THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

maryb

My pleasure. I use light olive oil from Liddle but ordinary veg oil is fine.

However extra virgin olive oil is too strong a flavour.

I don't know how long it keeps compared to shop bought, but it has always looked and tasted fineafter several days. I imagine emulsifying the egg in oil is a good preservative. That's my only reservation. Mind you, they say to use up the commercial stuff pretty quickly once it's open and I blithely ignore that

DigForVictory

I will be keeping aspects of this from the offspring as they have a regrettable enthusiasm for pot noodle. Still, if I can nudge them into figuring their own from Real Noodles, win!
I have passed on the potential horror to the Marmite fans - not only do I foresee a crazed rush to Waitrose, Sainsburys, Asda etc, from this window I can watch the addicts head over to Waitrose for a stash & stagger back!

However, I need to review my supplies & reload before the currency malarkey gets passed along.

greenbee

I'm with Thriftwizard. Stay out of the supermarkets. Use real shops, farm shops and farmers markets. Buy as close to the producer as you can.

THIRZAH

Plenty of Marmite and Hellmans in our branch of Tesco today and no sign of panic buying. I do like Hellmans but a pot lasts us about three months and we have an unopened one in the cupboard

Si_Clist

greenbee wrote: »

Stay out of the supermarkets. Use real shops, farm shops and farmers markets. Buy as close to the producer as you can.

Oh believe me we'd love to! But where food's concerned, there are no longer any real shops in town. The nearest farm shop is 4 miles away, not on a bus route, and hard work on a bike because of the hills. And what passes for the town's farmers' market is a very sad joke, consisting of at best six stalls, all of which sell bought-in produce (i.e. they don't produce what they sell).

As to buying as close to the producer as possible, we tried that with organic spelt grain a couple of years ago. The farm 4 miles away which grew it and packed it in 20kg bags wouldn't sell us one, so we're still getting it delivered by courier from 330 miles away.

In practice, the best we can do to meet your high ideals is to grow as much of what we eat as possible.

greenbee

I did say 'as close to the producer as you can'. It's not always easy. I find it harder where I live now than previously. ANd when I'm away for work it's impossible

singlestep

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

:eek: But they cost peanuts - by work standards - less than £50! That's petty cash to an employer. It's so low it's petty cash to many of us personally! Mean or what - ie your employer!

As for the thieving work colleague - I'd be sending him an email (copy to the person in charge). It would be phrased in polite terms - but making it very plain he was helping himself to MY property. Basically - if I had to send him a second one (copy to manager) then I would have just "landed him in it" for being a little thief.

List of things I have bought since August: pens and pencils (not for own use), projector remote, coloured paper, glue, paper clips, mouse mat, laser pointer, stapler, wall stapler, staple remover. The last three had also gone missing from my drawer when I wasn't there. There's more but then I might be really obvious to anyone who knows me IRL. Probably most of you can guess what I do for a living anyway! If I didn't buy them, I wouldn't get them but I have limited myself to £200 a year.

As for the light-fingered colleague, I admit I've been passive-aggressive e.g. building-wide e-mail asking if anybody picked up my stuff 'accidentally' lifted or borrowed my things. I have another less senior colleague and some others who have been only too happy to tell me what's going on. He's nice enough but I ever catch him out, he'll be reminded he earns £x more than me to buy himself stuff!

moneyistooshorttomention

Before retirement I had an office job and I can certainly recall there were times (going back quite some years too) in that job where pressure was put on to buy our own office supplies. That was the Civil Service too - not some tiny little private firm!!!!

I had to be "firm" on more than one occasion as to what I needed to be able to actually manage to do the job (yep...tiny cheap little things at that...) and I dug my heels in and refused to have lower salary than had been agreed (which is what it would have been if I had paid for their office supplies for them). It was made very plain that "If I haven't got it - then I can't use it - and how can I do my job without it?" and they soon realised that every time I needed a new biro/etc/etc I would ask for it and keep asking for it and there would come a point when I literally wouldnt have what I needed to do my job and it wouldnt be done...

I knew some of my colleagues were giving way to that pressure and buying their own from their own money - but I never paid for a single item of work stuff for my employer. I sometimes had to be quite a persistent "asker" for things I needed though...:cool:

When it comes to things being stolen from your desk drawers - can you ask your line manager/Personnel/whoever else for a lock for those drawers? Again - I had to be a persistent "asker" to ensure I always had a couple of lockable drawers and they came to realise "the buck would stop with them" if anything of mine got stolen.

singlestep

I'm quite reconciled to it. If there's no money for it, it can't be bought If I didn't do it my working life would be impossible. My department has about the same annual budget as the department I started my professional life at. Current department has been merged with a much bigger one and is at a much bigger place

I've asked about the lock and the building proprietors say no.

---

We were having a chat with newish colleagues about bad weather preps - alternative routes home, keeping in touch when travelling in bad weather, essentials to keep in school/in the car boot. We are in an urban area but have been known to get stranded overnight.

I have the dehydrated meal replacement, sachets of hot drinks, a couple of days of medicine, leisurewear I could sleep in and a change of undergarments, small towel, toothbrush and various miniatures of cleanser, shower gel, toothpaste and deodorant (which I have anyway for unexpected nights away). During late autumn til about Easter it lives in a filing cabinet drawer usually blocked by something else. I didn't get around to telling the colleagues this - usually people find it very strange. :rotfl:

vanoonoo

Hello *blinks*