London Socialite Sees The Light

joeyjimbles

If boredom is the worst of your problems for the next 10 or so days then its all going well, and means that you're doing the right thing as you hand off the work to your replacement.
Glad the dinner went well, I'm sure you'll be fabulous once you get in and start doing your stuff. Let it happen, you cannot know everything on day one.
Whilst your OH is away, might it be a good time to do bulk cooking for the freezer and even meal planning that goes beyond one week? So you make a meal that will do 3-4 meals and you freeze 2-3 of them (labelled so it cannot come off in the freezer - pizza with home made cinammon danish pastry dough was apparently not very nice!) and repeat. Then you keep a list of what is in the freezer and before long you have your own ready meal collection. You can also freeze portions of rice, mash, par-boiled potatoes for quick additions. I do it a lot before holidays when I know everyone will be eating at different times - saves takeaways and panic buying.

LondonGirl252

joeyjimbles wrote: »

If boredom is the worst of your problems for the next 10 or so days then its all going well, and means that you're doing the right thing as you hand off the work to your replacement.
Glad the dinner went well, I'm sure you'll be fabulous once you get in and start doing your stuff. Let it happen, you cannot know everything on day one.
Whilst your OH is away, might it be a good time to do bulk cooking for the freezer and even meal planning that goes beyond one week? So you make a meal that will do 3-4 meals and you freeze 2-3 of them (labelled so it cannot come off in the freezer - pizza with home made cinammon danish pastry dough was apparently not very nice!) and repeat. Then you keep a list of what is in the freezer and before long you have your own ready meal collection. You can also freeze portions of rice, mash, par-boiled potatoes for quick additions. I do it a lot before holidays when I know everyone will be eating at different times - saves takeaways and panic buying.

Haha that's true!!!

I will do, I need to have more stuff "ready" that isn't ready meals. When you do your potatoes... do you just par-boil and then freeze immediatley? Can you just pop them in the oven from the freezer?

joeyjimbles

You need to let them cool, then lay them on a tray and open freeze them in the freezer til quite solid and then put them in a bag. You can then take them out individually and use them from frozen - back into boiling water for mash or boiled, or straight into hot fat or onto a hot tray with 1cal spray for roasted/fake roasted.

Also worth doing if you have a slow cooker is slow cooker rice - quick wipe with oil, or a spray of 1cal stuff into the cooker, add 1 cup rice and 2 cups water and cook on high for 2-3 hours. Check after 2 hours as all cookers are different. Mine is pretty much done at 2.15 and I add another 1/2 cup of water when its done and switch it off to just finish steaming. Then I let that cool on a tray, open freeze it and freeze in in 4 different boxes/bags.

LondonGirl252

joeyjimbles wrote: »

You need to let them cool, then lay them on a tray and open freeze them in the freezer til quite solid and then put them in a bag. You can then take them out individually and use them from frozen - back into boiling water for mash or boiled, or straight into hot fat or onto a hot tray with 1cal spray for roasted/fake roasted.

Also worth doing if you have a slow cooker is slow cooker rice - quick wipe with oil, or a spray of 1cal stuff into the cooker, add 1 cup rice and 2 cups water and cook on high for 2-3 hours. Check after 2 hours as all cookers are different. Mine is pretty much done at 2.15 and I add another 1/2 cup of water when its done and switch it off to just finish steaming. Then I let that cool on a tray, open freeze it and freeze in in 4 different boxes/bags.

Awesome thank you so much! They are great tips, have got a big bag of potatoes at home so guess what I am doing tonight!

LondonGirl252

Morning gang!

Hope you all had good weekends! Ours started a bit dodgy but got much better!

I got home from work Friday night and felt so unwell! My tum was in knots, so took myself to bed about 8pm without dinner. It was a bit better saturday but not much so after riding we had a nice chilled out day.

Yesterday we went to go and see M's family which was lovely. His aunt and uncle were visiting from Australia, I met them once before a couple of years ago so it was nice to see them again!

And Granny gave us a lovely surprise! Despite the fact she's getting a bit old now to go on holidays she's still been squirrelling away her money and wanted to treat the family to more holidays while she can watch everyone enjoy themselves, anyway she gave everyone a card with a gift in it. She gave M and I £500 EACH! I was blown away, how generous is that!?

So there is my holiday spending money for Croatia! Thank you Granny! We are printing off some of the photos we took yesterday of the family and sending those to her as a card to say thank you. What a legend.

Well, another journey down, only 8 more days in the office! Fabulous!

I am a bit behind on my 10km running plan so bought my running kit in today to go at lunch.

Did well last night and prepped lunches for the week ahead, potato and ham salad, yum!

Did a supermarket shop on Saturday after I have stocked checked the freezers and cupboards. We managed to only spend £29.11 for the week ahead which I was very pleased with, two night we are having supper from the freezer stores and one night we are having a jacket with beans and cheese.

This weekend I think I'll resort to the old favourite and do a massive spag bol and use it to eat with pasta, in lasagne, on baked potato, freeze etc etc!

Might have to invest in a little more tupperware to store it all!

LG xx

[Deleted User]

Hi there, read the first and last pages of your diary - well done for keeping it up so long! Just wondering how you're doing with that 12K debt you had at the start!?

LondonGirl252

NavyFolly wrote: »

Hi there, read the first and last pages of your diary - well done for keeping it up so long! Just wondering how you're doing with that 12K debt you had at the start!?

Hello!

Thanks very much, it is something of a novel now!

It rose to £16k at one point, I then paid it all off but did take out some finance to fund my car purchase.

Over the last few months I had some large unexpected purchases which wiped out my savings and a bit more but I did a balance transfer to get that onto o% for 32 months so its £1900 now I'm chipping away at and YNAB is making sure my budgeting is back on track and allowing me to save a bit too!

Was hard work but glad I got there with it!

Ednoc

Hey LG. Can't believe you've only 8 days left - that has gone so quick! Well done to you for getting to the end without losing your cool!

Your granny is SO sweet! And what a relief that must be as much less financial juggling to do now!

Hope you have a fabulous time in croatia you lucky thing!!! xx

joeyjimbles

Yay for granny nutkins - that's a lovely thing for her to do, and you will have a wonderful time.
Only 8 days left? I bet there were times when you thought it would never happen, but you're nearly there - I almost typed we're nearly there. So 8 more days - you could make it fun and do something super-London-y each day, something that you like but won't do so easily when you're no longer based there - pick up supper from Borough Market, walk along the river when the lights are coming on, go to the most Hipster bar and order something deconstructed (then reconstruct it), I'm sure you have lots of things that you do now and won't be able to do so easily in the future.
Hope it all goes well.

LondonGirl252

Ednoc wrote: »

Hey LG. Can't believe you've only 8 days left - that has gone so quick! Well done to you for getting to the end without losing your cool!

Your granny is SO sweet! And what a relief that must be as much less financial juggling to do now!

Hope you have a fabulous time in croatia you lucky thing!!! xx

Thank you! I do wonder how I didn't lose my cool sometimes - especially in the meeting I had to sit through yesterday!

She is amazing, that gift came at exactly the right time!

Thanks, Just over a month to we go xx