Cooking for one (Mark Two)

PasturesNew

caronc wrote: »

....I must have the guts of £300 (at least) of meat & fish which is scary.

That's about 5-6 months food bill for me!

If my freezer broke down now and I had to replace everything at full price .... I'd still get change from £5. There's very little in it at the moment.

I did just relieve it of a portion of chips, which I splashed vinegar and ketchup on - and some grated cheese.

I noticed I'm getting a little chumpy.... I need to ease back a bit. It must be all those puddings ... and sweeties .... and biscuits ... and brownies/cake.... and sausage rolls ... and the pub meal ...

*sighs*

caronc

One plus from the freezer debacle is I found HM sausage rolls I forgot I had so sausage roll, oven chips and coleslaw for dinner;):D

karcher

caronc wrote: »

Good evening everyone,
I'm feeling a bit :o (well quite a lot actually) and also think I've seriously overdone it today so neither my balance nor back are happy . Today has been a stark reminder in how far I have to go in getting this CFO malarkey sussed!
Anyway after a productive morning (followed by a snooze) clearing hanging tom and bean plants into the garden refuse bin as it gets emptied on Monday, inspired by various posts re freezer sorting and using things up I decided it was time to get my freezers in a bit of order. Although I have inventories of what's in them there was no rhyme or reason to the shelves so things were just crammed into wherever there was a space. I decided that my big freezer would be solely for meat & fish and the other for everything else. In my head I would be able to open the door and see rows of neatly packaged products with space here and there stored in a sensible order. Cue first cramming things in rather than flat freezing means that some stuff is an odd shape so having come out of a space doesn't necessarily mean it fits well elsewhere. However, cue the second having things dotted here and there means I didn't realise how many of some things I have, put it this way I could feed an army on pork or gammon chops or steaks. The biggest :o is the realisation that I must have the guts of £300 (at least) of meat & fish which is scary. In part that is because I do buy the bulk of my meat online 3-4 times a year but usually in October I would be thinking about my "winter" meat order, suffice to say I'm not doing one;). Of course the final is I bought a whole chicken this week as I fancied proper roast chicken and of course being CFO that will mean "spare" chicken for the freezer especially as I planned to lop one of the breasts and legs off freeze these (I'll just add them to the other chicken portions ) and the roast the rest. I've still the smaller freezer to do but do think I've got most of the meat/fish out of that however, it is now crammed with fruit, veg and pre-made food from the bigger freezer but that will need to be a challenge for another day:). On a plus I manage to dislodge the portion of lentil soup that had welded itself around the bars of one of the shelves:).

Needless to say I've nothing prepped or defrosted for dinner.......

(Shuffles off hanging head in shame to pour a (large) glass of wine):rotfl:

You live in a completely different world to me caron and one I doubt I'll ever know:o

caronc

karcher wrote: »

You live in a completely different world to me caron and one I doubt I'll ever know:o

One which is a legacy of not being CFO and not being retired/unemployed but this thread has made me have a good think....

caronc

Good morning everyone,
It's very blowy and grey outside this morning so doubt I'll be straying far though the real storm isn't due here until tomorrow it's obviously having a wee practice run today. Today's list of "to dos" are mainly food related:- roast a chicken, sort out tomatoes and continue with the freezer sorting challenge:) so that should keep me out of mischief though I'll be going at a gentler pace than yesterday!

moneyistooshorttomention

caronc wrote: »

One which is a legacy of not being CFO and not being retired/unemployed but this thread has made me have a good think....

Well - I did grin thinking "If Caron ever decides to turn vegetarian - it will take her ages before she's actually able to do so without losing a rather noticeable amount of money by giving away a lot of stuff". Thought I was doing badly enough on the "change way of eating without wasting money" front with the 16 packets of various cheeses and 3 packets of butter there in the freezer currently....

CFO and what I thought was going to be a buffet yesterday was just loads and loads of sweet stuff - cue for me coming home more than a little hungry. Note to self time - never assume other people have the same ideas about regular mealtimes and at least halfway healthy food I do personally.

I admit to always being rather surprised at the number of people I come across who don't take it for granted that "If it's mealtime - then have a meal". I frequently notice that some other people will make social arrangements that go over the course of a lunchtime for instance and don't seem to even think that someone else (ie me) will be thinking "That is going over the 12noon-1pm timeslot - so when/where will we be having lunch?" and I do have to deliberately ensure it's deliberately "programmed in" one way or another or we wouldnt be having any.

There's my thought/query for the day:
How many on here eat at very irregular times and/or know of other people that do (rather than my way of "If it's mealtime - then I'm looking for a meal"). I do expect that breakfast will start 6am-8am, lunch starts 12noon-1pm, dinner is 6-7pm start (and I check in case of others having it later - as that's too late for a "lark" like me).

PasturesNew

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

How many on here eat at very irregular times and/or know of other people that do (rather than my way of "If it's mealtime - then I'm looking for a meal").

I eat when I'm hungry, or when I fancy something, or if something catches my eye when I go into the kitchen ... or just because I've got tasty food and it occurs to me to eat it right then ...

Breakfast today was: 1 crust of bread, baked beans, 1 poached egg, splash of the brown stuff. It's easy to get into ruts and I realised I've been eating scrambled eggs for the last couple of months, completely "forgetting" I could make poached eggs!

Expect more poached eggs to be eaten in the coming weeks.

moneyistooshorttomention

Taken as "eating when hungry" and I'd still be having regular mealtimes myself - as I'm hungry at each of those 3 mealtimes and rarely hungry in between mealtimes:rotfl:.

To me "fancying something" would mean = I've just spotted something interesting/only recently available in this country and I've not had it yet and therefore I'm going to take the opportunity to try it out (ie in case its a while before I come across New Ingredient x again).

Hollyharvey

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Note to self time - never assume other people have the same ideas about regular mealtimes and at least halfway healthy food I do personally.

I admit to always being rather surprised at the number of people I come across who don't take it for granted that "If it's mealtime - then have a meal". I frequently notice that some other people will make social arrangements that go over the course of a lunchtime for instance and don't seem to even think that someone else (ie me) will be thinking "That is going over the 12noon-1pm timeslot - so when/where will we be having lunch?" and I do have to deliberately ensure it's deliberately "programmed in" one way or another or we wouldnt be having any.

There's my thought/query for the day:
How many on here eat at very irregular times and/or know of other people that do (rather than my way of "If it's mealtime - then I'm looking for a meal"). I do expect that breakfast will start 6am-8am, lunch starts 12noon-1pm, dinner is 6-7pm start (and I check in case of others having it later - as that's too late for a "lark" like me).

I think that everyone is different, both in life and in their eating habits and that even if their way is not my way, they have every right to choose what and when they eat as do I.


I certainly couldn't stick to ridgid meal times, but respect your desire to do so. I like to have flexibility in my day and life in general so my meal times do very quite a lot. I don't have set times or strong views on when meals should be eaten .

moneyistooshorttomention

I certainly quite understand if other people don't seem to want meals at mealtimes personally and that's entirely up to them if they spend the whole day and miss all 3 meals. Their body. Their life.

What I don't understand is when they are with someone else (eg me) and they just go on and on and on with the "morning activity" (for instance) and the thought doesnt seem to occur to them that most other people will be expecting some lunch one way or another if it's lunchtime. To me - if someone is in my home for morning coffee for instance and it gets to lunchtime then one of two things happen - either it was just "morning coffee" and they've got other plans for the day or, if we are obviously still chatting, then I start asking them what their choice is for lunch and get on with making lunch for the pair of us.

If we're out and it's got to around 12 noon I'm checking out places to buy ourselves some lunch out and saying what ones I fancy and expecting them to say what ones they fancy (which could be a pub - if they don't want a meal - and I get my meal and a drink and they can just get themselves a drink if that's all they personally want).