SLICING & DICING

Five weeks have passed and there’s still a war on.

Increases in wholesale oil prices have so far only trickled down to petrol pumps but it won’t be long before those same increased fuel costs are making their way into food prices so I’m slicing and dicing my way to victory.  

Here's my super trooper cost of living tip to help you all save some wonga during these hard times.

My ears pricked up at hearing a recent radio advert for cut price veggies being offered in time for Easter celebrations. Super Scrimpers everywhere - rally the troops. Now! It’s time for a supermarket assault. Breaking news - carrots, parsnips and swedes all 4p per pack. FOUR pence. It costs more to use a public convenience!

Not quite on the same level as liberating the Strait of Hormuz I agree but my price-busting military coup costing £2.24p has resulted in a mega haul of 2 kg of carrots, 1 kg of parsnips and 2 fat swedes. My raid also included a couple of bags of tatties (spuds) at £1 per bag. Doesn’t sound like much but believe me, once frozen this little lot should be enough to feed two people for a good few months thus saving the pennies if food prices go up.

Gone mad buying veggies

Root vegetables are incredibly versatile so worth buying for storage. Think roast dinner accompaniments, wholesome soups, casseroles, mashed up or even baked into delicious cakes. Yep, you can actually make parsnip cake.

Now for the hard part – the slicing and dicing. In order to reap the long-term veggie victory benefits, everything has to be chopped, boiled, dried then frozen.

Blanching fresh root vegetables is easy peasy and doesn’t take long so not much gas used.

Top and tail the carrots and parsnips. I don’t bother peeling them just give them a good wash/scrub in the sink beforehand. Cut carrots into slices and parsnips into batons.

Blanched parsnip pieces

Heat a pan of lightly salted water until it comes to a good rolling boil then drop in your veg. Take care. Splashed hot water burns like hell. Boil only for 2 minutes then drain in a colander.

Spread the slightly boiled veg onto a tray then leave on one side until completely dry.

Two kilos of carrots is a lot of carrot

Once dry, place veg into clear plastic bags or containers and straight into the freezer. Label and date.

Same process applies to blanching swedes except that these are peeled and cubed before boiling. Swedes are tough to cut so use a large sharp knife taking care not to cube up a few digits whilst you’re at it. I’m using this lovely machete purchased from IKEA for this, cuts through anything – swedes, chicken bones, red tape. You name it.

Blimey - have you got a licence for that blade?

Spuds can be stored away in a cool, dark, dry place for a couple of months. The Ancient Mariner sticks his in his garden shed but mine are secreted away in my understairs Doomsday cupboard. Open the bags to prevent the spuds sweating or rotting. They may get rooty but don’t let that put you off. There is nothing wrong with eating rooty taters, after all you get to peel them first.

Going back to my roots

Having slaved away all morning over a steamy pan of boiling veggies, I can now relax with a cuppa and think of how many extra chocolate eggs I can buy once Easter is over with all that money saved.

One for you and six more for me

Happy Easter!

RASH DECISIONS

For the first time in my life, I haven’t had to get up at the crack of dawn to rush off to work. It’s the strangest feeling I can tell you.

So, what have I done with my first week of freedom? 

Well…. Relishing the warmth of our feathery duvet for starters whilst running through a mental ‘to do’ list to keep thoughts from turning to what I would have been doing at this very moment if I’d been back in the office. Saddo. Let it go. Now!

Utopian dreams of early retirement have been rudely scuppered by an unexpected sudden bout of shingles no doubt brought on from stress at the thought of having absolutely nothing to do. It came on rapidly, a Usain Bolt out of the blue.

The irony has not been lost on me. Here I am on my first week off work and all I’ve done is rest or dab gloopy calamine lotion on a super-itchy sore looking rash that appeared across the top of my left booby and armpit. Hardly the glamourous life of a retiree I’d imagined. I should be painting walls, digging up the garden, wild swimming or hunting capybaras not looking in the mirror every few minutes trying to figure out if my buboes are spreading.

Is this God’s punishment for idle loafers who should be spending their time in productive employment rather than dreaming of lazing around in the garden?

Having managed to get an urgent face to face appointment at the GPs, the lovely lady doctor proceeded to give my bouncing Berthas a jolly good fondle before prescribing a course of super-strength antivirals called Aciclovir. ‘Take five of these every day’ she smiled sympathetically quickly ushering me out with a barge pole to minimise risk of contagion and so she could fumigate the consulting room before the next patient.

Shingles is no fun. Awful calamine lotion aside, it’s the minor electric shocks rippling across your skin that leave you feeling frazzled. Now I know what it’s like being a fly near one of those electric bug zappers. Ouch! Itch! Dab! Not only do I look like an extra from a zombie apocalypse movie but Aciclovir gives you the stinkiest farts so I smell like a dead rat too.

Still, it’s not all bad news. I have to keep reminding myself that whilst I might not be full of the joys of spring, I have officially retired and that’s a bully bonus in itself. 

Just keep taking the tablets and try not to scratch.  Dab me!

THOSE THAT NEED IT MOST

The nation’s in yet another downward doom spiral as a result of recent wholesale gas and oil price hikes resulting from Trump turmoil in the Middle East.

And naturally, the vociferous few are making the most noise to persuade the Treasury to milk the taxpayer cash cow into funding yet another energy bailout.

Instead of imposing profit caps to curb price gouging particularly in supply areas affecting households powered by oil-fired central heating, the penniless (and clueless) Rachel from Accounts is looking to target funding to ‘those who need it most’.

So, what formula or criteria will the Government use to work out who falls into the ‘Those Who Need It Most’ bucket?

Somehow, I can’t see it setting up a registration scheme to identify households with oil-fired central heating. Creating a ginormous spreadsheet to record such data would be way too much work or be deemed far too complex for civil service monkeys to get their head round. Without means of corroborating applicant data, this would be a fraudster’s dream, with oil-fired central heating suddenly leap-frogging other conventional means of keeping homes warm.

I ask again. Who exactly are ‘those who need it most’ and what is the IT that they’re most in need of? A job, smoked kippers, bag of coal, silken underpants, a capybara?

Without further qualification of this statement, it will only serve to rile up the honest and upright tax/bill paying citizens that have always done the right thing into another populist froth because they will automatically jump to the conclusion that the IT equals more money for benefit claimants.

And with Treasury coffers already stripped to the bone then it stands to reason that if money has to be found for those needing it most, it's only going to come from one place - the taxpayer.

Some benefit claimants can surely not qualify as ‘those who need MONEY most’ because I’d bet my hat that many are ‘earning’ more from the Welfare State than some of us are in employment. Handing out cash on a blanket basis to anyone already getting a handout is not in my view providing targeted support with the limited means available to the Treasury.

Besides which, we’re heading towards summer. Most peeps (aside from the elderly or those with medical conditions) normally switch their heating off around the end of March so the impact of any price increases is not immediate other than at the petrol pump. In a few months’ time, this war might be old news and wholesale prices may have dipped back to lower levels so rather than jumping the gun, would it not be more prudent for the Government to adopt the NHS’s wait and see approach before scraping the bottom of the taxpayer barrel again?

Throwing out money the Treasury doesn’t have to the whinging throng is setting a dangerous precedent. It gives rise to expectations that the Government will always provide cash in any given crisis. It’s not really the way to build backbone or resilience in a population that wobbles like a hysterical jelly every time what is deemed a national disaster occurs.

People need to adapt to survive and sometimes this lesson has to be learnt the hard way; through struggle, self-sacrifice, squaring up to adversity and not cowering in a corner. Previous generations got through the repercussions of war or much worse and it wasn’t necessarily by receiving Government handouts.

Far better to equip those ‘who need it most’ with the necessary financial skills or mechanisms to help build strength of character so that when a bad situation crops up, they can remain calm and look for a solution rather than put their hands out.

LAST HURRAH

By Jove – is that a capybara?

Have you seen these fugitives?

Samba, the mischievous rodent recently escaped from Marwell Zoo remains at large, the capybara equivalent of the elusive Lord Lucan whose whereabouts still remain unclear to this day.

On the other hand, I know exactly where my illustrious self is - contemplating the light at the end of the workplace tunnel which is now rapidly approaching almost as fast as a drone missile locked onto a gas refinery. Only 1 day left or more precisely, 3 working hours before I waltz off into the early retirement sunset.          Not that I’m counting…

And no, I haven’t changed my mind about giving up work. There’ll be no political U turns here. It kills me to have to say ‘this lady’s not for turning’ but for once Thatcher summed it up in a nutshell. Quick, mouthwash me!

I’m more than happy to be leaving my job for youth or robots or any other bugger that fancies spending their time sitting at a draughty desk pounding a keyboard all morning. I have other fish to fry including finishing off my not-quite-completed wood panelling project.

Leaving your job should be a time for celebration so cakes are in order. My colleagues have been treated to a selection of Mr Kipling’s finest, enough sugary treats to last the entire week. Well, why not? It’s the least I can do to make up for my defecting to the west before the statutory age.

I shall miss the buggers in my own not-that-bothered-with-the-rest-of-the-world kind of way. We’ve had some good laughs over the past 5 years but now it’s time to plough a new furrow, write life’s final chapter and enjoy some quality ‘me’ time before this knackered bag of bones gives up the ghost.

‘And now the end is near and so I face the final curtain’. Fitting lyrics sung by the Chairman of the Board (or should that be Bored?) as he went off to do it his way much in the same way, I’m offski to do it my way.

Goodbye old chums!  It's been swell.