That time of year again.

It's that time of year again. Too early to reasonably start thinking and planning for Christmas (I just REFUSE to do this in any serious way till 1st December) and the memory of summer has drifted away into the mists of time. (Apart from the fact I still haven't got all the camping gear away.) Half term is past, Halloween is past....what do you do in November????

You feel skint, that's what. The holiday bills are finally paid, we've had three birthdays, two car MOTs and the C-lists are next, eek. Money. Not enough of. So steps must be taken to economise. Last year I joined Natalie's Store Cupboard Challenge, in which basically you try to live out of your larder, freezer and whatever else you have in store for a month and buy as little as possible. This has the twin advantages of (a) saving money and (b) clearing out all these odd tins, packets and little crunchy bags of frozen whatever you have in the freezer.

Just to show you the current state of my own larder yesterday (after tidying...!)





And of the same larder in 2007, just for comparison.....



Oh what a difference! (Not....)


So.....Natalie very kindly gives you a couple of days warning to get yourself prepared, even if it is only to go and see what's actually IN the cupboards and freezer. Interesting exercise. I found a lobster in the freezer. When did I buy that? (I know why...it had a Reduced to Clear £1.00 sticker on it.) There was a chicken, which I did know about and which is currently in the oven, four half full bags of frozen peas, four half full bags of Yorkshire Puddings, several chicken carcasses, a lot of blocks of unusual cheese and....well, lots of things. I like bargains and quite often have a trip down to Tesco in the evening when they reduce all the short codes produce.

Anyway, given that it's now NaBloPoMo the Store Cupboard Challenge is quite a useful even to be participating in at the same time, because if I run out of blogging inspiration I can always waffle about what I'm cooking today, no? So today we are having roast chicken, Yorkshire Puddings, baked potatoes, peas and gravey for dinner.

Have to tell you about the potatoes, btw. Last night I was putting the rubbish out when I discovered half a box of baking potatoes in my back garden. I assumed the local vandals had nicked them fromm the nearbye grocery shop but upon enquiry they had not come from there. So....well, I had two boxes of windfall apples pinched from the garden last week so I decided that the potatoes were the karmic balance taking effect and thus am not going to look a gift potato in the mouth, as were. The apples were only windfalls after all, destined for the compost bin. The only thing I regret is that the lads probably used them as missiles. Oh well, better a squidgy old apple being thrown at your window than a large spud.

Finally, to show you that I have not totally given up as a knitter, here is a link to a shop called Five Valley Fabrics. It has some amazingly good reductions in it's yarn section (and possibly other sections) at the moment Worth a browse.