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Archive for July, 2010

New shoes and lunch out

July 30th, 2010 at 10:23 am

I ended up in the city again, and did some shopping too! I had to go the Chiro for my monthly visit. The other day I found a pair of walking shoes on sale 50% off, so I ended up getting a pair as the ones that I am wearing are over eight years old so are coming to the end of they life as going out pair.
Cost just under $70.00 as they are leather uppers and with a descent sole.

Had lunch and coffee while I was there, I got senior discount coffee, getting a larger size for the same price as regular size $3.50. Bought $6.50 special deal on the Japanese Teriyaki Chicken with Vegetable and Rice it was the large size for the same price as the small size saving $2.40

So my savings on regular prices was $74.00.

Monthly Lunch and Bills

July 28th, 2010 at 11:43 am

I had a great day in the city today! I went to lunch at Casino again with my ex-workmates. We haven’t worked in 12 years next month, all of us were retrenched at the same time and enjoying our retirement now. We do meet every month like clock work not always the same ones but someone turns up each month, this time nine of us turned up about the normal number for our group.

Before lunch I set out to pay all my bills that are due this pay. This saves me an extra trip of running around early next month as most are due then. I like to pay as many bills over the counter as I can as this is away I can remember that I haven’t missing them. It’s a route now to pay the bills on certain dates that I go to the city. Some of the bills are paid via bank debit and another’s via post then the council rate bills are paid at the main counter so that I remember that they are paid and I get my discount and all credit card bills are paid when I am near the banks again over the counter. I did buy some birthday cards for the August Birthdays, another USB stick, A Moroccan Cookbook that I wanted, top up my fare card which is called a Go Card here which allows me travel around without having to find change for fares.

Costs
Lunch _________$13.50
Gambling ______$8.00
Fares __________$20.00
USB stick_______ $12.99
Cookbook ______$14.95
3 Birthday Cards _$2.00
Bills total ______$505.00

Total __________$576.44

Update on my Solar Hot Water

July 27th, 2010 at 10:20 am

It’s up and running just waiting for my rebate to come back. So after waiting 110 days for a team to come an install it for me! Why so long, a lot of red tape as someone (Federal & State Governments) didn’t do they job right the first time around, no safety checks were done that everyone was working on installing solar hot water and ceiling batts had the right certificates to do the jobs. Four young workmen died in the ceilings here installing ceiling batts which is the other option you could have had done. I had ceiling batts so went with the solar hot water option.

I will not know if I will save any money for another three months as it was installed two days the last meter read. I am working on that I will save about 4 kWh on Hot water and third off my power coming down from 16 kWh & 4 kWh per day to around 9 kWh per day for both. Prices are rising for our power here in leaps & bounds, another price rise started on 1st July for electricity and water is going up too! I am still using around same amounts but the bills are still going up. I have budgeted for extra $200 but mine may stay around the same because of solar panels & solar hot water installed. I do sell back to the grid but now I will use most of this to run the solar hot water pump.

I do have a slit system where the 400L water tank is on the ground and the panels are on the roof the only drawback is they had to put the panels on west side of the house and my solar panels are on the east side of house. Ideally they should be facing north but I never had the room to put either there. But I do get between 10 to 14 hours sun per day 365 days of the year. It’s good to live in the Sunshine State.

Five boxes or more

July 26th, 2010 at 01:51 am

Over the past few weeks I have been working my way though Garage Sale (Yard Sale) storage area. This is the area which I place anything needs to go at some time. I have had a few tradesmen here over the past year or so and have not got into that area for while. If any needed to be move they just move it out of the way and everything ended up in that area. So that I no longer know what’s there for certain anymore!

Very near my storage area for my bulk toilet paper and empty bottle stash. As I couldn’t get into this area without a clearout but I didn’t find any toilet paper so far but found 5 large boxes of empty bottles. I will cull them down to one box and give away or recycle all the others.



Two boxes in the front on left are to be culled further and all the others boxes to be recycled or given to a jar maker in the basket. They are just taking up to much room.

Update:- I will put up the photo again when crashing of photos stops.

300 Sensational Salads Index

July 24th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

I just found a copy of 300 Sensational Salads by Lucinda Hollace Berry - 1982 booklet of 46 pages in our local second hand bookshop for 50 cents for my Retro Cookbook collection. I found plenty of copies that anyone could buy online, as a great example of how not to set out a cookbook and it is by the looks of it, a study in some US collages too!

Why I am I so pique about this cookbook if I had to rate its layout, page numbering and picture details and index. I would give it a 0.5 /10 overall. Why give it 0.5 rating, it did fill every page with a picture or recipes. Some recipes were repeated again later in the book also. There is NO order in the layout, NO page numbering, NO picture details and NO index. Now the recipes themselves are interesting and I would rate recipes on they own at 7/10.

So set out to fix it for myself so I will put up two styles of index in My Pages on the side here for anyone to find if they wish to copy & paste. My own copy had been numbered in part by the previous owner so I finish it off and set out to make an index.

First by listing each recipe per page then separating the dressing from salads and alphabetical listing them into two groups. Any further can be done by those who need to do so.

Many of the recipes use fruits as ingredients in the salads and dressings.

I will just post one salad with dressing as example

Tangy Golden Apple Vegetables

1 Golden Delicious apple, in 3/4 in cubes
1 medium zucchini, in 1/2 in slices
1 medium carrot in 1/4 in, slices, cooked crisp-tender
2 tbsp chopped green onion
1 tbsp chopped parsley
Tangy Basil Marinade

Combine all ingredients; mix well.
Chill thoroughly.
Makes 4 -100 calories servings.

Tangy Basil Marinade

Combine 2 tbsp white wine vinegar, 1 tbsp oil, 1/4 tsp crushed basil leaves, 1/8 tsp salt & dash pepper. Mix well

300 Sensational Salads by Lucinda Hollace Berry - 1982

There would be away to update this recipe by changing the way you sliced the vegetables, may be in ribbons or baby matchsticks instead of slices. Both the zucchini and carrot could be done that way and the apple could be slice in a different way too!

Other recipes can be found

Text is Marinated Mushroom Salad and Link is http://www.ichef.com/recipe.cfm?task=display&itemid=110454&recipeid=95718
Marinated Mushroom Salad

Text is 5 recipes and copies for sale and Link is http://www.blujay.com/item/300-Sensational-Salads-Salad-Dressings-Recipe-Book-Cookbook-3100000-2096882
5 recipes and copies for sale

Its been awhile!

July 20th, 2010 at 10:47 pm

Its awhile since I blogged here!

So a quick rundown of what’s been happening around here.

I took a short break as my son cancelled all my favorites when he downloaded his iPhone download last time; I ended up with his favorites not mine. It’s lucky that my favorites websites are noted in any down load that I had taken. I use this method as a tracker so I know who to get credits any phrases that I post or keep on file. All ends well as it did clean out the deadwood in that favorites list.

I will try to post a bit more regularly from now on.