greent's mfw journey

greent

Hmmm... I seem to remember my use of psb bringing up a purple sprouting broccoli conversation before ! 🤣🤣

2 flebay parcels posted today 🙌🙌. Various odds and ends used up from freezer today and yesterday (ok, some of them ha e been turned into things for the freezer - but it's progess of sorts! 😃😃

8.70 something just claimed from pr0lific- whoop! Have another 2.50 pending on there, so should get at least another payout this month- fingers crossed 🤞 

greent

Extra money this month currently at around £117 (mostly flebay) - have put £50 in DS1's uni funding account (if he does a 2nd degree it will cost us min 7-9k per year, for 4years so this will need lots of money going in there! (may do a 50/50 split of extra money at the mo - we also have a (just increased) monthly sto going to this account)- he will also need some work himself but his time available will be rather limited) and bought another £50 of premium bonds   Debating finally trying my hand at MB after half term.... could go a decent way to his funding requirements if successful...

Looking forward (very much!) to half term next week DH is also on holiday for all of it - he carried forward 10 days from last year! Monday is electrical work day, so I'm thinking some board games (there are calls for Risk....) - and making sure everyone has charged laptops and phones straight off - and power packs for phones. Only other 'fixed' plans are for Thurs - DH and I had a postal afternoon tea as one of our Xmas presents, so I've ordered that for Thurs but will top it up with other bits and pieces and make it so we all have afternoon tea (DH doesn't like half of the one we had as a present, anyway! )  Other than that, it's not as though we can do much/ go anywhere. We have Di5ney+, too (free for 6 months with DS1's new phone contract) so can maybe watch stuff with popcorn - will get the kids all researching what they like over the weekend. 

Still having problems actually getting quotes off tradesmen for various work.... sigh   We've managed to get some here now, and they all promise quotes.... and never deliver, even when chased (and chased again, and again...)  I know they are all busy at the mo, but their booked work will run out at some point. 

Was looking at the kitchen earlier - it does feel like we have a lot of food here right now. I know feeding 6 people 3x/ day (+ snacks!! ) means a LOT of food - but I've also found myself buying things when I wouldn't usually. What I mean is I have several (3?) spare jars of mayo (we get through 1 every 10 days, I would guess - these aren't the huge jars - just the regular sized ones. (my cubital tunnel means I can't grip large jar lids properly any more, and DH has something wrong with both of his hands that means he can't, so I buy the smaller ones)  in case I can't get any (I seem to remember it running out for a while last year) Same for ketchup (DS2's preferred one is Sainz own brand - and I only got to Sainz max every 2 weeks (on a  Mon or Tues to maximise Nectar offers - I can use 2 weeks of offers on one day that way) and it is often out of stock now - so I buy 2 or 3 at a time when I see it. Pre- pandemic I would go to various different smkts on one day and shop maybe 4 times/ week? - very guilty of popping to Tesc0 for something on an evening. Trying really hard not to nowadays (but still shop twice a week because I'm not sure my fridge could fit a whole 7 days' worth of food in for all of us!) (and we have an American style f/f) but because I still like various things from various shops I will mix it up (so do Sainz every 2 or 3 weeks, Azda maybe every 6, A1d1 every 2 or 3 weeks, Lidl maybe once a month etc) with Tesc0 being my default (approx 1 mile away and is a big Extra store) - so I'm guilty of buying more of those particular things from each shop, but less frequently than I did before - it all equals out in the end - but sometimes it does mean that our kitchen looks as though we are preparing for an apocalypse (like right now!) I dislike it - mostly because I used to have an issue with buying too much food - we only ever had just enough when I was growing up - and once you ran out, that was it until Friday payday/ Saturday morning shopping  - so there was just enough food for the days with no room for change of mind or anything. (and I also usually ate tea after school at my Nan's - it would usually be spaghetti hoops on toast or something similar) Because of this, when the big kids were young in particular, I had overstocked cupboards. Still not much food waste - but I liked knowing there was a spare whatever in the cupboard and that we could choose from several things for dinner every night and that we never ran out of teabags/ coffee/ biscuits/ cereals etc. It took me a long time to realise why I was doing this and that it was ok to not hold large stocks of things - especially with a large 24hr Tesc0 not far away...  I've kind of slipped back somewhat! (although still no food waste - my food caddy usually consists of eggshells, teabags and the very odd spoon off someone's plate. And an occasional chicken carcass. Not real, wasted, food)

f0xh0les

I love the idea of MB, but can't bring myself to do it.  I come from a family of big gamblers, one of my first memories  is writing my dad's betting slips, I could not have been more than 6 yrs old.  It scares me, but I do find the idea seductive, so I stay away.

Risk is always a big favourite in our house too, along with scrabble, still I hope you are not without power for too long.

It is going to be an odd half term. As usual my DH has reading week the week after half term.  I do wish they would make the uni and school terms match up for once.

South_coast

I don't think there's any harm in having food stocks if there's nothing being wasted (as long as people aren't eating for the sake of it, just because it's there). I used to be one for popping to the shops too (I pass Lidl, Sainsbury's and Asda all on the way home from work, so never used to pay any thought to what I was going to cook in advance), but now just scuttle in on my way to/from BF's at the weekend. I'm sure I'm eating better (no picking up booze/chocolate because I've had a stressy day) and it's definitely costing less, so it's a keeper for me 😀

P.S. My Nectar days for two weeks of offers are Weds/Thurs - most odd, I just assumed they'd do everyone the same!

newgirly

I totally understand the collecting of food currently as with the combination of snow/virus/ big family it’s a wise thing to have replacement stocks if they last, the only thing I never can guess right is salad bags and lettuce as it’s either too much or too little 😆

Suffolk_lass

I have a larder here and a tendency to hoard if I don't control myself but I have one spare unopened and occasionally a four pack of baked beans or similar when there is a deal. That reminds me, they need to go on the list...

Karmacat

I started proper stocking up back in the days when I had bad CFS, and I lived right on the edge of my city, it was a huge problem if I ran out of food - even sitting at the computer to complete an online delivery order tired me out.  So I had massive stocks at one stage, and even now, they're appreciable.  Of course, there's only one of me!  Six times the amounts I have would mean problems  and although I've trained myself not to eat sweets/ desserts/ chocolate bars, I can only keep it up by not having any in the house.  So I can't stock up on those at all ... 

As for mb, if you *do* do it, start small.  When I did it, I found the only way I could cope was setting things up 3 days in advance, and then checking in a couple of days later to see I'd got it right.  I missed out on the "in play" stuff, but that really didn't matter because of the stress I felt if I did it.  And of course, if you feel stressed, you're going to make mistakes.  Foxholes - sympathies for the situation.  If you feel it's seductive, then you're right to stay away.  My only experience of gambling literally comes from 50p bets among friends or colleagues on Grand National Day, so that problem just didn't exist for me.  Seduction and addiction lay along the lines of chocolate and booze for me, also very traditional.

shangaijimmy

Mrs SJ very much sits on the side of bursting food cupboards. If/when the zombie apocalypse comes (marginally ironic at the moment...) Mrs SJ is well prepared and will be very quick to rub it in when we're hiding in the loft eating cold beans for 3 months...

greent

f0xh0les said:

I love the idea of MB, but can't bring myself to do it.  I come from a family of big gamblers, one of my first memories  is writing my dad's betting slips, I could not have been more than 6 yrs old.  It scares me, but I do find the idea seductive, so I stay away.

As usual my DH has reading week the week after half term.  I do wish they would make the uni and school terms match up for once.

Ah, yes - it would be so much easier if all educational establishments did that  - grrrrr!

Alcohol and hard drug addictions very close in my family tree here - no gambling issues that I'm aware of - and I think I'm too much of a control freak around money and numbers to be too swayed...  chocolate 🍫 is far more my poison!


Thanks, all - I shall not focus on my food stocks! I think it possibly looks worse because we actually have relatively few kitchen cupboards- my choice- we have a decent sized kitchen (just bigger than a standard double garage) and I chose to have far fewer cupboards than 'normal' - and way less than the designer wanted us to have - but my view is that the more cupboards you have, the more things you have... things accumulate to fill the available space

6 year anniversary today of a friend's daughter dying aged 17. She was my DD's friend, too and lived 10 mins away. The song played at her funeral was on my Spotify play list today, coincidentally. It's a beautiful song, but I don't listen to it often because it's 'her' song now - so it was weird that it came not just on my daily mix today, but also DD's! The universe is strange.... (the last time I heard the song was a year and a  day ago whilst waiting for my youngest to get changed after swimming - it was played over the pool's speakers, so nothing to do with my music tastes  

Copied @f0xh0les and made rice pudding today - using risotto rice bb 03/19 and vanilla sugar bought in Portugal in Oct 2014.....   Had pulled chicken (baked with tomatoes and Chipotle paste with added garlic and chilli) in wraps with salad and houmous- very nice

Am in work tomorrow morning - supervising someone sitting some.internal tests - so I get to take a book and read - and be paid  .

Karmacat

Seventeen ... what a sad anniversary, greent.