Recipe: Mac'n'cheese

I treated Lovely Anna to her first homecooked tea tonight, with ingredients from Green and Brown at Little Eaton.

INGREDIENTS
1 pack macaroni - or if you can't find any, do what I've just done and use kids' dinosaur pasta
1 pack cherry tomatoes
40g butter - I used parsley and garlic butter from Green and Brown
40g flour
200ml single cream
200ml whole milk
100g dolcelatte or other blue cheese
100g strong cheddar
Breadcrumbs
100g Parmesan

METHOD:
Put the pasta onto boil, and then in a saucepan make a roux by melting the butter, stirring in the flour and then adding the milk and cream. Keep stirring and heating the sauce, then add the grated dolcelatte and cheddar. Heat through until melted and thick.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it and mix with the cheese sauce and cherry tomatoes, chopped in half. Put mixture into a baking dish and top with the breadcrumbs and grated Parmesan. Bake on 200C for about 30 minutes, or until golden on top.

Pegging it

Today I was faced with yet another of those little conundrums that crops up every now and then in my quest to avoid the supermarkets. After all, I am of the generation that is pretty much used to being able to buy everything anything (and I really do mean ANYTHING) from Tesco.

So where the hell do I go to buy clothes pegs?

Lovely Anna has a washing line, but no pegs, and seeing as I’ve put my first official wash in her washing machine this morning, I figured I’d better not go home without them.

Luckily the older members of staff at the office, who remember a time before we relied on the supermarkets for everything, and pointed me in the direction of Derby’s Market Hall.

I’ve blogged about this place before - it’s a gorgeous old building and all the stallholders are like one big happy family, which makes it a really lovely and welcoming place to shop.

I found my pegs on a stall that seemed a bit like a mini Wilkos (and yes, I’ve just realised that Wilkos would probably have been another place to go for pegs). It had loads of useful stuff so I also came away with a pack of 20 washing up scourers for just £1. The good ones too with the really tough green scratchy bit that actually cleans the pans after I’ve burnt them!

Beat that Tesco!

 

Chris with my handmade card

It takes two!

Two babies. Not one. Two. That’s what my lovely best mate Christina is bringing home from hospital today.

And two babies are, of course, pretty special. Hardly anyone gets a double package from the stork. But unfortunately, because not many people have them, it also makes them slightly harder to cater for.

I found this out at lunchtime when I popped out to grab a congratulations card for the new parents. In every shop I went into I found dozens of blue and pink cards with “It’s a Boy!” or “It’s a Girl!” but hardly anything catering to the plural. A couple of stores had one, sorry looking “Twins” card huddled by itself at the back of the rack.

So in the end I’ve decided to make my own. I bought a pink blank card and envelope from Paperchase, plus stick-on jewels and coloured pens. And tonight I’m going to get crafty.

Results tomorrow….

Not cloud ants... or poos!

Lovely lovely long-suffering Anna almost found herself on the receiving end of quite a disturbing message yesterday.

“I put a bag of what looks like poos into your freezer,” I typed. “But don’t worry, it’s not poos, it’s ready-to-bake cloud ants.”

Not the sort of thing you expect to receive on your lunch break. Bloody predictive text!

What I’d actually put into her freezer were ready-to-bake frozen croissants. Although they do indeed look a bit like tiny anemic turds.

It was part of a little shopping trip to stock up her kitchen with a few of my favourite essentials. I’ve pretty much moved in with her now, although I’m still shuttling back and forth with car-loads of stuff this week. So I popped to Brown and Green, the amazing artisan food store in nearby Little Eaton, to stock up.

Lovely Anna is an Aldi and Morrisons girl, so she’s going to find living with me quite an education. And I’m hoping to get loads of blog fodder from her supermarket shopping trips! Delights that now grace her fridge include milk from Duffield Dairy, a homemade quiche and cheese from a Derbyshire creamery.

Luckily there are no cloud ants in her freezer though.

The other royal babies

While the rest of the world was urging Kate Middleton to push for England (not to mention Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia and the rest of the Commonwealth) yesterday, I was secretly hoping that the Duchess of Cambridge would keep her legs crossed for just a little longer.

The reason being that my gorgeous best friend Christina (who has guest-starred on this blog with her enormous bump several times over the past few months) was also due to give birth this week, and wanted to pop at the same time as our future queen to get her hands on the commemorative coins promised to all tots arriving on the day of the royal birth.

Alas, it was not to be. Kate dropped her sprog yesterday evening, while Christina worked her way through a pile of ironing at home in Huddersfield.

Amelie (in the pink hat) and Rosa

However, while the world seemingly goes crazy today over Wills and Kate’s baby joy, I have other, much much more exciting news to report.... at 10.30am this morning Christina gave birth to her twins.

Amelie and Rosa were born by cesarean section, weighing 4lbs 11 and 5lbs 10 respectively, and the whole family are doing fine.

These are the babies who have, while still in the comfort of the womb, accompanied me to farm shops in North Yorkshire, been gifted a truck-load of baby clothes from my overly-excited mother from the Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland Air Ambulance charity shop where she volunteers (not a supermarket!), and narrowly avoided a run-in with out-of-date supermarket formula milk thanks to Tesco. So I feel they have rightly earned their place on this blog.

Congratulations Christina and Matt, they are absolutely gorgeous and I can’t wait to meet them. xxxxxxxxxx

Bye bye Banana Bob

It’s a sad day for me today, because I’ve had to sever ties with my brilliant vegetable delivery man Banana Bob, who has been leaving little parcels of fresh fruit and veg on my doorstep every week for the past 18 months.

Bob has been everything you’d ever want in a vegetable delivery service - always on time, always with good quality produce, always understanding when I only give him 24 hours notice that I’m going on holiday, AND with a comedy name to boot.

But all good things come to an end (apparently) and I doubt he’d take kindly to having to drive an extra 30 miles to Derby to bring me my weekly bananas and spuds.

So in the next couple of weeks I’ll be looking for a new supermarket-free veggie source in the Derby area. If anyone has any recommendations, give me a shout!

Nothing full about this breakfast

This morning is one of those times when supermarket avoidance is not much fun.

Last night Lovely Anna and I had what was supposed to be a fairly tame night out, but in fact turned into drinking and dancing in Derby's Cuban salsa bar until 3am. So this morning (surprise surprise) I'm feeling a little delicate. Again. Which will no doubt prompt moaning from my mum later that I appear to have reverted back to my early 20s now I'm single. And to be fair, she might have a point.

In addition to the above, I'm facing a tough day today. I have a huge metal king-sized bedframe to dismantle and somehow coax into the back of my car - a feat which I suspect could reduce me to tears at some point over the next couple of hours. Or could actually just turn out to be physically impossible.

So I drove back from Anna's this morning mentally cooking a full English breakfast - only to discover when I got home that I was missing half of the ingredients. And of course the only place close enough to pop into for Lynda McCartney sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms, that opens on a Sunday, is the local Co-Op.

So below is the sad little breakfast that I've ended up with - scrambled egg and bake beans on rubbish brown sliced bread from the freezer.

Humourless

This is going to be a short and totally humourless blog today, for two reasons:

1 - I'm up to my neck in packing for the house move.

2 - I've just spent the morning ringing round various companies, taking my name off accounts and changing my address details. "Confirm this Miss Beecroft.... what's your DOB Miss Beecroft... let's just run through some security questions Miss Beecroft...." I've consequently completely lost my sense of humour! Even as I type, there's tinny music coming from my mobile phone as I wait on hold to speak to another bank.

To be fair, I've spoken to some quite nice people. Lovely Scottish Lucile, from O2, insisted on calling me "lovie" the whole time, which I quite liked. Christopher, from LV, sympathised with the break-up situation as he proceeded to increase my car insurance premium for being single (great - thanks for that). And Matt, from Halifax, has just wished me well with my packing.

But I still feel like my head is about to explode.

So definitely no supermarket shopping for me today - that really would tip me over the edge.

Sunny supermarket-free Derby

It’s days (or I should probably say weeks actually) like this that make avoiding the supermarkets such a pleasure. I mean, who in their right mind would possibly want to be traipsing around Tesco right now, when the weather is so gorgeous? When you’re blundering through the aisles at Morrisons you don’t even know whether it’s day or night.

I’ve just been out on a lovely walk onto pick up a salad for lunch and some veggies from the market. And I took these shots of Derby basking in the sunshine. With a gorgeous stroll like this waiting for me just outside the office, I’m laughing at my colleagues who choose to drive to the supermarket on their break instead.

RECIPE: Christina's Asparagus Tart

Christina, bump and tart

Despite now being RIDICULOUSLY pregnant with twins (and I really do mean ridiculously – they’re coming out in less than a week) my gorgeous and blooming friend Christina treated myself and Christine to an amazing tea earlier this week.

Christina is such a trooper. Most women would be lying on the sofa moaning by this point in a twin pregnancy, but Chris is still being proactive, waddling off out to meet friends (albeit slowly), shopping, cooking and organising all her photos on her laptop. She may not be able to put her own shoes on anymore, but she still cooks up a mean Asparagus Tart. Here’s the recipe….

INGREDIENTS

6tbsps mascarpone

40g grated cheddar cheese

3tbsp basil

½ lemon (Christina’s pregnancy craving has been lemons)

1 pack ready-to-roll puff pastry

1 pack asparagus spears

1 tbsp olive oil

Cherry tomatoes, chopped

METHOD

Heat oven to about 200C. Mix the mascarpone with the cheese, basil and lemon. Lay the pastry out onto a baking tray, then spread the cheese mixture over the top of it. Layer the asparagus onto the mixture, then sprinkle the tomatoes over the top. Drizzle with the oil, then bake for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Pop goes the boss

“Hang on, you bought biscuits for the office with MY money?!”

Neil's cheerful response to the biscuit news

That was my boss and Derby Telegraph editor Neil White’s slightly indignant reaction to the fact that the chocolate digestives are on him this afternoon.

He’d slipped me £20 to pick him up a couple of bottles of pop on my lunchtime walk into town (clearly expecting some change!), which of course is blog fodder.

I ended up in Derby’s Eagle Market, at a stall called the Special Offer Shop, which basically turned out to be an Aladdin’s Cave of all kinds of household basics at suspiciously cheap prices - with labels advising customers that sell-by dates were close or biscuits were broken.

Inside the stall an enthusiastic herd of OAPs and the overweight clucked and bustled around the bargains, and when I paid for Neil’s two bottles of Pepsi Max with a £20 the stallholder looked at me incredulously at the sight of so much money.

I also decided that it was about time that Neil, a keen connoisseur of all the sweet stuff that comes into the newsroom, stumped up for this afternoon’s biscuits, so I taxed him a pack of discounted choccie digestives too.

“I’ll have you know I by loads of stuff for this newsroom,” he grumbled when I got back into the office and told him what I’d done. “What about when I go on holiday? I always bring back sweets. And what about my birthday?”

I had to concede that on Neil’s 50th earlier this year, he brought in such a startling amount of confectionery that it actually took us an entire week to get through it all - a feat previously unheard of. At one point we had to invite the advertising team to enter the fray before the baked goods started to go off.

“Can’t believe you’re blogging about my two bottles of pop,” Neil concluded as I snapped his picture.

Well Neil, I’m seven months into a daily blog about shopping, so I’ve got to blog about something!

I'm Clark Kent

This is going to be a very quick post today because once again I'm snowed under with work and moving stuff.

However I thought I'd share this little story...

I dashed out into Derby at lunchtime to grab a sarnie, and went to one of my favourite shops. I won't name then because I don't want to embarrass the staff member in question, but suffice to say I go into this shop several times a week and have actually featured them in the newspaper. I'm on first name terms with everyone in there.

So imagine my surprise when a member of staff who usually asks me how the blog is, or how I'm getting on with avoiding the supermarkets, didn't recognise me at all, and even asked where I work as part of her patter.

I walked away scratching my head. What's different? Do I really look that rough today?

Then I realised... ah ha! My glasses. I'd left the office still wearing my glasses.

So to all those who used to think Superman was a bit ridiculous because how could anyone really not recognise Clark Kent just because he stuck a pair of glasses on... apparently this is actually not quite so crazy after all.

Unfortunately this still doesn't make me Wonderwoman. Sadly.

Joey's cucumber trick

When you ask your colleagues to give you supermarket anecdotes and one of them pipes up that his story involves “a large cucumber and some lube” you know you’re probably onto a winner.

I was sat in the office last night with a touch of writer’s block, wondering what the hell I was going to write about on the blog this week, so I decided to ask my workmates if they had any half-interesting shopping stories that they’d like to share with the world.

At which point, trainee reporter Joey decided to reveal a former murky fixation with planting “phallic-looking vegetables and KY Jelly” into the shopping baskets of OAPs.

As a teenager, Joey never really enjoyed traipsing round the supermarket with his dad – so he invented the little “hobby” to pass the time in Morrisons.

He would waiting until he spotted a “suitably respectable” looking elderly couple, then follow them round at a distance until they put their basket down.

As his victims browsed the produce, Joey would sneak up and plant “the biggest cucumber or other phallic-looking vegetable” he could find in their basket, along with a tube of lubricant from the pharmacy aisle.

He would then go and sit by the check-out to watch the inevitable embarrassing domestic scene unfold.

Joey confessed: “I just enjoyed seeing the look of puzzlement on their faces as they lifted the items out of the basket - or as the check-out girl scanned them. I never felt guilty.”

Clearly after Joey’s bombshell, the anecdotes from my other newsroom colleagues kind of paled into insignificance, but bless them - they still had a go.

Caroline and Carl both expressed utter hatred for the self-service check-outs (but admitted still using them).

“You can’t go through without getting something wrong,” said Caroline. “They always tell you something hasn’t been bagged or weight properly, but despite this I always still feel like going to them is just a little bit faster.”

And Rachel got the prize for the dullest story of the evening with her tale of finding rotting oatcakes at one of The Big Four. That was it. The whole story.

Silence. And the Grim Reaper wandered slowly through the newsroom.

Finally, Andy Darlington upped the game by providing me with the below picture.

“I just hate the way supermarkets treat their customers like complete idiots,” he said. “This, in the Co-op, is a prime example, telling people not to eat green bananas. Well doh!”

But despite all this, they all still go to the supermarkets for their weekly shopping. Well doh!

Darlo's bananas

Boxing clever thanks to Judi

I’ve banged on quite a lot over the past few months about how when you set out to avoid the supermarkets you really get to know your local shopkeepers and begin to consider them as friends.

And I can’t think of a better way to illustrate this than when I popped into my local pet shop, Hasland Pet Supplies, yesterday to pick up some cat food and a new collar for Pepper cat.

The collar was particularly urgent. Pepper lost her old one a few days ago and on Friday night I got home from a long day at work (and a really tedious train journey) to find a bird masacre had taken place. The hall was covered with feathers and a tiny prone body lay stiffly on the doormat.

It must have been a particularly retarded bird because Pepper has never been any good at catching things, but I reckon it’s only fair to our local wildlife to stick a bell on her - just in case she has sudden fit of hunting brilliance. And probably also only fair to Pepper’s Auntie Anna, who is very sportingly letting me bring my animals when I move in with her, and probably doesn’t want to have to deal with dead bodies littering the hallway.

But I digress. Last week I blogged about moving house, and how I’m not able to do my usual trick of using Morrison’s banana boxes to pack.



The boxes Judi saved for me



So yesterday, when I walked into the pet shop, Judi immediately made a beeline for the back of the store.



“Don’t worry Jade,” she hollered as she rummaged around amongst her stock. “I saw the blog and I’ve already started setting some aside for you. We’ve not actually had a delivery yet, so I haven’t got many, but as soon as we do I’ll have some more for you.”

Judi then produced about six flattened cardboard boxes of varying sizes, including a couple that she said would be the perfect size for CDs (and she was absolutely right, I packed my slightly questionable music collection into them this morning).



Pepper with her collar and mouse



I was touched that she’d thought of me and started saving - before I even asked. Judi is a really brilliant example of a small business owner who is genuinely concerned about and actively involved with her local community. She’s been campaigning to get a better road layout than the traffic lights on the main road (where crashes routinely happen) and yesterday I found a box of hand-knitted toy mice on her counter, being sold to raise money for our local animal rescue centre.

Of course, I took a mouse home for Pepper as well as a bling-tastic hot pink collar with little fishes on it, having decided that if she’s going to wear a collar, she may as well wear a silly one. Pimp my cat, etc etc....

And thanks to Judi, I’ve managed to get quite a bit of packing done this morning too.

Clearing out the garage

This is going to be one short blog.

I've had a manic day today... packing... seeing friends and clearing out my grandma's garage. So I've certainly not been anywhere near any supermarkets (which is, of course, the aim of the game).

I've actually had some brilliant help from my lovely local shopkeeper friends, but more on that tomorrow when I have time time to blog properly.

In the meantime, I'm off to bed, so I'll leave you with some pictures of this, my main achievement of the day - making space in grandma's garage to store my stuff...

Christine goes supermarket free

My lovely friend Christine is making a guest appearance on the blog today. She's currently holidaying in Newquay and has just messaged me to tell me she's found an honesty box called Mel Cameron's Cakes, full of free range eggs and fudge.

I love the concept of honesty boxes. It goes back to the principle of having respect for where your food comes from and the people who have produced it, rather than just trying to save as much money as possible from the faceless supermarkets without a thought for the people behind the products.

And she's sent me some photos...

Supermarket water saves the day

“If I’m putting water into my car, and it’s disappearing fast, and it smells like burning, that’s bad isn’t it?”

That was the first question I put to my long-suffering boss/occasional surrogate father (and Derby Telegraph editor) Neil White this morning.

“Yes that’s bad,” he said. “What do you mean?”

I explained that I’d noticed last night that there was no water in my car’s water tank. Not the windscreen wipers - the actual important running-of-the-car tank, so had topped it up.

But then this morning, after doing the 30-mile motorway drive to work, I checked in the office car park and noticed it had all gone again. And there was some smoke (just a teeny bit) coming from the bonnet. And a burning smell. Now I don’t know much about cars but I do know that a burning smell is never good.

“Could be your radiator,” advised Neil. “Best not drive it home. Phone the AA.”

But instead of the AA, I decided instead to call my mechanic, a lovely chap who tends to do most of my little jobs (tyre pressure, bulbs, wipers etc) for free and is fondly known as Sausage Andy after a recent request to bring him some lorne sausage from my trip to Edinburgh. Which I actually ended up failing to do. Which hopefully he won’t hold against me now, in my hour of need.

“Hmmmm, doesn’t found great,” agreed Sausage Andy. “Sounds like a leak in your radiator. Hopefully it’s not your head gasket.”

“What’s a head gasket,” I asked. “Is that bad?”

“It wouldn’t be good. Bring it round in the morning and we’ll take a look.”

So poor old Austin (yes my car is named after Austin Powers) has got to go and see Sausage Andy first thing tomorrow, and I could be looking at a medical bill in addition to the moving costs this month.

And on Sausage Andy’s advice I’m going to have a go at driving it home later, with regular stops to top up the water. Apparently, as long as I keep topping it up, I should be fine.

So here comes the supermarket link.... I need to make sure I’ve got a big bottle of water in the car later, and I’ve been so busy at work today I’ve not been able to take a break, so I had to ask a colleague to pick some up for me, and this is what she came back with....

Sainsbury’s basics still table water, which cost a whopping 17p.

I’m hanging my head in shame as I type, but hopefully it’ll stop Austin exploding half way up the M1 in a couple of hours.

GumTree to the rescue

My lovely friend Judi, from Hasland Pet Supplies, considers the big Pets at Home chain to be - in effect - a pet supermarket. So she will be delighted to hear that I avoided going to it yesterday by doing a crafty bit of GumTreeing - and saved myself a nice £50 into the process.

I mentioned yesterday that I’m on the move, and I’ll be taking my girls (Beans bunny and Pepper cat) to Lovely Long-Suffering Anna’s house with me.

Beans bunny currently lives in my utility room. But unfortunately, because Anna’s house is a little smaller, she will also be required to downsize and needs a proper rabbit cage to call home.

I went for a mooch round Pets at Home at the weekend and spotted something perfect, but at £65 it seemed a bit much alongside all the other moving expenses right now. Plus Beans bunny is a little furry rebel and will only trash the damn thing anyway. So yesterday I popped my Gumtree virginity (my god, I had no idea what I was missing - it was awesome!) and found the exact same cage, complete with all the add-ons, going for just £15 at a house in Sheffield.

However, in order to gazump another interested buyer, I had to go and collect it last night - cue an emergency drive north after work.

Being a journo, going into strange houses doesn’t bother me at all. I reckon I’ve pretty much seen it all - hoarders, filth, drugs dens, families with 15 kids and on one memorable occasion a little old man with rice pudding tins stacked floor-to-ceiling all along the wall of his kitchen. Either he was trying to make a post-modern artistic statement or the dementia had well and truly kicked in.

So predictably the GumTree seller’s house was a little smelly and full of animals, including a crying Doberman in the corner. At one point this dog actually came over to me and produced what can only be described as a loud wailing sound.

“Oh he got bitten in the park yesterday,” said the woman. “Keeps making that noise now.”

Maybe time for a trip to the vet then?

Anyway, the rabbit cage turned out to be in good working order, if a little filthy, so for £15 I considered it money well spent, loaded it into the back of the car, then spent the drive back home trying not to gip at the smell.

And because the weather was so nice, it was no problem that I then spent 45 minutes on my hands and knees in the middle of my back lawn, in a pair of ripped jeans and old t-shirt, scrubbing. I broke every single nail (not a great loss - I’m not particularly well-groomed anyway) and felt like sodding Orphan Annie, but I got the damn thing as squeaky clean as new by the end of it all.

Bean’s bunny officially moved into her new home later last night. So far she’s not impressed, but she’ll get used to it. At least I’m not sending her to the RSPCA, which is pretty much what she deserves every time she chews the hell out of one of my phone chargers. She’s lucky I’m a vegetarian.... that’s all I’m saying....

On the move...

A couple of regular readers have asked me why my lifestyle seems to have been a bit different over the past few months – with lots of takeaways and nights at friends, and very little in the way of supermarket-free shopping for two.

So it will probably come as no surprise when I tell you that I am now single, and will shortly be moving out of my current home and into Lovely Anna’s spare room.

Don’t worry though, I won’t be going down the saddo ready-meal-for-one route, I’ll still be avoiding the supermarkets and probably cooking loads of yummy veggie teas for Lovely Anna, who had been my guardian angel over the last few months.

And in the meantime, I need to do a big house move without the aid of the supermarkets, which will actually be a bit trickier than it sounds.

Last time I moved house, I did so with the help of my old friend Morrisons - or more specifically, with the help of Morrisons banana boxes. These amazingly-strong double cardboard crates tend to be piled up at the end of every till in the supermarket and are free for shoppers to take.

By the time we were ready to move, the whole dining room was stacked floor-to-ceiling with Morrisons banana boxes.

This time around, I’m going to be ruthlessly downsizing because all my worldly goods (which are currently liberally spread around our rather large, Tardis-esque house) have got to be condensed into Anna’s spare room. Meaning quite a lot of it, including my furniture, is going to have to go into storage in my grandma’s garage.

So right about now I could really use those Morrisons banana boxes!

Instead I’m going to be appealing to my new friends at all my favourite local shops to see if they can help out with any spare boxes from goods they have delivered. Watch this space...

My day of supermarket food

How nice is M&S cauliflower cheese?! I mean, HOW NICE?! And that's an exclamation - not a question.

Today I have mostly been eating supermarket food. Not of my own design, but because I've had lunch with my lovely (and now absolutely ridiculously pregnant!) friend Christina, and tea at my mum's. And both have fed me supermarket-bought food.

As clearly stated by the rules, back in January, this is fine. I have no control over where my friends and family shop, and it would be rude to go to their houses and demand supermarket-free food.

Christina adores the supermarkets. I found a pack of pink French fancies in her bread bin and asked her what she had against the yellow or brown ones (because personally yellow is my favourite).

"Oh nothing," she replied. "But the boxes of just pink were on offer for a quid in the supermarket."

And after stuffing my face with Lynda McCartney pie (mock-beef - not real bits of Lynda) at mum's and praising her on the cauliflower cheese, she admitted that it had come in a packet from Marks and Spencers.

So there we go.... occasionally My Year Without Supermarkets does involve days where I eat mostly supermarket food, but at least I've still not set foot in one myself this year.

God bless Pizza Hut

So apparently the sensible thoughts that ever so occasionally pop into my head (and it really is occasional) rarely match up with what comes out of my mouth.

Take Wednesday evening, for instance. I'd popped round to see my lovely mates Lucy and Ady, and their baby Oly, but very sensibly made myself a quick tea of veggie burger and salad before I went. This was because the rare sensible thought running through my head at that point was that after feeling refreshed by my holiday I really ought to try to keep the health kick going. Body is a temple and all that.

Then Ady suggested getting a pizza from the icky takeaway place round the corner, a place that really is only usually acceptable fayre on the way home from a trip to the pub.

So the sensible thought that ran through my head was 'come on now Jade, you've already had your tea and that pizza won't even be a nice one, it'll be stodgy and gross and made you feel like you've swallowed a brick'.

And what came out of my mouth was: "Oooooooh yes please Ady, make mine a margarita, and does anyone fancy sharing some garlic bread?"

Predictably, the pizza turned out to be stodgy and gross, and made me feel like I'd swallowed a brick for the rest of the night. Which does tend to happen if you eat two dinners instead of one.

Last night was another example. I was on a night out in Derby with Anna, and in the early hours of the morning I headed off the dance floor to the bar to get a glass of water, because a rare sensible thought had popped into my head telling me that after executing a spectacular botty wiggle to Beyonce's Crazy Right Now (Oh come on, it is a classic) it might be a good idea to sober up a bit.

Nom nom

Unfortunately, once at the bar, what came out of my mouth was: "Can I have two Tequila slammers please? And a couple of Jack Daniels with ice."

Balls.

So I'm now sat in work on a late shift, putting the finishing touches to tomorrow's paper and feeling ever-so-slightly delicate.

And when my workmates suggested calling the Pizza Hut for our usual Sunday evening takeaway, for once my thoughts and actions matched up....

'Mmmmmmmm fatty stodge....' said my hungover brain.

"Mmmmmmmmm fatty stodge.... count me in!" came out of my mouth.

God bless Pizza Hut. And the tenuous link to the supermarkets is this is what I've been eating and drinking for the past few days.... a nice/naughty mixture of pizzas (of varying quality!), salad, smoothies, Tequila and JD - none of them from Tesco.

SAVE THE CRISPIN

Back in March I blogged about the successful fight to stop The Crispin pub, in Chesterfield, from being taken over by Tesco and turned into one of their 'Express' convenience stores. Locals mounted a campaign against the plans and the application was refused by the local council.

Unfortunately, I've just been informed that the supermarket giant has now resubmitted a revised application to take over the pub.

And local people are once again campaigning to stop the move.

If successful, it would become Chesterfield's ninth Tesco-owned store, and Chesterfield is a pretty small town.

The Crispin, on Ashgate Road, has been a public house since 1840 and was originally a hostelry for weary traders bringing salt to the tanneries of Chesterfield.

There is a petition to Save the Crispin, sign it here or visit their Facebook page.

Behold my harvest

At the beginning of this year I had visions of myself morphing into Charlie Dimmock - only with much smaller (and better restrained) breasts. Freed from the shackles of supermarket bondage, I was going to live off the land, become at one with the soil and cultivate my own crops.

Clearly this hasn't happened. My garden is once again an unruly forest that I tend to venture tentatively into perhaps once or twice a week to hang out some washing.

Occasionally, when it threatens to grow above the knee, I mow the lawn.

But apart from that, I'm afraid to report that all gardening ambitions have faltered. I'd love to come up with some fantastic excuse - such as that I've been away inoculating orphans in Africa or advising the UN on the growing unrest in Egypt. But I'm afraid not. Frankly I've just been a bit preoccupied with life in general, and haven't been arsed.

Holy Jesus!

So imagine my surprise when I went out yesterday to fetch some washing in, had a little potter up the lawn, and discovered these two bad boys nestling amongst the leaves of a long-forgotten strawberry plant.

Huge, aren't they? (said the actress to the bishop)

And what's even more impressive is that this was a strawberry plant that I cultivated myself, from a runner, last summer, in a short fit of gardening enthusiasm that lasted approximately 35 minutes.

It happened after a visit from my fab friends Catherine and Gav, who are dab hands in the garden. I seem to remember they brought me a massive homegrown squash, and then over several bottles of wine sat out on the patio Gavin imparted some of his gardening wisdom, which included propagating strawberries.

I'd bought a couple of strawberry plants earlier that spring, but they'd not done much - just shot out a load of weird long tentacles.

However, Gav pointed out that these random strawberry plant arms were actually new baby plants, and if you stick them in a pot with some compost and bed them down for the winter with straw (hence the name) then in the following spring you might have whole new plants.

I have no shortage of decent quality compost (horse poop) or straw, thanks to the gee gees, so I gave it a go.

Then totally forgot I'd given it a go, until yesterday's discovery.

Admittedly, I planted half a dozen plants (and they're growing) and only have two strawberries to show for it so far. But LOOK how big they are! And ripe! And juicy!!!!

So clearly if World War Three ever kicks off and I find myself genuinely having to sustain myself from the land because Tesco has become preoccupied by making own-brand bombs or something (Tesco Finest explosives), then as long as I can survive on a diet of a couple of strawberries every year, I'll be fine!

Sweets for my sweets

There's a sure way to make yourself popular in the Derby Telegraph newsroom, and that's to arrive with gifts of food. It's a strategy often adopted by the more creative and ambitious work experience students (which often secures them a return placement - who says we're fickle), and every member of staff returning from holiday brings a little something back with them to cheer up the troops.

Mallorcan Haribo stand

Nothing gets the newsroom fizzing better than a massive sugar-rush, so sweeties are a firm favourite.

So when I stumbled across this massive Haribo stand on the way down to the beach in Mallorca, Derby's enterprising bunch of journos immediately sprung to mind. 

In a very thinly disgusted and vain attempt to make myself popular (which can surely only last until I have to tell somebody what to do) I bought a whopping two kilos of the stuff from the amazed Spanish stallholder, who I think by the end of our stilted conversation was probably under the impression that I work with a bunch of bulimics. 

"Si senora, mi colleagues es muy muy greedy...."

And the extra weight in my suitcase raised a few eyebrows at the check-in desk at Palma airport too.

So this is what 2kg of Haribo looks like, and seeing as I'm on the late shift I reckon I might be eating at least 1kg of it myself, throughout the evening..... and then probably slipping into a diabetic coma towards then end of the night....

Back from the buffet

What would your last meal be if you were on death row? Chocolate cake? Your mum's Sunday dinner? A fry-up? Pizza? Homemade veggie lasagne? Or for the meat eaters - a rump steak? 

I have a brilliant friend who always provokes laughter when she says that her favourite meal in the whole world is "a good buffet".

"Ooooooooh I do love a buffet," she will say wistfully, whenever the subject of food arises. And her love of the buffet is so well-known that other pals have been known to take tupperware to events where there is expected to be "a good spread" and smuggle home the leftovers for her.

But after my experiences in the past week, I have to say that I'm in total agreement on this one. You really can't beat a good buffet.

As you know from the fact that I've not been blogging for the last two weeks, I've been on my holidays - firstly for a long weekend seeing mates in Edinburgh and then for a week lying on the beach with my mum in Mallorca, arriving home yesterday.

But don't worry - I've not been anywhere near the supermarket.

In Edinburgh, thanks to the influence of a lovely Irish friend, I subsisted largely on a diet of Guinness and Bushmills. Mixed with a healthy amount of my old favourite Jack Daniels. The nearest I got to shopping was agonising over whether to spend £40 on a bottle of Jura Superstition from a specialist whisky merchant (willpower won out in the end).

And in Mallorca, we didn't need to shop due to the breathtaking magnificence of the hotel's buffet.

The Hall of Buffet

Now, I'd like to state that I was initially dead against going all-inclusive. I much prefer winging it while on holiday and going out to find cute local restaurants to eat in. But it was mum's choice, so I went along with it. And my god I'm glad I did. The buffet in the hotel had to be seen to be believed. I actually think my buffet-loving pal might have had a stroke if she'd been there to witness it.

The name of the hotel - Grupotel - should have given the game away. This place was populated mainly by Germans, and as we all know, the Germans are nothing if not efficient. They love a bit of the old 'vorsprung durch technik' so clearly any buffet aimed at them was going to be a highly specialised operation.

Breakfast part one

For a start, this was no row of heated trays in one corner of the dining room. This bad boy had an entire hall dedicated to it. The Hall of Buffet. And in this hall was quite literally every foodstuff known to man. At breakfast time there was a choice of a full cooked breakfast with FOUR different kinds of eggs, the continental meat and cheese selection, breads, smoothies, fruits, yogurts, cereals, pastries and jams. Mum and I took breakfast over at least two courses to fully savor it.

And dinner was on another planet. We began each day with a massive salad that peed all over the much-lauded Morrisons salad bar, then a main course which basically involved cramming as many different dishes, from different cuisines and cultures, onto your plate as possible. My theory is that some basic, almost primal human instinct kicks in when you're confronted with a buffet and you simply have to have a bit of EVERYTHING.

This rule also applied to pudding. Why have one pudding when you can have at least half a dozen?

And of course all this stodge does wonders for lining your stomach so you can enjoy the liberal drinks rations doled out by the waiters in the local bars later on.

A typical mash-up dinner

So I'm back home now and heading back to work tomorrow. But I'm looking a little better thanks to the buffet vitamins and the sun.

For a start, my face actually has a touch of colour - the kind of effect I usually apply with a make-up brush. Normally I look a lot like an extra from a zombie movie - all pale cheeks and dark circles under my eyes. Or perhaps someone who has been living underground for a number of years. But this morning there's a slight flush. I look almost rosy.

Just six puddings on that plate

And a week lying in the sun has had a similar effect on my body. I wouldn't call it a tan, but it's also a step away from my usual almost translucent skin tone. Admittedly I managed to burn myself epically on the first day (after confidently stating that I 'never burn') and spent the next two days looking like I'd been in some sort of nuclear accident. I had a diagonal red stripe across my bum which was so vivid that if I'd got creative with a blue biro I could have turned the right cheek into one of those funky new Union flag motifs that Stella McCartney dreamed up for the Olympics. And I've got the typical 'readers' tan' - weird white marks on the insides of my elbows from continuously holding a book.

But now the redness has faded I look almost healthy. When normally I'm the same colour as an uncooked pork and leek sausage.

Let's see how long it lasts before the usual harried journalist pallor returns....