Next steps; grip-relaxing bimbling, and avoiding the temptations

Watty1

You are so my kind of woman - finishing her evening with a Brandy Alexander    That has been my favourite since university days when we went off to cocktail bars      

Baileys_Babe

Happy New Year 🤗

foxgloves

I haven't had a brandy alexander since my student days when we took regular advantage of cocktails happy hour at a city pub. 

Suffolk_lass

Back from the hospital via a quick purchase of oranges in the SM on the way home. Still -2 when I got home and the rear windscreen of the car is a nasty smeary mess as the washer fluid jet is frozen. I have had my first double yolker egg and two rashers of bacon with two slices of toast and I might just have soup for the rest of today to get my body back to a sensible level of expectation!

Thanks to shopping just before NYE but after Mr Sl's pension arrived early, I have spent over a third of this month's grocery budget already - £57.85 out of the £150 I am hoping to achieve. We shall see. The only "need" is cat litter - empty shelves before Christmas, and I might buy Seville oranges if I see them.

The sonographer was lovely and my scan was all done in just over 20 minutes. No changes and I look to be in good shape, despite the little growths that are regularly monitored. All good for another few months.

My objective today is to nudge Mr Sl into sorting out whether we can fix the non-reading of the PV arrays by the inverter, or if we need a grown up to come and look. I'm sure I downloaded a full manual. My next task is to find and read that. 

Have a good day everyone!

beanielou

Glad scan went well. 

Suffolk_lass

Thanks @beanielou. It is a relief.

Poor Mr Sl spent most of the day fiddle-faddling (technical term) with the inverter to try and get it to work with the solar arrays to no avail. The manual is some sort of bot-translation from Chinese that even he (a capable engineer) cannot get the device to do what it is supposed to. We have a friend in the next town who might be able to help but if not, it will be a call to a grown up. I really don't want to go back to the original installers as they were arrogant little gits who dismissed and ignored virtually everything I asked for. The person who set it up was keen to leave and really could not be bothered to take the time to explain anything. There is a company in the next town the other way who have a decent reputation. We will call them.

In terms of Christmas Fayre, the untouched cheese is now frozen, along with a small wheel of Brie that has more than half left. We have two elevenses portions of chocolate chip panetone left, a few Apple stollen bites (an unintentional happy purchase from Aldo's) and a carton of single cream. We finished off the turkey soup for supper with garlic naans!

I have my veg box outside still and I'm of the opinion the veg is keeping better in that than my fridge. I've just brought some in to make today's sausagemeat casserole (onions, leeks carrots, Broccoli stalks, potatoes, celery) with half a stick of now defrosted sausagemeat in patties with a jar of (homegrown) tomato passata, some veg stock and herbs. Looking forward to this with some steamed greens. We have black kale and kalettes outside in the garden, but also SM cabbage that is underway, so undecided at the moment. The community garden has some romanescu that I fancy if they are still there.

Other than that, today's to-do is to take down, review and pack away the decorations we will keep, and dispose of those we won't. I plan to make a list of what is needed. The outside lights will come down tomorrow with DS promising to join Mr Sl and do the bit up the ladder, while I am at Auntie's funeral, and tomorrow is twelfth night. It looks like it is a 200 mile round trip to that. Needs must.

Right, time to get that casserole made and underway. Have a good day all!

foxgloves

That sounds like a tasty use-it-up casserole. We are going to pack away decorations today too. 
I hope everything goes well for your Aunty's funeral tomorrow, including the journey there & back.
F

Suffolk_lass

Thanks @foxgloves. I have woken up to snow this morning. Hopefully it will melt and won't be too bad travelling to Sussex (not too far from Gatwick Airport). I do love the way it deadens the road noise though.

To today then. A quick check of the bank balances and a few more regular amounts taken, with the second of four credit cards clearing the accounts this morning. I have Tilly tidied both of the balances down to the nearest £50. The running costs should be good for the rest of the month - the bills account is dependent on my state pension arriving before the big card goes next week. Other than that and Mr Sl's second card, in the second half of the month, it should be extremely low key this month on the bills and intentional spending fronts. I do have eighteen items in my shopping basket (online list), but only the cat litter is urgent. Stealth Cat is eating more, but getting thinner, in the way that a lot of old cats do, and the end result for our indoor purry girl is additional supplies of litter too.

Having said low spends, Mr Sl's efforts to get the inverter to see the solar arrays have failed and he is due to request help from a company in the local town we have not dealt with before. His other tasks to tackle today are the removal of the outside lights with help from DS and sorting out his magazine content for this month. When DS comes he will take a gammon joint and a large peeled parsnip home, I bought the gammon with them in mind, but found the parsnip lurking in the fridge after I decided two huge ones were enough for Christmas Day. He loves them so a win-win there, with more space in the kitchen freezer.

Our Village Community Garden has announced the start of a seed swap - which I suggested in Autumn, for collected and spare seed. I can't go tomorrow, but I shall try and go next week.

For the meal-plan this week, it is shopping from my pantry, freezer and outdoor veg stores. I have removed a big pack of venison mince from the freezer and we will be having Venison burgers this week;  twice, I think. We can have them with salad once (hopefully no snow as apparently salad and snow don't go together), and with either hot veg or in a casserole as meaty lumps, or both of these.  I also have a couple of chicken thighs out, defrosting, for tomorrow. Mr Sl will finish off the "spot the sausage, vegetable" casserole that also used up a small, slightly wrinkly looking butternut. I need to get going with my squash inclusion in meals and tomorrow I plan to get making courgette soup to get back to low-carb, filling, warming, nutritious (cheap/free) lunches. I still have lots of bread so no need to bake this week. Hopefully one of the large bakery loaves can come out of the chest freezer later this week, although we have half a dozen home-made rolls I would like to see used out of the kitchen freezer first, too.

Just six stollen bites left - I happily picked up apple ones - which means Mr Sl is helping reduce them too! 

My grocery spend is at £57.84 out of a hoped for £150 this month. Trying to keep out of the shops as much as possible. Happy days - keep those purses dusty from lack of use!