Fiscal Fast – 7 days no spending (at all)

Wish Alison all the best from us - here's a dodgy group hug :grouphug:

Had to spend - my mop broke part way through my marathon clean-up and my knees are too shot to get down to floor level so I went out and bought a new mop - and some bleach - and a sandwich :eek: I can forgive myself the mop but the bleach could have waited and there was absolutely no need other than laziness for the sandwich Floors look good though

"Freezer something" will be roast chicken and chips - my reward for mending a bit of my path so the dog can't dig a hole in it any more. It was a big contributor to the floor problem.

Lally - get well soon Alison x

wishing you well alison / lally x

i decided to use up both some bread and quorn chunky cooked 'chicken' today alongside the very end of a cucumber which even i would have usually thrown away - was quite proud of myself lol;)

also, the quorn had a bb4 date of jan 2011, so had been in the freezer over a year but i am still alive and will eat the rest tomorrow. even rescued the mayo jar that OH had put in the bin as there is enough to use tmrw:o

plus had bacon and beans on toast tnite.

am tempted to make some of the cakes/bickies, but know i will eat them.....all.....

Morning gang,

Have to report a spend last night - DD found a friend for the cinema, but I still had to transport, as we are rural - so 2 hours hanging around our nearest town at whoopsie time....I bought:

3 wholemeal loaves
1 ciabatta
10 assorted roll/bagels
2l milk
6 wraps
a cauli
7 satsumas
3 bananas
carton of soft cheese
4 red peppers
2 little gem
pack of carrots
4 baking potatoes
value coleslaw
2 tins tomatoes

all for £5.50!
Was actually cheaper than a cinema ticket!
So, have broken the fast but not the bank, and will probably only need to spend £5 - £10 for next week's shopping.

At home for most of the day today, so will be meal planning and doing a bit of housework .

Calico, know what you mean about the shopping - I see it as a challenge, try to get the best value for as little as possible. I remember the days when I would just float around, picking up what I fancied - no more - these days it's war!
Won't be able to save quite as much as I'd hoped this month, after Easter and birthday expenses, but hoping for £50 towards the holiday fund.
Good luck everyone!

Well, day 3 is heading towards closure and the purse and wallet are still firmly closed. Tell a lie, actually; I have opened the wallet just far enough to give my library card some exercise, but that it that.

I didn't eat the second installment of my h.m. soup yesterday so I had it for breakfast with a chunk of h.m. wholemeal bread. The dietary police didn't come and arrest me.:p I had a small pot of black grapes for lunch as they needed eating.

I was very much on the ball today and planned what I would have to eat; breaded fish and oven chips, with half a can of baked beans heated thru on the same oven sheet (in a little Pyrex tureen). I adore Pyrex and have various sizes including 2 titchy ones just the size to cup in the palm of my hand. All family cast-offs, charity shop purchases or boot fair bargains.

I handmade bread dough and put it in balls onto a greased baking sheet and left it until after work; the balls spread into good-sized rolls. I needed the oven to Gas 7 for my fish and chips and then just whipped out that and inserted the rolls. I also put a portion of the pear crumble in another Pyrex casserole to warm thru. The Pyrex casserole family is 1 large, 4 medium and 2 titchy and they are very well-used.

I made a small amount of custard, 1/3rd of a Tesco Basics custard sachet, and had that with the crumble. Nomnonmnom.

So, all in all, I was feeling very smug and pride cometh before a fall; my milk had turned in the fridge and I had to throw almost a pint away. Grrrr! Attribute this to the thundery weather we have at the moment.

I'm a bit down about that. I buy milk in 4-pinters and decant half of it into single pinters and freeze, use the rest of the 4-pinter from the fridge then defrost the single pints as I need them. I use 4 pints in 6-7 days and this is the way it works for me. I knew I'd run out of milk before the end of the Fast as I had family over on Monday and we used a fair bit of milk and only a single pinter got frozen. It is now defrosting.........

It's not the end of the world as I only use milk for my tea and can and am drinking it black but it's a trivial disappointment. When you're committed not to buying more for a period, it makes you more sensitive to waste and loss.

A friend said something unexpected to me this afternoon: "You're early." I did a double-take at my watch and saw that it was half an hour after the end of my workday, and I'd been to the library but I would normally have done that and the shop before I dropped in on my pal on the way home, so that made me think about how much time my daily bargain-hunting was taking me, even though it was only in one small supermarket.

As I was ambling in the library, I briefly thought about hiring a DVD. I haven't got a TV but have a DVD drive and sometimes watch movies on the pooter. As I started to drift towards the DVD section, I remembered that I have at least half-a-dozen unwatched DVDs borrowed from my brother so can get into one of them for free if I feel the urge.

It's amazing how a promise to yourself (and to a buncha friendly strangers on a forum) can change your behaviour......:rotfl:I am down to a single bar of chocolate with a bit more than half the Fast to go, so must eke that out or be choccie-less at the end.

Have a lovely evening, all. GQ xx