Sweet and Sour Cucumber Pickle

It was a case of use them or lose them because last week there wasn't just 1 cucumber from the greenhouse...................

or two........................

or three......................

but four!

So I bought Cider vinegar and  some celery..............

And turned the largest three cucumbers, one and half bottles of vinegar, some of the celery and a large onion into 5 jars of Sweet and Sour Pickles.

The recipe is on the separate Recipe page. I didn't put mustard seed into the mix this year. Trying to avoid things with seeds in.

Despite giving the 2 cucumber plants in the greenhouse plenty of water, they've started to shrivel. Perhaps the extreme heat has done them no good at all and there might be a shortage of cucs later.....typical.

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Another bad day at Wimbledon. I think just two men through to the second round, I lost track when I abandoned watching for a while  to watch the first two of the new series of Countdown. They used to take a break for summer but now roll right on. I worked out I've been watching this words and numbers game since about 1986. I had a small portable black and white TV in the kitchen and used to watch while getting a meal ready for the children..... it was on at 4.30pm back then. I didn't know what colour their set was until many years later!

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End of June Financials

The usual income of State Pension, Suffolk County Council Spouses Pension and interest on savings.

I'd hoped for a fairly low spend in June with only three known extras. The garden waste bin was up £2 on last year to £66 for the year - they empty every fortnight all year round. The car tax which suddenly appeared last year (previously the age and engine size of my car meant I didn't pay any) stayed at £20.The dentist was for a check up and x-ray and was £84 - he said a nine month rather than a six month check up would do, which is good. The regular expenses were Council tax, charity donations, phones and broadband, one lot of diesel for the car  and monthly electric bill. That lot came to around £550.

Food spending for home -already mentioned- plus  things for doing pickles totalled £106.93. There was also one meal out with YD and EGD, a KFC after the dentist and just the one whippy 99 ice-cream (sadly!)

Personal spending wasn't too bad (no books!), there was the annoying £5 wasted on the  card making kit, a hair cut and 2 new Puzzler books - I ordered a 16 x 16 Sudoku puzzle book online as there is only one of these puzzles in the Take-A Break Puzzler and I always turn to that page first. It takes me days to sort a 16 x16 so I think the new book will last me months!

Incidental spending was mainly small stuff including screen-wash for the car, sunflower hearts for the birds, a new plastic stool for the hallway (£4.99), bits for bathroom and kitchen- including useful car-boot finds - and the window cleaner came round (£10.00). While Amazon had their Prime Special Offer Days I bought Ecover Laundry Liquid and a different sort of Dishwasher Tabs. I'd almost come to the end of my last Smol orders - now cancelled due to their new delivery costs.

Small Savings..............

• Didn't go out much in the heat 
• Bread loaves from bread machine as usual 50/50 Wholemeal/white flour
• Washing machine used only twice a week
• Washing dried outside
• Raspberries from the garden ( had to stop eating them -  they were upsetting my stomach so they're in the freezer for adding to the fruit peel to make 'Compost' Jelly sometime)
• First cucumbers from the garden
• First courgettes   ""     ""  ""
• Dishwasher only used every other day.
• Taking advantage of the Amazon Prime-Days savings for a couple of things.
• Reading library books and from my shelves for free. I read 13 books in June - due to the heat!
• Useful kitchen bits..... scourers etc found at boot sales.
• New sunglasses from car-boot sale for 50p! (Still with their Asda George £5 label)

Next month...............

 July in 2025 was the month with the lowest spend, can I do even better this year? The only known extra is for Virus protection for the laptop - there are no birthdays or other big bills due and fingers crossed I won't need to spend much at all.............especially if we get more very hot weather that keeps me indoors rather than out on adventures.

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An awful start to Wimbledon for British Players and Jack Draper had to pull out as he'd had a return of injury. Then there was the Cricket third test against NZ - another loss. Plus the brilliant Ben Stokes deciding to retire from International cricket.....with test matches against Pakistan still to come. Maybe the English Footballers will do better? 

Not much of a Summer of Sport to write about this year!

Back Tomorrow

Final Food Shop of June

Might as well do another food shop photo to round off the month................

The world and his wife were outside Aldi at 8am on a very hot morning waiting for it to open to get shopping done and home again.

I was there too - lots of empty spaces in the fruit and veg section due to a late delivery but I got the things on my list. I noticed the icecream/ice lolly freezers were decimated!

Left to right. Bunch beetroot £1.39, Tender-stem broccoli £1.45 (their heads of calabrese were looking sad and yellowing just like the week before).1Kg nectarines £2.39; 6 mini apples 99p; mango 69p (one of their on offer special 6 - they are usually 88p); 2  peanuts @ 59p = £1.18; crumpets 45p; 6 medium free range eggs £1.49; 4 pints semi skimmed milk £1.65; ground coffee 1 decaf and one normal @ £2.49p = £4.98; mayo 89p; and off the edge of the photo is a pack of six small packs of mini cheese bakes 99p.

Total for these was £19.19p

For the month ..............£50.42 + £13.35 + £19.92 + £19.19 = £102.88 - Much the same as May even though I'd been hoping for less.

With photos of the food shopping all month I could see what fruit and veg I'd had during the month, seems like a goodly mix.

 A Cauliflower.                                        Apples

Tenderstem broccoli                                Nectarines                                

Beetroot                                                   Strawberries

Potatoes                                                    Mango

Carrots                                                      Prunes

Cucumber                                                 Canned peaches

Salad Leaves

Head of calabrese

Peppers

Onions

Mange Tout

Frozen Sweet potato Fries

Frozen peas

Canned tomatoes

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According to the Met Office forecast the exceedingly hot weather has gone and yesterday's high was 26℃ rather than the 37℃ of Friday. The coming week should be in the mid 20's too but  the long range forecast says we may well get another hot week in July.

Back Tomorrow