Combat the Christmas Crush with the NSD challenge

kerri_gt

karom wrote: »

No much cinnamon smell around or Father Christmases in the alley but had a very good time. Found quite a few interesting bits for my Christmas hampers within the budget (chocolate wine, chocolates but I am keeping the ones dipped in Sauternes). Tasted lots of very interesting drinks. Got really excited when I saw the Ph1ll1ps hot air fr1er (was really interested in it but at £200 was thinking of collecting all my vouchers for a while and then get one), .... well what a disappointment to taste the chips. We don't do many at home and buy the chunky ones for the oven, we'll carry on doing this and spend the money on something else.

Hoping for an NSD today, need to go out to pick up items on behalf of family thus no spend for me; will confirm later.

Jinty happy to read about your neighbour

No snow left :j

Thanks for the heads up about the chips - I keep seeing it advertised and have the odd fleeting though of 'that looks quite good'. We usually by McC*in H*mefries (have to be Crinkles) but here's a good recipie for home made oven ones http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-oven-chips-128985
I sometimes do a mix of standard spuds and sweet potatoe ones which works really well.

karom

kerri_gt wrote: »

here's a good recipie for home made oven ones http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-oven-chips-128985
I sometimes do a mix of standard spuds and sweet potatoe ones which works really well.

Thanks Kerri, I'll try this; coool

IF

Good afternoon all x

This made me smile.........and I'm the Santa by the way!! :eek::rotfl:

Surfbabe

well I have had 3 NSD so far - mainly cos I've been home ill !!!!:o

PerfectPeaches

Hi all

Well I think I can declare today my number 4 NSD as the OH has decided to go football training instead of taking our daughter and I out for the day - less said about this the better as I am still rather livid :mad:

Oh well at least I am not spending!

Peaches

cw18

Yesterday was yet another spend day here

I picked up a couple of bits from work (1 special offer, 1 Whoopsie), and also ordered a couple of presents on-line

Hoping to keep today as an NSD (so far, so good), and am currently working on sorting/defrosting my freezers...... again !!

I did a batch cook yesterday, using just over 900g of minced beef. I split this into three, and into each added a small quantity of rehydrated soya mince, onion, leek, celery, peppers and grated carrots. One lot got left 'as is', and made up 4 portions of mince and onion. The second had cherry toms, kidney beans, tinned toms and a packet mix added to it and gave me 9 portions of chille con carne. The third lot gained pasta sauce, cherry toms and mushrooms and gave me 9 portions of bolognese sauce. So that's a total of 22 tubs to be shoe-horned into the freezers (though once they've frozen they'll get transferred into bags and free up some space. which means I may be able to defrost some sausages and get some casserole portions made up and frozen ready for use )

I've currently been through my smaller freezer, and managed to get 10 of the tubs in. But in order to do this I've pulled bread for the next few days (including some date & walnut I'm going to use to make a bread & butter pudding), some shredded cabbage (will have with something for tea), an almond croissant (probably my breakfast tomorrow) and some stewed apple (apple crumble on the way for supper for the rest of the week).

Just done a quick tot-up of the batch-cooked meals/meat/fish/pies/sausages I now have listed as being in that one, and (including the 10 tubs I put in there) I have a staggering 141 portions (though a dozen or so are more snack meals than main meals). I dread to think what the second (larger) freezer is going to add to this as I know it has a load of cod fillet portions and several rolls of sausagemeat before I get to anything else :eek:

I guess my grocery budget isn't going to have to stretch to anything more than fresh produce for at least 6 months



DD spoke to the milk monster about Christmas, but doesn't sound like she was too tactful Apparently she asked him if he was coming home 'cos we really wanted to, because he thought he should, or because he didn't think I should be on my own - and he confirmed it was the latter. That would have been OK, but it appears she then told him I 'want' to be on my own even though I'd told her I was 'quite looking forward to being able to do my own thing for once' (especially as I don't have any extra days off work) but didn't mind him coming home if he wanted to - and asked her to be sure that was the message she relayed !!!!

beanielou

Surfbabe~Hope you are opk.
Ooops Peaches not so good.

elfen

NSD no 2 for me please....not snowing but raining and most of the snow has been washed away.

cw18

cw18 wrote: »

Just done a quick tot-up of the batch-cooked meals/meat/fish/pies/sausages I now have listed as being in that one, and (including the 10 tubs I put in there) I have a staggering 141 portions (though a dozen or so are more snack meals than main meals). I dread to think what the second (larger) freezer is going to add to this as I know it has a load of cod fillet portions and several rolls of sausagemeat before I get to anything else :eek:

And the answer is another 192 (and at least another 3 weeks worth of bread) !!!!

That gives me a total of 333 meals, though some will definitely be used for lunches rather than 'main' meals. But I reckon that's still about 300 main meals, even before I start on the tinned meats/pies I have (at least another 16 meals), packet veggie meatloafs (not sure how many I still have, but possibly another 8 meals there), tinned tuna (a lot of which will be used for lunches) and making my own pizzas

But if DS comes home for his Uni hols I'll get through them in less days than that

So it looks like my next job is to work out how much I have of each sort of food, and see where any imbalances are (don't really want sausages 3 times in a week because I've run out of fish - or vice versa).

And then I need to make a list of the only items I can consider picking up from Whoopsies and make sure I always have it with me in my purse


I'm now far too tired to consider going anywhere (and so clearly don't need anything for me to go and check the Whoopsies for) that I can safely declare today as NSD #1 :T

slowlyfading

cw18 wrote: »

....That gives me a total of 333 meals

Wow...! :eek: