Selfsufficientish.com

A friend of ours developed type II diabetes a few years back. Her diet, medication and blood sugar results are regularly monitored by a NHS nutritionist based at one of the big teaching hospitals and on her last visit, being concerned about her weight, she discussed the 5:2 eating program with the n...

Fast today. At last weigh-in I was down at 76.6kg, so only 1.6 to go to target. My blood pressure is down at levels not seen for, oh, ever such a long time. I'm exercising a lot - running mostly - and I think I'm starting to put back on some of the muscle I lost after stopping regular sport many moo...

Good to see! I'm just starting the sowing now, but we have a longer season here. Hoping for an improvement over last year's climatic gyrations...

The fox attacked again today, in broad daylight Luckily the hens were shut up and the geese gave him a run for his money By the time I had the gun out of the safe and loaded he was gone next time... Getting more cocky! What's left of my flock is kept penned during the day - no more shall they go a-...

I've sowed peppers, aubergines and beans, but only four varieties of tomato to date: I need more window sills! I'm trying a form of hot bed this season - I've three-quarters filled a couple of big wooden planters with fresh horse sh1t and I'll be putting some good compost on top of this. I'm hoping ...

We had a concerted campaign against mice & rats early in winter and seem have persuaded that that this is not a healthy environment in which to party. For the time being, at least. As an aside, I've been seeing an extraordinary number of owls of various species (but more barn owls than others) a...

We lost pretty much our entire flock - including all the RIRs that I hatched this year - to Brer Fox back in February. That was a dozen chickens lost, but only one actually taken and eating. The carnage was appalling. I try to be philosophical about this sort of thing: I've had only two incidents in...

I have a feeling that only certain strains of barley are good for malting & beer making. Specifically, the lower protein types 'cos proteins make a hazy beer. Does your seed supplier mention anything?

The drinks are counted, so water, tea or coffee without milk or sugar are basically ad libitum and anything else has to come off the permitted 500 or 600 kcal. And I'm with you on the "just stopping" approach - I did that with smoking and with week-day drinking. I find with drinking it's a...

How sad. A fine actor and, by all accounts, a nice chap too.

Hmmmm. It's less calories in than used both ways, but this Way of Eating (it's not a diet!) is easy to fit too, and doesn't mean you have to stick to a nasty boring diet. It is very clear in both books that if you have EVER had an eating disorder, this is NOT for you. That's two key points made the...

Myself, for oven cleaning, I use sodium carbonate (washing soda).

That sounds like quite a lot of oil. It might be worth trying substituting a smaller amount of butter or other hard fat (say about 25g) and upping the water accordingly.

Be careful to use only food grade bicarb for teeth, though: the stuff that you find in the baking section.

Make "Shake 'n' Vac" - add a few drops of essential oil to a jar of bicarb and sprinkle over the carpet before vaccing.

Also I find this whole "you can't put the prices up think of the plebs on benefits" argument just doesn't stack up. When a "typical" pleb on benefits spends so much on White Cider, Rolling tobacco and dare I say it Cannabis, surely it's there choice to do this, and spend relativ...