Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Morning rainy people..... well it's certainly chucking it down here! Just finishing my coffee. My only goal today is that I achieve more than yesterday!
Here goes, 
F x

foxgloves

Oh... more rain. Never mind, I was going to squidge down to the compost bins with a bucket of peelings & twigs, but the lovely Mr F volunteered for the fresh air.
Hello m'dears, it's felt like a bit of a rum day today, as it is quite unsettling not knowing even at this late stage whether Mr F's work sector is closing for lockdown & he's been pretty furious today about not being able to update his team. I've been quite busy though. 
I baked a wholemeal loaf & some flapjacks, did the ironing & then set about getting all the bunches of herbs I picked & dried during summer crumbled & into their jars. The kitchen was very herby & fragrant - it looked a bit like Cadfael's workshop! Bay leaves, lemon thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary & winter savoury. I love re-filling my jars ready for all those winter stews & soups. Had to vacuum afterwards, as looked like a layer of volcanic ash everywhere!
Rubber chicken duties also successfully performed. It did a roast dinner last night, will do chicken, chips & salad tonight, a home made mexican-style chicken topped pizza tomorrow plus soup & also an Epic Man Stew (the latter will defo not involve me!) All the gribbly bits went in the slow cooker for stock as usual - a carton for the freezer, a jugful ready to make the soup & some for the aforementioned Man Stew.
Am now making a list of local shops I could usefully visit tomorrow before they have to stop trading for lockdown. I will be looking particularly at bits & pieces to progress my Christmas shopping. I want to be in town early though as I only have the car for a couple of hours. 
GBBO night with a freshly baked flapjack is going to be the limit of my evening endeavours. 
Love F x

kayannie

foxgloves said:

Oh... more rain. Never mind, I was going to squidge down to the compost bins with a bucket of peelings & twigs, but the lovely Mr F volunteered for the fresh air.
Hello m'dears, it's felt like a bit of a rum day today, as it is quite unsettling not knowing even at this late stage whether Mr F's work sector is closing for lockdown & he's been pretty furious today about not being able to update his team. I've been quite busy though. 
I baked a wholemeal loaf & some flapjacks, did the ironing & then set about getting all the bunches of herbs I picked & dried during summer crumbled & into their jars. The kitchen was very herby & fragrant - it looked a bit like Cadfael's workshop! Bay leaves, lemon thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary & winter savoury. I love re-filling my jars ready for all those winter stews & soups. Had to vacuum afterwards, as looked like a layer of volcanic ash everywhere!
Rubber chicken duties also successfully performed. It did a roast dinner last night, will do chicken, chips & salad tonight, a home made mexican-style chicken topped pizza tomorrow plus soup & also an Epic Man Stew (the latter will defo not involve me!) All the gribbly bits went in the slow cooker for stock as usual - a carton for the freezer, a jugful ready to make the soup & some for the aforementioned Man Stew.
Am now making a list of local shops I could usefully visit tomorrow before they have to stop trading for lockdown. I will be looking particularly at bits & pieces to progress my Christmas shopping. I want to be in town early though as I only have the car for a couple of hours. 
GBBO night with a freshly baked flapjack is going to be the limit of my evening endeavours. 
Love F x

How do you make your flapjacks? Mine usually fall to pieces!
KA

Kantankrus_Mare

Hoping everyone is well in the lead up to another lockdown? 
We in N.E.Lincs moved into tier 2 and it has made working in the hospitality industry very frustrating!!
Of course we have had the rule of 6 for a while now which isnt a huge issue for us as being a small restaurant, we dont have room for more than 6 at a time anyway but the new ruling of supposedly not mixing with anyone from outside of your own household seems a tad difficult for people to grasp.
We have to ask everyone that books a table or walks through the door if they all belong to one household. We have been told blatant lies. Im sorry, but four middle aged women coming in together do NOT live together!! This is just one example of many and it has really annoyed me that people are so stupid and cant follow the rules.  Some people dont even know that we have been put into Tier 2??? Without asking for proof of address, there is no way we can dispute what they are saying.  And people wonder why we are going into full lockdown again!!  Rant over.
So now I face another month (or longer) off and Im ready to recharge the batteries to fight on when we return to whichever tier we get put back into.
Keep smiling everyone.........though I have to say Im struggling at the moment.

Pixiehouse55

Good morning to you all.. Yesterday we popped out and got milk, bread and yes loo rolls. J uses loo rolls to tidy up, clean the sink and himself lol. I see bits of loo roll everywhere. J went back in hospital last Thursday. Had another op yesterday. We dont know what he had done as we are on respite till tomatoes 4pm and our manager was very clear that no one contacted us as we are exhausted and needed a break.  Yesterday we visited hubby's mum. Today is mega housework. We are looking at double glazing companies as our windows need replacing.  Not sure how much I need for that?.  Dear Mrs F I did ask you a question a few days back re your money pots, I think you must of missed my question, it was a couple of days ago. We are all busy and things on our minds haven't  we, Paid off another £250 on the credit card. Just over £700 to pay off now!! Yesss. More money to pay off of the mortgage 😁.  Chicken tonight for dinner. Possibly with salad. Weve had a roast, a curry, with salad tonight and still have some left over😊 back to the cleaning... keep safe everyone  X 

foxgloves

Kayannie - I've had that problem with flapjacks in the past. These last ones came out perfectly & the recipe was from Mary Berry's Baking Bible. It's such a good book as recipes are very reliable. There's nothing different about them, though. Usual method - butter, sugar (I was surprised it said 'demerara' as I've always used soft brown sugar in the past....though having said that, I hadn't quite enough demerara & had to top it up with the other anyway) & golden syrup melted in a pan without boiling, remove from heat then stir in the oats & mix thoroughly. They took 35 mins in the oven at Gas 3 in a typical rectangular traybake tin. I always think the bubbling liquid on top looks as though they are going to fail, but as long as it is golden brown on top, the sizzly liquid quickly re-absorbs as they start to cool. Says leave 10 mins before marking into squares, then leave till cold before turning out. I shan't use any other recipe for these now, as we both agreed that this is exactly how we like our flapjacks to be. 
F x

foxgloves

Kantankrus - You did well up in NE Lincs to stay in Tier 1 for so long. I miss shopping trips to Lincoln, but couldn't go while in Tier 3 as they were only Tier 1 & us Typhoid Marys from over the border are not supposed to visit.....& our other nearby city centre has been very coviddy indeed compared to other places, so we didn't much feel like going there either. Fair enough though. These are not normal times, something which many people seem to be having difficulty either understanding or accepting. It must be very difficult for you in a small restaurant, & yes, I've heard similar stories about customers trying it on. The staff at our favourite local indie coffee shop have been really fed up with it - one member of staff told us last week that they had a wedding party arrive in dribs & drabs so that they looked like ones & twos from the same household, then they moved several tables & chairs so they could all sit together! The staff there have been working so hard to comply with the rules. We have been going since Lockdown 1 ended & have always felt safe because they have gone the extra mile with getting all the safety measures in place, extra cleaning, etc, so I can understand how frustrating it is when people swan in & arrogantly assume that they have some kind of d*ckhead's exemption clause. If only it was just the idiots who caught Covid - not that I'm wishing it on anybody, but you know what I mean.
I'd have been packing for our week away by now, so boo to that, but at least we are both well, & all I really want now more than anything is for this to end. So many people have lost loved ones, friends & neighbours & it makes me very sad to think about what they are going through.
Stay strong m'dear,
F x

foxgloves

Pixiehouse55 - Yes, it sounds like you have had a lot on with your J being poorly. It's always extra stressful, isn't it, when a situation is just ongoing with no resolution despite hospital visits, etc. 
You are quite right that you asked me about our Savings Pots system. As soon as I read your last post, I remembered you asking me. Ok, well I used to use the envelope system for our savings pots - they were quite literally envelopes. I wrote the category on the front & I mostly paid the same amount of cash into them each month when I set the budget. I ran things like this for a few years & more recently, decided I could trust myself to run 'virtual pots'. I also increased the number of pots to 10. So here's how it works in our house. Our current account has a sort of 'sister' savings account & it's easy to transfer money from one to the other. I already used the savings bit of the account to save for bigger one-offs, such as overpayments into our car loan when we had that, so I just decided to use it for the savings pot money. That sits in there just as one lump sum for all the pots. We have an Excel spreadsheet to keep account of how much is in each pot. This is a very simple spreadsheet. It is just a list of all the pots & how much is in them, which I update with funds as they move in & out. It's just a case of checking that the total Savings Pots amount on the spreadsheet tallies with the balance of the savings account. My Savings Pots are car maintenance, clothes, home & garden, presents, holidays, appliance replacement, tech replacement, leisure/entertainment, optician/dentist & meow fund. General savings (for the future) & emergency funds are separate accounts.
Hope this helps.
F x

foxgloves

And now for today's post. The sky has got that low-lit look that comes just before dusk starts to arrive - the perfect backdrop for the skeins of geese which regularly fly over this time of year on their way to the river. I love how they all follow the leader in a perfect V-formation, except for the occasional rebel who just flies just exactly how she wants!
So it's hello from me on our final day of a very short-lived Tier 3. Was woken by the sound of a neighbour scraping their car windscreen. Yes, our first frost & icy cars this morning. Cosy inside though with our new central heating. Got up early & was in town by 9 am, as I wanted the chance to buy a few Christmas gifts from shops which will have to close from tonight. I'd made a list & managed to get almost everything on it, including 3 rolls of half price gift wrap, so I can get cracking with a bit of wrapping as soon as I feel like it. Nephew chocolates were 3 for 2, so that was another little saving. 
Apart from that, I've been a bit kitchen-based today. I've made bread dough for tonight's pizza & a batch of rolls, also a decent-sized pan of chicken soup from the rubber chicken I divvied up yesterday. I've also tried to have a good tidy. I'll be glad when the painting in the kitchen is all finished, because then I can get everything in there back to normal, instead of having to trot out to the conservatory whenever I need a pan or search in 26 different places when I want the grater, etc. I intend to give the floor a bit of a revamp but I can do that afterwards. I think it will involve elbow-grease & sore knees rather than buying anything. I am going to go & prep a bowl of salad in a minute, then I intend to try & finish knitting the first of Mr F's Christmas present socks. I am up to the toe, so should get it done & hopefully might even get to cast on the 2nd one before he appears. He's proper fed-up today. He assumed his sector would be locking down but has heard at the 11th hour that they are only partially doing so & so he has to sort out how this 'neither one thing or the other' situation is to be managed. I'm sure a cheer-up flapjack & home made pizza will work its magic when he gets in though.
OK, must crack on.
F x

foxgloves

Well, another day disappears in the flash of an eyelash. I'd even forgotten it's Guy Fawkes night until the rockets started going off, & I popped out onto our back courtyard for ten mins of pretty flashes & bangs.
Hello to everyone reading tonight. Hope you're all ok. Honestly, this year!! We won't be forgetting these times in a hurry. My Gran still talked about the 1918/19 flu pandemic in her 90s! She was 13 at the time.
Lovely long skype chat with my sister this morning. Knitted AND yakked so managed to get 2nd sock cast on & most of the ribbing done. Must knit my other Christmas present tonight to keep both projects moving. I've spent this afternoon making a list of all the presents I need to order & progressed almost the whole list. The only sticking point is something I want to buy for Mr F's B-in-Law, which is sold out, so I will try to find it elsewhere. I have deliberately not placed any orders with massive conglomerates which sell everything iyswim. If I can't use actual indie stores because of Lockdown, my next best thing is to use smaller indie online businesses. I've really enjoyed working through my list & there's only really Mr F now, where I need to make progress on the presents front.
Looking forward to catching up with Autumnwatch now. 
Cheers all, 
F x