Frugal Food and Frugal Shoes!

One of my new things was to avoid throwing any food away. This morning I noticed that there was quite a bit of veg in the fridge which would hang around much longer. I chopped up a bunch of celery, a bag of carrots and three onions and cooked them for a while in olive oil (extra virgin organic from my friends Sues farm in Crete.) When they had softened enough i blitzed them with my stick blender. I froze half of it and the other half went on to be the beginnings of a huge pot of bolognese sauce. I chopped some more celery and onion and cooked every up with the minced beef. Later i added mushrooms, tinned tomatoes and borlotti beans plus a carton of garlicky Dal which i froze last weekend. It was superb and i got to feel good about not binning anything.

I also found a shoe recycling facility in a shop in the local town. I am not sure if you are supposed to use it if you don't buy from them but I think its for everyone. Shoes are neatened up a bit and then sent on to someone who needs them. This is really good news for me because with two teenage boys we often have shoes which are too small before they wear out. In the early days you could pass shoes from one to the other ( I checked with the health visitor - this is fine) but one now has long thin feet, like a rabbit, and the other has short wide feet, so it really doesn't work so good anymore. So during the coming week I hope to collect up all the shoes which are about the place, match up the needed ones with their owner/potential new owner (younger son has his eye on some of my beloved shoes)and take the rest off to town to recycle.

Not a bad day, I think.