EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

MistyMountainTop wrote: »

Your dinner sounds amazing! And now I want donuts.

I'm slowly getting the Xmas gifts sorted, and am really watching the pennies this year. If there is something I know someone wants, I'll spend hours searching until I know I have the best price and then see if I can get some cashback as well. It may not be the most productive use of my time but it's satisfying and at the moment I have more time than money.

The budget beer festival was a boon! It's not often you can get away with spending a fiver at those events, you have every right to be chuffed.

I hope you have a lovely Sunday x

Haha - I'm starting to wonder what I can talk about now to make you want that, next! :rotfl:

The beer festival on a budget really WAS a bonus - I used to be festival organiser for it, and worked it for years prior to that, so it's kind of "earned" - but it's nice that people still appreciate stuff like that.

hex2 wrote: »

The salsa sounds lovely - any recipe for it please?

Ummm....:o Well it started with the cheeks of a mango, very finely diced (MrEH did that bit, I've not got the patience and just end up eating it all! As it was we ate the rest of it that wasn't needed for the salsa!) and a red pepper "roasted" over the gas flame to blacken the skin, the skin was then scraped off, and I finely diced that too, and threw the two in together. A tiny pinch of kashmiri chilli powder (or a more punchy one if that was to your taste) and a handful of roughly chopped coriander. Mixed it all together and just gave it a splash of white wine vinegar to give it a little "bit" - it was absolutely delicious!

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

tsk! We wanna see yer tea! :rotfl:

Greying X

Soooooooorreeeee! I really wish I had photographed it as it looked really appealing!

Headed up to Cambridge yesterday - a LOVELY day for it, all cold and crisp and blue skies and sunshine, and Cambridge is such a beautiful city. Parking cost us £4 - we deliberately found a spot out on the ring road and walked through the colleges to get into the centre. Managed to get a decent amount of Christmas shopping sorted - think the niece and nephews are probably about done now, and I managed to get my Dad's main present, too. we only had 4 hours parking so positively whizzed around the places we needed to get to, and left a bit of time for a nice lunch as well - fab tiny Greek cafe - MrEH had lamb souvlaki in pitta and chips, I had falafel in pitta with just a scoop of chips added too (it was chip weather!) but they serve them up with all the sauces too - I had a spicy tomato one, a lovely houmous and a really fresh tzatziki - just delicious and such a nice place - we'll be going back there! £15.00 altogether and worth every penny and more too. Cambridge is only about 40 minutes in the car, we really should go more often!

Odds and ends to sort out this week - I've transferred the money out of our VSP so we can start the new year on that afresh. Got train tickets to book, and must update what needs sorting for the Hebrides trip. Also want to place the order we've been talking about for AGES from the meat people.

Slight change of plan on my dinner tonight - it will be a buddha bowl style thing with roasted veggies (which were on the plan), the other avocado, and toasted seeds I think. Dressing will be something nice and zingy - I still have some basil and pea salad dressing I think so may be that. Grain will "probably" be couscous with coriander and lime juice. (yum! Making myself hungry thinking about that!)

Afternoon! Not a great deal to report, to be honest. The goat tagine was indeed very tasty, and there is another 2 portions of that in the freezer now which will get used either next week or the one after. Tonight is potato, onion, cheese and bacon bake - which *hopefully* I cooked for long enough last night that a heat through tonight will ensure that it's just as gooey and unctuous as it should be. It'll get a top-off with cheese and then a re-heat in the little oven anyway. Going to serve that with garlic mushrooms and some steamed savoy cabbage I think - yum. Tomorrow night's dinner is going to be a change of plan to a very mushroom and bacon heavy pasta I think. Got a splosh of cream needs using, and can throw in a lump of frozen pesto too. Thursday tea often ends up being a "£use it up" kinda meal though so no problem with that. The buddha bowl will slide to friday lunchtime by which stage the second avocado may even have deigned to ripen itself.

Walked up the road yesterday lunchtime to collect some train tickets, only to find the station was closed, and will be until the New Year. Hopefully collecting them from a different machine won't be an issue - I known it's usually fine. I'll either do that one evening when I've car-shared with MrEH or will wander to one or other station nearer to home on Friday.

Need to start thinking about Christmassy stuff I guess. We've bunged mum £50 which will go a good way towards covering christmas dinner itself (which we're having on the 18th - a Pippi style "fakemas" if you will) but I'll also be making sausage rolls, and mince pies. Current thought on the mince pies is to soak dried cranberries in cointreau (which I know I have a bottle of somewhere) or Calvados (ditto) and use those to augment a jar of bought mincemeat, then do them with a crumble topping rather than traditional pastry topped. Sausage rolls I think will have chopped dried apricots mushed into the sausagemeat. I like to come up with something a bit different to the norm! Might actually do a trial run of both those things on Friday. Presents are MOSTLY done I think - need some extra bits for my Dad (who is a total pain to buy for!) Just need to tackle the dreaded wrapping now, and - urgh - cards. we only do a small number of cards now though at least.

Shopping for this week also needs to start being thought about:
I'll return to Al's for oranges & apples, and will probably be unable to resist at least 1 more mango.
According to lovely Greying Lil's should hopefully have Peppers and clementines - and fingers crossed mushrooms as well, although actually I need to think whether I'll need any as I bought a large pack last week. I may just cook the balance of those up to stop them going over.
Need a meal plan. Also need to check how many eggs MrEH left me with after he made the Chrissie cake.
T's: Milk for both of us, possibly eggs, bananas. Some sort of frozen shellfish to augment what is in the freezer and facilitate a Thai fish stew/curry one day over the weekend. Jar of mincemeat (although will check Al's and Lil's for that first).

Need to do the online meat order as the freezer is getting a bit light on solid ingredients.

So - jobs for tonight:
- freezer audit
- update "use it up" list
- count eggs
- Cook mushrooms
- Pin MrEH down about the meat order
- meal plan

The apricot question is a mighty good one Greying - in fact I need to add them to the shopping list as I had none at all - I substituted the last of the figs in the tagine in the end. Cranberries are a good thought for the sausage rolls - at least for any trial run I may do. :T

The "jobs for tonight" list didn't get as far as it should. In fact it didn't really get very far at all.
- eggs total 5.
- Use it up list is updated
- mushrooms are still OK and they will be going in the pasta sauce tomorrow so I've not fussed about cooking them this evening.

And now - I'm going to bed. Night all!

MistyMountainTop wrote: »

Dried apricots..... that sounds so good. I want to eat dried apricots right now!!!

Damn - that's FAR too healthy, I was hoping the mention of mince pies and sausage rolls might be what got you! :rotfl::rotfl::D

I'm still doing quite well with trying to keep my step-count up a bit. Weekly average is hovering around 6k a day, which I'm happy enough with. In the past I've always said "I want to do my 10k a day" which with the job I do (desk-based for 7 hours a day, and having to use the car for commuting) just isn't realistic, and as a result I've lost heart. This time round though I'm following the principle of "enough, not perfection" and it's actually working! :T

Decision is made on my new phone I think. Going to go with the 64gb iPhone SE - I spend SO much time using my phone one handed, and the 6S just isn't as suited to this sort of use to be honest. The SE has all the bits I *really* want from the upgrade, and the bits it doesn't are the ones I'm not so concerned about. Looking online I can buy one outright for £409.00 from GiffGaff (less if I can work out how to do it without having to buy their £10 initial bundle with it as well) - and I can then add the £10 plusnet SIM-only deal from this week's email.

I'll take a look at applying for a 0% spending card to pay for it on as that seems to make sense - I can split the amount I pay off it over a few months that way, or even better just leave it paying the minimum, and pay the lump sum (which is already in savings) at the end.

I can never resist eating a handful straight from the bag when I'm cooking with them Misty! :rotfl:

My new phone is really pure indulgence - the only issue with the old one is that the battery runs out in no time now. I use it an awful lot though, and now I have the new camera with the wifi capability it will get even more use, too. Essentially though it's an expensive toy., and I know I'm really lucky to be in a position to save up for stuff like this. I'll almost certainly go through TCB for both bits - although I do wonder whether EE will offer to match the PlusNet deal if I ring them up - Mum did exactly that yesterday after I told her about the deal and they've matched it for her, but her base contract price was lower than mine so I'll have to see.

The cashback has arrived already from Canon for the new camera so :j to that - I've transferred it straight out to savings for the moment.

Been doing a bit of digging about and currently there are a couple of CC's out there which according to the eligibility checker I should have 95% likelihood of getting - 24 months or 22 months 0% interest on balance transfers but most importantly with no fees. Current thinking is thus:
- Buy the new phone on the existing CC, earning 0.5% cashback for it
- Apply for the new card
- If I get the new card, B/T the cost of the phone PLUS the cost of the camera I have already bought (yes, I KNOW - but it's all saved and budgeted for) onto the new card
- set the payment for the new card to the minimum and let it trickle out, while the money for both items sits in my savings earning me at least some interest
- Set a reminder for 12 months time to pay the balance for the phone off the card
- set a reminder for the month prior to the 0% finishing to pay whatever else is outstanding to the card
- in the meantime treat the card as "debt" and aim to make small extra payments to it from survey money, TCB funds, etc, so reducing the amount that will eventually come from my savings

Make sense? It seems to, to me. Daftly I quite like the idea of a challenge of this sort again too.