Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Hello diary readers,
Quite a momentous day on the domestic front, as today our 84 year old house acquired central heating!! The builders arrived at 8am & didn't leave after 5pm & we were doubly grateful as it means we have hot water for the rest of the weekend. Still hard to access most of our house, but I made myself useful & Mr F drove out to local windmill to collect our flour order. I did today's pickings - apples, blackberries, chillies, tomatoes, a fab aubergine 🍆, heaps of beans, 4 corn cobs & 2 courgettes. I also checked my tomato ripening bag & took out the red ones. Tonight, Mr F is cooking something which includes our home grown peppers, tomatoes, garlic & courgettes. It makes all the hard work in the garden worthwhile. 
I've also got a load of laundry dry for free outside, finished my knitting & darned in ends & done a bit more with my recipe project.
We have also sat over a coffee & ordered new bookcases & kitchen lights. I do think £39 for flatpack furniture delivery is rather steep, but it does mean we don't have to drive to the other side of the county to the Swedish Emporium, stand in a big queue & then discover they don't fit in our car. We started looking at new cookers too, but I was feeling rushed, as though I hadn't had time to think about features on our current one I want to avoid. I need to spend a bit more time on it, maybe tomorrow, as it is an expensive purchase & I want it to be right. We were very much in the Spendy Years when we bought our current one & this was part of the problem.
Well, time for a teeny tidy, then my book is coming out. (Says to self 6 times "I will not look at paint colour charts".....) 
F xx

Onebrokelady

Maybe the evil black fluff is from something the builders have used and it's got into the machine, were they around for part one, is my Miss Marple impression impressing you yet 😀

foxgloves

OBL - Yes, imptessive sleurhing skills, m'dear, but I don't think the Evil Fluff can be builder-related because alrhough they were here, they weren't working in that area. They did move the washing machine to plumb it into the new little utility room, but the horrid fluff-slarming wash occurred before that. So it remains a mystery.
F x

Blackcats

Could EBF be a tissue that got dyed black from colour run in the wash or is it more fluff texture rather than tissue texture?  . 🧐.  You'd think a scandi crime drama or my all time favourite Morse would have had at least one episode involving EBF?  

Your home improvements sound really exciting - I bet you will be so pleased when it is all done.  When I first had a house with gas central heating I loved to hear the whoosh of the boiler when it fired up all by itself, just because the thermostat told it too - it felt like a mini marvel of living in a grown up house.  

foxgloves

Defo not a 'dyed tissue', Blackcats, as the fibres are of a wool-type, as though someone had combed a gothy 1980s-style black mohair jumper & stuffed the combings into my washer........unless there are naughty pixies out there who perform this kind of underhand operation, I can't see how it got there. I think I will probably just be getting on with something completely unrelated & will suddenly solve the mystery. It hasn't happened yet, though.
F x

foxgloves

Hello diary readers,
A really useful day today. Oh my days, how nice was it to have an extra hour & a half (& coffee) in bed this morning because I didn't need to be up for the builders.....& I bet they were glad of a day off too. Mr F said he'd give me a hand in the garden if there was any grunt work which needed doing, so I decided we'd harvest the last bit of sweetcorn & get the huge plants chopped into the council garden wheelie. That was so speedy with two of us that we also did the tomato plants & cucumber. The tomatoes won't ripen as well outdoors now that cooler weather is forecast, so I gathered all the remaining ones & have put them in a crate in the conservatory to finish ripening. Any that refuse to play will go in the big brown paper bag I've been using for this exact purpose. Of the remaining sweetcorn, there were 3 cobs which were big enough to wrap & freeze. I sliced the kernels from all the smaller ones & have frozen in a bag, as they'll be fine for other things - adding to pizza toppings, savoury rice, pasta bakes or for sweetcorn fritters, etc. I picked the two last cucumbers of this year - not as big as at the height of the season, but perfectly usable. Oh & I cut some bay leaves for tying & drying too.
We had a conflab about the next stages of our home improvements especially with regards to an idea I had yesterday which could save us money on professional painter & decorator costs. We went over the details a few times to make sure we're on the same page - I really don't like the idea of somebody being invited to our home to give us a quote on work when we are still umming & ah-ing or worse still, disagreeing on what it is we actually want. We also chose an exterior wall light we both like, which is supposedly in stock & can hopefully be picked up before the electrician calls, so we can include it in the quote. It requires a type of lightbulb I'd never heard of....when did lightbulbs get so complicated?! 
That's all the good stuff.
Now I have to tell you something which you simply won't believe has happened today in the Foxgloves Home of Zero Food Waste.
I can hardly bear to type the words. Takes deep breath.......
I am going to have two more slurps of my tea while I gird my loins & try to be brave.
Will the world of MSE or the entire internet come crashing down when I tell you that today...........WE THREW AN ENTIRE STILL-WRAPPED CHICKEN IN THE BIN!!!!
Really, I kid you not. A whole chicken. Well, the two of us were as gutted as that bird, I can tell you! Mr F did the grocery shopping on Thursday night (17th). The chicken he bought (for roasting tonight) was 'Use by 18th' which was of course Friday. It was very unlike him not to notice the date, as he's a proper Mr Miss-Now't, but at the same time, he was surprised that there were so many chickens on sale with such a short date- he took one from right at the back as has a bit of a thing about stuff at the front being the stuff that gets mauled by customers, so doesn't think it can have been a case of them having the short-dated stuff at the front. So a bit of a dilemma today, as I am usually quite happy to use my sense of smell & common sense when deciding whether to use something past its 'use by' date, but I came to the conclusion that we'd got 3 days of meals planned from this roast & it was already going to be two days past its 'use-by', so for the first & last time, we chucked out a whole chicken & had to pop across to the village farm shop to buy another one. It was much more expensive so you can absolutely bet your last rice crispie that I'm going to be using every last scrap of it over the coming days. You can watch this space on that!
Well m'dears, I must go & round up the laundry & do a bit of knitting (a small paid commission for a friend) & I also need to wash what will almost certainly be a whole load of green tomato leaf dye & builder's dust out of my hair. Never let it be said that glamour is dead here...........
Peace & love, & stay safe,
F x

Blackcats

Deeply shocked to hear about the chicken - luckily I have some Sunday night wine and dark chocolate buttons to soothe my troubled thoughts.  Seriously though that is very annoying.  I got caught in marks and spensive recently when I bought some cooked chicken for sandwiches for elderly relative. When I went to use it 2 days after buying it the use by date had already passed and I didn't dare risk giving it to a 92 year old 🥴

foxgloves

Oh that's annoying, Blackcats. Our emergency chicken from the village farm shop was twice what we'd paid in Waitr*se, so I'm aiming for effective rubber chicken-stretching this week. It will have to wait until I see how much dust is being flung around today though, as I know the builders are planning a big final push.
F x

ladyholly

I had some liver from Mr S this week which I used on the day of purchase and on the use by date. I took it back and got a refund but wasnt happy. My sympathy to you.

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams, 
The builders really cracked on today & reckon they'll be finished tomorrow, which is a day earlier than we expected. It looks as though we'll need to ask them to quote for an additional job at some point, as the remedial work on our dodgy wall uncovered further work which needs doing. I asked lots of questions & will see if I can procure a quote this week, as it will mean I can plan the home improvements budgeting better - knowledge is power & all that.
I had limited indoor access again today so I sat outside & progressed my recipe project. I also managed to get 3 loads of laundry dry in the sunshine. Everywhere I look at the moment, I see a whole ton of jobs. We are going to go ahead with the electrical work we need doing, then we're going to pause, get everything straight, progress all the jobs we can do ourselves & plan the next phase of improvements. My chest feels a bit tight today, with a slight sore throat but I have no other symptoms & am 99% sure it's from a month of inhaling so much builders' dust.
I'm going to wish you all a peaceful evening now & fetch my paint colour charts out..... I fancy a proper nice colour for the doors of my lovely new pantry.
I couldn't half fancy a caramel digestive. None in the house, which is probably just as well!
F x