From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

Greying_Pilgrim

I forgot to add. In MrS there was a promo stand of brew-woof sauces and marinades, and I spotted some of the spice blends. They didn't have the smokey burger seasoning that I got yesterday, but the packs were on special offer (n*ctar), for 75p versus £1.15 "proper" price. So I'm super chuffed I got the 4 packs from bee+Em now. I have transferred them into the washed out Jaymee O fajita sauce jar - which is a nice size and has a cheerful pink lid, and cut a pack up to label up the jar. I also a sprinkling on my avocado on toast this morning. Super! Not hot as hades, as some chipotle flakes can be, but a nice smokey, interesting seasoning. As there were 2 more avocados in my MrL box, I'm going to be in brekkie heaven this week!

Greying X

rtandon27

@Greying_Pilgrim - I'm curious - how long does it take you to use up a 10kg bag? - For the two of us, we use a max of 5kg a year of Jasmine & about 1kg a year of Basmathi - so once we made it through the big bags that were purchased in the days of the zombie apocalypse, I've reverted to smaller quantities.

Greying_Pilgrim

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81920243#Comment_81920243

I think it's about a year rt - give or take. £1.05 a kilo is back to pre c'vid days price-wise, so I hope the rice is the same as they've been stocking previously, as it cooks nicely.

Greying X

Staffordia

We finished with the TV licence when MiL went into a home, she had paid for it previously. We don't miss 'live' tv, plenty of things to watch on catch up or YouTube.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

Yes, I wish we would give up the licence Staffordia - but I doubt DH would want to. The TV was on for all of half an hour last night, and LG was flicking channels (as there was very little on). The only snippet of a programme that was interesting, was…….."This Farming Life" ???? I may have the name wrong, but it follows farming families in the Scottish Highlands and Islands - but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was a repeat, as I'm sure we'd seen the local nursery visiting a sheep farm (at lambing time), before. However, the programme was on the Isle of Lewis when LG flicked on to it, and the farmer was talking about the weather (it was well windy), and saying it was "relatively" calm that day, and no way a "5 pegger", which meant you'd to use 5 pegs to keep your washing on the line 🤣 I thought of us all on here 🤣

Yesterday would have been a "5 pegger" for much of the UK from the sounds of it. I didn't even bother, not because of a lack of pegs, but we had intermittent sharp showers throughout the day, and by the time I was taking LG to club, it was like being in the middle of a monsoon 😬

I think I might be able to get some drying done today, assuming I can navigate the quagmire that is the garden 🫤

Tea last night was lentil ratatouille with pasta for LG and curry, dhal and rice for DH and me. For pud we had strawberries and yoghurt. There had been 2 punnets of strawberries in the green box - one was the 'standard' punnet, and the other was a 's1mply' punnet. In the (more expensive) standard punnet, more of the strawberries had started to "melt". Initially, I thought I would cook them and use them - but on looking at them, they had gone a bit far, and had a strange aroma, so I decided to throw them away, but I did keep 4 of those strawberries (they were still firm and not mushy). As the strawberries were so big, there weren't many in the punnet, so I guess I threw about 5 away. OK, half that punnet, but at least I salvaged some. In the 's1mply' punnet, they were still OKish, and I think I only threw one away. But we all had strawberries (and I used one of the bananas slice up) and whilst they weren't "height of summer berry perfection", there was a taste of strawberry with them, and they weren't just woolly red blobs, which can sometimes be the case with imported strawberries. More importantly, we're all still here this morning, with no ill-effects.

The savoy cabbage that was in the box, which was severely wilted, seems to be responding to the trimming of the stalk and putting in a bowl of water treatment. Fingers crossed that works, as we don't eat enough cabbage in this house.

I think I will have to do something with the apples that came in the box, as I'm pretty sure DH grabbed one of them this morning for the porridge, and has put half of it in the bin 🙄 a) he's too fussy with his trimming, and b) he expects to be able to eat an apple that is blemish free 🙄 There are other apples in the bowl that fulfil that brief better. I tend to use bruised apples for cooking, as it's less of an issue in a crumble. And like the bananas out of the box, to look at them, they look battered, but I took the "worst" looking one last night, and peeled, there was only a slight (and I do mean slight) grey blemish on the banana fruit, where on the skin had been a black 'slash'. I had the small blemished bit in my bowl - there was no impact on the taste at all.

Right, best totter off to prep snap and peg out a….. top. I did the whites wash yesterday, so hopefully they can go straight out and i shall try and get up to speed with some of the workwear.

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Right. Whites pegged out, workwear and socks 🙄 pegged out. Another 'general/uniform' wash is on.

I totally forgot to mention, I saw a redwing in next doors garden this morning! I was slightly dubious, as I could only see one - they usually are in small flocks (which morph into big flocks if they are in the countryside) - but I saw the red (it was far bigger than a robin), and it looked around and I could clearly see the yellowy marks on it's head. I'm not sure we've seen redwings here before. We used to see them at the rental house, but there were far more dense hawthorn hedges around that area, than there are here. I can only assume it was feeding on ivy berries, as it was pecking at something. There is holly in next door's hedge, but I couldn't see berries. Mind, at the rental house it was the ivy berries that attracted the redwings and other birds, as the hedges were hosts to huge ivy thickets. There were some little birds in the silver birch as I was pegging out - I'm not sure what they were. Their tails weren't long enough for long-tailed t*ts, and they were a longer body shape anyway. They were chirping, in a group and were merry hanging upside down on the twiggy fronds (very like blue t*ts, but they weren't the right colour) - presumably either hoovering up aphids, or pecking at the emergent shoots? They were very drab little birds - which made me think they might be the females, but of what type, I don't know.

I had an avocado for breakfast. I used one from the pair that were in the MrL box - simply because it felt absolutely the most ripest, of the avocados I now have. It was very ripe - you couldn't have sliced it nicely to adorn a salad, but it was perfect to make smashed avo toast. I used the seasoning again, and enjoyed every mouthful. Fingers crossed I'm packed full of vit E now, and I can swoosh me glossy hair about, just like as though I'd come outta a salon……. 😁

Best crack on. Greying X

ladybird1106

very jealous of your redwing. My eldest favourite.

Love 🐞

rtandon27

Yesterday reminded me of that fateful Ozian day that took Dorothy away - I was minded to put the washing up in the summer house, but the short path betweeen it and the back door would have meant getting very wet! OH was desperate (as he says) for smalls so I did the load and put them up on the airer with the dehumidifier. Upon checking the drawer today, there is a week's worth - but heh-ho - such is life! - at least he was attempting to be proactive in his observations. 🤣🤣🤣 Today I have t-shirts to be folded and another load of jeans & t-shirts to wash as atm OH can go through 2 sets of cloths a day for various health related reasons!

Greying_Pilgrim

Oh rt - I like your turn of phrase 😁 Dorothy-esque weather indeed!

Well I don't know if I've done the right thing or not……. I had bought (last year) some travel cups from MrS so that we could take a hot drink on a walk, or to avoid stopping at a coffee shop if we walked into Greying Town etc. They haven't been much good - and I'm doubly pleased that I didn't pay full price for any of them. I should have twigged when you filled them up that the body of the cup got warm. But they really seem to be useful if you're making a drink to consume literally as you walk out the door. Maybe if we had a dog, they would be useful on the morning/evening walk for example. But as an insulated cup, to drink something anything other than lukewarm, an hour after you popped the kettle on, these cups have proved useless.

So I had been considering upgrading. What we need them for is if we are going say for a day out at an NT place, or travelling to a holiday destination, we need to have a hot drink, that doesn't require either opening a large flask at breakfast/elevenses, or doesn't require carrying a large flask around a NT property for elevenses and lunch drinks. So, I'd set my heart on the tH3rmos brand of cup. We have both $tanely and tH3rmos brand flasks, and have found them to be both good at keeping drinks hot ($tanley is better, but….$$ 😬). Our local farmers mercantile did stock a goodly range of flasks, cups, tumblers, water bottles etc at really competitive prices. But they seem to have slim-lined their offering, and don't stock the T brand anymore ☹️ I asked a dear MSE chum which brand they had, as they had hit upon a good one, that kept drinks happy hotty 😁 I was going to pull the trigger and get some of these cups, as they were - colour dependent - cheaper than I could find the T brand, online. I hadn't got around to it, until I thought about doing it today….. but I just couldn't resist rechecking, and the T brand website has a Mother's Day 20% off offer 😁 It still makes the insulated cups slightly dearer than our dear MSE chum's cup, but I have been able to get the colours that I wanted, and free delivery. The T brand cups fare very well in reviews for keeping drinks warm for a long time.

I think it will take approximately 7-8 coffees/hot drinks for each cup to "pay" for themselves. It's an investment, but fingers crossed, the right type of investment, in things that will last, that work well, and that save us money in the longer term.

I hate that I over-analyse things, but for once dropped lucky with a discount code.

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Humpf. Council tax bill has come thru ☹️ It all but swallows up DH's supposed wage rise ☹️

Still, I can't sit here grumbling if I've just been spending wully-nully on "leisure" products, can I? and we knew it was going to be bad news from local press coverage. Just need to suck it up and see where cost savings can be made elsewhere I guess.

Greying X