Rainy day shopping

If it hadn't been for Wayne (best pal of many years) waking me up with a text this morning, I probably would've slept until lunchtime. S was late for school, and by the time I'd got her there and sped to the place where I'm haggling with a car salesman over a Landrover (yes, I know, hardly carbon neutral transport but if you saw where I live you'd agree...), half the day was gone and I still had the shopping to do. Not a good start to the week.

Added to that, the absolutely awful weather threatened to make a real misery of the shopping. But it had its payoffs: because of the rain, most of the cars in the car parks had their windows well and truly misted up, so rather than paying you could put an old ticket on the dashboard and Mr Plod, not being able to make much out besides a small white square of the expected size with some indistinct print on it, would give you the benefit of the doubt. And it was an excuse to duck into Meyer's for a coffee to get out of the rain.

One full English and a slice of lime and pistachio cake later, I finally accepted that it wasn't going to clear up any minute and finished off the rounds. This is what I took back to the car:

If you click on it you can see the details of what, how much, where from and so on. I went a little over budget by indulging in the cakes and olives, and I'm not quite sure why the soda crystals are included in this picture - I was on another planet I think. Put together with stuff I still have in stock and from previous rounds this lot will keep us fed for the week. I've ordered from Hodmedod - they had a special offer on of a 12 can case of their baked beans in tomato sauce, plain beans and the vaal dhal thingy, so I went for that. I'm all for stocking up, and goodness knows if I don't sort myself out a half decent 4x4 we're going to need a survival pack in case this mud gets any worse - don't even start on the topic of snow!

I'm planning to turn this lot into the following menu this week:

We're starting with the steak & chips... watch this space!