Jan62 day 26 – five days and less than a fiver left

A friend was shooting a video for one of her songs yesterday and asked for volunteer “crowd” so B and I drove to the shoot (mildly exciting!). On the way back we were passing Aldi and dropped in to see if they had any flaked almonds. Unfortunately, they seemed to be out of almonds completely, flaked or otherwise, as they were last time I visited in December, but I did manage to pick up a kilo bag of oats for 75p.

I wanted to see if my oat and coconut flour pastry would work in savoury format but had been low on oats, so it was good to get more to play with. I tried the pastry with a ratio of 2:1 oats and coconut, plus a splash of olive oil, pinch of salt and water to bind. I made a simple red onion and chickpea flour quiche-type filling. Seemed to work okay, though the coconut flavour is a little unexpected in a spiceless savoury dish.

You may be wondering what I’ve used to fasten up the bag of oats, although those of an urban-foraging disposition may already know. It’s a strip of bicycle tyre inner tube, tied to make a sturdy rubber band. I cadged loads of inner tubes from a local bike repair shop, and they were happy for me to take them as they were much punctured and repaired and would otherwise have been thrown away. Once I’d brought these home I cut them across once to make a tube, then slit the tubes end-to-end. I popped the tubes into the washing machine on wool cycle and they came out nice and clean, ready to be used for craft and DIY projects! They’re a perfect free sub for rubber bands as you can make them almost any length and they’re much less likely to perish.