A new royal start

QueenJess

Having a quiet day at home today as my eye is slightly swollen and sore. Seems to be a combination of tiredness (not sleeping due to heat) and bad hayfever. Hopefully it’ll go away.

Got DD to make some fairy cakes this morning (under heavy supervision) and she will make some buttercream and cover in sprinkles soon. Lunch was cheese and mushroom omelettes with salad for the grown ups and apple for the kids. Dessert will be the fairy cakes.

Dinner is the salmon I was going to do yesterday as we decided to make lamb kebabs instead yesterday. Dessert is strawberry frozen yogurt with raspberries :) I’m just trying out the frozen yogurt recipe in my ice cream maker now.

That cleared down the fridge a bit. It’s extra full as I put all the fruit in there due to the heat.

QueenJess

I can see I've got a £5 off £40 spend in the Lidl app (was £5 off £30 last month). I can see this would be a slippery slope and I'll struggle to buy £40 of goods anyway. I'm already stocked up and I really want to get rid of this grocery deficit. I'm going to leave that one.

I've given myself a target of £25 top up spending in Lidl this week as a bit of a challenge, plus Riverford. Fortnightly big shop already done last Saturday. Already at risk as I am mean to take a bottle in on Friday for a school tombola and alcohol is expensive. Will still give it a stab though as I really do have a lot of stuff in cupboards etc and DH is now away until Sunday, so a lot less needed to feed everyone.

I've budgeted for £40 a week Riverford, £110 a fortnight for WR, £25 a week Lidl, £25 fortnightly for zero waste shop and £50 a month for bulk purchases like flour, hot chocolate, beans, oats etc. This would leave me still with £144 in "debt", so I am looking to shave little bits off all these amounts to see if I can at least get below £100 and clear it next month. I already know I generally spend £30 a week at Riverford, so there's £40 off already there.

QueenJess

Very busy work day today, then kids clubs to contend with. I am going for easy food today, so dinner will be jacket potato with beans and cheese followed by fairy cakes that DD made at the weekend. I stewed up the rest of the rhubarb that I will have with yogurt. Lunch will be feta cheese salad to use up as many bits and pieces in the fridge as I can before my Riverford delivery tomorrow.

Mortgage payment day and my new mortgage payment for the term is 60p less than I expected. It must be to do with the timing of when they calculate the payments as it must have included another month of my over payments. I've rounded down the mortgage for this month to £108,700.

QueenJess

I can't wait for this work week to be over, although I'm not sure next week will be any better.. my eyes hurt as I'm so tired 😴. Didn't make the £25 Lidl target this week because both schools demanded chocolates/wine to be brought in for summer fairs. To be fair, I spent about £10 on the school stuff and £34 in total in Lidl this week, so I would have totally made my budget without it. Still on an expected -£144 for this month, so I will be looking for savings at the big fortnightly shop next week.

I did splash out on a huge chicken for Sunday because DH will be back and I thought the least he could do is cook me a massive roast! Am taking a break from work right now as I have a lunchtime meeting (urgh) and frankly I just need half an hour to regain some sanity. So I am spending it in the kitchen of course. I have a chocolate cake (made with condensed milk - a very old recipe) in the oven and am about to make pesto with the carrot tops from my Riverford delivery.

Lunch today will be more feta and beetroot salad to use up the feta and tons of salad leaves, then dinner will be leftover tomato pasta for the kids or they can share my asparagus, courgette and spinach pesto pasta (with extras of course for my Monday work lunch). Dessert will be the cake. I will treat myself mid afternoon with stewed rhubarb and yogurt.

Looking forward to DH being back tomorrow evening as my fridge is rammed 🤣

QueenJess

I was going to have a very quiet day today since my eyes hurt with tiredness, but I ended up doing loads of house stuff as otherwise I will never have time to do it. Popped to B&M for loads of soda crystals on the way back from Ikea for a tiny plant and two packs of rechargeable AA batteries. Also went to Lidl on the way back for compost and emergency eggs (someone decided to leave 1 egg in the box at the bottom of fridge pile despite us always using the box at the top so we didn't have enough for the planned lunch). Then I went to the garden centre for another pot as I ran out of houseplant pots.

This afternoon I picked a pile of redcurrants from the garden (doesn't seem quite a good a haul as last year), sowed some lettuce leaves and then had a major rearrangement of the houseplants. About 5 got repotted, some moved positions and I had to separate some of them due to size or having babies. My spider plant had to be cut out of the plastic pot because it had outgrown the pot so much I couldn't get it off - there was no soil left 😂. In the rearrangement there was the odd casaulty which I've dipped in root powder and put all in one pot to see if they grow. If they do it'll be a disaster as I've no idea where they would all go! I guess I could list them on Buy Nothing to see if people want them. My aloe vera has had another baby - I'm practically providing one for each house where I live at this point! All my friends and family already have one 😂

I am finally having a lie down as I feel dreadful. DH is cooking the chicken roast with all the trimmings and we have chocolate cake and yogurt for dessert. Lunch was omlettes and salad. The fridge is slightly lighter than yesterday.

dawnybabes

ooh, I have some condensed milk in the cupboard, I’m off to google the recipe

QueenJess

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82026950#Comment_82026950

It was this one: https://www.lavenderandlovage.com/2022/07/frys-condensed-milk-chocolate-cake.html

The cake is nice, but quite dense. It tastes best warmed up with a spoon of yogurt. I also needed to use up some condensed milk, which is why I made it (plus I was trying to make something that didn’t need too many eggs as I didn’t have that many left).

QueenJess

Food shopping fail today on the back of struggling with a high work and out of work workload for weeks. Feel close to breaking point with no help as usual. Yesterday I made sourdough, pesto and dinner (pesto pasta), changed beds and did two loads of washing (and hung them up), then was expected to have all the answers to what was for lunch and dinner and ended up making a mackerel salad for me and DH (I asked for help and the response was to go and buy something despite us having food in. When I asked what he would buy he said salad. Ur… Riverford delivery was yesterday with plenty of salad 🙄). I asked what DH was doing halfway through the day and it turned out he wasn't even working yesterday. sigh

I am completely exhausted and hampered by not fun time of life symptoms like fatigue, memory problems and random emotional changes. Came back from food shopping and told everyone to put stuff away and I am now on strike. I am not making lunch, dinner or doing anything else (although I do have to take DS to gymnastics later). Have gone back to bed for a rest.

Anyway, it made for some very poor shopping, but I hadn't the head space left to do a good job. So back to using everything up and putting off food shopping for as long as I can. We have so much food… I spent £22 in Al on oats, weetabix stock up etc, £140 in wr on so much stuff and £47 in the zero waste shop.

Work also stupidly busy and it seems I am the only person who can fix things 🙄.

Oh - just remembered I'm going to the theatre later with my sister… I pre-made my dinner yesterday (extra pesto pasta) that I'll eat at my sisters. Dessert will be iced buns I made on Thursday and I had forgotten how good they are!

Jessy103

Oh Jess, that's not good, please look after yourself x

Bluegreen143

Sending hugs Jess, that’s not good at all. You do so much with all your cooking etc around a full time job. Definitely worth rearranging some of your household jobs, for instance your DH could have done the changing of the beds even if he’s not much of a cook.

My advice is two fold. I’ve gone through phases of writing all the jobs on the whiteboard which helps my DH see what needs done and he’ll add the jobs he sees too (he’s more in tune with garden or maintenance tasks). And also if I am busy with work I just don’t do housework and I find my DH gets fed up of living in a mess and does it. You do need nerves of steel for this approach and I tend to keep my room tidy so I have somewhere to retreat to! I don’t mean it in a passive aggressive sense, just if I don’t have time/energy for doing something I don’t add it to my list and trust someone else in the family will do it, maybe not the way or timeframe I would have, and it creates much more domestic harmony than me nagging or losing the rag. Ultimately it’s not specifically my responsibility to do it as we both work. My DH isn’t someone who enjoys living in dirt so this may not work for those men who are totally blind to it.