The Crazy Days Challenge - Challenging Myself to Use What I Have in the Best Way Possible ... and Stay Sane Throughout These Crazy Days

I had no intention until just now to start a Challenge on this blog ... in some ways it's not even a proper Challenge as to how this blog usually runs … in many ways most of us are just embarking on perhaps one of the biggest and strangest challenges of our lives.

But as I looked at this photo which I have just shared on my other blog I thought why not document the food we eat during these crazy times and see how we make everything we have last for as long as possible.  Is it a cop out Challenge, perhaps yes, but it will hold me accountable and give me something to do as well as giving you something to read and perhaps a few ideas or tips to use for your food supplies … or lack of them.

Let's just get things straight to start with in case you don't read my other blog, and for the first time look at the contents of the fridge and gasp, in either admiration or indignation.  I haven't dashed out and bought up everything I possibly could from the shops I have just returned from my Van, the static caravan I usually spend the majority of my time at for nine months of the year, as the caravan park it is sited on has closed, like many others, on Government orders for the duration of the current crisis.  On leaving I had to bring back with all the food that might possibly go off or go out of date during the next three to four months.  I also, unusually for me, brought back here to Wales most of the dried and tinned foods that are always stored in the Van for times when I arrive with no fresh supplies after a few days away.

So because of this, here in Wales at the moment, my fridge and my cupboards are looking very healthy and we will survive this crazy time relatively easily.  But saying that  I will not be wasting anything, I will be using everything in date order, cooking excess portions of any foods that might go out of date before we can eat them and freezing the resulting meals.  Luckily our large chest freezer was only a third full ready for us selling it, so it has once again been called into service.

If you would like to follow along, for something to do, a way to pass ten minutes of your morning with a much deserved cup of coffee or as a way to pick up a few tips or to share some of your own in the comments below.  Please know that you are very welcome.

Let's survive these Crazy Times together.

Sue xx

The One Hundred Books Challenge

I am Challenging Myself to read One Hundred Books during 2020 

... and also to remember to list them on here.  😃

December

45 - kept

44 - gone

43 - kept

42 - kept

41 - gone

November

40 - kept

39 - kept

October

38 - gone

37 - kept

36 - gone

35 - gone

34 - gone

33 - gone

September

32 - kept

31 - kept

August

30 - kept

29 - kept 

28 - gone

July

27 - kept

26 - kept

June

  25 - kept 

24 - kept 

May

 23 - kept

22 - gone

21 - kept 

20 - gone  

April

19 - gone  

18 - gone

17 - gone

14/15/16 - gone

March

13 - gone

 12 - gone

February

11 - kept

10 - gone

9 - kept

January

8 - kept

7 - kept

6 - kept

5 - gone

4 - gone

3 - gone

2 - gone

1 - gone

Challenge One - The One Hundred Books Challenge

The first Challenge I'm setting myself this year is a year long one and it is to read one hundred books over the course of this year. 

 I seem to have gone from loving books and reading all the time to being much more intermittent with my reading.  Just recently, like so many other people I've been picking up my phone more and more and of course this has meant that sometimes I simply fill my time with social media, playing games and well basically … just not reading books.

Now I have decided that I simply want to bring my love of reading books back to the forefront of my mind.  Hopefully giving myself the Challenge of reading a minimum of two books a week should help to do this.

To start me off and to inspire me I have just been around the house counting the books that we own.  The ones on bookshelves, the ones on ledges and the ones stacked by the side of the bed ... all of them.

The grand total of physical books in this house is 362.

I also have my tablet which holds all the books that I used to have on a Kindle.  There's around 200 on there,  or maybe more now as I tend to pick up any Kindle freebies that I spot on Amazon that sound interesting.

I have some books at the Van which will have to be added into the main total, I'm guessing around 25-30, we'll see when we get back there next month, but I'm thinking that this will still bring our total number of already owned physical books to just under 400, which is a big improvement on the 619 that I counted up to in 2015.

Over the years books have come in, both new and second-hand, and some have gone out again to car boot sales and charity shops and the number we own has fluctuated up and down, but then last year we decided to start slimming down the collection properly in our bid for a simpler life and it's nice to see that we seem to be on target to reducing the number we own.

Ideally I would like to own just one hundred books … but I doubt that would ever happen.  Perhaps I can get to one hundred fiction and non-fiction (biographies etc) and then another one hundred cook books … now that might be achievable!!

Anyway thanks to my counting of books I now know that this bookshelf will easily hold one hundred books, and as this is one of the few pieces of furniture that we intend keeping once we sell our house it's good to know that if I can downsize all the non-cookbooks to one just hundred, they will all fit comfortably on the shelves of this unit and we will have the cupboard for storage of other things.  My cookbooks I hope will in future all be able to fit in my kitchen!

I will be listing all the books that I have read and am currently reading, on the post that published just before this one and that is the post that can be linked to from the link on the right-hand sidebar, under My Challenges 2020  so you will be able to follow my progress throughout the year.

Better go, I have some reading to do.

I started this last night as my bedtime reading ... it's good.  I'm also loving their television series on Sunday mornings 'Living on the Veg'.  How nice to see a good vegan cooking show on television. 🙂

Sue xx

Happy New Year

Late … but better late than never.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, and that you are looking forward to this New Year and new decade with hope and renewed vigour and energy.  

There's no new Challenge as yet but I have some ideas that I'm jotting in my notebook and if any of my regular readers have ideas that you think might make for a good week or month long Challenge, that others would be interested in reading about, I would be interested to see your ideas.

Sue xx