london 9.38am 15.1C sunny friday 2017. sunset is 7.14pm . days are getting shorter. but it does not feel autumnal at all. trees are still green. and it is quite warm.
not a lot of flowers though, the plants around here are looking rather bedraggled.
on wednesday, i went into a M&S store in chelsea on my way to the circuit training, and saw they have half price oakham farm whole chicken. and today i see they are advertising it in the papers. if u search the shelves you can find a large chicken 1.8kg usually £6 , for £3. which is a nice bargain. but i think by now they are all gone, and only the small ones are left, which are not so much of a bargain. they are usually £4, which i think is very overpriced, reducing it to half price £2 just makes them barely reasonable.
but tesco is also selling 25% off chicken , £3.37 for any medium and large size, and if u find one that is 1.95kg as i did , you can get a nice bargain. the trick is to find the largest chicken they have got that is reduced by 25%. i must have got there just when they stock them up, because these large chickens usually get bought very quickly. they are not advertising this though. maybe they reduced it as a response to the M&S offer.
i roasted the chicken yesterday, and by today they are all eaten. simon loves eating them…he even offered to peel the potatoes so i can roast them together with the chicken. he knows i am not bothered to peel them if it were left to me… haha. it does make the outside crisp when peeled.
i find the chickens sold in london are very meaty, they have lots of breast meat, which is a good thing. and if u dont over cook them, they can be very juicy and tender. i think the larger the chicken the better, in that a lot of the weight then is meat, rather than bones. a small chicken have proportionately more bones than meat.
its really lovely to have a roast. i realise people in s.e.asia dont roast meats, as it is too hot and the oven just makes the kitchen unbearable. and it is true that roast dinners are more enjoyable during the cool months. or when we get a cool summer, which is often. haha. another plus for london, even our summers are cool enough to have roast chicken so we can enjoy it all year round. nice or what.
but chicken can be cooked in other ways too, like in a curry, or with black soya sauce. i am often torn between choosing how to cook them, as i like them all… so it is really tempting to buy more chicken so i can cook them in those other 2 ways.
in the old days when i get really cheap chickens,(£1 each!) i will buy 3, and cook them in all the 3 ways. and freeze them. perhaps with all this competition for chicken, i might be able to find more reduced priced later in the weeks ahead as they come up to their expiry date. who knows! right?
added. 12.25pm 17.1C sunny. correction about there being no flowers around. i went out to the library just now and on the way i could see lots of flowers. like this one hanging basket near the bus stop, plenty of these hanging on every lamp post in the area.
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then as i was coming back, i decided to look in to the tate britain to see what they have got.
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very pretty these, with the sunlight shining through them they seem to be lit from below. they are transparent blocks that rachel whiteread the artist have made of the spaces underneath stools. she did a shed too, sitting outside on the grass.
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its about man height. must use a lot of concrete haha. it’s a chicken shed, a replica in concrete of the inside of a chicken shed.
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alifesgayventure 
Glad you managed to get the discounted chickens! You are a savvy shopper and I take my hat off to you. I have lots to learn as I buy out of convenience as always hard pressed for time!
oh, i do it for fun, really. but i am helped here in london, because competition between supermarket chains is so fierce. and there is the expiry date too. that is why to me, cost of living here in london is low, in spite of what they say.