Happy Sloth Clawing back

Happy_Sloth

Ok so it's official i'm rubbish at meal planning in it's traditional format. 

It's not that i don't plan normally, i just don't normally decide a concrete list of what im going to make.

• My way of doing things is to look in the fridge on a monday,
•  identify the food that is going out of date, 
•  write it on a white board i have on the front of the fridge
• At this point i usually have an idea what i can use everything for but nothing set in stone.  
• Then each day try decide what i will cook trying to use the items identified where possible.     

Anyway ... creating a list of concrete items doens't work for me, it gets too easily messed up by my husband deciding to cook or my son going out suddenly.  

While my diary isn't and shouldn't be just about food what we eat.  Given my current situation and the fact that i am trying to do a low spend month for food it seems especially relevant. 

Anyway... scrapping the weekly meal plan,  going back to daily mindfulness.  

It's monday so i've just done my whiteboard of food on the hitlist.  

• 1/2 swead 
• Old Potato's (some starting to go abit soft so need using) 
• Leek 
• Spring Onion 
• Tomatos 
• 1/2 Red Cabbage 
• 1/2 Cauliflower 
• Savoy Cabbage 
• Bell Peppers 
• Parsnips 
• Beetroot
• Yellow Sticker Gammon Joint 
• Yellow Sticker Minced Beef. 
• Leftover Cauliflower Cheese
• Cold meat / Ham 
  

Other veg that needs using but isn't in immediate danger of going bad. 

• New Potatos 
• Carrots 
• Sweet Potatos 
• Onions

Plan for today... 

I think i'm going to take the minced beef, old potatos, leek and some carrots and onions and some green lentils and make 2 cottage pies.  One we will eat tonight with the leftover cauliflower cheese, some cabbage and some airfried parsnips.  The other one will go into the freezer.  

Make some more pasta sauce, i already have 4 containers in the freezer but some of the peppers and tomatos are looking sad so anything sad looking is going in and then it can be frozen.  

im finally going to sort out and pickle the beetroot... it take up too much space in the fridge and once it's cooked i can start eating some of it for lunches.  

Turn the red cabbage into coleslaw i may even pickle some, for the same reason as the beetroot once it's ready to eat i will generally start using it.  

Happy_Sloth

Yesterday when more or less to plan,  i made the cottage pies and cooked the beetroot... wow there was alot of beetroot! 

I didn't quite get the the pasta sauce or the coleslaw but i did make up a bunch of Yorkshire puddings to freeze enough for 2-3 meals at least.  They are a good way of padding out the dinner without a ton of additional expense.  

I'm going to go and make the coleslaw in a minute so i can have a ham salad for lunch using as much of the beetroot as i can get away with.  

Today i REALLY need to sort out the pasta sauce, before the tomato's are not good for anything and i need to sort out what we will have for tea.  Im thinking of doing the gammon joint with veg and new potato's.  If i cook that today i can see how much gammon is left tomorrow and make either a pasta bake or gammon/beans casserole.  Casserole might be better as it will give me an opportunity to use some more of the peppers up. 

Only 5 days till pay day for me, i get paid on the 25th.  I will need more bread/milk before then but nothing else from the shops.  

I do need to sit down and look at my bills account today, figure out what happened.  I worked out a couple of weeks ago that i had £16 left in the account once the bills came out,   a few days ago i noticed that we where almost at the bottom of the overdraft to transferred in £150 out of my personal overdraft,  looking at it again today it still doesn't look like it's going to make it to the 25th without going over the overdraft limit. 

I know i have in all honesty spent more than the £16 on food, i bought a few Yellow sticker items (beef mince, gammon and yesterday some muffins) ... but i would say i've spent no more than £30 so the £150 additional i added should have covered it. 

So i really need to figure out what has gone out of the account that i didn't account for   not very happy if im honest.  we should have had enough in there. 

Grrr i'll report back when i work out what it was.   

rdone

Mmm I'd forgotten about making coleslaw, so much tastier when made yourself and lasts longer!  Plus I can add apple which I love.  Thanks for the idea!  Pretty sure I have all ingredients too.

I was going to suggest maybe taking a month off the veg box to allow you to eat everything up?  Especially as it's all quite "wintery" veg and if you're anything like me I hate eating food out of season.  Don't ask me to eat a stew in summer even if it's raining! 

Happy_Sloth

rdone said:

Mmm I'd forgotten about making coleslaw, so much tastier when made yourself and lasts longer!  Plus I can add apple which I love.  Thanks for the idea!  Pretty sure I have all ingredients too.

I was going to suggest maybe taking a month off the veg box to allow you to eat everything up?  Especially as it's all quite "wintery" veg and if you're anything like me I hate eating food out of season.  Don't ask me to eat a stew in summer even if it's raining! 

Yes i am thinking about skipping the veg box next month, parsnips in particular are starting to overrun the house.  We can always buy the odd thing like salad stuff to supplement.  

Happy_Sloth

Ok so i think i've established what happened with my finances.  

Firstly we had an extra £100 bill this month to set up our new Will.  It was needed but didn't help the finances.  
Secondly the electric bill went up to £450 per month from £300 so that was an additional £150!  

Other than that there was no real additional expenses. 

But looking at the bills we have about £4200 regular expenses going out per month,  because my husband wasn't working we've for the past couple of months only been able to put in £3,200 + £500 = £3700 (My income + DS1's rent) 

Which long story short means our outgoings have been greater than our income for the past few months and have been slowly spiralling. Which explains why we are in our overdraft the way to are.  

While my husband did get a full pay last month none of it hit the joint because he had some debt to repay.  With hindsight we should have only paid some of the debt and thrown some extra into the joint account for bills, but we didn't realise we needed it.  

Anyway mystery solved... i've spoken to the OH and he's agreed to put £500 into the joint next month,  so moving forward we will have £4200 in, and £4200 out (assuming i spend my full budgeted amount on food, which of course i hope not too at least for a few months)   OH will then use the rest of his money to tackle the home improvements and debt. 

Happy_Sloth

New month, New Budget!  

Ok so i'm spoken to the OH and he's putting £600 into the bills account when he gets paid at the end of the month,  the rest of his money is going to be used for some small debt repayment and on some improvements/decorating the livingroom. 

The decoration of the living room has been planned for 3 years!  but with the stress of some other work we have done plus covid it was delayed and delayed.  Im so excited,  most of the money for that is already set aside,  the wallpaper has been sitting in a box for 12 months! 

All really need to pay for is a carpet and some new radiators so we shouldn't get into too much trouble.  We have agreed as a couple though this is the only thing we are getting done this year!  once it's done we are focusing on debt repayment and saving for Christmas.  

So budget...  i've managed to throw an extra £100 into the joint this month,  it was in the negative so much last month i want to try and get it straight.  

So income for this month is  £3300 me + £500 DS1 + £600 OH =  Income : £4,400...   

Outgoings := 

• Scheduled payments £3,100 
• £500 (food budget) 
• Nieces wedding (£300 on hotels and probably another £100-150 on petrol, drinks etc..) = £450
• Camping weekend   (£200 on petrol, treats, visits to things etc) I expect to get the food money out of our normal food budget. 

So that's £4100 in total expected outgoings leaving £300 ish spare for treats in the month. However my son (DS2) is coming home from UNI for 3weeks in May with his girlfriend!  he will easily cost me that somehow!  

The cupboards are still looking pretty full DS2 is vegatarian and honestly i have a good portion of my big freezer full of veggy food so it will be a good opportunity to eat a bunch of it.  

I am hoping NOT to spend my entire budget on food this month.. however with DS2 home all bets are off haha...  i would really like to spend around £250 so i can use the other £250 to buy curtains to go in the Livingroom.  That would be lovely... as unlikely as it is.  Otherwise my peach curtains are going to look really weird with teal walls for a few months!  

Does anyone else's children come for a visit and eat them out of house and home? 

Plans for today, i need to sort out my kitchen cupboards there is a bunch of stuff that was OOD LAST time i did a big organise and didn't throw away. 

TBH we've been good and eaten a bunch of it, but i've decided if it's still there it just needs to go into the bin this time around. 

I really need to figure out a better way to organise the cupboards, they are not messy or especially full as we need spares of things in the basement.  But things still get lost and un-eaten!  and it's very disorganised.  It's hard to know which one to look in for the thing you want.