Leftovers and filing

I spent almost all day yesterday (eight hours on a beautifully sunny day!) sorting out papers and all the filing I hadn't finished doing. I now have everything sorted by year and ready for proper filing in actual folders. Actually I had pretty much everything done up to around the end of 2006, the last time I tackled it all properly and from 2007 plenty of things are processed so to speak (i.e. receipts attached to bank statements and that kind of thing) and just need putting away properly. And the piles for the other years are fairly small. But such a relief to finally, once and for all, have it done. I would often think I had it done at least up to a certain point in time and then another box or bag would turn up that I had shoved stuff into. Now that I have the space to not just shove things wherever they fit I am finally doing it properly. And I have my medical expenses tax claims ready and waiting to be processed, just need an answer from Revenue on one question and I go enter them onto the website. My couch is covered in paper: but what the hell. Definitely worth it to get this done. Then I can start thinking about doing my German tax return.

Having had to pay for the car repair I've definitely been having a storecupboard diet week or two till the end of the month. Brought all my empty bottles back to the supermarket on Saturday so that I could buy some veg at the market. Got seven onions, two big carrots and a kilo of potatoes for 4 euro and then a few slices of turkey salami and, to be adventurous, two rabbit legs. They'd been marinated in a spicy oil (mostly rosemary and chili I think) so I fried them yesterday for lunch and at them with some wheat which I had flavoured by adding a bit of lemon juice to the cooking water and then thrown some peas and corn into. Delicious although rabbits legs really don't have a lot of meat on them. I knew this. But now I really know it.

So tonight I'm having the best kind of leftovers. At least I have high hopes for it. Leftover wheat/peas/corn is being heated up, I threw in a tin of tomatoes so it didn't dry out and I had a mettwurst in the fridge which I'm also going to add. Then I had the great idea to try some chutney and have added a couple of spoons of pumpkin chutney to it as well. It smells fabulous so I don't care that the wheat will be hopelessly overcooked by the time it's heated through again.

Did some reading this weekend about vertical gardening and now have a brain brimming with ideas and wanting to completely rearrange my living room so that I actually will be able to grow some of my own food this year.

And found out today that the cost to me of repairing the rental car is 465, so will get 335 refunded to me, which will make a HUGE difference to my budget for the next couple of months (i.e. will allow me to actually have a budget instead of trying to make my storecupboard stretch that far. Which it couldn't.)

Crappy weather today, horrible black clouds but I feel good.