A new royal start

QueenJess

Work was actually ok this week. I worked absolutely reasonable hours, took the evening off and refused to be stressed. Irritatingly my work was done on time, although it was by the skin of our teeth at the last possible minute. Hopefully that still made a point. Not sure how long my post holiday frame of mind will last, but I am enjoying it whilst I can!

Planning on getting some seeds planted later, but need to have a look at what I actually have available (I pick up veg seeds for free from my local zero waste shop). I also want to go to the garden centre for compost and a browse. Not sure if it's too early for chives, but I want to buy a few for the front North facing tiny patch of sun section. I've tried them from seed in the past, but I am never very successful, so will buy them.

Trying to recover from holiday money wise by only buying essentials at the moment, helped on by my determination to eat through the small chest freezer to get it defrosted. We easily survived this week with only buying the odd food item and actually we need so little this week I decided it wasn't worth the 20min each way trip to the zero waste shop and sm, so I ditched those and just bought what I needed in the local Lidl instead. Total food spend this week was £47! £20 Lidl, £19 Riverford and the rest in M&S on the way back from holiday to get milk etc that we needed urgently. Gosh, how rich would I be if I only spent £50 a week rather than my current budget of £170?!

I'm not sure what's happened here, but I mentioned going to Legoland in Denmark (the kids are so obsessed with Lego I actually tried to ban the L word for an evening meal as I was sick of hearing it!) inspired by @themadvix and a long desire to go to Denmark and now it has everyone's vote and we are looking into prices! To afford it, it's going to have to be a very frugal next few months to get the joint account kicked into shape as I don't want to top it up with savings. Not sure how possible it'll be, but it'll be a good challenge.

Quite randomly DD's friends parents have given me some sourdough starter. If you've been on this diary a long time you'll know it's been on my wish list forever to do and I never get round to it. Well my hand was forced and yesterday I made my first sourdough bread and DH gave it the thumbs up (perks of being the chief cutter of bread that he has the first taste!). So looks like sourdough is firmly on the menu from now on. Related to that, I am considering ordering a big sack of flour online as I have to buy far too many small bags of flour from the shop and it will be cheaper this way. I'm just trying to decide how I would store it and what I use most of that would make it worthwhile (generally white and brown bread flour and self raising flour). I do use lots of self raising flour, but I know it doesn't last as long, so I am not so sure about that one - maybe I should just get the bread flour and see how that goes? Any tips?

Yesterday I was very organised. I needed so little for the food shop (and it's down the road) that I popped out and did it at lunch time. Meant I could have a nice lie in this morning. I also made granola, oat milk, the sourdough bread, roasted a butternut squash for salads in the week (based on the very salady contents of my Riverford box) and also made a huge batch of vegetable soup from peeling scraps I couldn't bear to compost and froze (still got one more bag left in there to use up). I am toying with making an orange cake today as I have the juice leftover in the freezer from candying orange peel (again didn't want to waste it), but we honestly have so much leftover from our holiday that I'm not sure if it's needed.

DD is out today at a party, so lunch will be bitty. On a Saturday I usually have breakfast at almost lunchtime (the fun of that time of life means a slower digestive system and I like to have some days of larger non-eating periods), DH will probably have some leftover party food plus some bits and pieces here and I will make DS a sandwich and fruit. Dinner is spicy (for the adults) chicken with chips (we have a lot of potatoes for some reason!) and frozen mixed veg. Dessert is more Easter egg for the kids (or yogurt and jam/honey) and the adults will indulge in a French biscuit or macaron later.

I think I will be enjoying some quiet time now as DD is at her party and DS is going to be building Lego for the next few hours. Feels odd not to be rushing around with chores, but I don't have enough for a load of washing and no food shop this morning. It's lovely!