Shopping - 14th Feb

From market:
148g turkey salami - 3.48
122g duck tornados - 2.43 (a kind of kebab with duck meat in a spicy marinade)
114g turkey pieces - 0.92
I also bought six eggs from this farmer but realised today she didn't charge me for them, will have to pay next week.

6 elstar and 2.5 kg bag of boskoop apples - 3.70

1 kg potatoes and 100g mushrooms (both organic) - 2.40

From kaisers supermarket:
Milk - 1.09 plus 0.15 cent deposit on bottle
Bar of chocolate - 1.89
Jar of yoghurt - 1.09 plus 0.15 cent deposit
Frosch washing-up liquid - 1.59
Bacchus wine - 4.69

From baker (this is my main foodie treat of the week usually):
Half a loaf of organic wholegrain rye - 1.60
2 organic slawiner (a type of bread roll) - 0.74
2 chocolate croissants - 1.96 (only actually asked for one but had a newbie serving me so didn't make a fuss - was glad of it later as I had to go straight from my new tai chi class to a four hour choir rehearsal and was famished by the break so the second croissant and an apple went down very well)
1 slice organic apple cake - 1.60

Yesterday was a good day. I had one thing planned which I didn't manage to get to due to sleeping later than I thought I would. I found out that the VHS (volkshochschule - local community college) also has an organic garden in the town where you can go along and help out on Tuesday afternoons or Saturday mornings from 10. As I'll now be doing tai chi from 12 every Saturday morning I would only be able to spend maybe an hour there but it would be good to be doing something outside and, hopefully, I might be able to start bringing my fruit and veg peelings there to compost. Otherwise it was a long, busy, tiring but satisfying day.

I intended to go and distribute leaflets advertising choir's next concert at a couple of other concers that were taking place in Dusseldorf today but it started sleeting around lunchtime and was definitely a day to stay inside. This morning I decided to make sure I did a conditioning vinegar rinse in my hair today and after heading to the bathroom to do that I decided that I should clean it first. I ended up doing a very thorough job (which was needed as I only skimmed the surface last week) and also trying something I first heard about ages ago but hadn't done before. I am now a very big fan of a lemon quarter sprinkled with bicarb as a method of cleaning hard water scum off the bath and taps. The taps on the bath, which I've tried before to get sparkling, are actually sparkling now. Once the place was clean I did the vinegar rinse on my hair and had a nice hot shower. And made an effort to keep those taps sparkling by drying them off immediately. I also moved a window wiper into the bathroom so that I can wipe down the tiles immediately after having a shower, which should help with the water deposit build up in future too.

Spent a quiet afternoon watching Jeeves and Wooster on the internet and then at one stage, after having gotten up to make a cup of tea, had a fit of energy and decided to wash the kitchen floor (also something that badly needed doing as I've just been making do with sweeping it for the last couple of weeks and mopping up any spills with a cloth). Of course, to make that worth my while I had to sweep well and since I had the brush (microfibre cloth type) out I did a quick run around the whole apartment. I also shook out the tablecloth (the thing about all the wonderful German breads is that lots of them come with seeds in them and they do tend to get everywhere), which meant I had to clear off the books that were on that. New tablecloth on table (white of course, just in time for me to spill a dirty big spoonful of chutney on it - what on earth ever possessed me to buy a white tablecloth!), floor swept, potatoes for dinner scrubbed and in a pot of water and then I washed the floor. Did a quick swipe around the rest of the place while I was at it but a really, really thorough job of the kitchen floor. Feels like a weight off to have done it. It's one of those things that preys on my mind when it's not done and yet I sometimes have the greatest difficulty just getting up and doing it. Switched the cooker on under the potatoes while I went away to let it dry and spent a while on the phone to my brother. So, kitchen is all tidy now, dinner dishes washed and put away and leftovers in the fridge for lunch and the makings of dinner tomorrow. Another good day. And time now for bed so that I can get a reasonable night's sleep and maybe get into work early tomorrow.