£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

rawr_ · 17 March 2018 at 8:14PM

Hello, I just wanted to say hello. I discovered your thread yesterday and have been reading a long. I think you have done amazingly well so far, have subscribed to see how you get on.

Arsenalbarnie ooh, we used to have soya protein all the time when I was little, my stepdad used to make curry with it. None in the zero waste shop, but I bet I can track some down sans plastic.

I buy my soya protein from T*sco - it's on the same place as all the beans and pulses. I also agree with Honeybug - lentils are great for bolognese too, and for bulking out other meals! Pasta is also a brilliant versatile dish, which can be so cheap.

apple_muncher · 17 March 2018 at 8:45PM

Cherryfudge wrote: »

I've read that soaking / cooking with bicarb destroys Vitamin C - how much I don't know, but it may be worth taking into consideration. It's going to be a balance of cost, organics, vitamins and pesticides, somehow.

Vit C is water soluble and destroyed by heat anyway - anything over 70 degrees. Amazing we're not all deficient!

Treadingonplaymobil · 17 March 2018 at 9:51PM

Day 1 one of three busy days out of the way. It's snowing lightly here at the moment and has settled, so I'm hoping tomorrow's client isn't postponed due to the weather - I'm driving there so it will depend whether we get snowed in, which seems unlikely.

Have just made ice cream. Not quite sure why I decided we needed homemade ice cream - I think one of the children mentioned it and I mindlessly went 'yeah, no problem'. It actually is no problem - I can make custard with my eyes shut and then it's just a case of chucking it in the ice cream making, but I feel sure it would have been easier (and cheaper) to just, you know, buy a tub of ice cream. Anyway, the point is that I have frozen the egg whites, as google assures me I can use them for meringues after freezing, which I am intrigued by, and I have no use for half a dozen egg whites just now. I will report back when I defrost them.

Three things to do today
1. Sort charity/recycling stuff and load into car for DH to take later.
2. Paint nails.
3. Sort provisional childcare and email client re extra work.

Debt repayment:
- £22.77/31 March rounding down pot.
- £1,608.78/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.

PurpleFairy26 · 17 March 2018 at 11:47PM

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

Day 1 one of three busy days out of the way. It's snowing lightly here at the moment and has settled, so I'm hoping tomorrow's client isn't postponed due to the weather - I'm driving there so it will depend whether we get snowed in, which seems unlikely.

Have just made ice cream. Not quite sure why I decided we needed homemade ice cream - I think one of the children mentioned it and I mindlessly went 'yeah, no problem'. It actually is no problem - I can make custard with my eyes shut and then it's just a case of chucking it in the ice cream making, but I feel sure it would have been easier (and cheaper) to just, you know, buy a tub of ice cream. Anyway, the point is that I have frozen the egg whites, as google assures me I can use them for meringues after freezing, which I am intrigued by, and I have no use for half a dozen egg whites just now. I will report back when I defrost them.

Three things to do today
1. Sort charity/recycling stuff and load into car for DH to take later.
2. Paint nails.
3. Sort provisional childcare and email client re extra work.

Debt repayment:
- £22.77/31 March rounding down pot.
- £1,608.78/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.

TOPM I made a pavlova recently (as a luxury pudding, well in our house anyway. Using frozen egg whites and it was perfect. Actually, they weren't even quite defrosted and I bashed them about a bit and it still worked. Some reports say that are better post freezing for meringues anyway. Alternatively they pad out whole eggs for omelettes, scrambled eggs etc...

Treadingonplaymobil · 18 March 2018 at 6:03AM

Week 57: Day 7

Well we have a whopping, oooh, 0.5cm of snow here, at a push. I think I'll probably make it out this morning. The forecast quantity of snow today has been downgraded a fair bit too, so I think I'll be fine coming home later too.

Nothing new on the financial front, just ticking along and trying to keep the numbers balancing, more or less - still in the same over-budgeted situation as a couple of days ago, although have knocked the shortfall down to £79 as I had too much in DH's train fare pot.

Out all day again so a somewhat unambitious to do list, although need to make something for DC1 and 2's packed lunches this week.

Three things to do today
1. Make onion quiche or similar for packed lunches.
2. Plan next week's work.
3. Bake biscuits for clients tomorrow.

Debt repayment:
- £22.77/31 March rounding down pot.
- £1,608.78/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.

Treadingonplaymobil · 19 March 2018 at 6:25AM

Week 58: Day 1

Well yesterday went all kinds of wrong. I made it to my client's, but the snow started coming down in force and I had to abandon the session and head home, which took me about an hour (to go 7 miles). We've had loads of snow, and I don't think today's client is going to manage to get here today (her house has a very steep driveway). I'm going to offer to walk over there to her though, as she's only two miles away, and I think she has a knee or a hip problem so wouldn't be able to walk to me.

The DCs' school is closed, but luckily my parents made it down to visit before the worst of the snow hit and will look after them today.

No major spends to report, hopefully today will be another NSD as getting to the shops will be too much like hard work!

Menu plan for this week:
mon - dhal with rice, flatbreads, leftover veg and mango chutney.
tue - hm tomato soup and fresh bread.
wed - mujadara and steamed veg.
thu - leftover mackerel puttanesca.
fri - leftovers of some description - I'll be by myself as DH taking the DC to visit relatives.
sat - leek and potato soup (DH and DC still away, but I have clients).
sun - noodle soup.
breakfasts - porridge, french toast, granola and yoghurt.
lunches - savoury muffins (in freezer), leftovers, onion quiche, roast veg and houmous.
snacks - popcorn, biscuits, fruit, toast and jam.

If anyone has any good uses for leftover stale bread, I'm all ears! I always end up with one stale heel of my handmade loaves left, and I have been accumulating them in the freezer faster than I'm using them up.

Three things to do today
1. Make onion quiche or similar for packed lunches (completely forgot this yesterday. Good thing there's no school!).
2. Tidy house in case I am able to come back here with the client at some stage.
3. make dal for dinner.

Debt repayment:
- £22.77/31 March rounding down pot.
- £1,608.78/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.

Verbatim · 19 March 2018 at 8:59AM

breadcrumbs as fruit pudding topping, veg gratin , ratatouille with lemon crust https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/

dawnybabes · 19 March 2018 at 9:19AM

I always make bread and butter pudding with mine. Could you make croutons for the soup ?

armchairexpert · 19 March 2018 at 1:18PM

Egg whites: coconut or almond macaroons. Coconut ones you can put in lunch boxes for school, which is a bonus. Breadcrumbs: lots of good suggestions above, also I haven't tried this, but I wonder if you could do a sort of summer pudding but with tinned fruit and sliced stale bread?

As an aside, do your reusable bread bags work? I bake my own bread as well and my ears pricked up at that idea.

I always feel like I'm reading about my own life, and the how-cheap-do-we-get-the-food-budget thing is one I struggle with a lot. My kids and husband prefer expensive meals. I am happy with lentil soup. I provide a balance, but I do sometimes think - you know, family meals, and savouring good food, are some of the true joys of life, and I want them to be some of the memories they take with them into adulthood. And it's just not true, I don't think, that they'll 'just remember the laughter'. They'll remember the meals they didn't like, as well, picking at root vegetable soup to find the flecks of bacon or whatever. I had a very happy childhood with a loving mum, but we were also grindingly poor for large swathes of time and that's what I remember about my childhood meals - no pudding for weeks except the huge sack of blancmange powder that got hauled down from the shelf, or gristly bits of lamb scrag in a stew bulked out with pearl barley and despair.

(Of course, she was also a dreadful cook, which didn't help!)

I'm not going to serve them what they want all the time either: they like sushi and oysters and pork ribs that sell for $30/kg and the expensive sausages, not the cheap ones, and they'll polish off an entire roast chicken if I put the whole thing on the table. But I agree that, if you have the option to do so, it's okay to stop somewhere before "well, their tummies are full".

enthusiasticsaver · 19 March 2018 at 2:19PM

This weather is totally weird. We have gorgeous sunshine in Cornwall and no snow. My son in laws office is in Devon about 15 miles away and the snow is so treacherous over there he turned round and came home.

£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

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