Cherry takes the reins

How lovely you got your sandwich back OBL! I am trying to do those till receipt surveys from time to time (only managed one recently) but I did include feedback about products that are no longer available. Perhaps they'll listen. And it we don't say, how will they know?

No progress on decorating or anything today: it's been a grand old day off. A&H had a walk and a picnic, and I got lots of groceries. I don't normally shop on a Sunday but we were short of fridge space so I decided to shop immediately before Sunday dinner. In the end I made a vegetarian chilli (using some of the peppers that were filling our side of the salad baskets and a couple of tins from the cupboard), and added cauliflower cheese and some salad. It sounds like an odd mixture but there was very little left after the family tucked in. Pudding was Cardinal Peaches which I hadn't made before. We finished off the evening with DS2's holiday photos.

Spends:
Housekeeping: £13.88
MS:
Peaches half price as the whole shelf full was going over - but 8 of the nine I bought were useable.
Free raspberries from the garden.
19p for a bag of potatoes to make into mash along with 30p for liver so it will be liver, onions and mash some day soon.
DH only got about half his usual housekeeping out this week and I underspent on my share by about £6 so we are still saving a little - but mostly on the back of a very low spend last week.
Decluttering:
It wasn't clutter as such but have used two of three bags of cauliflower and a couple of peppers, thus increasing fridge/freezer space, and the raspberries are ripening faster than I can use them so combining them with peaches and some vanilla sugar I made ages ago... worked well.

HairyHandofDartmoor wrote: »

I've been stalking my DS who is in Madrid via Messenger :rotfl:

It's a Mum thing :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: You can also track them via the FlightRadar app if you have flight numbers or sufficient other details. :rotfl:

H'm... having a bit of a stress day so am coming to chat to y'all before I go out and buy more unnecessary stuff.

I had a text from the lady who looks after Mum's old house to say my sister had lost the keys! Long story short, they had been moved but she hadn't seen them and my sister, who is staying at the house sorting things out right now, had been down at the doctor's, poorly. That's after a lot of exchanging of texts and being annoyed with both of them: one for panicking and jumping to conclusions and the other because the place is reportedly in a mess, thus creating me another day away from home just to sort that out. My sister rang in the end and said among other things that it's making her ill, to which I said the same happens to me... oh, and DS offered to take me over there which could be a perfect solution except that last time he went he did nothing to help and is now denying I asked him, and I get muscle problems in the broken arm if it's not kept mobile, as in on car journeys.

My sister has also had an expression of interest in buying the house but it's from the daughter of a nosey woman I try to avoid... makes me a bit sad to think it might go to someone I probably wouldn't want to visit, even though I actually wouldn't want to go there again anyway unless it's restored to how I remember it from the late 1960s! Hypocritical or what? Maybe I just need to sleep on the idea and get over it.

I did get a little light relief and The Lady Who Cleans and I discussed going halves on some dynamite to get through my sister's debris. :rotfl:

So that's my moaning done for now! Feel free to ignore.

On the positive side, the bank rang me back over the complaint and explained I hadn't been notified of the non-payment of the mortgage because I was ahead on payments and so effectively hadn't lost any interest. They are reinstating the missing 'reward' payments and offered me £75 for the inconvenience, which is nice. I didn't refuse.

I was reading TOPM's thread and came across a mention of Bea Johnson so I looked her up and have to admit I bought the book. It's only £1.99 on Kindle and I like her style of writing. This is nothing to do with the fact I'm still part way though Early Retirement Extreme, The Millionaire Next Door and various non-money books including Les Miserables which is a goodly length. It's even less to do with my having lots and lots and lots of books I haven't started yet, not to mention the old favourites that I've read so much I can recite bits.

Oh, and I cleaned and tidied our part of the fridge and two shelves of the larder. This last is in itself a bit of history book. I found a broken cartoon cup at the back there which DS2 declares is a favourite of his (not sure he would have remembered it if told he can only keep possessions he can describe) - it dates back about 15 years.

So, please may I have ideas of what to do with the following: 2 jars of Dijon mustard, four jars of cranberry sauce, half a packet of strong brown flour, medium oatmeal, sesame seeds, seeds for sprouting (assorted), a jar of black olives that I thought were damson gin till I opened it (!), a jar of jalapenos that no one likes, a packet of meringues and a packet of sponge fingers?

And would you believe it, I have discovered that the storage containers I bought many years ago (and they cost more than I would normally pay even now) are still available! I thought I needed thinking time but I have saved the page with some in the online basket... they have withstood years of regular use, the lids remain a good fit and don't fall to bits unlike later cheaper versions. I am tempted - everything I attempt to store pasta in seems to get lost at the back of the top of the freezer and pasta is too bulky for normal places and these containers fit the larder shelves so well...

Enough of my waffling. I'm going to tidy the kitchen and go and buy dishwasher salt to satisfy the 'wanna buy myself out of stress' feelings.