Up early as had an outstanding job to do, to take the cooked cherries and separate the flesh from the stones. I decided to try to do it using a sieve and wooden spoon. This meant I got a good lot of cherry juice and some solids, and some flash/stone mix, the stones I extracted manually when I became aware of them, but I didn't have time to remove all of the stones. I froze an ice-cream tub full of cherry juice and a bag of flesh with a few stones left in it. Obviously the pile of extracted stones will get composted.
By this time it was midday and I'm due to go to Manchester because tomorrow I'm at the wonderful Disability Awareness Day.
So, time to go offline and get my Fiddlesticks kit together and get down to the station!!!
I got to the station with all my clobber in the trailer and bought a ticket to Stockport. I got a train in about 5 minutes... lucky!
Met a nice granny on the way over to Huddersfield, and after that read my NewScientist and was soon in Manchester Victoria. Headed straight over to Night and Day, was pleased to see Sean, Swin, Laura and Colin, Robert, and later Simon and Ian arrived. I had a mocha and enjoyed chatting.
People started drifting away at 5 so I went back to Piccadilly with Colin, Laura getting a ride on his wheelchair. I then took the train out to Stockport, where Janie said she'd meet me. I was very pleased to see her again, it's been a long time. Her son was waiting at home and it was good to see him too; we get on well. Her older son and husband Mark were in Cardiff, supposed to be having a game of blind cricket, but they'd got there and it had been rained off.
I had a bowl of soup, really nice carrot and borlotti bean, and then, helped by the younger son, cut their hedge with the electric hedge trimmers. Janie finds this quite difficult as the machine is a bit unwieldy, and Mark finds it a bit difficult as he's blind. So I was happy to do it for them.
Janie went to the station to pick up Mark and their eldest, and when we'd settled down for half an hour, Janie and I walked into Marple to get some drinks. On the way back I suggested looking in a supermarket bin... and there were large numbers of packets of frozen fish fillets and breaded chicken fingers. We filled Janie's bag with enough to fill her freezer. I love being a Freegan, even if it's not the sort of stuff I eat! Miles better than landfill....
So, then had 2 bottles of pear cider and some good chats with Mark and family, and relatively early to bed, and was able to borrow a desktop computer to do my blog and play a bit of Scrabble before sleeping.
Showing posts with label free food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free food. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 July 2011
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Tuesday 22nd June 10
A hard working day in the garden. I finished off the chainsawing which I started yesterday, and split some logs which I liberated from a bonfire pile on a building site last night. I cut a load of hedge with the shears and cut back a huge bush which was towering over our currant bushes, and shredded some of this material but not all. Some of the shrub needs the bigger stems cutting out as they will make good kindling in a year or two.
Around the middle of the day it was too hot to be outside so I used solar hot water to do a load of washing up.
At 6.15 there was a Hull Road Ward Planning Panel at Tang Hall Community Centre, where we faced a large pile of applications, and we didn't stop til 7.45. Some of them were quite complex, and unusually we made quite a few comments on the applications. On the way home I visited a friendly bin and got 75kg of chapati flour, 3 unopened sacks, two brown and one white. Amazing. I'm ashamed of the wasteful society we live in.
I had a bit of tea and then another hour in the garden, but came in at 10.45 when it got too dark to continue.
Around the middle of the day it was too hot to be outside so I used solar hot water to do a load of washing up.
At 6.15 there was a Hull Road Ward Planning Panel at Tang Hall Community Centre, where we faced a large pile of applications, and we didn't stop til 7.45. Some of them were quite complex, and unusually we made quite a few comments on the applications. On the way home I visited a friendly bin and got 75kg of chapati flour, 3 unopened sacks, two brown and one white. Amazing. I'm ashamed of the wasteful society we live in.
I had a bit of tea and then another hour in the garden, but came in at 10.45 when it got too dark to continue.
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Saturday 6th February 10
Up at a reasonable time so that I could get to St Nicks for soon after 10am, as I'd promised to dig out the compost bay which is over-full, and it needed turning into the next bay.
I took my fork and spade down in the trailer and fully expected to have a couple of hours work by myself... peace and quiet, with the birds singing around me and an occasional dog walker passing by.
There was a lot of work to do; the composting area is a concrete base with 4 walls of breeze blocks, about 6 metres long, a metre high and about a metre between each wall. Each bay therefore is about 6 cubic metres of space. A pet shop regularly drops off sacks of sawdust and pet bedding, and this makes up the majority of the material, but I have on occasion added stuff and other people probably do too. But no-one is completely in charge or responsible.
So, I started getting the second bay ready for the contents of the first, and did about half an hour, with a short chat to Sue the Priest, out walking her dog, and anticipating the service in Doncaster this afternoon. Then I was joined by a 20 year old student, who offered to help and I let her have the fork, which is easier to use, and she worked at one end of the pile and I started towards the other, but in the middle whilst standing in the empty bay and adding to the pile that she was also adding to. We talked about all sorts of things, her history degree, her half Chinese ancestry and peoples' attitudes to race, lots of other subjects. We worked together for well over an hour. I think we shifted about a quarter or a fifth of the compost. Lots more needs doing!
I went into the Environment Centre at about 12.30 and the Eco-Active volunteers were all having lunch, and John invited me to have lunch too. I did, and chatted to a nice Chilean guy and a female student from Minnesota.
Home to a peaceful house... our youngest had gone to a birthday party and wasn't due back til 7pm. I busied myself in the front, trying to tidy up after the unwanted planks and packing wood had been almost tossed everywhere after yesterday's sorting of good from bad. I chainsawed up quite a bit more and built a good stack on the right of the door.
When I came in for a coffee I chopped up two huge onions, rejects because of surface blemishes, and slow-fried them on the stove, hoping that they would come in useful for tonight's meal.
Later, Gill decided to treat our eldest to a DVD from Blockbusters and a bag of chips from the Chinese takeaway just beyond it. So they ate together and I made myself a meal based on the onions. I had couscous (free as the bag had split), sweet red pepper paprika (made from thrown-away peppers) cooked in marmite water (to clean out the nearly empty jar) and a couple of, shock horror, bought mushrooms. Oh, and there was a 'crust' of Edam cheese left in the fridge because Gill cuts this cheese parallel to the rind, leaving a half centimetre of wasted cheese..... but not if I can help it, so I chopped that into small cubes and mixed them in just before I plonked it on my plate. Delicious! And 90% free materials... only the olive oil, mushrooms and cheese was paid-for. Even the heat to cook it was free. I really like meals like this!
A nothingy evening followed... bit of telly, kept the stove going as it's another cold night, played on the laptop for ages.
I took my fork and spade down in the trailer and fully expected to have a couple of hours work by myself... peace and quiet, with the birds singing around me and an occasional dog walker passing by.
There was a lot of work to do; the composting area is a concrete base with 4 walls of breeze blocks, about 6 metres long, a metre high and about a metre between each wall. Each bay therefore is about 6 cubic metres of space. A pet shop regularly drops off sacks of sawdust and pet bedding, and this makes up the majority of the material, but I have on occasion added stuff and other people probably do too. But no-one is completely in charge or responsible.
So, I started getting the second bay ready for the contents of the first, and did about half an hour, with a short chat to Sue the Priest, out walking her dog, and anticipating the service in Doncaster this afternoon. Then I was joined by a 20 year old student, who offered to help and I let her have the fork, which is easier to use, and she worked at one end of the pile and I started towards the other, but in the middle whilst standing in the empty bay and adding to the pile that she was also adding to. We talked about all sorts of things, her history degree, her half Chinese ancestry and peoples' attitudes to race, lots of other subjects. We worked together for well over an hour. I think we shifted about a quarter or a fifth of the compost. Lots more needs doing!
I went into the Environment Centre at about 12.30 and the Eco-Active volunteers were all having lunch, and John invited me to have lunch too. I did, and chatted to a nice Chilean guy and a female student from Minnesota.
Home to a peaceful house... our youngest had gone to a birthday party and wasn't due back til 7pm. I busied myself in the front, trying to tidy up after the unwanted planks and packing wood had been almost tossed everywhere after yesterday's sorting of good from bad. I chainsawed up quite a bit more and built a good stack on the right of the door.
When I came in for a coffee I chopped up two huge onions, rejects because of surface blemishes, and slow-fried them on the stove, hoping that they would come in useful for tonight's meal.
Later, Gill decided to treat our eldest to a DVD from Blockbusters and a bag of chips from the Chinese takeaway just beyond it. So they ate together and I made myself a meal based on the onions. I had couscous (free as the bag had split), sweet red pepper paprika (made from thrown-away peppers) cooked in marmite water (to clean out the nearly empty jar) and a couple of, shock horror, bought mushrooms. Oh, and there was a 'crust' of Edam cheese left in the fridge because Gill cuts this cheese parallel to the rind, leaving a half centimetre of wasted cheese..... but not if I can help it, so I chopped that into small cubes and mixed them in just before I plonked it on my plate. Delicious! And 90% free materials... only the olive oil, mushrooms and cheese was paid-for. Even the heat to cook it was free. I really like meals like this!
A nothingy evening followed... bit of telly, kept the stove going as it's another cold night, played on the laptop for ages.
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