Put away your purse & become debt-averse

DawnW

My husband didn't get any side effects either @Foxgloves, not even a sore arm.

amber03

My GP told me that you have more coverage of protection if you have had two different vaccines, ie my first two were AZ and my booster was Pfizer. He said it is normal practice to mix them up for whatever you are having a vaccine for , like if you need jabs for going abroad.x

QueenJess

foxgloves said:

@QueenJess - I expect you'll have made your stock by now. I also make it in the slow cooker....well, apart from turkey carcass, of course. I usually get 3 days of dinners plus a packed lunch or soup from a chicken, & ideally, when the carcass has been stripped of meat, I like to shove it in the freezer until I have another one, then I use both together for a richer stock. I think I may have first got this doubling-up idea from @DawnW on the Daily Small Things thread. Much like @Baileys_Babe, I put them in the slow cooker with the usual stock ingredients - celery leaves &/or bendy celery, carrot tops/clean peelings, tops & tails of onions plus a couple of the brown papery skins (tip from my old fashioned cookery teacher in the late1970s for imparting a rich golden colour), a bay leaf, a few parsley stalks & 3 or 4 whole black peppercorns. As we aim to be a zero-food waste household (had to compost TWO mouldy lemons last week, was so cross, the air was a blue as they were!), I also add other things which need using up - wilty lettuce leaves, leek tops are good, also green tops from spring onions, etc, but not potatoes as they are too starchy & can be better used up in other ways (potato bread, bubble & squeak, hash, fish cakes, etc). I don't use parsnips in stock either, as I find their flavour can overwhelm the subtle sort of savouriness I'm aiming for, so bendy parsnips would usually be used in parsnip mash or soup. I give it a morning in the slow cooker on 'high' then turn it to low for the afternoon, no set time, it is strained when I feel it's had long enough. It gets frozen in containers in the size of portion we'd want to use for gravy, stews, soups, etc. When I make stock from our Christmas turkey, I always have to remind myself to put aside 900 ml in the fridge as it's an ingredient in the turkey chilli recipe I make every year. It's the best stock of the year in my opinion & makes lovely gravy for roasts to come.
F x

Ooh - thanks for that tip 🙂. I also make chicken last three meals for the three of us. With the chicken stock I made a chicken soup for lunch that even DS (who doesn’t like soup) likes. Still got more left so may use it in a homemade pot noodle for lunch tomorrow.

 It did feel like a fair bit of extra work, but everything feels difficult with an 8 month old!

Blackcats

Glad you are feeling better Foxgloves.  The side effects are so variable but better than getting the bloomin virus.  It seems like things are just as bad as this time last year but we can console ourselves that at least we are vaccinated and boosted.  I had no side effects from the booster - 8 hours of feeling very irritable but that was a work related side effect.  

Baileys_Babe

Glad you are feeling better @foxgloves and as you say better than having Covid.

Pixiehouse55

Hi Foxgloves and Gang.vWe are now on the Thames just outside of Reading. Not pleasant in places. We are aiming for Surrey for Christmas Eve. If I don't get on again. I wish you all a very happy Christmas.  No spends unless absolutely necessary. Enjoy,,  Keep Safe. Its everywhere again isn't it. Lots of love to you all. I will read your diary and be on again soon xxx

QueenJess

Ha ha, I know it well @Pixiehouse55 .At least there’s a big T*sco to get your food shop.

cbsexec

Hester on Old Style Daily lives on the river near Reading 

foxgloves

Morning Campers!
Thanks for all your replies, which I've enjoyed reading over a coffee & gingerbread Christmas tree biscuit baked by my sister.
@Pixiehouse55 - Good to hear from you. Happy Christmas - hope you can get to where you were planning to spend it. Love the stove - it must be cosy on board if the dogs are anything to go by!

@Blackcats - Yes, the NHS vaccination programme does make the Covid situation feel more hopeful than it did this time last year. Just wish we could see a bit of strong leadership - first rule of government is the safety of its citizens, not keeping a load of ultra right-wing headbangers on board for party survival. We are testing a couple of times a week now & making sure we plan in a test if we are meeting up with people. And we only want to meet people who are happy to do us the same courtesy. I'm convinced that a bit more leadership & good example setting (oh the irony.....) on personal responsibility re the basic safety measures would mean fewer lockdowns. 

@amber03 - That's interesting about mixing up the different vaccines. I don't have a scientific background, but logically that kind of sounds like a good idea.

@QueenJess - I think you're right that having a baby to look after means that additional old-style tasks added to routines can feel time consuming. Once you get used to simply throwing a chicken carcass into the slow cooker with a small selection of stock ingredients, so that you are no longer even having to think about it, I think you'll find it much speedier. You don't have to deal with the freshly made stock straight away - it can be divided into containers & frozen, so that you can make soup or whatever at a more convenient time for you. 

F x
 

foxgloves

And today's post......
Well, I wasn't as productive yesterday as I'd hoped, because despite feeling mostly fine on Sunday, I had a few booster jab side effects return in the morning & kept feeling waves of heat & tiredness. They seem to have gone today, & I had a good sleep, probably aided by discovering the festive gorgeousness of 'Di sar*nno Velvet" last night.....oh my life! Anyway, back to yesterday....I did a couple of loads of laundry, tidied & baked a batch of Delia's little cheesy rolls (her recipe is called 'Vegetarian sausage rolls', I think, but I always make them despite having no vegetarians in the family because they are so nice & festive*) & revisited this week's meal plans to see what needed to come out of the freezer. Managed to do a bit of minor freezer tetris, which was just as well, as having spent most of November telling Mr F that I will need the small freezer kept fairly free for my festive baking, I opened it to discover a large ham, streaky bacon, 2 sleeves of sausage meat, a pack of bagels, a kilo bag of prawns.......& an empty space the approximate size of a satsuma! Things very much improved now, however, possibly because I let the words "I might only make a small batch of sausage rolls as I've no space to freeze them" permeate into a conversation about food shopping!
So far today, I've sorted the dry laundry, done my weekly budget updates (& I came across an oversight which certainly accounts for £20 of that £70 discrepancy, so I bet the other £50 will come to light on my next Big Budget Day after Christmas), fed the birds, put away the last of the pre-Christmas food shopping (Mr F discovered the supermarket opens at 6 am & decided to go before work, as he had a slightly later start today & was already heading into town to get our fresh veg from a local farm stall on the market). There is just the turkey to collect now, which is budgeted for & some super-special cut of bacon which Mr F 'needs' on Christmas morning.......not that I begrudge him this, of course, it's just that I don't know how he manages to eat a big breakfast before Christmas dinner - he has the appetite of a starved ox! Have planned festive kitchen tasks for this afternoon including icing the Christmas cake. I have a really good audiobook on the go atm, so will have it playing on the kitchen stereo, will put the dresser fairy lights on (they are up all year round) & get cracking. Mr F brought a huge piece of mistletoe back from the market this morning, so he's definitely planning on finding at least a bit of energy, despite all the beer & feasting. 
Have a good day all,
F x
* I have used one of those Mexican-style chilli flavoured cheddars in the cheesy rolls this year & they are lovely with that little bit of heat.
P.S Can report that we are still within our December grocery budget.
P.P.S The last of my '12 past spendy sins of Christmas' will be posted tomorrow.