And now we go again...

Moorviews

Having experimented with the purchase of a commercial fresh bread sauce this year, I can report that I shan’t be doing that again! Grey, watery and tasteless, and nothing like the yummy, creamy deliciousness of homemade. 

I hope that all your plans for the day worked out well and that you had a wonderful time. 

EssexHebridean

Ooh Moorviews maybe that is why so many people seem to not like bread sauce - they’ve tried a bought one and it was horrible! Thank you for taking one for the team with THAT experiment! 

I hope everyone had a lovely day yesterday - thanks to so many of you for dropping by to wish us well! We had a really nice quiet relaxing day at Mum’s - got home about 10pm at which point MrEH got to enjoy a well-deserved beer having done the driving. Dinner was lovely - Mum had cooked the turkey to perfection and her roasties were, as ever, crusty and delicious. Lots of lovely presents too - as always the majority were from our needs/wants lists, so we are all now in possession of a good many things which we will now not need to spend our own hard-earned on, as well as some nice treats. I have a nice stack of books ready to add to my reading pile, including the latest in the “Outlander” saga by Diana Gabaldon which will be the next thing I get stuck in to when my current book is read - I’ll be making plenty of headway in that today hopefully! I also have a Clinique voucher to spend courtesy of Mum - I’ll be eyeing up their sale at some stage to see if there is bargains to be had! MrEH is very grateful for a new supply of coffee and was delighted with his main present of the a hidden London Baker Street tour (which I confess I am also looking forward to!) 

My body has clearly decided that 7am is its preferred time to get up at the moment as without an alarm I have been out of bed a short while before that each of the past 3 days. Today it makes for a nice lazy start to what is traditionally in this house a “do what you want to” day - there will be no cooking beyond shoving stuff in the air fryer for tea - I may make a winter coleslaw with some of the sprouts, red cabbage, shallots and carrot perhaps as that quite appeals. Lunch will be a hotly anticipated leftovers sarnie with turkey, ham, cranberry sauce and bread sauce - always a highlight of the year! MrEH is off to play rugby later - I may take myself out for some exercise at that stage, we’ll see. It does look like a really nice day outside so it seems a shame not to enjoy some of it! 

Sun_Addict

Glad you had a lovely day at your mum’s. Sounds like you’ve had some great gifts too. Enjoy a relaxing Boxing Day 🙂

RosaBernicia

Glad you've had a lovely time EH, and more slightly belated Christmas good wishes from here. 

savingholmes

Coming late to the party - but I hate bread sauce (but only had at a pub or equivalent I think, mint sauce and cranberries.

Glad you enjoyed the festivities and are now having a well earned rest. Happy New Year if I don't catch you again in between.

EssexHebridean

Morning all - SA , Rosa & SH - thank you for popping by, I hope your respective Christmas breaks are all going peacefully! 

My threatened cold has indeed arrived with full force, and MrEH naturally now has it too (I’m generous like that) albeit a few days behind me. As a result of this we have reluctantly pretty much given up on our plan to travel to friends tomorrow for NYE - the combination of potentially 5 hours in the car and the risk of then giving them all the lurgy too isn’t appealing. 

I ended up popping out for a run on Boxing Day which was lovely - it was a beautiful day here and very pleasant to be out in it for a plod. Since then exercise has been limited to just walking through - and indeed even our planned bit of tube-walking on Thursday ended up being cut down to just a paltry three stations due to rain which varied between light and torrential while we were out. We DID make good on our plan to ride the Northern Line through from East Finchley to Morden though (the longest continuous stretch of tunnel anywhere on the network) and we made it to the London Transport Museum too - albeit just for the last hour of the day as they were exceptionally busy. 

MSE Stuff:
- surprise arrival of a £125 cheque from the car insurance company a couple of days ago as a result of my complaint to them about the way their chosen courtesy car provider had behaved. I’ve had no other correspondence at all from them on this, but I can only assume that they found well and truly in my favour as their usual goodwill payment amounts are around £30. That has been designated as “money we did know we had” and has gone directly to the mortgage.
- another small mortgage OP means that we will be ending the year at precisely £112,000.00 outstanding which I am reasonably pleased with - It feels like we have made decent progress in just a few months. 

- the turkey yielded a sandwich lunch for me on Boxing Day, the same but for both of us the day after, then 2 tubs of slices for future roast dinners, and 4 tubs of more chunky meat which will make curry, stir fries, risotto etc. also three 500ml and 1 400ml tubs of stock - all of these are in the freezer. There is also a further tub containing half the chunks that the backbone I got for free provided.
- freezer 2 is currently switched on - in spite of my best efforts it proved impossible to find space in the main one for all the stock and red cabbage (5 tubs of that) so we have decided it should go on for a while. MrEH’s Christmas present coffee stash has also gone in, and he will make a batch of lunchtime rolls later as well. 

- I cashed in the Sky TV “free chocolate” voucher yesterday - getting the biggest bar of Wh0le Nut I could for the value of it. 😁

- travel on Thursday entirely came off existing 0yster card balances - no topping up required, although MrEH will have to do feed his on Tuesday morning. 

- Museum entry was free to us due to our “Friends” membership - I remembered that this gained us 20% off the cafe bill, too! 

- we’ve been making good use of the Christmas ham too - it has provided sandwiches, salads and slices with picky teas, and there is still a good chunk left. 

- in spite of having the fire lit most evenings, we aren’t quite at the end of the first bag of logs or the first bag of coal we bought a few weeks ago, so I am quite pleased with how that’s working out. We’ve been using a little more coal than usual as this maintains a really hot base and means it continues to give off a little heat through the night too. 

- If we are not now travelling tomorrow this will save a chunk of diesel money, at least, although I’d rather be spending it and seeing pals to be honest! 

Spendiness:
- lunch in a pub from the meteorological/cutlery chain on Thursday will come from the Joint Fun account I think although this will need discussion yet.
- I treated us to tea and cake at the Museum too - from my personal spends, of course. 

- shopping has been super-low so far this week, as expected. Aside from popping into T’s yesterday for free chocolate and finding a pack of toasting muffins YS’d to a level which made it sensible to buy them, there has been no grocery spending at all, and I’m not expecting to spend much when we shop for the week ahead - which will probably be tomorrow, and just a walk to Al’s I think.

Plans today involve a walk at the RSPB reserve I think - if it looks like the rain is going to stop! 

Makingabobor2

Sorry to hear you have the lurgy. I'm full of it, caught it from DGS3 on Boxing Day. Hope yours doesn't develop into anything worse, I'm aching all over with mine.  
Enjoy your walk

foxgloves

Sorry to hear about the lergy, @EH. Mr F has just headed out to the supermarket (without me as I am fighting off the headache I annoyingly woke up with this morning). I've reminded him to stand well back from fellow customers as flu & covid numbers have apparently surged. We paid for flu jabs but private covid jabs not available so can only do our best to avoid it. Hope your lergy behaves itself by taking itself off asap.
Good rubber 🦃 activity. Same here. Too good to waste.
F

PennysIntoPounds

Commiserations from another cold sufferer. I am not happy about the additional spends on tissues this week!
Glad you got at least some of your planned tube trip in. 

jwil

Hope you both feel better soon!