Frugal, thrifty, make do, mend! Let this debt come to an end!

foxgloves

Nice to see you back, @Elisheba. 
I did a lot of reading about gut health last year when I was diagnosed with one of the inflammatory gut problems-without-a-cure (except surgery) & I have mostly been doing intermittent fasting of the 'time restricted eating' variety since then. I do 14:10, so I aim not to eat anything between 8pm & my breakfast the next day at 10am. There are occasional days where this doesn't fit in with stuff I need to do/places I need to go, but mostly it is what I do & I have got into the routine of it. I am often amazed by just how much stuff I can get done before breakfast, & I sooooo look forward to that mug of coffee, I think I enjoy it even more than I used to because of the wait. I usually just have a ginger tea (from a slice of root ginger in hot water) when I get up.
As September is such a good time for fresh starts, I intend to tighten up a little on health/diet things, continue getting more plant variety into my diet & cut lunch (which I don't really need in its traditional sense when doing TRE) down to a mug of nice home made soup & a couple of pieces of fruit. Always interesting to hear what other people are doing. I think eating more plants is something which can be reasonably easily accommodated within a budget too, as can just buy 1 each of different things to keep up the variety.
Anyway, welcome back to frugal diaryland!
F x

beanielou

Enjoy the cake. 

Elisheba

Evening, all,

Yes, I'm the same @foxgloves. Occasionally the time restricted eating won't suit my plans that day, but most of the time it works really well. The reason I'm really sticking with it all - the intermittent fasting, low sugar etc is that a week after I started doing it my period started and I didn't have any pain.

Couldn't believe it. For the first couple of days of my cycle I'm normally knocking back naproxen like it's going out if fashion - so anything that reduces inflammatory pain that quickly must be doing a heck of a lot of good behind the scenes in my book. I'm not sure exactly what it was that worked this miracle, so I'm just sticking to everything 😂.

Trains home today ran on time, unbelievably! That was this morning and this evening - I'm not sure that has ever happened before 😂. No train refunds for me today!

On my way home from the train station I drove a bit out my way to fill up on diesel. 138.7 a litre, which was 2p cheaper than other petrol stations in the train station city, and about 6p cheaper than the petrol stations near my house. Thought it was worth filling up now as I need to drive to work the next couple.of weeks, so will really be racking up the miles. Think I got about 55 litres of diesel, so that was a minimum of £1.10 saved plus Tesco points and Amex cash back, and over £3.00 saved on my local place.

Other than that which is budgeted for, and my parking and travel cost today (also in the budget) it was a no spend day. I stuck to my food flask of muesli for brunch, and food flask of cous cous for dinner. Also had 2 apples and 2 satsumas. Could probably have done with a bit more food tbh, as I was quite hungry at points, so I'll need to remember to pack more snacks next time.

I don't think I've mentioned it here but I had to renew my car insurance at the end of July. Because the incident where the woman said I'd reversed into her still is outstanding, awaiting her to prove any evidence of damage I think, and I hadn't protected my no claims (d'oh) I went with a quote where I need to have a little tracker in my car, and it's a bit cheaper.

It's a bit of a nuisance remembering not to speed, or accelerate quickly, or brake fast 🙄 but it does mean my driving is much more economical, so money saving all around really! Once the incidence is sorted out, hopefully in my favour, I might even get some money back on the premium for this year.

I'm tired now, so I'll be heading to bed soon. Silly dog is still full of beans though, so I'll need to leave it a little while yet. 

Sleep well, everyone 🥱🛏️😴

SuzeQStan

Hiya lovely - 1/2 price dungarees and clean eating sounds v nice! So good to see you posts on here again 🥰

Ive been trying to get away from online shopping as much at the moment so been distracting myself dancing around the house to Hozier ‘Movement’ pretending I’m dancing with Sergei Polunin in the video lol. Edit to say I don’t agree with Polunins views. 

so far it’s working 🤞🏻

if you are looking for something to watch I can’t recommend anything as all recent choices have been 🩲

KajiKita

That cous cous sounds amazing! You are inspiring me to try something new as my lunches are getting pretty samey …. 😊
Glad the trains ran to time - I know refunds are helpful but actually having the time to live your life on a Friday is probably worth more 😉
I don’t have a tracker on my car, but since getting a sixth gear (changed the car in March) my first ever! I have really noticed a drop in my spend on fuel. That’s an easy win 😊

Hope you enjoy your coffee out this weekend amongst all the virtuousness. 😊

KK

Moorviews

It’s great to hear how well your life has been going @Elisheba and that you were pretty on track once you shifted your pots around. It sounds as though your current home is better insulated and more economical to heat. I find that I use the wood burner a lot more than I would ever put the heating on. I have one of those little fans that circulates the warmth and it made a big difference. 

Like others here, I have been trying to eliminate the UPFs as much as I reasonably can. It’s going pretty well as we have homemade bread, ice cream and cakes and I only buy or make plain yoghourt. I cook most meals from scratch but am not averse to occasional canned baked beans on toast! We are recent converts to wholemeal spaghetti; I’m sure it tastes better these days than it used to! I would like to do the time restricted eating as it would save me time, however unfortunately my health needs require more frequent meals. I love the sound of the bounty balls and must have a go at something similar. My chocolate treat is from the 70% range in one of the discount supermarkets; Fair trade and no palm oil. Dr Rupy has a great recipe for a bolognese sauce made with tofu. You might find his books in the library; most of the recipes are vegan or vegetarian. 

Elisheba

Morning, thrifty friends,

@SuzeQStan you inspired me to watch Polinin dancing to Take me to Church. Absolutely beautiful. But yes, what a silly man. He appears to have all the advantages one could want - talent, looks, opportunities, but throwing it all away slowly with a lot of stupid opinions. 

@KajiKita Glad the cous cous has given you ideas! My theory at moment is to try a different grain each time, and add different veg, and see how it goes 😂.

@Moorviews Yes, I'm still allowing my self some of the 70 and 85% chocolate bars occasionally as a treat!

Well, yesterday instead of being particularly organised I just sort of pottered through my to do list, getting some of the nice things done but none of the things I wasn't so keen on 🤭.

I have emptied the car of camping gear, but not the porta potti, which has barely been used to be fair but still needs done. I put up the cupboard door in the kitchen, which I've been meaning to do for ages. Looks like my electric screwdriver might have gone kaput though. I put it on to charge, and the light is green, but nothing is happening. Bit annoying as although it is 6 years old I have barely used it.

I also changed the living room rug for one I picked up in a charity shop for a tenner a few weeks ago. It fits in much more with my 'vision' so that's good. Not sure what to do with the old one though - I did contemplate putting it down upstairs in one of the areas black cat seems to vomit on most, but although it would save the carpet it is actually quite hard to clean being quite long, so not sure that a good idea.

I got a lovely walk done with silly dog yesterday in my nearest big town, and then went into a cafe and had hot chocolate, a slice of what looked like home made millionaires shortcake, and a packet of crisps. It was a yummy treat after working up an appetite on the walk, and all the nicer for being an unusual occurrence. It cost £9.30, so that had been taken off my September personal allowance.

So what I want to do today, although I'm not sure I'll manage it, is the proper concept of Sabbath, where I do no work. It's obviously from the religious concept, but the idea of a day of rest seems such a good one in the modern world where we never properly switch off.

So my plan is, apart from the basics like cooking and walking silly dog, I do no work. I'm going to try to implement it one day a week - the day can change based on circumstances. I already have a planning meeting for my Beaver Scout group this evening so it won't be 100% but I can try.

So today will be church, dog walk, and then this afternoon I can pick my hobby activities - reading, audio book or podcast while I do a jigsaw or start the build a bookshop kit I bought. The list is endless. What I won't be doing is cutting the grass, or cleaning, or any of the boring chores that need done. They can wait until another day.

Due to having coffee and cake out yesterday I didn't make pizza in the evening, and also the feta in the remaining cous cous wasn't going to last much longer, so I had that instead. So tonight will be wholemeal pizza for dinner. I've not had brown pizza before so I'll see how it goes!

I am just finishing my coffee in bed now, so time to go and get ready I think. Have a great Sunday, everyone, and I hope you all find some time to rest and relax.

SuzeQStan

Hope you have a lovely restful Sabbath Elisheba

Elisheba

SuzeQStan said:

Hope you have a lovely restful Sabbath Elisheba

Blimey, that does sound very old fashioned, doesn't it 😂. I like old fashioned though (as long as it's mixed with modern things like feminism and equality, antibiotics and vaccinations 😂) so I'll take it.

So far my wholemeal pizza has been a disaster. I used an online recipe but put it in the bread maker, and it ended up liquid. I've added 5 extra handfuls of bread flour and put it on again, so I'll see how it goes. Dinner could end up being pasta at this rate though 🙄

Elisheba

Can happily report that pizza ended up lovely in the end. The dough was just a tad bit sticky after it's 5 extra handfuls of flours and a second go at the dough setting on the bread machine. Once I rolled it out on some more flour though it was fine, and I barely noticed any difference in texture or flavour to a white one.

I didn't have any fresh veg to put on it so I had to improvise a bit. I used a mild smoked cheese I had, and the tomato sauce was the last of the red pesto from camping and some tomato paste, all mixed together. Toppings were sun dried tomatoes, olives, halloumi and onions.

It really was delish, and I could have eaten all of it but I am trying to be mindful when I eat, and only eat until just about full rather than totally stuffed, so 2 slices got put in the fridge for another time. I also had enough extra dough to put 3 portions in the freezer, so that's pizza sorted for the rest of the month!