EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

Greying_Pilgrim

EssexHebridean wrote: »

Oh and Greying - if you see this - ThaT supermarkeT has a 4 pack of "ripen at home" avocados for £1.75 - but admittedly you'd need to be confident of finding a use for all 4 in the timescale to make it worthwhile. Might have succumbed to a mango too...

Duly noted, thanks hun. Avocadoes will be making a bigger appearance in our meals I think. So good to know, and mrT's isn't a supermercado I 'broswe' thru any more, actually, none of them are, I rely on leaflets, spotting things on here, or kind folk mentioning things

Greying X

MistyMountainTop

EssexHebridean wrote: »

Oh and Greying - if you see this - ThaT supermarkeT has a 4 pack of "ripen at home" avocados for £1.75 - but admittedly you'd need to be confident of finding a use for all 4 in the timescale to make it worthwhile.

Do you mean that 8 minute window when they go from being perfectly ripe and lovely to black and rotten? :rotfl: I love avocados, but it's so disappointing when I've been looking forward to having one that feels just about ripe, and finding it black and ugly inside... If they were cheap like potatoes it wouldn't matter so much. Now I keep the packaging and take them back to the store for a refund if they are still within date and rotten.

I don't trust those smart metres - my neighbour had a bill for over £30,000 and though it obviously was a huge mistake as she lives alone in a flat, it took her months and months to get it sorted out and as she paid by direct debit, they kept trying to take the money out of her account. Can you imagine if she'd had the £30,000 in her account and the water company took it? She'd have to fight tooth and nail to get it back...:mad: It was a lesson to me anyway to not keep lots of excess money in a current account. Not that I have lots of excess money, but when I do....

I hope you get your printer sorted! It's a sad business when it's cheaper to buy a whole new printer than it is to buy a set of ink refills. My last printer broke when I tried to use non-original cartridges. I was given an old printer - made before they started putting chips in all the refills - and I must say it has been the most dependable I've ever had and only about 50p per refill cartridge. It's ugly as sin but it does the job.

Hope things are going well xx

EssexHebridean

That made me chuckle Misty! But yes, it does annoy me that it works out cheaper to buy a whole new one if you want to use original branded cartridges - madness.

I love avocadoes but yes, they can be disappointing, I'm all too familiar with the blackness and inedibility! having said that, we've eaten 2 from the pack I bought on Friday now and both were utterly delicious - these are the very rough skinned ones, I have a feeling I've found before that they are better than their smoother skinned brothers.

Weekly round up then:

Surveys:
OnePoll £36.60 (Cash-out £40)
PC £3
Populus Live £16 (Cash-out £50)
Opinion Outpost 15 points
Power of opinions (Cashes out to vouchers at 1,000 points) 630 points
YouGov 450 points (Cashes out to £50 at 5,000 points)

TCB: £33.32 confirmed but not yet payable

Meals:
Continuing the great kitchen clear out - my bullet-ish journal is proving an excellent tool for keeping a track on the things that need using up!
The weekend's uber-frugal puddings involved clafoutis with an out of date tin of black cherries and the last 2 eggs, and rice pudding with cranberries and brown sugar, topped with flaked almonds. Both delicious and both entirely from storecupboard ingredients. :T
M: Thai Veg Curry & rice
T. Baked sweet potatoes, beans, bacon & cheese. Remaining salad.
w. Bean & butternut hotpot (Well it would be if I could find the FLIPPING recipe! Might have to make it up...) (THIS is technically with sweet potato but squash will work as a stand-in)
Th: Pasta, pesto, sundried tomato, soft cheese sauce
F: Fry up! Yum!
The more observant among you will notice that bar a smidge of bacon in the beans tomorrow, until Friday that's pretty much a vegetarian menu. Don't tell MeEH - I'm curious to know if he'll notice...
Between them that lot will get rid of the salad left over from the weekend, the other half of a large butternut squash, another spoonful of the thai curry paste that's been kicking about in the fridge forever, a can of coconut milk, a can of kidney beans, a can of baked beans, the last of the bacon from the freezer, the last can of chopped tomatoes, and one of the 39p cartons of sun dried tomatoes I grabbed in HB ages ago. :T

Spendiness:
MrEH's car is in for its MoT test and service. It's already failed the MoT test (that was quick!) but only on 2 tyres and a bulb. One main advisory which is on front discs, which will need replacing before long. All in all that's a fair bit better than we expected. :T There's another part being replaced as well but that's under £50 fitted. Plus the cost of the service. So it will still be ouchy, but hopefully only moderately ouchy.
Cautiously, I'll say no other planned spendiness this week. I may be indoors much of the day on Friday again as the bed base is being delivered "at some point". And "at some point" on saturday this is being followed by the mattress.

All good. Mostly.

MistyMountainTop

Rough skins are def better IMO - they are 'Haas' avocados. The smooth skinned ones can grow much bigger but imo they are nearly flavourless and can be fairly watery and soap-like in consistency.

I love reading your diary, you really inspire me to get my !!!! in order!

EssexHebridean

Aww thank you for that Misty!

Had another of the avocados last night - also perfectly ripe and very tasty. I think you're right about those being better - easier to peel too! I'll look to buy those in future I think.

Thanks to Martin's team for the handy money off AO dot com code that I spotted on the email this morning - may have to look at getting appliances ordered sooner rather than later to make a saving.

Had a nice £4 Populus Live survey this morning - I've got another invitation from them too but it requires sound so will need doing at home and I didn't have the time last night...because....

We have a kitchen plan! :T

Much excitement at EH Manor last night - and also much headscratching, checking and measuring. We have a list of questions for Dave-The-Builder who is hopefully popping over in the next few evenings for a meeting to go through stuff. There are also a few changes we've already made to things based on seeing the plan, drawings and quote - the lovely curved cabinet we'd selected for one end isn't available in our chosen range, so rather than include one unit from a different range, and risk them ageing differently, we're going to go with a straight 300mm wall unit at that end. Also has the added advantage of saving us in the region of £200 - who knew curves were so expensive?! There are a few other questionmarks on the quote too - a splashback in included but our cooker will have an integrated splashback, and we're fully tiling the wall behind the worktops, so that may yet be able to come off.

I'm going to mark up the plan fully at lunchtime, and make relevant notes on it, then scan and email over to my pal Ross who's also taking a look at it for us - he's not only a very keen cook himself, but he's also a bit of a home improvements whizz and has fitted kitchens for numerous people, so a good chap to get to cast an eye over it all. We were very pleased when he offered to look at the plans if I popped them across to him!

Another job for lunchtime is to update my list of food to use - it needs sweet potatoes added, as when MrEH popped into Lil's for them on the PotW on saturday, they were all HUGE - he came back and assured me that he'd got the "three to four medium ones" that I'd asked for, but that he'd got small as they all looked quite big... :rotfl: I did one between us last night and it was plenty! Oh well - we'll not starve, and they ARE a superfood, no?! :A;)

Ooh - need to do the payday shuffle too - we both got paid, I'm pleased to say!

EssexHebridean

Another £20 off the card at lunchtime - just because I felt like it.

OnePoll now at £38.20 - anyone care to start a sweepstake on how long that last £1.80 is going to take me?! :rotfl:

Reactivated my account on Toluna yesterday but already remember why it was I stopped doing that one before.

Payday shuffle is done - AND I remembered to move the Council tax & water rates money across to the savings, go me! :rotfl:

MrEH's car has cost £336.72 - that's on the CC for now as usual. It will need to go back in later in the month for a couple of odd bits to be done - there was some confusion with what level of service MrEH should have booked it for. (The confusion was his, not the garages. I hasten to add!)

Food tonight will be a variation of the sweet potato and bean hotpot I linked to the recipe for. Before that however I have time to kill ahead of meeting MrEH so I'll probably do some survey clickage here. It's a lot warmer than sitting in the car!

Cheeseface

I actually hate Toluna. They are so faffy.

I'm a big fan of Haas avocados but they are never ripe when I want them to be.

EssexHebridean

How weird Cheeseface - I just posted on your thread without realising you'd just posted on mine too! :rotfl:

Yes - I have a sneaky feeling this was why I stopped doing them before! :eek:

Bobarella

Horray to kitchen plans

EssexHebridean

Well the dinner last night ended up as a very rough approximation of the recipe I linked to. Onion turned into leek, sweet potato into butternut squash. All sorts of other veggies that needed lurking got throw in. Tasty it was though - muchly so! Also made easily enough for my lunch tomorrow so that's something tasty to look forward to. The tin cupboard is now starting to look quite depleted, and the fridge is also beginning too look a bit "thinned out". I think I'm winning.

Kitchen plans were suitable scrawled on yesterday and then the whole lot was bundled across to my pal last night on an email - he texted me yesterday evening to say that he reckons there are tweaks we can make but he wants to go through everything and sketch out some ideas, so we'll see what he comes back with. :T

Another 10p from OnePoll this morning.

Tonight we have to dismantle the old bed base and dispose of the bits. We'll be sleeping on the existing mattress on the floor tonight, hopefully on the existing mattress on the new bed base tomorrow, and if all goes to plan, the new mattress AND bed base on saturday night! Fingers crossed.

Al's S6 offer this week look like assisting the veggie stir-fry that's on my meal plan. Mangetout & Baby Corn. Might get the 'shrooms but at that price I'm betting they're not British. I guess I could justify buying them anyway as an "Anti-Trump protest" - no?!

Might need a list for tomorrow.