Finding the chase and cutting to it

I was reading my plans for my holiday and felt I should be honest about what actually happened.

Best laid plans, do not always come to fruition and my holiday was certainly that, although, more from my gaze being further than my reach.

For a start, my gym was manic, so I didn’t get to have a relaxing day in the pool, though I did make use of my voucher and have a mud bath. Weird but true that it really does clean spots in a really soothing way.

The food plans did not come to pass either: the flan was baked on Wednesday, with left overs on Thursday lunch, really seriously tasty even on the second visit. The coq au vin Tuesday night was delicious, as was an impromptu stilton and celery soup on Thursday night with a sour dough baguette.

The house was very slowly cleaned and a great deal of walking. I did find a whole load of missing things! I also sorted out the TV in the kitchen – turns out a new coaxial cable was all that was needed.

I researched quite a few recipes and bought a Konro grill for the summer. I am way more excited by this than I feel I should be. I produced a table explaining how my microwave works in terms of power settings. Did I say I found a really interesting recipe for a microwaved honey roast ham?

Having a hectic job, I am sure many would find my holiday less than blissful, but I honestly don’t get much time to just enjoy my home. Isn’t that why most of us work for a living? To have a place to call home?

You can control what you eat and exercise levels is the statement often touted on facebook and linkedIn.

Unless you have an immune condition that means you are manually providing the means to control your sugar and potassium levels – things are a bit more complicated when you do that.

I have resisted a high fibre diet for many years – fibre is a major headache for me, indeed for high fibre foods (anything more than 5% fibre), I subtract the weight of fibre from the carbohydrate value to prevent hypos. It’s work I just don’t need and to be honest, thanks to being very active, I have got away with that approach.

Being over 50, I am aiming for about 0.35 grams per kilogram of my mass a day. That works out at just under 25g of fibre a day but if I lose weight, I need to reduce that.

I eat vegetables, bread, potatoes, use wholegrain rice, wholegrain wheat for my bread.

So, easy, right?

I am using a tracker, Samsung Health’s meal recorder, and it shows just how difficult this work is. Thursday I managed it (259g), but yesterday only managed 20.3g, and today with my planned meals it only looks like I am managing 16g. Physically, it is really hard work.

And that’s while keeping my diet balance – 55g carbohydrates, 25g fat, and 20g of protein. Many high fibre foods, like nuts, are very high in fat.

This is my third day and I feel quite nauseas and stuffed. I also cannot drink enough liquid.

Wholemeal rolls are a bit of a saviour. A ham roll does the fibre and protein hit for 65% of the daily totals.

Balancing my insulin is hard work – the food is absorbed much more slowly, so a bread roll without butter has a 45 minute bolus split with a 25% up front bolus. The rice is over 20 minutes and I have to remember to remove the fibre amount from the carb count.

Hard work doesn’t come into it. It doesn’t feel like control, at all.

The funniest thing of all is looking at our Sunday food. Roast dinner gives me 49g of protein, 13g of fibre and a perfect balance of fat, protein and carbs, 650kCal. In one meal. A good range of vitamins, low in saturated fat. Tastes great too,

Is the humble UK roast dinner the new super food?

I’ve been working my way through an article in the Observer (20th April 2025) about boarding school following an announcement by my friend on her journey through life the past couple of years, and both resonnanted as both my parents went through at bording school.

My mum’s experience was very different to my dad’s. Mum went to the same school as her brothers, and, to some extent, it was an escape from a choatic family life – my gran was very disorganised and a bit of a hoarder. Mum was 11 when she left home, and it was a co-ed school with some day pupils as it was a grammer school. Her fees for boarding were paid by the RAF, as my grandfather was serving abroad when my mum was of school age.

My dad was the only son and went to a private boys school as he had failed the eleven plus. My dad was a late bloomer, not least as he was very asthmatic. Every holiday he was the stranger in the house, and school was alien and cold – I suspect in his younger years at school he was bullied. It wasn’t just the children who bullied you and at boarding school, there is no respite, no break, it’s 24-7. Every year he wrote to be allowed to come home and study in the local school and it wasn’t until 6th form that his request was granted.

One thing this shared experience meant was that neither of my parents had really experienced home life. My mum was determined we didn’t hoard like her mum did, but I think my dad never got over the experiences. There wasn’t the money at the time, but my parents would not consider boarding school for either me or my kid brother. As a grown-up, I am very grateful for that, and the traditions my parents set up for us – they had a relatively clean slate, after all.

One of the ones I remember was a ham at easter time. I did this for my family today – a honey roast ham, roasted carrots, baby corn, pak choi, baby cauliflower, and potatoes. I served it with a onion roux sauce and rosé wine.

It feels like a priviledge to be able to do that without a thought.

It’s been a while since we did a deep clean of our house. I usually make the effort to do this twice a year, once at the start of winter (ready for Christmas) and again at Easter time. Occassionally, I manage to persuade those with time on their hands to join me, making it a family affair.

But as we’ve had a bit more spare cash, this time has been spent on travel, entertainment, and generally relaxing, doing nothing.

Which is great, until you realise just how much time in your day is spent “looking for” what-ever it is you cannot find. Like many, I have too many possessions and are running around like mad with the career and other commitments to take good stock of what we have.

As I haven’t taken much leave since Christmas, so this is my plan for the Easter fortnight. To get sorted.

My plan is to generally relax too, but just get on top of the cleaning, the little jobs that should be done every 4-6 weeks, and tidy up the belongings. I was going to go to the gym for workouts, but frankly house work of this nature burns 200-400 calories an hour – so the spa is my aim rather than the weights – especially if I cycle there.

On my search list are two things I haven’t yet found during this process. But I am hopeful they will turn up as everything else has.

Hope is always the guiding light that keeps us going when the grind of general floor and carpet washing is underway!

Oh, that light shade is looking very dusty…

Actually, that’s not quite right: my man is home, but having started a new job, he has no leave to take for Easter if we want to make some plans later this financial year happen.

But I have an opportunity to catch-up on the housework, sort my office and bedroom out, find some misplaced things, go to the gym, and just stay away from the job.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, I work in a great team. But the reason we have annual leave is to recouperate and bring a revitalised person to the office on the Monday you walk back into the office.

I try to sit down with my husband on New Year’s Eve and work out where we want to go, want to achieve in the house, and be able to say at the end of the year that we grew in this way. Hopefully not in terms of waistlines…

This holiday, is all about not thinking but doing for me. Taking care of my hubby for a bit, as he took on much of the house work while he was unemployed. It will be great to repay the favour.

The idea is to take it easy too. My gym is newly reopened (in terms of its pool area), so clean a room then chill in the health club.

To be honest, it’s to enjoy our house too. We’ve been here 12 years this May, and it looks amazing.

All in preparation for this nivana, I went shopping today. I bought the ham for Easter Sunday (unsmoked but ham is a preserved meat, so has a good long life on it), a chicken for this and next week, and loads of fresh vegetables and salad. My plans are:

Saturday – apple and blackberry crumble.
Sunday – eating out!
Monday – pasta dish – I’m in London during the day.
Tuesday – joint the chicken, this night it will be coq au vin, with home made stock. I’ll make at least two batches.
Wednesday – chicken rissotto with home made stock.
Thursday – butternut squash soup and home made french baguettes.
Friday – Good Friday, hot cross buns and a goat’s cheese flan.
Saturday – Remainder of the flan and some carrot and bean soup for the other meal.
Sunday – ham.

I haven’t got to the second week yet, but left over ham and chicken is likely to feature large. With salads and vegetables. I have some pastry for some pies.

My plans are fairly lose, the whole idea is to relax and enjoy myself. I have some books to read if the house work runs out. My motorbike is ready to go, as is my push bike. The garden furniture has made its way out of the shed.

Let the good times roll!

As I type this at 07:45 British summer time, we have only just stopped using our battery to supply our power and yesterday we used just 0.6kWh of electricity sourced from the grid.  At 26p a unit (I know, I know), that’s a whole £0.16 bought electricity.  Which beats Friday, which was a whole £0.25 spent on purchased electricity: that’s for our hot water, travel, everything!

For us, April is a great month, usually, with generation figures between the high 300s and mid 400s kWh. It’s still cold enough to be efficient (solar panels benefit from running a bit chilled, don’t we all?) but the sun is high enough to hit the panels for longer and the leaves are yet to put in an appearance on the trees. This year, we’ve averaged 22kWh a day.

Of course, being chilly means we’re still heating the house, so we’re not quite off grid, and it’s all subject to the weather – clouds at midday make a huge difference to our generation values.

But we’re making the most of it. Keeping our waste quantities down too, we cook much of our own food. Careful selection of the containers used for raw veg means we are keeping our carbon footprint down in more ways than one.

When solar first became available in the UK, I said it would impact gas providers. I didn’t predict heat pumps or the UK government making them mandatory, but by 2014, we weren’t using gas over the summer.

The response to a decreasing market has been for energy providers in the UK to put up electricity prices and keep gas low. Basic A level economics in action here, cut demand by putting up prices and generate it by keeping the price low.

Which is one of the painful things about our power providers being commercial operations rather than government owned – they need to make a profit, with regulation being used to ensure to the UK meets its climate promises. How big a fine makes it worth the cost of obeying the rules?

For us, we’re just enjoying the lower costs, because we’re still coming out ahead. From Ovo’s Energy Insights calculator and comparing us to “similar homes” (battery, solar panels, electric car, washing machine, tumble dryer, 2 people, electric cookers, etc), we are consuming roughly half the amount electricity the others are on average?

Which seems odd.

I don’t think we’re being overly careful in our usage. My house is warm: I’m having baths a couple of times a week! We wash our clothes, use the dishwasher. I don’t use chemicals to clean the house – that’s all done by a steam cleaner!

Charging up the car battery does take a load of power: the last time we did it was Tuesday, and that took 7kWh compared to our daily usage of 20kWh. We’re both making more effort to use the car less as the weather has become warmer, at 08:15, it’s a balmy 7°C out there. Even so, my commute on Monday into the local office typically uses that very same 7kWh. I should drive more economically…

A goal to aim for?

As a closing thought, we’re not the only ones to enjoy a good April – 1st April 2025 is the first day the UK reached 12,569MW being generated by solar power.

I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it, I’m about…

Why are you singing like that, with a stupid grin on your face?

Well, today is the day…

Mother’s day?

No, concentrate, I get to look at our heating costs and compare a winter with an air sourced heat pump to a gas boiler – like I said, I’ve been looking forward to doing this analysis.

You really ought to get a life, you know, you only get one!

Cheeky, this is what I like doing. Making things better and I like to be a person of action. It’s been killing me the fact we couldn’t make this move earlier…

Would you mind doing the figures, so we can all get on and have some fun?

Sorry. This is the approach I’ve taken. 1st October to 31st March is the duration of a British Winter. Taking our old figures for gas consumption from https://www.n3rgy.com/, I have compared that to the heat pump’s consumption figures.

This makes sense for us because gas was only ever used to heat water and the house – no gas appliances here.

I have cross checked the heat pump’s usage figures with our hourly usage for electricity, and again that seems a reasonable way of sanity checking them.

Each winter is called the year of the January it falls in, so this winter was 2025 (1st October 2024 to 30th March 2025), last winter was 2024 (1st October 2023 to 31st March 2024).

Wait a second, this winter is going to be a day short!

Yes, I will complete the figures tomorrow or later this week, but I didn’t want to delay publishing.

So, what are the numbers? Does a heat pump make sense from an energy conservation point of view?

You’re finally interested – a contented sigh this side…

Here are the numbers, going back to 2022, all in kWh (kiloWatt hours).

Year	Total power used (kWh)	Jan – Mar usage (kWh)	Oct-Dec previous year’s usage (kWh)	Winter totals (kWh)
2022	15,013.391	5,502.894	7,109.310	12,612.204
2023	13,270.888	5,360.847	6,727.941	12,088.788
2024	4,433.757	3,105.757	6,170.366	9,276.123
2025	2,075.000	2,075.000	1,328.000	3,403.000

In 2025, the “Total power used” and other figures are electricity, all the others are gas.

Now, the difference between 2022/23 and 2024 was the use of programmable radiator valves and zone thermostats. The average temperature in a room was 18°C, but the lounge and kitchen often run at 20°C and above for all years.

Temperature-wise, the winters were comparable. Last winter, we didn’t have a winter’s holiday but in the end, we didn’t turn down our heat pumps running while we were away, so again, probably a fair comparison.

Our boiler died on the 23rd March 2024, so last year’s figures are a little light, we used electric radiators on the cold days, but I am not counting them.

So, what is the usage difference between 2024 and 2025? 5,873.123 kWh or 37% of what we used last year.

So, from an energy conservation point of view, it’s a no brainer.

Cost is a harder sum. In March we have generated 476.9 kWh of electricity from our roof, and our solar batteries (the second one finally got installed on Monday), which goes towards heating, lighting, dishwashing, laundary, transport (our Leaf), and cooking.

Which covers our heating costs this month (469 kWh) but it’s close. On average this month, we’ve paid £4.54 a day for all our power, or £140.74.

January was by far the coldest month: our gas usage last year was 1694.77 kWh, this year it was 909 kWh, nearly half the power we used went towards heating and hot water, of course some of that was generated. The costs were, on average, £10.61 a day for the 1327.0 kWh we bought.

Of course, that’s not our total energy bill: for January, it was 1327 kWh or £328.79, that’s on top of what we generated, which was 92.7 kWh (it was a dull and overcast January, our worst ever, typically we get 145-170 kWh off the roof).

Feb we paid for 1044.6 kWh and generated 146.3 kWh. March was 544.2 kWh bought, and generated 450.7 kWh.

We’re relatively heavy users of electricity. But it is powering our car, as well as the house. My commute to work has relied heavily on the car the past few weeks: while it is now sunny, it is still chilly.

So, is it cheaper than using gas? If you’re not generating your own power, possibly not. Over the summer, we should be grid free.

If you are, it’s an absolute no brainer, go heat pump!

Time rich, money poor is the mirror of money rich and time poor, which is the problem of our time as we return to the office at least 3 times a week.

My commute at the moment takes 4 hours out of my week, and it is shattering. Before I took this role, my commute was 30 minutes a day, 2.5 hours a week (unless I was part of a big jam). But it meant I had spare energy.

Next week, when the clocks go forward, cycling becomes an option again. I will be on a fold up bike, heading into the office – so at least my exercise for the day will be met.

But the clocks going forward means it will be day light in the evening. We walk: after cooking and washing up, we pound the pavement.

Except Wednesdays when we hit the gym.

Other things I do to get back some time is working out our meals up front. Google calendar means we share those decisions – it menas it takes out a decision a day. Only 10 minutes or so a day or nearly an hour a week!

While I’m out for my walks, I remotely start the waI’shing machine. By the time I walk through the door, the final spin is happening giving me time to wash and decoat, ready for hanging up the washing.

Normally, I wouldn’t say I look forward to the clocks changing, but next week I get to see the results of our move to an electric heat pump.

We should also, finally, have our 2nd Tesla battery added. Here’s to running off grid for the summer…

It’s Sunday, in March, and I’m cooking a 1.7kg medium(!) chicken from Waitrose.

Why on earth would you do that?  So much for trying to be carbon neutral!

Actually, we’re going to get four meals out of this chicken. And that’s excluding the stock, which I will use for a soup tonight and pie later in the week. Wednesday is pie night, where possible…

Doing the chicken in the microwave takes 45 minutes. I do the potatoes, courgettes, broccoli, and some peppers in too. Quick and tasty.

Gravy is delivered from the left over vegetable water from boiled carrots, leaks, and baby sweetcorn. I heat the plates on top of the microwave.

We eat about a quarter of the chicken in this sitting.

I then make chicken stock in the microwave from some saved vegetables, garlic, and most of the carcass. A 1.7kg bird should give me about 500ml of stock in two sittings.

Tonight, a soup with some fresh baked bread will use half the stock. Tonight I’m doing celery and stilton and one of us should have a serving of celery soup tomorrow for lunch.

Tomorrow will be chicken rissotto, from the one of the left over breasts. Sandwiches will come from the other breast and the stuffing – a little recurrent sauce and that is one tasty home sandwich for not many carbs.

Tuesday is quorn chilli night (on a roast chicken weekend). Or potatoes gratin. Or pasta arrabiata. Or vegetable fahitas. Something meat free.

Wednesday is pie night, what-ever the roast, the left overs are done with some onions, potatoes, carrots, garlic, stock, and other boiled green veg. I typically use up the store bought puff pastry with some frozen fruit and ice-cream. It’s delicious and stops us throwing the pastry or wasting the heat from the oven.

Thursday is potato gratin.

Friday is all about the soup, or quiche or pasta, or stir fry. A little something for the weekend.

How do you make the plan stick? I forget the plan half way through the week as the stresses and rush sets in…

Me too. We never got our shit together like this before, but I started something new a couple of week’s ago.

A shared calendar (such as Google) works great for this – we started doing this for our Sunday rota and last week I had the idea for doing it for the week too. (It helps stop repetitive meals too).

The really odd thing is, doing this on a Sunday while cooking resets your expectations. How much left-overs are you expecting? If it’s elaborate, what’s happening work-wise which will act as a distraction? For next week, I’m on version three of the plan, but it looks good now.

That sanity check is vital. But it’s odd how writing something down and communicating it will make it happen.

The UK news channels are all extolling the arrival of spring. Yes, we have finally have had sunny days and today the temperature did rise above 6°C, in fact it is a barmy 16°C.

But with a low front through the early part of next week, it’s short lived and all the flowers triggered by warm temperatures are resisting put on a show at the moment.

But from a solar generation point of view, sunny but cool is your ideal conditions. For the heat pump, early morning sun warming the air feed to the heat pump are your friends too.

Indeed, Friday 7th March 2025 was the first day most of our used energy came from the sun and our battery. The usage was helped by the fact solar gain in our rooms meant we did not need to warm our house…

From 9am Friday morning, we were off the grid. Our battery got up to a full 100% full – it finally discharged at 5:30am Saturday morning.

This time of year, the UK mornings can be bitter. The past week, it has not been unusual to be below 0°C until 8am. So it will be a few weeks before we can be 100% off grid.

A full break down saw half of all our generation powering the house, the rest going to the battery. Discharge then started at 15:45. Our heating, cooking, and hot water, all came from our battery! The tesla app reported 30% of our power came from the battery, 31% from our solar panels, and 39% from the grid.

It will be a while before we’re at 100% self-generated, but the hope is there!