Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Sayschezza - Glad you enjoyed reading my diary. At least I'm showing that even very longstanding bad money habits can be changed.

Re Friendship Cakes - It was something which organisations like guides, brownies, churches & various groups used to do. I haven't seen it for ages, but often did back in the 1980s. There was a recipe for 'Friendship Cake' & a starter portion of the cake mix got passed on in a long chain of people. I was given my portion of cake mix by a bloke who volunteered with the scouts. It came with a printed sheet of instructions. I had to divide the dough into two, add a few things to it & bake it to make my cake. The other half, I had to add a bit of flour & pass it on to a friend with the instructions. A nice idea in principle..... maybe a few potential hygiene issues, but not an experience I'd ever repeat. The cake was really mediocre & as for the portion I took to work to gift to a colleague...... that's a disaster zone of a story!
A few years later, someone at work begged me to take her spare portion of another Friendship Cake batter, but I wouldn't. Never again, lol!
F x

foxgloves

Hello Diary readers,
Just reporting in to say I've been very strong today where splurging cash is concerned. Weve had a 150-mile round trip for a family meet-up. A long drive in massive rain, but important, as I have so little family. Anyway, we met up halfway between both households & had lunch at a place with a big tempting Christmas department. OK, some of the decorations were truly awful..... Pale pink nylon llama wearing headphones to hang on your tree, anyone?? I did, however, see a freestanding decoration that I really liked. The problem was that it was £8.99. At the start of this month's personal spends budget, I'd probably have bought it. It wasn't plastic, which was another plus point. But another fortnight until New Spends..... I went & looked at that decoration another three times, but I couldn't justify paying £9.
I did, however, buy several nice little bits & pieces for Christmas presents, so I really must get my list properly written up showing what I've got for people & what I still need to buy.
Tonight we have a free meal..... some vegetarian pasties. These appeared in our last online grocery order. I assumed Mr F had added them to our order for his work lunches or because they were on offer, but he said he definitely didn't. He checked the receipt & the box of pasties wasn't listed on there, so it's a mystery & I can only assume that a picker was compiling two orders simultaneously & put it in the wrong box. I don't buy ready made stuff, but neither do I waste food, so onto the meal plan they went!
I woke up horribly early this morning & am feeling it now, so I intend to do nothing more taxing than setting the washing machine on timer for a load on the cheaper tariff, then I'm going to chill out on the sofa with my knitting. I didn't do as many rows as I hoped last night, so need to make up lost ground.
My sis was pleased with her plants & strawberry runners, & I'm just as pleased to have a bit more space in my greenhouse.
Enjoy your evenings, all. Next time I check in, I very much hope to be reporting progress on my Christmas present planning,
F x

DawnW

I actually quite liked the Friendship cake thing - after a while the culture stuff seemed to go off though, so I threw it away and haven't seen it since. I would give it another go if it reappeared though.

Sayschezza

I think I am glad my DC are too old to have been part of the Friendship Cake palava but thanks for enlightening me.

foxgloves

Dawn & Sayschezza, I think the idea behind the Friendship Cake thing is really nice, actually. I think I just had a spectacularly bad experience of it. Not just because 'my' half of the batter made such a tough mediocre cake, but because the gifting bit went haywire!
Apologies if I've shared this sorry tale before, but I arranged to take the 'gift' half of the batter to work for a colleague. It was in a bowl which I put in my locker to give her at the end of the shift. But she was off work poorly & I didn't need to go in my locker again that day, so I forgot about the cake batter. It was a Saturday in summer. We didn't work on Sundays &............ can you see where this is going....... the following Monday was August Bank Holiday. Back then, we closed for the Tuesday as well, so I wasn't actually in work again until the Wednesday. In the hot weather, I hardly dared think what that cake batter was getting up to. I got in really early & as soon as I walked into the staff locker area, I could smell it. The heat & raising agent (it worked a bit like a sourdough culture) had, had a field day over the long weekend. I opened my locker & it had climbed out of its bowl & was even stuck to the inside of the door, so it glooped everywhere. I had to stand on a chair & scrape it all out & completely wash out my locker before I could start work. I was glad I'd got in early as I think my profusion of stinky fermenting 5-day old cake batter glugging out of my locker may have taken some explaining. So that's why when offered a portion of a similar Friendship Cake some time later, I felt the person would be more of a friend by giving it to somebody else!
You see, I've probably been traumatised by Friendship Cake & it's coloured my view of the concept. I'm sure some of the mixtures did turn out nice edible cakes, but mine wasn't one of them!
F x

foxgloves

And today's mystery....... Why has somebody dumped a load of horrid soggy potatoes outside our house?
Answers on a postcard, as they say.....
F x

Sayschezza

Hilarious.
Strange about the spuds.

HairyHandofDartmoor

I suppose they're no good for eating? Perhaps you look hungry? :rotfl:.

Does anyone remember using potatoes to make patterns in paint at school? I don't know why that popped into my head!

foxgloves

Yes, it's weird alright. They weren't there this morning, so they've appeared sometime between lunchtime & about 4pm. It's been pouring with rain all afternoon & I looked through the front window to see how the drain outside our house was coping, as it sometimes struggles in very heavy rain. There was a pale pile of something heaped up over the drain cover. I went out to investigate & was astounded to discover it was a pile of potatoes!
Yes, someone has peeled & prepared enough to feed quite a large family, then for some reason decided to leave then to go a bit iffy, then to dispose of them DOWN A DRAIN!! And not the drain outside their own house, but the one ourside ours!! I have definitely not got Potato Amnesia & the house next door is currently uninhabited, so as people don't usually go around flinging large quantities of potatoes out of cars, somebody who lives on our street must have gone to the trouble of walking along to the drain smack outside our house for their unhinged potato skulduggery.
I mean, I rarely need to throw food away, but if for some reason I had a large bucket of prepared potatoes for disposal, my first choice would be the compost bin. If I didn't make compost, I'd put them in the council wheelie bin. What I wouldn't do, is go & pour them onto a random drain somewhere on the street.. I say 'onto', because unless you are the numpty potato-dumper, you would know that large chunks of potatoes won't fit through the holes in the drain cover, so your dumped spuds will just sit there preventing rainwater draining away, & doubtless rotting.
If I knew who'd dumped them, I'd put my rubber gloves on, gather them up & arrange them to spell a few choice words on the perpetrator's front drive.
Weird, or what?!
F x

foxgloves

THE POTATOES ARE STILL THERE!! Although I'm not sure why I thought they might have disappeared overnight. Perhaps I hoped a little team of nocturnal discarded vegetables clearing pixies would arrive to take them away on a convoy of miniature barrows.
Or a couple of wombles.
F