Learning to walk before I run

edinburgher

@Suffolk_lass - oops - causing confusion wherever I go! Fish sticks (as they are known in our house) are also referred to as seafood sticks or surimi. Not to be confused with fish sticks (i.e. American English for fish fingers). It was a nice meal, but DD didn't fancy it as she has a cold and is eating less and Mrs E had a late lunch out with her pals. Today was leftover cassoulet beans topped with some finely diced red onions and capers, a baked potato and pan fried YS yellowfin tuna fillet with a little butter and lemon juice. It tasted better than it sounds, even Mrs E gave grudging approval

I went grocery shopping tonight and it was a lot dearer than recent weeks (£89). This did include a case of tuna (L1dl offer of 48 cans for £14.99), cleaning products and a few treat items. Next week should be cheaper as the freezer is groaning with cooked pork shoulder, chicken breast and frozen veggie options.

£4 OPed and £4 paid into my ISA (regular Monday payment).

All in all today was cost negative, as my lovely M-I-L transferred us the £160 we paid for a very good condition Silver Cross pram that we bought from someone locally on FB. It was a good deal (£800 when bought 4 years ago), should do us fine for the next couple of years and hopefully still have a wee bit of resale value afterwards?

Right - off to bed as getting up at 05:30!

Alchemilla

Night night Ed.

Baileys_Babe

edinburgher said:

@Suffolk_lass - oops - causing confusion wherever I go! Fish sticks (as they are known in our house) are also referred t as seafood sticks or surimi. Not to be confused with fish sticks (i.e. American English for fish fingers). It was a nice meal, but DD didn't fancy it as she has a cold and is eating less and Mrs E had a late lunch out with her pals. Today was leftover cassoulet beans topped with some finely diced red onions and capers, a baked potato and pan fried YS yellowfin tuna fillet with a little butter and lemon juice. It tasted better than it sounds, even Mrs E gave grudging approval

Me & dd are fans of fish sticks, we eat them as they are, I've never thought to use them as an ingredient.

Tonight's dinner sounds delicious 😋

Suffolk_lass

I should have stuck with the fish finger illusion. I googled Surimi and it really does not sound very appealing (the way it is described). The yellow-fin tuna sounds more my thing thanks!

We had a really simple salad (as I shopped yesterday) and added cold roast pork and pickles, and a small but crusty jacket potato. Feeling moderately virtuous as we had yogurt and honey to follow but then a part eaten bar of chocolate fell out of the fruit bowl (which was replenished with fruit about four hours previously), so we shared it, just to stop it falling on the floor again, you understand...

We also bought a second hand (or maybe more than two as we think it was c1960s) Silver Cross pram for £50 and replaced the solid rubber tyres, the sunshade and the leather straps (it was sprung suspension with these) plus a tin of coach paint to touch in a scuff. With a new mattress it was like new, and tall enough for DH to take DS out without looking absurd pushing it (DH is 6'4", or 194cm). It was like this one. We sold it twelve years later for over £350 via the bay, to a film props company. Looking at the prices of new ones, the hoarder in me has a twinge of regret that it was sold

Watty1

Huge fan of the Silver Cross pram but bet they are hard to find 3rd or 4th hand now!

edinburgher

@Suffolk_lass - I'm reliably assured by a relative who used to sell luxury seafood for a living that the quality is generally much better than you might think! 

Also, at the risk of dashing any lingering Mary Poppins visuals, it's a modren Silver Cross and can be lifted with one hand  It also comes with a nifty adjustable handle - ideal as I'm 8" taller than Mrs E.

Last night was an absolute riot  Mrs E took her sweet time in the bath and I dashed in just after 10 as I needed to get to bed, leaving her in inexplicably grumpy mood (I've been doing my class on the same days for 13 weeks, so no surprise)? Tabby cat then brought in a dead bird, which she left for her not so little brother Maine Coon cat who basically exploded it across the sitting room. Just when Mrs E had been able to clean it up (I was in bed by that point), DD got up as she's under the weather. We laughed about it this morning, but not at the time  Cue us all being like half shut knives today.

No money saving, but more tasty grub. Veggie sausages for second breakfast (a slice of toast and PB for my pre-exercise breakfast), a mahoosive poached chicken breast and salad for lunch and a moreish chicken one pot that Mrs E made with some very rich brown chicken stock I made yesterday for dinner. Basically chicken, rice, onion, grated carrots and peas with parmesan 

Paspatur

Fake crab – called crab stick, crab cake or surimi – is a gluey emulsion made from the pulverised meat of cheaper species of fish, bound together with additives and salt to give it the flavour and mouth-feel of more expensive crab.
Sorry as the daughter of a fisherman this is a big no for me
Fish and seafood were free for us, lobster or crab for bedtime snack and fish for main meals
My fish and seafood still come direct from the sea to the fish merchant to me but I do live nearer a fishing port than you do
I had an after school job once in a fish merchant and asked for a "fry" (a free parcel of fish)  only to be laughed at as we were processing coley which went to England for fish fingers

edinburgher

A lobster is at least £6-8 (assuming tiny and frozen), with a Cromer crab or similar costing about £6. That would be a special treat for anyone whose dad wasn't a fisherman, not one ingredient in a cheap weekday dinner 

Alchemilla

Like half shut knives! Never heard that one.
Mrs E is expecting, right? She's entitled to all the grumpy she wants xxx

Karmacat

That use of "half shut knives" is great very vivid.

No experience with seafood here, none at all.  Though there's a family story from the time when my mum moved back into her parents council house, when me and my brother were tiny.  My grandad worked on the river, helping the tugs to dock the big ships that used the Mersey, and he tossed crab/lobster pots overboard (I don't know how he fished, actually, that's gone) but he brought back the biggest crab he'd ever fished, alive, and released it into the kitchen, whereupon I ran around chasing it  I was about 2 years old.  I bet there aren't many city people who've done that  though there's probably a good reason - this was in the late 1950s, when pollution levels in the Mersey were appalling, the river smelt bad.