2021 Frugal Living Challenge

joedenise

@willow_loulou - most general veg oils are rapeseed anyway so it will be fine.  If I have a choice between rapeseed or sunflower I'd go for the rapeseed one.

DawnW

@willow_loulou rapeseed oil is fine. What do you usually use? If it isn't a specific oil such as sunflower or olive it probably is, or contains rape seed oil anyway

Oops cross posted with @joedenise

MandM90

@annieb64 that correlates with what I've heard about walnuts. We're 30 so if we stick a few in now we'll hopefully have a few decades of enjoyment still, or at least someone will.
@willow_loulou thanks I think I'll give it a go in feb when my pocket money renews. Spent most of this month's on a fancy journal to bullet journal in.

Realised with lockdown I'm saving £30/month with DD not getting the bus, and ~£100 a month if we stick to our no takeaway pledge. We're also trying to drink less. We're certainly buying less alcohol but someone* may have had a sneaky bourbon the last two nights, but we have two bottles in the drinks cabinet, so it's decluttering, right, RIGHT?!
*that someone is me
Got news today that the title deeds from the vendor were received by our solicitors, mortgage valuation next week, fingers crossed the report is done speedily. It's the first time I've ever had a proper valuation done. Where I lived before they always just did a drive by to check it existed. I suppose a London commuter belt house is a bit less risky than a country house in Northern Ireland!

willow_loulou

@Frugalistamama I hope the kitchen was at least warm after that! 

willow_loulou

joedenise said:

@willow_loulou - most general veg oils are rapeseed anyway so it will be fine.  If I have a choice between rapeseed or sunflower I'd go for the rapeseed one.

DawnW said:

@willow_loulou rapeseed oil is fine. What do you usually use? If it isn't a specific oil such as sunflower or olive it probably is, or contains rape seed oil anyway

Oops cross posted with @joedenise

Thanks both! I normally have a tiny bottle of just sunflower oil as I only use it to roast or occasional fried egg, it’s M&S one and I like the taste but I’m having to Asd@ for now.  I use olive for Greek salad etc but it doesn’t roast well imo. It looks okay but is literally 3 x the size of my usual bottle! 

Viking_mfw

willow_loulou 

Asd@ is due soon, my oil has been substituted for rapeseed oil, I’ve never used it so that will be interesting! Has anyone tried it? If I wasn’t completely out I’d send it back. 

If you've ever had something labelled "vegetable oil" you probably have had rapeseed oil. It's just the same as sunflower. 

Viking_mfw

Oops, should have read over the page before posting. 

Nice Olio haul this evening - potatoes, cucumber, croissants, bread. I don't think I'm going to have to buy bread this year at this rate. 

Frugalistamama

willow_loulou said:

@Frugalistamama I hope the kitchen was at least warm after that! 

Yes it was. I was wondering why it was so warm that day!

cw18

MandM90 said:

O_Laney what would you recommend as an easy craft to get into? I've ordered a journal to start bullet journalling. I used to sew a lot but it's so hard to get everything out and put it away again. We only really have the dining table here, and I have 10 month old breastfed baby so finding time and space is hard. We are moving to a 5 bed soon with a few reception areas I could steal for sewing, yay.

I used to do cross-stitch - and really should dig out all the kits I never got around to doing and get stuck in again.    If you've done sewing I would expect you to find it easy to pick up, and if I could do it on a train journey to work I'm sure you'd be able to manage it around the baby     I didn't do it on the train home as those were always packed - but an early morning start meant I could grab a seat with a table, and rarely ended up sharing the table.



My first Olio pickup (planned for yesterday) got delayed a day.   I was just on my way out of the door when the lady messaged to say she'd overslept and forgotten to leave it out for me.    As I was about to leave today a new listing came up for some surplus homemade coconut macaroons within very easy distance of home - so I shot off a message asking for those as well.    Almost 8 hours (and 20.5 miles later) I arrived home with a celeriac (I've never had before, but keep trying to talk myself into buying one to try it), a full and unopened 'tube' of ready-rolled puff pastry, an opened to try jar of flavoured coffee, and a package with 5 macaroons.   (I did pick up 7, but I was feeling a tad pekish by the time I picked them up on the last leg of the walk ).     Now I need to figure out how I'm going to cost 'freebies' to my grocery budget, as I'd really like to figure out what a reasonable annual budget is by logging everything this year - and if I hadn't picked up the celeriac and pastry I'd have had to pay for something else to make a meal (the lady also pointed me in the direction of the celeriac and leek wellington recipe she'd originally planned to use them for, so I still need to pick a few things up as it looks and sounds yummy).

cw18

thriftylynny said:

Really enjoying this thread & tips ! Been trying to set up the olio app & my samsung won't let me do it , just realised it might only work on apple devices ,is that right?

Works fine on my Samsung.   I treated myself to an A21s in October (from Amaz0n on a special deal price and on 5 months interest free) as I was getting ready to chuck my Moto through a top floor window even before it went for a 'little swim' that it didn't fully recover from