A new royal start

QueenJess

ladysummerisle said:

Hello @QueenJess - I’ve been reading your diary over the past week or so (maybe more!) so thought I’d say hi. Similar demographic here with a soon to be 4 DD and DS 8. It kept me reading I had to keep reading to find out how things turned out!

I managed to take time off over Easter and managed to bake and cook more but nowhere near your level. My burning question is:

do you have this book? https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/green-roasting-tin-book-rukmini-iyer-9781910931899

Hello! Not sure how fascinating a reading my diary is, but thanks for stopping by! 

I used to have that book, but I honestly didn’t use it, so I sent it back to the charity shop. I mainly prefer baking to cooking and in the latter I usually go completely off recipe and just make it up! That’s why one of my River Cottage books hung around as it suggests lots of alternatives if you don’t have something in.

I am currently enjoying lots of very vintage recipes in combination with some nice baking books I picked up on Buy Nothing.

QueenJess

Need to post and run a bit today, but looks like I’ll be back to austerity as I have decided to exit my current contracting position early. I will have 3 weeks left excluding an extra week of holiday I was due, so will be paid for another month. After all the internal wrangling, I’m quite relieved now I’ve made the decision. Will see what comes up, but otherwise I may take a few months off for the summer ☀️ 

So it means lots of forward planning to cut costs and lots of baking from scratch to come.

QueenJess

A quick update as it's been a really long day, but I managed to do a huge pile of tidying, 3 loads of washing hung up (and 1 load already dry and put away!).  I also made some jam tarts from scratch and a load of custard creams, so no one will go hungry.  The jam tarts were handy as I had some jam that had been hanging around in the fridge for a bit too long and needed using up.  Dinner was tofu stir fry and noodles using lots of bottom of the fridge veg including cutting up the cauliflower stalk into small pieces (adds a nice crunch). Dessert we have been spoilt for choice with things leftover from other nights as well as the things I baked today.

I've written my food shopping list for tomorrow, written a rough dinner plan for next week and spent time costing it up.  Hopefully it should all be ok    Riverford was a much lower cost this week as we had a few things leftover to use up.  I am hopeful I can make some sort of a dent in the grocery deficit this month.

ladysummerisle

QueenJess said:

ladysummerisle said:

Hello @QueenJess - I’ve been reading your diary over the past week or so (maybe more!) so thought I’d say hi. Similar demographic here with a soon to be 4 DD and DS 8. It kept me reading I had to keep reading to find out how things turned out!

I managed to take time off over Easter and managed to bake and cook more but nowhere near your level. My burning question is:

do you have this book? https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/green-roasting-tin-book-rukmini-iyer-9781910931899

Hello! Not sure how fascinating a reading my diary is, but thanks for stopping by! 

I used to have that book, but I honestly didn’t use it, so I sent it back to the charity shop. I mainly prefer baking to cooking and in the latter I usually go completely off recipe and just make it up! That’s why one of my River Cottage books hung around as it suggests lots of alternatives if you don’t have something in.

I am currently enjoying lots of very vintage recipes in combination with some nice baking books I picked up on Buy Nothing.

I’d much rather bake than cook. The bane of my life is “what shall we have for dinner?” and whether everyone will eat it. Here for food inspiration but also the general grind resonates, although I don’t push myself as much as you! 

QueenJess

Well I pretty much managed to stay within food budget this week despite needing to add hayfever medication to my list, finding a pack of ys organic chicken and buying the kids some sweets from the zero waste shop (not on the list!). I spent only £64 in the sm (thanks to £8 of a gift voucher), £16 in the zero waste shop and £7 in the pharmacy. I also spent £26 in Riverford and £3 top up milk shopping. So all in all that’s £126 for the week. Below my £150 allowance. I suspect it’ll get harder as the month goes on and I use stuff up, but will see how it goes.

Planning on planting some more free seeds (from zero waste shop) this afternoon and possibly planting out a few things as well in the pots. May as well use them all up and get some free food! I have two pots I picked up free from Buy Nothing I can fill with edible seeds. I’m also planning to go to the garden centre to replace the plants I wanted and get some mint plants. That will be my total spend on plants for this year.

DH is out with DD today (DS is at gym), so just the two of us for lunch. Thinking of making eggs and soldiers with a side of beans. Dinner I need to take with me as I’m off out to a comedy night with my sister which is near to where she lives so I need to leave here at 5 so I can eat at her house first. I shall be taking the last of the leftover pizza with a big salad, followed by jam tart with me. I’m leaving DH instructions to make them fish, chips and peas for dinner with jam tart for after. Tomorrow we shall make a big roast chicken so we can have leftovers for Monday’s dinner and hopefully will be enough for DS to have sandwiches at school the next couple of days after that. 

We are also off to a car boot sale early tomorrow morning and I shall see if I can pick up anything on my long list of things I am on the lookout for (including an alarm clock for DS so he can get himself up in the morning!). I think the kids have other ideas on the things they are looking out for and are planning on taking their pocket money. DS could be helpful though as he is very bold at bartering and frequently does it everywhere 😂. Who can resist a cute kid clutching their pocket money?!

Tomorrow DS is making a chocolate cake with fudge topping from a baking book I picked up for free for my sister’s birthday on Monday (she and my parents are visiting). Obviously he’ll be highly supervised, but he really wanted to make one for her. I imagine the cake won’t last long and I’ll be back for more baking on Tuesday!

Apparently DS said my custard creams are amazing and the best I’ve ever made. High praise indeed!

QueenJess

I hope everyone had a good long weekend.  I have a very busy week this week, culminating in an interview Friday morning that I need to start prepping for soon.  Over the weekend I have to confess to ordering the plants I was planning on buying and a few extra ones made it into the basket as well to fill the odd gap I have in my borders.  It came to £132 I am looking forward to getting them all planted though.  I've also seen Lidl are doing cheap compost, so may go and grab some to finish off the rest of my patio pots.

This lunchtime I filled the oven with two different homemade breads (brown and spelt) and then followed those with another batch of custard creams (the first lot mysteriously disappeared over the weekend) and some flapjacks.  For lunch I'm on my own so had leftover pizza and a salad.  Dinner will be jacket potato, beans and cheese for something easy after DS's swimming lesson.  Desserts are still the hm jam tarts and there is one slice of birthday cake left that DS made for my sister (I will leave that for him as he made it!).  There's also bits and pieces in the freezer that I need to start making inroads into as well.

The kids have randomly stopped eating bananas as they seem to require them to be perfectly yellow without even a tiny microscopic particle of brown on them... so I have just put 4 in the freezer that were getting too black and will be made into goodies at a later date.  I've started eating them for breakfast to use them up!  Need to sort out my Riverford order later today, so I will be reviewing the contents of the fridge/freezer carefully to only order what I need and start thinking about my shopping list for the weekend.  

Looks like it's going to be another bumper year for the redcurrants.  Last year it was cut back as it was 6" tall (although apparently it isn't supposed to be able to get that tall) so you could see the honeysuckle and rose behind it.  Now it's come back even more and seems to have decided it may as well be 5" wide instead   I still have a small bag of them left for last year, so no idea how to get through them all.  I clearly need to be making more fruit based goodies

Right - better get back to work.

Edit: Forgot to say that I rounded down the mortgage, so I'm now at £121k.

QueenJess

I survived my week - just!  Was so tired I went to bed at the same time as DS 3 nights this week.  Yesterday I went to my interview and they said that they would make me an offer next week at the end.  Never happened to me before!  Fingers crossed I get a good offer through and then I can plan out my finances for the rest of this year depending on what they offer me.  I already negotiated 4 days a week.  Really hoping to start putting something into the mortgage again soon.

Despite my tiring day yesterday, I also changed all the beds, took my return back to a shop, did a load of washing, watered the plants, planted most of the plants that arrived yesterday at 7am, wrote a food shopping list and did a days worth of work.  Stocked up on a few pantry bits in the sm this morning that I can't get in the zero waste shop and also discovered some ys cooked chicken that DS likes for sandwiches.  I got a few packs and have put one in the usual place and have attempted to hide the other two so they can last a few weeks.  sm shopping came to £68, zero waste £37 (you get 5% off on the 11th shop and so I did a massive stock up) and Riverford was £31.  All in all that's £136 for the week, which is definitely below my £150 a week budget.  Hoping to keep it up to chip away at the deficit.

No idea what is for lunch today as I am back late with DS after his gymnastics class... so probably something quick and easy.  Dinner is meatballs and spaghetti followed by rhubarb crumble and cream if I get a chance to make it this afternoon.  I am also planning on doing some gardening this afternoon to plant the two shrubs I bought, although I have to de-weed the areas first and also move two other plants around.  I also need to plant some cucumber seeds as I don't think mine made it and fill up some more of my patio tubs with seeds. Better run as I need to get some washing on and get DS to gymnastics.

QueenJess

Just a quick check in before dinner is ready.  Redid the budget for when DD finishes nursery and frankly that was a bit depressing given all the increases recently and so I won't have much if anything spare for mortgage overpayments...  I will have to cross my fingers the mortgage goes down when I fix again and I can use the savings there to put into the mortgage.  Otherwise it's just going to be odds and ends going that way.  I even printed off the budget and got DH to check it and he said he couldn't find anything extravagant about it at all.

In food news, DH had leftover pesto pasta for lunch and I had feta salad.  Dinner is salmon with red pesto (for the adults, no pesto for the kids), boiled potatoes, steamed carrots and steamed greens.  Dessert is more of the rhubarb crumble and cream.  Whilst the oven was on anyway, I made up some cheese, onion and spinach pasties that will do a few lunches.

Better go as dinner is ready in a minute.

QueenJess

Got up early this morning to make some rhubarb and ginger scones with the rest of the rhubarb.  Ironically I ordered rhubarb as an extra in my Riverford box last week as I love it and assumed I wouldn't otherwise get any, but the British boxes this week all have them in.  So looks like rhubarb is on the dessert list for the forseeable future!  I put a garlic bread in the oven at the same time to fill it up completely and to avoid putting the oven on later just for a garlic bread.

Dinner tonight is tomato pasta, spinach leaves and garlic bread (although I will make it at lunch time as I eat my main meal then when I'm off to the gym later).  Lunch is the pastries I made last night for everyone (DS took one in his lunch box).  Dessert is the last of the rhubarb crumble and cream, rhubarb and ginger scones or there's still some flapjacks left.  Spoiled for choice!

My cupboards are slowly emptying out and the fridge is slightly more empty than usual whilst I'm trying to plan much better.  I'm concerned that means June might get expensive if we've gone through our stores, although I'm trying to make the food shop cheaper than my budget and then adding back £10 of stuff I'm running low on but don't need right now.  Hoping that will limit the damage even if my deficit goes down a bit slower.

Better go and do some work now..  hoping to get half an hour later today to do a tiny bit of gardening as I still need to fill up the patio pots and the sunflower seeds (free from the zero waste shop) I planted on the windowsill are already huge and need planting out somewhere.

QueenJess

Been another long week.. just trying to finish the work I need to do before I effectively leave next week (technically my last day is 3 June, but I am on holiday before that, so I only have 6 days left).  Had to go into the office yesterday and despite really not wanting to, I did the full shopping list last night, costed it up and then got it down to £70 for the sm which is my aim.  Didn't quite work out when I went round as I found some ys organic casserole beef which is now happily in my freezer for some future cheap meals and I didn't have many extras to remove from my list to offset it.

Total food spend for this week: sm £75, zero waste shop £6, Riverford £35 = £116.  Much less than the £150 I budgeted, although I usually have £50 set aside a month for stock up shops, so it's really £140 a week.  As it looks like I will have June as work free, I am hoping to drive down my deficit as much as possible by the end of June.  Very excited for next week as Riverford have their summer fruit bags back... I wait all year for those    First up is blueberries, apricots and mini watermelons

With my lists for food I think I'm really realising where I am overbuying and what really costs in my budget.  Clearly I can do it properly within budget, but it just requires time, which I don't always have.  I do also have an unreasonably full freezer at the moment, although I think a lot of it is bread (didn't make any this week).  I've been concentrating so hard to using absolutely everything we have that is fresh from Riverford and basing all meals on that, we've just used little bread recently.  There are also scones, cake and some other goodies hiding in there which will need to be used up.  On that basis, I should be able to keep the food bill down for a few weeks yet.  Hoping to save £100 a month.

This week I also scored 14 marigold plants from Buy Nothing which I picked up and immediately planted in two groups of 7.  I love marigolds and they should look lovely next to the catmint.

On the not so money saving side, I have bought myself some second hand clothes online as I have some gaps for the summer.  1 pair of jeans (I've mended mine multiple times, but they are all baggy and just over worn really - possibly I could pull them in,  but I've relegated them to the mend basket to use as patches for other things), 1 dress for the summer (I have 2 which isn't quite enough), 1 t-shirt (didn't have quite enough for the amount of washing I do), 1 denim jacket to wear over dresses (don't have anything suitable) and finally a pair of yellow trainers.  I don't need the shoes, but I love yellow and it will make me happy wearing those   I also got DS an alarm clock so he can be a bit more independent.  He was using an ancient wind up one I had, but it's not terribly reliable, so I've relegated it back to my library room where it's providing admirable ambience with the pleasing ticking.

Lunch today will be fractured as I am taking DS to gymnastics and we don't get back until late.  DS and I will be eating what is left of the cheese, spinach and onion pastries and salad.  There are plenty of other leftovers to snack on for DS and DH.  Dinner tonight is roast chicken with carrots, greens, roast potatoes, hm yorkshire puddings and loads of leftovers to use for tomorrow's dinner and for some of DS's lunches in the week.  Dessert will be a rhubarb cake which I shall make later today.

Edit: I had some rhubarb left, so stewed it up with some apple that had gone too soft, ginger, cinnamon and star anise.  I can add yogurt and granola for breakfasts or just for a snack.  I filled up the oven by roasting some beetroot at the same time as baking the cake - the beetroot can be for lunch salads in the week.