From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

Greying_Pilgrim

Cherryfudge - that's what i can't understand - DH has all the other car-related expenses diarised.  I can't see why he hadn't done this one.  I'm sure it auto-renewed last year, but the leap wasn't much more than we'd paid the year before, so we let it go.  I will have to see about cancelling.  Or it comes out of his "pocket money" (he doesn't get any 😕) as a 'stoopid' tax.

Ha ha - I like your potato name choices 😁 What name can you come up with to make LG fall in love with baked tatties??? 😁

Greying X

Cherryfudge

Greying_Pilgrim said:

Ha ha - I like your potato name choices 😁 What name can you come up with to make LG fall in love with baked tatties??? 😁

Greying X

We used a wartime meat extender recipe called 'Piglets'. The idea was to use an apple corer on the potatoes so there are holes through, then stuff with sausage meat. Vegetarians could of course use anything they preferred, perhaps sage and onion stuffing, or a colourful veg mixture. For added derring-do, 'cork' the holes with the potato you took out.

Then you pretend it's the blackout, the siren has gone off so you all go down into the shelter and eat by torch light or a camping light (no light is allowed to be visible from out of doors, of course).

ETA: I misremembered the name: Marguerite Patten has it as 'pigs in clover', served on a bed of cabbage.

Greying_Pilgrim

Oooooof - I prefer your name Cherryfudge - what a cracking idea.  I wonder if those could be cooked on the embers of a barbecue/campfire?  I will definitely log THAT idea in the culinary memory banks.  Thank you.

Could someone please send help.  Or perhaps gin.  

LG and DH are cooking - if I wasn't getting summoned every two seconds to applaud that they'd opened a tin/packet, I would be giggling in a cupboard somewhere.  What free fun it's turning out to be 🤣  LG has picked up things from me with cooking and is telling their beloved papa that they are "doing it all wrong" - but it's working so far, so.........

Greying X

badmemory

Penny for the guy anyone.  Just don't have a child born in the fourth quarter of the year or be fully prepared to buy any cards & wrapping paper in the third quarter.  Although Xmas in August in one shop this year!   I have had enough of Xmas by November usually although I am alright by the time we get to the 21st Dec.  But sometimes I just want to scream give it a rest!

Paspatur

@badmemory yep Penny for the Guy here, money used for fireworks
All 3 children born in 4th quarter
2 got Halloween cakes and 1 got xmas cake (think Santa or Snowman as opposed to real Xmas cake), I can cook but cannot bake
No sweet tooth for any of us so maybe a blessing in disguise
Love your diary GP

rtandon27

GP - I just love your account of LG and DH cooking. - I'd not be able to reign in the laughter!

Cheeryfudge, your recipe of sausage stuffed tatties would go over well in this house! I too will make a note and add to the meal plan!

Cheery & Vix & GP - truthfully most of the time work is VERY stressful & there is lots of whispered swearing and pedictable routine burnout, but I am the lead mouse when the cat is away and so play was had. Picture 15 grown adults overdosed on sugar bouncing off the walls and deciding to plan a karaoke evening! I was summoned 'upstairs' so had to leave the room and when I got back was being told to pick my signature song for karaoke night.  I will at least be able to swear to the boss that I had nothing to do with the planning.  We'll just keep it between us that I'm the catalyst shall we?

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

1st November - where is the time going?

The local tawny owls were hooting away this morning in the early hours (they probably do most of the time, but I was awake 😕and heard them - blessed meno).  But then, the street lamp came on at 4.23am (random, I know and possibly still on BST), and they appeared to stop (or moved away?).  I wonder whether street lighting interrupts their hunting?

I have to say, I don't think anyone ventured to our door trick or treating, although I was in the back in the kitchen, so couldn't hear anyway, but I'm pleased that the 'code' of 'no decoration/no participation' appears to hold here too - which is appreciated, as not every household wants to get involved - for a broad range of reasons.

The buns got made.  I won't include a pic, as they were 'artisanal hand-crafted' and basically I didn't make enough glace icing (nor was it thick enough), to make a topping that could then be decorated.  But i did make the icing with lemon juice and it tasted really nice.  I don't think the buns were cool enough - LG insisted they were, but my plan had been for the buns to be made in the morning and decorated in the afternoon, but DH took LG on a bike ride in the morning, so that put paid to that idea.  The icing soaked into the buns and also the paper cases flared away from the bun and it went down the side!  I ended up putting the buns back in the tin to try to contain the flair and keep the icing on top of the bun!  However, we had fun decorating.  We did; cobwebs (black circles on white icing, use a cocktail stick to draw the straight connecting lines of the cobweb), ghosts (black icing on white topping in a classic ghost shape with eyes), spiders (a sultana popped in the middle and spidery legs iced from the 'body' in black and red dots for eyes) and bats (same principle as the spider but draw bat wings and ears and do red dots for eyes).

The buns were wonderfully uniform in size.  I would have made perhaps 10, but they did 12, as each cake case could have been a tadge fuller.  But for uniformity, they knocked it out the park - and the buns rose, but stayed flat - perfect for decorating.  The buns tasted lovely, and we all got to do a decoration of some description, so it was good family fun 😁LG took the cooking and testing for doneness very seriously, and the buns cooked in 13 minutes....... 😁 And to cap it all - despite them both being very messy cooks - DH cleaned up at the end!  I was out of my kitchen for 3 hours, but at least he cleaned up! 🤣

I got a small wash dried yesterday which i was really pleased about.  There wasn't a super amount of sunshine, but there was a reasonable breeze and the air temp was just high enough.  We've a grey, still start to the day here.

Tea was plant balls, tommie sauce and rice as I didn't get my kitchen back until gone 5pm.  Pud was chocolate 'hallo'd' buns 😁

I'm not too sure what is on the cards today, as I was thinking about swimming, but it depends if DH has something in mind.  If all else fails I will go into Greying Town and do another money shuffle as I want to get yesterday's 'nasty postal surpirses' sorted.  DH seemed indifferent about the breakdown cover, as though it's nothing to do with him 🤔

At least the money is in place for the DD's and I will nab DH's pay slip just now to see what - if anything there is to put into the windows fund.  RT makes a good point over on her thread (she has a thread - go check it out!) about being 'momentarily mortgage neutral' when (for example) you've been paid etc.  I feel the same about the windows fund - we could have had them installed months ago, but then we have had issues with the car and one or two other unexpected expenses this year - so if we'd have drained the car repair fund, and the clothes fund and the white goods fund etc etc, sure we'd have new windows, but we'd have had to walk everywhere and cook on an open fire....... So budgeting is the way to go, but gosh the temptation to 'spend it all' to get that one thing is very real......

Right, I'm away to see what the others are up to and want to do today.

Ta for popping in.  It's really appreciated.  Greying X

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, I meant to say I've had an unexpected breakdown renewal from one of the bigger providers before and I just contacted them and they cancelled it, no questions 😊 worth a quick ring anyway! 😊

Halloween buns sound like excellent fun 😊😊

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, and RT had a thread?! She kept that quiet!! 😂

EDIT - oh,  she only started it less than 24 hours ago 😂😂 thanks for sharing Greying!

Greying_Pilgrim

Arrgghhhh!

I've managed to do it again.  I have ended up spending more money than necessary -arrrggghhhhh!

Because LG's school give a nano-second's notice of activities - which special clothing is needed for  - I've had to purchase a couple of clothing items.  The one set of sportswear is clearly seen by supermarkets etc as 'seasonal summer wear only', so no dice there and the other shop I have used was pretty much oos for LG's size.  I have tried specialist sportswear sellers before (online) and the sizing of (branded) stuff is way off.  

So I grudgingly went to that big box sports store with the awful returns policy.......  We saw what we needed (for less than half a term 😡) and so we gulped at the cost.  Then we eventually found another item that is required - for an hour a week...... and we gulped at the cost of that too.  I asked everyone to look, look and look some more to see if there was this item cheaper/on sale etc etc.  But they went off and were playing with sports equipment or picking stuff out for themselves (DH). So I purchased the two items.   As we were walking through the store, I found a display (under the stairs), of just what we needed.........  Same size, and half the price of the item that will only be used for an hour a week....... So (not having left the store), I took everything back to the till and asked if I could change the £20 item for the £10 item.  Oh yes, I'll just get someone to do it.  I knew - in my heart of hearts this store didn't do refunds - and sure enough, once they'd done the change, it was "we can only offer a credit note".  😡  I try (ever so hard) to not buy stuff from this shop because i think this policy sucks - particularly if you haven't even left the store!  

So I have still ended up spending the same amount of money (one-third of the CHB), but have a blessed stupid credit note instead of the cash in my purse.  I've been looking for so long in chazzers for these clothing items - I found some, but unfortunately they were too big - and LG is apparently getting asked by the teacher why they don't have these items - even though the teacher told me they are not allowed to insist the children have them 🙄 

Rant over.  Because I do know that a) that store has had that stupid policy for a long time, and we shouldn't have shopped there and b) this is primary school, it will just get worse at secondary school 😕

DH is now claiming that he told me that he'd done comparators and the breakdown cover was the only one available for our (aged) car and that it was £6 more than last year.  I don't know when he had this conversation - but he wasn't speaking to me.

Today isn't going very well........

My car insurance policy has come through.  DH sorts this and pays on his cc.  The letter informing him that the payment has been taken was sent to our old address.   DH has already told the company they have the incorrect billing address and they claimed they hadn't.  We are coming to the end of our mail redirection period, and I really don't want to have to extend it, just because one company can't change details when informed.  

The firm who installed our CH system have written again touting for the boiler servicing work.  That is (fingers crossed) being done by a different company this coming week.  I hope that a 'third party' can be objective about the installation, and give some guidance on how we might improve the efficiency of the system - and have it work, like, y'know, properly......  

And breath.  In the grand scheme of things, this is nowt.  But I have had it with school, and I will start batting back their demands for 'this, that and t'other'.  Regrettably there is no PTA.  Only a fundraising arm. But surely to goodness other folks must be struggling financially?  We've only one child and find £1 for this and £10 for that and £25 for the other to be putting pressure on finances.  And that's without my budgetary ineptitude!  And at least I have a child that doesn't demand branded things. 

Sorry, just needed to vent.  It boils down to being mad at myself.  I shouldn't have shopped at the big box sports store.  End of.

Greying X