Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@PennysIntoPounds - Yes, it was quite a shop! I am not native to the region in which I live & as it wasn't too much of a train journey into London from where I grew up, we visited during every school holiday & half term. This continued for another couple of decades when I was staying with Mum & Dad for a few days. I can still remember buying those boots from Shelley's. I had the plum coloured ones lined with lime green & my sister had the blue ones lined with pink!

@sarah_diamond & @BalileysBabe - It has saved me so much money 'trying before I buy' on books borrowed from the library before making the decision whether to buy them myself. This is particularly true of cookery books. I've just borrowed a slow cooker book which was nice to look at & fine, but having had a proper sit-down & look through it, I could see it duplicated quite a few recipes I already had (as in they were similar) but another I borrowed a couple of years ago contained a lot of different things. I remember going through it with a pile of bookmarks I made from old birthday cards (I use these to mark the recipes needed as I do our weekly meal plans), stopping to bookmark each recipe I thought I would either probably or definitely make. This is an easy way to see if it is worth spending around £20 on a book, which it clearly isn't if only a couple of recipes have been highlighted. I always do that now.
I think with skills/knowledge, we have entered a culture where the first port of call is asking someone online, rather than seeking to find & build knowledge in a more resilient way. I am on a foraging FB group - it's a lovely group & some very knowledgeable people, but it really strikes me how many beginner foragers will pick their berries or whatever, then have to post asking 'Can anyone tell me how to make jam'. I think a baseline knowledge of preserving, drying, what can be frozen, etc, etc, is essential for anyone learning how to forage, so again, time to borrow a nice pile of books from the library & browse their way around the subject before spending money on kit. Not that I think there is anything wrong with asking someone for information. It's all part of learning, but only part of it.

Ash having such a noisy wash behind me, I can hardly hear myself think!
F

foxgloves

Well, let's see if I can get this post on without it getting eaten! I do know about that method of protecting my post, @Pip, but  I just can't see myself ever faffing around with actually doing it. Thanks for the reminder though.
After a solid morning of dank drizzle, the sun has put his hat on & is streaming through the window. It's been a different sort of Monday today as Mr F has taken a day back for having to work yesterday, so I did some of my usual Monday jobs yesterday instead - not that you need to know this drivel, of course!
Today's budget-helping bits & pieces:
*Treated ourselves to breakfast at the local village farm shop - used our Personal Spends, so budget-neutral. 
*Did a couple of surveys. Mr F got yet another 2 x £15 studies first thing, so his September PA earnings are already at over £90.......& there's me not yet having broken through the ten quid barrier! 
*Did a minor bit of darning.
*Despite 4 loads of laundry yesterday, there was very little ironing, which saved both my energy & the paid for kind.
*Today's garden pickings: 2 small green peppers, 1 cucumber, last bunch of grapes, 4 courgettes, 400g french beans, a bowl of windfall pears, 5 chillies, 3.65 kg tomatoes, 1/2 a punnet of blackberries & some cavolo nero.
*Sort of generally damp feeling in the greenhouse with the change in the season & as I spotted a bit of botrytis on the indoor tomato plants, I decided to pick all the green fruits & bring them indoors for ripening, which they usually do very well on a tray in the sunny conservatory. Couldn't see any signs of blight, but it can kick in at the end of the season in the more vulnerable varieties, so Mr F pulled the plants up & chopped them into the garden waste wheelie, which will be emptied this week, so I shall feel we've had our money's worth. Having just picked our final cucumber this year (no. 22), we got rid of those plants too. I will leave the outside tomatoes for a little longer before doing the same, as they are both blight-resistant varieties, but I do generally finish the tomato season by ripening indoors as I reach the point where I am wanting to clear up & prep the garden for next year.
*Plan my first free energy hour which is tomorrow from 1 to 2pm. I have planned to move all sorts of bits & bobs of electricity use to that hour. I am expecting the gas man at some point tomorrow, so hope he doesn't arrive when I need to be charging stuff, doing stuff, etc! 
Well, Mr F wanted to cook, so he is making green bean macaroni cheese, which will use the french beans we picked this morning. We both really like this recipe, which is a BBC Good Food one, if I remember rightly. While the light is still good, I intend to decamp to the conservatory with my shawl knitting as I need to count the stitches & there are a lot. I am hoping I will also be able to knit the few remaining rows before I need to swap to the black silk/merino yarn & learn the complicated looking lace pattern. Will need to do a thorough budget update tomorrow, as there were weekend purchases which require assigning to the correct pots. There was also a non-purchase. I almost bought a dress with pumpkins on it, which I very much liked, but I needed the size up to get a better skim around my chunky midsection & they didn't have one in stock. Sad face at the time, but happy Clothes Pot!
Hope everyone had a lovely weekend.
F x

Makingabobor2

Can't believe the amount of tomatoes you are picking each day....lol.  We are finally getting quite a lot, but think I may need to ripen quite a few indoors as well. I read the other day that you can put them in a brown paper bag with a banana and that will help ripen them.  Think the 2 cherry tomato plants I have, should be called grape tomatoes, some of them are so tiny...lol

foxgloves

Hi @Makingabobor2 - Yes, we have a big tomato harvest but we have 21 plants, so that is probably the main reason we have so many! For ripening green ones, there really is no magic about it or any need to try anything complicated, which is always good news, isn't it? I bring green ones inside & put them on trays in the conservatory window where they'll get plenty of sun. Every 2 or 3 days, I remove those which have ripened for using, or for storing in the fridge. In my experience, the majority will ripen quite naturally doing the sunny tray method. Any that remain green by the time I am either sick of seeing the trays or usually because the temperature in the conservatory is getting much colder, are put into a large paper bag with a peg on the top to keep in any helpful ripening gases & moved into the kitchen. I don't bother with a banana, but including a ripe tomato seems to help, which is probably the same science. Then, just check the bag every few days & remove the red ones as you go along. 
I have taken the indoor 'Roma' variety down today. I still have several 'Consuelo' (a large cherry-type) & 'Oh happy day' growing outside. The fruits on both these varieties have been ripening well, but this will slow down once the weather cools. I will probably take them down at the end of next week if ripening seems to have slowed a lot. If I do it now, I shan't have enough trays as there are heaps & if I spread them on every conservatory surface, table, floor, etc, I reckon the cats will think I've made them a ball pool! I don't yet have enough space cleared in the greenhouse to spread them out for ripening in there, but if I made progress in there, that'd be another option. Busy time of year for veg gardeners, but it's the culmination of all our efforts, isn't it, so is something to celebrate & feel grateful for, I always think & I do love Autumn.
F x

Sun_Addict

I ripen my green tomatoes in a brown box with an apple. It works really well. 

PennysIntoPounds

I'm impressed that you and everyone can remember what to write without putting it in notes when you do it then copying and pasting it! The 'save draft' option on MSE when writing directly is marvellous though.

No-one is invested in other people's diaries without the 'drivel', please continue sharing your days

Mr F is doing so well on the surveys, do you think he's in demand what with being male, when I get the (possibly incorrect) impression most people who do them are women? 

Well done on not buying the cute dress in the bad size!

foxgloves

@PennysIntoPounds - I did wonder if Mr F might be getting all these survey invites because a particular tranche of research is low on male participants of his age group. Recently, as soon as he submits his work, he receives a further invitation. It is working out at about £15 per hour & as he's saving up for something, he's taking part when he feels like devoting a spare hour to it. 
Ohhhh.....better go & investigate suspucious cat activity. Soot has just come in yowling, followed by peculiar scuffle in the hall. I'm hoping he hasn't brought a mouse in, as he's a cracking mouser for a cat who never set a paw outside until he was 7.
Busy day planned & defo do not need a mouse!
F

foxgloves

Afternoon Campers.....glad I'm NOT camping! Grey drizzle here. 
Reasonably productive day & no mouse, unless he dropped it & it's hiding, but I haven't heard one, so that's a positive. Today's budget helping bits as follows:
*Gas engineer came to do our annual servicing - boiler & stove (we have one of those which look exactly like a woodburner but is actually gas). One of the good things about budgeting is not being caught unawares - I had checked the cost of servicing for 2 appliances as the business usually offer a discount on their usual £99 per appliance - Yes, still doing it, so I paid £170 for both & had included this in September's budget.
*Baked bread
*Made pear & blackberry compote which will do us a couple of days for dessert.
*Zero effort for tonight's meal as Mr F made sufficient lovely green bean macaroni cheese to feed us for 2 nights. I may make some mini bruschettas to serve along side as we have the end of a loaf which needs using up & plenty of homegrown tomatoes, garlic & basil.
*Used the time waiting for the gas engineer to sort through a huge bowl of the tomato glut & prepped some in readiness for tomorrow, which I think will have to be some sort of Tomato Day.
*Did my slightly belated Monday budget updates. Quite a lot to do as we had a busy city centre trip at the weekend plus several transactions closer to home. Another underspend on the grocery budget - £19 this time, so with last week's £26 underspend, that's an extra £45 added to the mini-break expenses pot.  
*Did our 1st Free Energy hour with the Cephalopods. Moved as much as I could to the appointed hour - charged up the vacuum, my phone, fitness tracker & laptop & got this morning's laundry onto the heated airer with some added ooomph from the dehumidifyer, as the conservatory gets damp without it. Also made sure I had my lunch break during this time window, so that was a TV episode watched, my sofa-side knitting lamp on & the coffee machine brewing! As we are on gas for heating, hot water & cooking, I couldn't really think of much else I could have done, as I didn't need to do any ironing & Mr F's laptop was fully charged. 
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & porridge pot.
*Did an inventory of our household medicine/first aid box. While we haven't run out of anything, we could do with a stock-up on the sort of over-the-counter stuff it's sensible to have at the ready for winter lergies, should they be thinking of paying us a visit, so I will make sure I buy a few standards when I'm next in the cheap pharmacy.
*Not much around in the way of surveys for me today, but I did one each on YouGov, Ipsos & PA. 
Soot & Ash are already on the windowsill looking out for Mr F.......which is bad news on their part, as he is on a later shift today & won't be home until an hour later than usual. He always does their breakfast & dinner. It was something we started when we first adopted them because with them being here with me on weekdays, we wanted a sure-fire way of them bonding with both of us. They are both very motivated by food, especially Soot (can you believe I did him a small biscuit-hunt at 5am today just to shut him up! He really has the loudest meow!), so it has worked well & we have stuck to it. 
Right, I am off to see if I feel like getting creative with this rather stale end of loaf by turning it into cute little bruschettas. Ooooh, I could get my cutters out.....or could just do square ones & not faff around!
Wishing everyone a peaceful evening. Autumn is with us.
F x

PennysIntoPounds

It certainly is, I found my first conker of the year yesterday. Obviously I brought it home and am treasuring it, because I am five years old 😁

foxgloves

Love conkers. Used to find amazing ones next to the parade ground when I was a little girl & we lived on an RAF camp. So shiny. They will always be my 'gold standard' for conkers.....though as we are currently watching 'The Chestnut man', they also have a new creepier vibe. Read that flipping book ages ago & simply can't recall whodunnit......at least that means I can't do any spoilers for Mr F....or even myself!
F