Windy Day

We've been extremely fortunate with the weather down here in the south-east and my heart goes out to all those that are suffering as a result of the dreadful floods in other parts of the UK. It has been very blustery today, though, and I found it hard to walk against the wind sometimes, but at least it's been dry.  

DH and I decided to leave our next day trip until the wind was less fierce; it seemed a waste of money to buy a bus ticket to Deal and not be able to take a leisurely walk along by the sea. We still managed to achieve our 10,000 steps by taking a walk around River village, stopping off at Aldi on the way back, depositing our shopping at home and then walking into town for a coffee. 

We had a lazy afternoon after all that walking and an easy dinner tonight of barbecue beans with smoked sausage, jacket potatoes and little gem lettuce. I used 2 cans of Aldi baked beans (4 can pack for £1.15, approx 58p for 2), 2 cans Aldi red kidney beans, drained (23p a can, so 46p for 2), 1/2 a Mattesons smoked sausage (£1 from FarmFoods, 50p for 1/2), a sliced onion (aprox 10p), some sliced frozen peppers (25p) and a glug of barbecue sauce I got from Approved Foods (approx 20p). Left to bubble in the slow cooker all day, and served with jacket potatoes also done in a slow cooker for 4 hours on low (2.5kg bag baking potatoes from Aldi at £1.89, approx 20p per potato, 80p for 4) and 2 little gem lettuces for 39p as part of Aldi special offer veg. Total cost £3.29, 4 servings at approx 82p per serving. There was also some lettuce left over for tomorrow.

I expect we'll be up until the early hours tomorrow night as the neighbours nearly always have a New Years party. DS2 is playing a gig with his band in Sheppey and then going on to a club in Canterbury that's open all night. We don't usually celebrate New Year so we'll probably spend the night in (ignoring the thud of next door's music blasting through the walls), watch a dvd and hope the party doesn't go on all night. I enjoyed Christmas but now I'm ready for the holiday period to be well and truly over and to get back to some sort of normality. 

Goodnight everyone, I'm off to bed early tonight in case I don't get much sleep tomorrow. 

Love, Helen xx