And now we go again...

EssexHebridean

Hey all - Happy last-day-before-a-four-day-weekend!

Al's near work have been completely cleaned out of the garlic - I'll pop in again later to see if they've restocked. I did get the planned shallots and parsnips at Lil's, and three packets of the crisps as well, although I guess a lot of folk got that coupon as the stock levels were rather low! We're heading back in this evening with a £5 off £40 and will do some stocking up on basics I think - plus using another coupon for 25% off cheese that will come in handy.

Hoping for some more cheap electricity over the weekend - the forecast looks as though it should happen, so we will see. If so then we'll get fully caught up on washing again - I'd like to run the dishwasher on a hot wash as well ideally.

MSE Stuff:

• Lil's coupons for savings and reductions - annoyingly nothing much on the standard coupons this week.
• Cheap easter veg - that should keep us going for pennies for a few weeks
• Managed to top up MrEH's car this morning at the last local filling station to be sub-£1.80 for diesel. Hopefully will find one slightly cheaper elsewhere tomorrow to top mine up.
• £100 sent to the mortgage yesterday
• MrEH has moved some dosh to a S&S ISA for some specific shares which should, down the line, gain us some savings with breakfasts in particular places and similar. The falls in prices recently have actively saved us money here as we've paid substantially less for the shares than we otherwise would have done!
• Already back at £5 payable/£6 pending on Prolific.
• Only a few points off being able to cash out another £10 fruit-based credit on Ipsos too.
• we HAVE to start eating from the freezers again - and as a starting point I've got out turkey, some roasted mushrooms and some green lentils and will do a noodle broth tonight with those in, plus the remaining green beans from the Lil's box I got on saturday.

Jobs for the weekend include:

• A financial summit - just to go through things and ensure we're on track
• lots of garden stuff!
• A proper attack on a meal plan - ideally through to the end of the month.

Sun_Addict

All sounding good. Another one here who needs to eat from the freezers.

rtandon27

@EssexHebridean - we too are going to make April eat from the freezer month!

This upcoming week I'm on leave so it will be a bit easier to tackle it. With OH's variable appetite, we keep stashing extra portions in the freezer and are now full to the brim! So much good food in there, but most of the time he prefers a meal replacement shake.

EssexHebridean

It's so tempting to just pop the leftovers in, isn't it - and I like to make sure that we have choice too…we were doing quite well post-christmas getting them eaten down, but the last few weeks seem to have seen us filling them up again! RT I imagine with little appetite it's mostly about what's the easiest thing for OH to manage to get at least some calories in. Not ideal for either of you, but in the circumstances not something you can help.

I have sausages and eggs on my list for tonight specifically so I can ensure that I make air fryer scotch eggs over the weekend - I'm entirely charmed by the fact that I can produce really excellent scotch eggs at home for well under the price of decent shop bought ones!

EssexHebridean

So here we are at the other side of the East weekend already! A nice one with us - a consciously spendy-ish Friday, it was the only day we had plans to go anywhere, so we had a trip to one of our favourite RSPB reserves (Minsmere in Suffolk) where we had a tasty breakfast and a lovely walk, then a drive along to Aldeburgh where we had ice creams - and another nice if VERY blowy walk, then fish & chips before heading home. Not a cheap day - but a lovely one, and as that was the sum total of the "entertainment" type spending for the weekend, £27.50 each seems perfectly reasonable!

MSE Stuff:

• planned Lil's stock-up on Thursday - lots bought, plenty saved, and cupboards well stocked.
• Went to C0-0p for the ice cream and pizza deal and they were sold out of the ice cream. I did happen on two tubs of the same brand, reduced down to £1.15 each - because of that they couldn't be included in the offer, so I bought those and skipped the pizzas!
• Filled my car up with diesel on the way back on Friday because it was substantially cheaper than at home.
• Sunday was a day of negative prices on Agile - we literally used a weeks-worth of electricity in the day, and made £4.34. Every stitch of clothing that could possibly have been even slightly grubby was washed, as was bedding and towels, the dishwasher ran twice, the house was heated to tropical conditions (and so was the office!) and the dehumidifer ran for 17 hours straight.
• Also got plenty of cooking done - a full roast dinner, a tray of mushrooms and a tray of garlic roasted, two double portions of cauli pasta cheese bake and an additional portion of cheese sauce too.
• This was on top of some negative slots the day before which also saw some washing done, and MrEH made rolls as well so we are well stocked up on those.
• The main work on our reclaimed pallet garden table is done - just the legs to attach now. That staled because we discovered that longer screws will be required - at least I think they will - MrEH was all for continuing with what we had…a small difference of opinion occurred, but allowing that he decided to pause what he was doing, I think the rational approach may have prevailed!
• New mini-greenhouse is built and in place - the cover split on the old one when we took it off last autumn, so we've opted to keep that erected just as open shelving, and have built the new one (bought at the same time in Wilko's closing down sale, so no cost to us at this stage) for use this year.
• More seeds sown- cucumbers, courgettes and squashes this weekend, plus more herbs in the shape of the first bowl of basil.
• Quarterly financial summit was had - some small increases to pots agreed. Generally speaking, all good.
• MrEH discovered that his ISA interest rate had dropped and has immediately opened its replacement at a much better rate and got the old one transferred in - great stuff!

Intention for this week is a very simple and short shopping list, with next week's meals almost entirely coming from the freezer. MrEH is out on Friday night so I can throw together whatever I fancy for tea - it may yet end up being a big bowl of some form of salad - pasta, or bean, or pasta and bean…! I also want to get out on my bike again - I did a short ride last night just to see how my back felt about it, and everything feels OK today, so a bit more distance on friday I think although probably still not a massively long one. Aim for this month is just to get used to it, and to tick off my basic monthly goal on Strava - 25 miles cycling. After that it will need to head off for its free 6 week service - when they will hopefully be able to adjust the gears a little better for me too - currently top range is mostly unachievable as the shifter obviously doesn't quite swing across enough to make it change - I'd sooner they adjusted it as it's brand new.

Makingabobor2

Sounds like you really made use of the Agile prices.

EssexHebridean

We certainly did - and of course we saved on gas as well - several days with no central heating use at all!

PennysIntoPounds

Jealous as always of Aldeburgh! Sounds a grand time 😊

lucielle

All this gardening talk is making me jealous. Need it to stop raining and dry up so we can get the digger out and finish off the potential flower bed!

Marvellous use of the electrickery.
L

EssexHebridean

following the conversation on Cheery’s diary I am pleased to report that as soon as I got home this evening I did a half hour general tidy/sorting out clean washing/putting away the washing up. In fairness on days I arrive home earlier I am fairly good at using that time productively, but whether I would have done as much without that nudge, who knows.

Lovely evening last night with pals - a crawl round a handful of pubs in the Bethnal Green area of London - where MrEH lived when I first met him, and where I inevitably ended up spending rather a lot of time for 6 months or so too before we moved out and got our own place. Three of the pubs I’d not visited before as far as I can think - the fourth we didn’t think we had until we got there and realised it used to be called something different! Food was from the wonderful East London Beigel Bake - their gorgeous salt beef beigels - and of course we bought half a dozen plain ones to bring home too! All spending from our personal spends.

Small budget helping thing today was getting a £1 off voucher from TGTG - as far as I can see prompted by the fact that I’d not used it for a while. Anyway, activated that, then did a quick look and realised I could nab an Al’s bag for this evening, so we’ve not long been and collected that - cheese, bacon & potato cakes, spring greens, oranges, a punnet of strawberries, veggie sausages, three punnets of raspberries, a pack of rice noodles, and three packs of hot cross buns. Somehow I’ve managed to cram some bits into the freezers, the oranges will do MrEH for next week, one pack of HCB’s are out to use tomorrow/saturday, the spring greens will go into various meals early next week, the strawberries have been sliced and turned into compote, one pack of raspberries will go into porridge in the morning, not sure about the others yet..! A decent win for the £2.30 it cost me, for sure. The noodles are the troublesome bit - MrEH is out tomorrow evening and they won’t last past then I suspect - so I’ll have some of them in some sort of noodle broth but I suspect the rest will go to waste.