Monday 8 August

1. It was frosty and forecast to be sunny, and I will need to go to the laundromat later to wash and dry my doona, so I focused on getting laundry washed and out on the line as early as possible to get as much dried outside as I can, to reduce the amount of tumble drying I need to do later. I had three loads outside by 9:30am! (In the end I did not end up using the tumble driers at all, see below, since I brought in all my dry sheets and blankets and re-made my bed with a spare doona, and left everything else to finish drying on the line tomorrow).

2. I continued working at cooking ahead to make sure Eric doesn't have to spend money on lunches, and using up odds and ends of vegetables (2 broccoli stems and the last of the droopy celery in the potato, cabbage and split pea soup).

3. I finally planted the first of my three new fruit trees, and mulched it with free newspapers and free composted mulch (yay tip!).

4. I did splurge on one big double choc chip cookie using laundromat money, after getting annoyed at the big washing machine being hogged by someone else so I couldn't use it for my doona, but I had enough self-preservation instinct to put back some additional items so kept the damage to less than $3. 

5. I did not give up on my dispiritingly bland, watery and boring soup, even though I was exhausted and found it hard to muster up any enthusiasm. Rose and I tinkered with it until we improved the flavour balance to make it more interesting, so now it can go into the meal rotation for the rest of the week.

Gratitude:

I am grateful for my slow cookers, because I know that if I am likely to be exhausted by the evening, I can make dinner in the morning when I still have the energy to think about cooking. Also, thanks to my slow cookers I now have a huge vat of cooked chickpeas to make things with for the rest of the week.

I am also grateful for having the pantry as a multi-functional food prep room, since I have my jars of sprouts out there out of the way, as well as various labour-saving devices.