Ding! Ding! All change, please... (now replaced with new diary on MFW)

EssexHebridean

Ha - I'd forgotten about your saga Cheery! We're hoping the current owner - who we saw when we viewed - will remember quite how taken we were with the place, and how interested we were in the history of it too when he was telling us. if there is any sentiment there which there may be then it just may be they'd sooner sell to people who love it, rather than people who just want to go in and change everything - we'll see! 

MrEH has just suggested that if we've not heard back on the offer on OCO by tomorrow morning we try to line up a viewing for "The One with the Beams" for Saturday - this sounds like a plan to me. 

Just been over to the Grocery Challenge to declare my January budget - I'm going with £225 for the month, that's an increase of £25 on our 2022 standard - we sat down and discussed this a few weeks back and increasingly it's getting stupidly difficult to get that amount to stretch particularly on the 5 week months allowing for the veg box (fortnightly) and wanting to continue buying at the farmers market (monthly) too - hence the increase. I'm hatching a plan to  make the opening month a pretty frugal one though - realistically we could do with working the freezer(s) down a bit ahead of moving - although we'll likely have the chance to keep some food frozen (our second freezer can hopefully go to Mum's in advance and then we can ship some stuff across to it, then back to our other freezer once we're moved in) we'd prefer that it's not too much. Freezer 1 is very well stocked at the moment - freezer 2 less so, but ideally I need to dedicate some time at the weekend to batch cooking some of what is in F1 to turn into meals to stock F2! All in all, I want to refocus on:
- Proper meal planning
- Frugal shopping
- Batch cooking
- Regular freezer audits and actively planning meals around what we have.

We've established that F2 doesn't cost a horrific amount to run - I'm expecting a monthly cost of in the region of £7 - so if we can get our moneys worth in terms of batch cooking to bring shopping bills down, that will work fine. 

This weekend I would like to cook up a big batch of chickpeas - we're approaching the end of our current tinned stocks and it makes sense for me to cook the dried ones I have and portion from there. Also get some mince out and make up another batch of ragu - done as I have before padded out with red lentils and finely chopped mushrooms - it makes the mince go much further and we both really enjoy the added flavour from the mushrooms in particular. I will also plan to cook the lamb shoulder from the freezer for Sunday I think - and I need to remember the experimental frozen Yorkshire puddings I have too.

We'll be cutting back on storecupboard stuff between now and when we move - and in fact actively looking to eat our way through some of what is in there. The exception to this might be marmalade which I suspect MrEH will want to get the oranges for this weekend or next. We get those from the farm shop - and that's another thing I'd like to get back to this year - using the Farm shop more. It's a 15 mile drive away, but is extremely good for locally produced stuff and they are a really nice family business. I've actually just signed up to their reward card which comes with various special offers attached - so that could be an incentive to go more frequently - perhaps aiming for once per month.

Let's see how all this goes! 

Makingabobor2

I wake up a lot in the night thinking of things...its weird how it only ever happens at night. Some nights I just feel like getting up and doing stuff, but I never do. I do however often put the light on and write notes of things to remember....lol

milann

Running the food stock down makes sense. Especially having your 2 nd freezer at your mums 👍

foxgloves

That's a very economical amount of grocery budget, @EH. We budget quite a lot more than that, although we are experimenting with a monthly reduction of £30. I've been thinking for a while that it isn't so much where we shop that makes the most difference, but what's on the list, which of course comes back to canny meal planning. As an example, I looked up the price of a particular tinned item (butter beans) at the two supermarkets we most often use - the supermarket which is perceived to be the cheaper of the two had their own label ones priced at 85p. The supermarket widely considered to be the most expensive were selling their own label at 70p on the same day. The first supermarket did have the KTC 'world food aisle' ones at 65p, but the point I'm making is that I'd been feeling for a while that since food prices began shooting up, the difference between different supermarkets isn't as noticeable as it used to be. Our last 2 shops were done at Waitr*se & came in well under budget, but of course, it does make a difference having a good local market for meat & fresh fruit & veg.
If I needed to reduce our grocery budget further, I could do it, which is good to know.
F

EssexHebridean

Happy Thursday all - or "weekend-eve" as it is in my world! 

MAB - not convinced MrEH would be too chuffed if I put the light on in the middle of the night!   I do occasionally read on my iPad kindle app during the night, but mostly if I've been lying there restless for a while I'll just get up and either potter for a bit, or sit in the living room and read - I usually drop off fairly fast when I go back to bed again.  Milann I still need to run the "freezer in Mum's shed" idea past her - but it would only be for a few days so hopefully she'd be OK with it! (She does occasionally have a look on here so here's hoping she doesn't read it here first!) 

It's interesting on the grocery budget Foxgloves - I'm conscious that related to our income, we do budget low. And it does include most of the stuff we buy/use/eat too. For shopping I use a combination of T's and Al's most often - things like tinned beans, tomatoes etc always come from Al's although an occasional F@rmf00ds visit often turns up bargains on the tomatoes front. We buy very little branded stuff. Meat wise, most comes from the Farmers market off the back of our monthly visit there - and we don't eat things like steak at home. I do buy supermarket chickens but always free range - eggs are always FR too. We probably eat far less fish than we really should - this is something I'm keen to improve on in fact. I do buy supermarket meat from time to time - mostly when I have a rare visit to Mozzas. Things that come outside of the grocery budget: anything we buy at the Good Food Show, that has a budget of its own. Then we order things like rapeseed oil and flavoured mayo from a supplier that we found at the GFS and really like - that's usually budgeted from the accumulated underspend in the grocery account but not included in the monthly budget. I am prepared to shop around to find the bargains to a degree - and we have a pretty good idea of what stuff it is worth getting from where - we also run with an idea of "target prices" on a lot of items, so will pass them by if they're not priced right. I think a lot of it is buying things like tinned items from Al's though - BUT I also think that the gaps there are closing - tinned beans have seen huge price increases recently, using Butter Beans as an example, last time I bought they were sub-50p - now 59p a tin. I find the Trolley app really useful to compare prices in various places too - and also to get an idea whether a FF "bargain" really IS a bargain! That budget also rarely includes any alcohol either - that tends to get bought/budgeted separately - and often from personal spends.

My expensive toiletries site purchases are being delivered today, in theory - I say that because they are also due to be delivered by "Evri" - as in "There is Evri chance we'll leave it on the wrong doorstep" in my experience. Fingers crossed. MrEH has been given the heads-up to keen an ear open from just after lunch anyway.

MSE Stuff:
Today should be a NSD as far as I know - and no reason why MrEH will scupper that today with inconvenient "needing to pay to travel to work" issues either!  
By a miracle we got post again yesterday - that's twice in a week, which is the best postal service we've had pretty much since some time in 2019. That delivery contained my cheque from EDF (Sent 21/12) which I have scanned to pay in to FD - although it's not showing yet and I did notice that the rear cheque photo the app took was atrociously blurry so I'd guess that's delaying it. that will go to the New House Fund as soon as it clears though though. 
Risotto for tea tonight - using the remaining YS'd chipolatas and a tub of stock from the freezer. I'll also use up the last of the leeks in that I think, and probably some frozen mushrooms and the last of a packet of frozen peas. 
Tomorrow's job is most definitely to write a shopping list as I know there are some bits of frozen veg we'll need, for a start. (peas!) that might also prompt me to write the meal plan too.
I sat down yesterday evening and updated our budget - I use the MSE Budget Planner tool which I find works well - I need to add the finishing touches but will then make a further copy and re-do it for presumed costs once we have a mortgage in place to really see where we will stand, and see where we might need to make changes/tweaks. 

Other stuff:
I didn't run yesterday. It started raining mid afternoon and never entirely stopped - and regular readers know what that means for my best intentions around running! I might well end up with a run tomorrow though as because of the valuations I could see myself not going to the gym. 
What might be the final bits of sealing in the bathroom got done first thing this morning - yes, before I left for work! There were a couple of bits with poor coverage which were drawing the eye a little more than we wanted - so those have been touched in and hopefully will dry OK during the day today.
Voluntary role stuff done as far as we could last night - we're now being delayed by waiting for some information from someone else that informs our next step - that person knew the deadline for it (end of December) and has already had an email reminder from us, and we think from someone else too. they now have a further - rather more terse - reminder copied in to our Festival organiser. We'll check back in to it over the weekend probably and see if we can move on - MrEH has one job to do today as well. 

That's about it for now I think! 

Makingabobor2

Love your description of Ev/i  They really are atrocious, and our delivery lady is so miserable Not a pleasure to deal with them I must say

joedenise

Am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with Evri deliveries?  The ones I have problems with are Royal Mail Parcel deliveries!!!

themadvix

joedenise said:

Am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with Evri deliveries?  The ones I have problems with are Royal Mail Parcel deliveries!!!

No, mine are fine too - but we’ve had the same guy for several years and he’s very reliable and friendly and has a brain. When he went on holiday, we were given a taste of the normal Evri service levels!!

Paspatur

My Evri guy is wonderful although he works crazy hours and can come very late in the evening
He came during the really cold snowy spell in December and warned me that my path was icy and I need to be careful, I told him he was delivering a snow shovel!
He came at nearly 10pm on 30th December looking exhausted with a parcel I was not expecting until well into January
I gave him a big box of Hotel Chocolat choccies (after asking if him or his family eat chocolate)

foxgloves

Our regular Evri lady is a star - always arrives within the delivery window, polite, efficient & correctly follows instructions for if we are out. Apart from our Postie who is fab, she's our best courier service by far.
F