It's STILL tough and not getting better - so how are we coping?

flowertotmum

Morning all...i agree with you about schools not doing enough to help prepare children for the real world..the cooking lessons were a total joke..we never ate any of it...i decided to do it myself..i got them baking with me and doing meals from scratch also we gave them a note book and so much pocket money and they had to manage it until they got paid again..they are now all very money concious and watch the pennies...will do it again when my 2 little ones are old enough to understand money and how it works...
I feel very blessed to day..in my garden i have seen a robin,wren,blue tits,finches and 4 geese flying over...went to allotment and got carrots,beetroot,cabbage,spring onions and a huge pumpkin..and hubby interview went very well yesterday so hoping to hear back some good news...i hope your all ok...
take care

gailey_2

Well my mam rarly cooked and we lived off ready meals so had to be self taught.learnt few things from housemates in uni.
love recipie books have stacks but never cooked them all.
Think last 10years or so cookings become more fashionable and so many cookery programmes and i get good food channel and food network no excuse really.
Plus i google lot of recipies.

Luckily will involve my kids so they wont rely on school cooking lessons.
But for those with parents who dont cook sensible lessons be fab idea as building blocks to build on in the kitchen.

So if they have to do their own meals they can whip up a toastie, omlette, pancakes, stir fry in next to no time.

stupidly exited about my soup now.
boiled chicken carcass for 1half hours surorised how much meat thourght I had picked that bird well.
just added potatos and frozen beans/leeks from our garden herbs, more water, stock, salt,pepper and garlic and simmering down for an hour.

so with 1 3quid chicken made

roast for 2adults ,2kids
7huge pasties
least 3-4 bowls of soup.

rang up Lloyds today can see why they voted worst bank on news this morning!

Watched last nites food from c4 on planner and quite annoyed.
Im not as niave as some but way supermarkets pretend somethings local or british annoys me , that chese as long as packaged in uk can be called british even good old marks at it.

I love farmers market and farm shops but they so pricey we do buy mainly from various supermarkets I try to balance my ethics and principles with our budget.

juliethemuse

hi everybody its a gorgeous day here, i have got almost all my washing dry!
DDS 2 has lost his Jsa, for not doing as he is told, but he has found a job , hurrah! only trouble is he wont get paid for 3 weeks so , as per usual the bank of mum and dad will have to keep him, trouble is the bank is almost empty so the next few weeks are going to be extra frugal, however i do have the cupboards stocked at the moment, the trouble is 3 young adults can eat a huge ammount of food in a week,
i remember being the same though, i was always hungry as a teenager, my mum would ask me if i had worms :rotfl:

Fruball

Got to share my bit of excitement with you...

I bought a garden shredder today for £10 from a very nice man who put an ad in the local paper

It means when I do my autumn clear up, i don't have to ferry loads of branches to the dump (too big for composter) and don't have to have them lying about for ages, saves on trips in the car, spiders in the car :eek: AND i can compost them

I can't tell my friends how excited I am as they already think i need to get a life :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

flowertotmum

Frugal wrote: »

Got to share my bit of excitement with you...

I bought a garden shredder today for £10 from a very nice man who put an ad in the local paper

It means when I do my autumn clear up, i don't have to ferry loads of branches to the dump (too big for composter) and don't have to have them lying about for ages, saves on trips in the car, spiders in the car :eek: AND i can compost them

I can't tell my friends how excited I am as they already think i need to get a life :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Frugal..same as me then ..i got a breadmaker for a fiver with all the extra bits included..was soooo excited...we have a shredder and its so satisfying shredding things;)...

Fruball

flowertotmum wrote: »

Frugal..same as me then ..i got a breadmaker for a fiver with all the extra bits included..was soooo excited...we have a shredder and its so satisfying shredding things;)...

I know!!! I can't wait to get out there and start shredding... I am usually a bit heavy handed once I get started with pruning... my poor garden is going to suffer now I have a fun toy to play with!!

Enjoy your BM

mama67

Kitcaboodle wrote: »

The whole tax credits thing scares me! It's done on previous tax year and DH and I started our jobs part way through the tax year. My earnings last tax year should be roughly the same as this year because my money will stop when my maternity pay ends but, if I notify them when it ends (as I believe I have to) then they might up the credits and leave me having to pay them back at the end of the tax year as DH will earn more this year than last (unless he's made redundant which is looking more and more likely).

I'm so worried about over-payments that I'm going to put everything they give me in a separate account and run a year in areers unless we're desperate for the cash. I've heard too many horror stories about them suddenly wanting back thousands of pounds to feel comfortable about spending the cash until they confirm they've paid us the right amounts!

I keep a check on dh pay as he gets fluctuating overtime, in October when has in the past got pay rises I have informed them immediately and then again around Jan/Feb I have looked at his earnings to date then checked what we told them and if his pay including the last couple of months to April is going to go over I tell them, if it is going to be under I leave it as that way we get a nice bonus in APril.

hth

charlies-aunt

* :mad: * :mad: * RANT ALERT * :mad: * :mad: *

Grrrhh! I am very miffed. . . . new announcement at work that some of the temporary workers due to finish in a few weeks will have a chance of being kept on for an extra six months - it boils down to one in four of us will keep their job that bit longer.

Great! . . . BUT we all have to re-apply for our jobs and compete against each other to be one of the lucky 25%

I've got to apply and hope against hope to be selected . . . . even though I know the odds are against me, I will be devastated nonetheless if I don't get through the selection ......:(

If life wasn't stressful enough....

* :mad: * :mad: * ALL CLEAR * :mad: * :mad: * ALL CLEAR * :mad: * :mad: *

Having one of those [STRIKE]days[/STRIKE] weeks no feedback from any of my carefully completed applications.

The sloe gin is going to be cracked open tonight. . . and tomorrow is another day

stiltwalker

Some der de der years ago when I was at a girls grammer school we has 3 years of home economics/needlework (half year one, half the other). Loads of other things that there wasn't room for elsewhere on the curruicum got stuck in the home ec bit and, combined with a teacher who was so OCD about her clean cookers we were hardly allowed to touch them, in those 3 years we made fairy cakes, sandwiches, one starter, one main and one pudding! Yes that was it! Needlework was not much better - I was always being asked by other girls to sew buttons back on shirts and ripped seams in too tight skirts, I'd do it once and show them but after that they were on their own.

It really used to annoy me as the school would go on and on about how we were all expected to do the school proud and go on to uni and it would have been so easy to use the lesson time we did have to teach good solid basic cooking skills like how to make a good nutritious soup or stew or easy homemade pizza and curry instead of expensive take away stuff.

I was lucky enough to come from a family who did real cooking and I learnt from being tiny as my children will but I felt sorry for my fellow students who ended up at uni without a clue in the kitchen, no doubt spending all their student grants on take out and ready meals!

Rant over, I shall go back to my kitchen and my beef stew and my ham hock (both on the stove) and gingercake (in the oven).

redlady_1

Well, I walked in to find an electric bill for £232!!!! :eek: It's not even winter yet! That will teach me to let a quarter go on an estimate rather than read the meter. Thats the first months wages of the second job taken care of then!