January - the month tighter than Mr Tighty's hosiery

Grimbal

AnnieO1234 wrote: »

From next Thursday aldi have various seed packets on cheaply, the mixed kind with four or six different varieties in an overarching pack like "herbs" or "English veg" xxx

https://www.aldi.co.uk/en/specialbuys/thur-29-jan/product-detail/ps/p/premium-seed-multipack-2/

Glad to hear you're coping. Hope DD is improving daily x

kezlou

so pleased to hear dd is improving xx

Juts wanted to say you have done absolutely fantastic! so give yourself a clap.

Butterfly_Brain

Jojo my hat goes off to you.

How scary, I hope that DD is improving.

It is not long now before the end of the month, you deserve a big hug and a huge round of applause :T

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

He's fussing over me now, asking what I want for breakfast (the answer is always 'black coffee') and just making stuff anyway. He's definitely eating more, breakfast, lunch and dinner.

He asked if we could have a Sunday dinner today. As he's done 90% of everything since DD was in hospital, it only seemed fair to give him what he wanted: roast chicken, mash, peas & broccoli. The Iceland chicken breasts are surprisingly good, especially when you add a stock cube and dried herbs to the foil they're wrapped in. Pushed the boat out and even had one each, instead of one between two.


About 20 minutes after eating, he put his feet up across my legs, lay back and went to sleep. I'm now trapped on the sofa, under him and the cat (as he decided to take advantage and curl up on top of his shins). His face is a lot thinner and his clothes much looser - he's got a long sleeved tshirt on under a normal one; both look baggy when they were both close fitting before.


There's another chicken breast cooked for him to have a chicken sandwich for lunch tomorrow. I'm thinking of jacket spuds tomorrow night. Maybe with veggie chilli on top.

[Deleted User]

Honey that noise you hear is me applauding you all for 'toughing it out' Well done and I do sincerly hope things get better for you all.
There are times in life when things really get grotty and the brown stuff hits the fan, but you have proved to us all that running through you all is solid steel, and you will get through this bad patch

Well done to you all and God bless

Love JackieO xxx

FatVonD

Glad to hear you have everything sorted and also that work is coming in from other sources too. It is tough when you are self employed and get someone dragging their heels about paying, I just had my first recently but I have been amazingly lucky on that front, Mr JoJo has been incredibly unlucky to have his first a lot sooner.

I ended up threatening my slow payer with the small claims court and they eventually coughed up (14 weeks after I did the work), thank God I only worked there for 1 week, they had booked me for another 2 a couple of months later but I had cancelled those weeks for unrelated reasons and I'm so glad I did because 1 weeks money down was a pain but doable, 3 weeks unpaid and I'd have been stuffed.

Hope your DD is on the road to recovery.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

We're still living off the stuff we got from Iceland, with the addition of some salad veg that was reduced - cherry tomatoes, celery, cucumber, lettuce and some black grapes, goats' cheese & feta.

A hunting expedition in the cupboards revealed an ancient tin of coconut milk and some bamboo shoots, which, after washing with very hot water, went with a chicken breast, some frozen veg, some curry paste and chicken stock. He had the rest of that for lunch today.

I've been bought food twice by colleagues this week, which has helped - the restorative powers of a free bacon roll when you're cold and hungry can't be overestimated!

Just trying to work out what to do for dinner tonight. My inventiveness mojo seems to have left me today.



I saw a feature on a newspaper website today - some woman was claiming she ate really well for 80p a day. What she actually meant was that she miraculously acquired huge sacks of vegetables for pennies from a market that must have been about ten foot from her front door for her to be able to carry them home, food was reduced way below the minimum amount supermarket staff are allowed to reduce them to - and she still ended up having plates of flavourless boiled veg and rice most of the time. I'd be interested to see her being able to provide evidence of her claims, plus advice on how healthy her diet was in the long term, with hardly any protein, calcium or iron or the anything near the recommended calorific intake for an adult. It irritated me so much, I costed up her claims, using basics versions in the supermarket (which certainly don't turn up very often in supermarkets around here). She would have spent more than her claimed entire week's budget on the onions alone.


Bah. I'm cold and grumpy today. I want something warming and preferably as unhealthy as possible.

Upsidedown_Bear

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

I saw a feature on a newspaper website today - some woman was claiming she ate really well for 80p a day. What she actually meant was that she miraculously acquired huge sacks of vegetables for pennies from a market that must have been about ten foot from her front door for her to be able to carry them home, food was reduced way below the minimum amount supermarket staff are allowed to reduce them to - and she still ended up having plates of flavourless boiled veg and rice most of the time. I'd be interested to see her being able to provide evidence of her claims, plus advice on how healthy her diet was in the long term, with hardly any protein, calcium or iron or the anything near the recommended calorific intake for an adult. It irritated me so much, I costed up her claims, using basics versions in the supermarket (which certainly don't turn up very often in supermarkets around here). She would have spent more than her claimed entire week's budget on the onions alone.

This is her blog if you want a read
http://sponsorkenya.blogspot.co.uk/

NewShadow

I wasn't impressed by her meal choices, but actually thought her prices okay.

I know it's not uk wide, but morrisons were/are selling 12.5kg of potatoes for £2. I can buy sacks of onions for £2ish at my local market (in the middle of Cardiff). 4 aubergines for £1 the other week - sliced in the freezer for moussaka.

I can carry around 25kg of cat food or sack of potatoes/root veg about 3 miles in a sturdy canvas rucksack. I've gotten halfway home with 40kilos before now - then gave up and called a taxi

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Upsidedown_Bear wrote: »

This is her blog if you want a read
http://sponsorkenya.blogspot.co.uk/

Now I'm feeling murderous.

One slice of pork pie took 'all afternoon' to eat and made it difficult to manage dinner in the evening? Nobody mentioned in the paper she foraged for expensive mushrooms (probably because it's a potentially risky pasttime) or sold half of the veg she conveniently couldn't provide a receipt for. And it's so 'special' she managed it for a whole seven days?

That's a glorified sponsored crash diet, especially when the meal photos depict a potato cake about an inch across, a teaspoon of greens and an egg on a huge plate or a single potato about the size of a duck egg as being a massive dinner. She included a tip for the eating disordered - drink lots of hot water. Not much calcium in it, though.



I need to stop reading reports about middleclass people playing at being poor and declaring that they love it/aren't hungry/tired, etc. It's not good for me. Think she'd have lost her enthusiasm if she knew that was the best she could do for the foreseeable future - especially if she had to do it for somebody else as well.




In the end, I rinsed out the last of the curry paste jar and boiled up some spuds with it, a tin of tomatoes, some extra turmeric and an onion. Got some leftover as well, which will do for tomorrow.