A Quiet Weekend

I watched Last Night of the Proms last night. I only watched the second half, and I quite enjoyed it. It is a call to Britishness, with all the jingoistic greats, like 'Land of Hope and Glory', and 'Rule Britannia', but I think of it as a harmless and eccentric tradition that comes at the end of great music and celebrates an event that was originally planned to encourage new composers and to make live music available to more than the elite. There were a lot of EU flags on display - possibly as many as the traditional Union flags. I sometimes wonder if the UK has a collective case of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. When Sir Terry Pratchett said that if you asked ten gnomes to pull, three would push and two would say pardon, it kind of sums up how I'm seeing my country at the moment. Whichever way you voted, the divisions will take a long time to heal. It's heartbreaking.

On a more mundane note, I was dipping in to Tesco recipes again, and picked up a recipe for lentil soup that I shall not be following as it seems somewhat bland with no herbs or spices and just stock powder. What caught my eye, however, was the costing. According to the recipe, the recipe as written should serve 2 at £1.97 per person or £3.94 total. I went on their shopping site and costed it slightly differently

1 onion - 10p
1 carrot - 6p
1 leek - 35p (after some working out and erring on the expensive side)
1 potato - 33p (again, best guess and erring on the expensive side)
2 sticks celery - 12p (best guess, buying a bunch and using a quarter)
1 tbsp olive oil - using olive oil, the best price on Tesco's site was their own brand 1 litre bottles at 30p per 100ml. A tablespoon is 15ml, so 1 tbsp olive oil is around 5p.
1 tbsp plain flour - A good, heaped tablespoon of flour comes in at around 25g. Tesco's cheap flour, good for soup, comes at 30p per kilo, so around 1p
1 tsp stock powder - I'm going with a Tesco own brand vegetable stock cube, which is coincidentally gluten free and you can get 10 for 50p, so 5p for this.
500ml boiling water - I'm not going to cost this! It involves joules and boiling points and science and bear is out and can't work it out for me.
50g red lentils - you can buy these for £1.80 for a kilo, so 9p.

If I've added this up correctly, that's £1.16 for two portions or 58p per portion instead of the £1.97 each that Tesco quoted. Mind you, it would be slightly more expensive as I would be adding lots of herbs to this, and perhaps a good shaking of pepper. It would be even better to add another potato, possibly lose the leek and add lots of warm spices like cumin and tumeric.

There has been drama on the street, but it's away from my home, so I'm taking it as a win. Hugs to all.