November ninety – day five

I cracked last night! Spend so far now at £4.45, because I was going a bit stir crazy not being able to get out of the house apart from work or other people’s houses.

B and I took a scrabble board to the Swan and Rushes pub, and I bought a bottle of Dunkerton’s Black Fox cider for £3.70 (I also ordered a pint of water alongside to make it last longer) and a grab-bag of Walkers ready-salted crisps at 75p. The latter was because I foolishly decided to go out before eating, and only realised how hungry I was once we were there.

It’s a good wheeze to take games to the pub, though. Haven’t done that for ages. While I was winning at Scrabble (right up to the final word, where the tables suddenly turned. Grrr!) a group came along with folky instruments such as a squeezebox and tin whisle and a fiddle and started having a play. After a few instrumentals I asked if they could play something to sing along to. Being good sports, two of them launched into ‘cockles and mussels’, so it was a proper old fashioned pub sing-along for a few minutes.

Today I’ve finally opened up one of the butternut squashes, and made a sort of curry with some of that, some of the cabbage I still had left, in a sauce made from leftovers, the ever-present chickpeas, and a blob of peanut butter, served over some brown rice I’d found lurking in the freezer. Pretty good, as it turns out. I’m missing things like peppers and mushrooms but I’m still eating pretty well in spite of a dearth of the higher-priced veg.