Thank you Mummy x

I often find myself in debt (not financially) to my Mum. She really is very good to me. As I work, she will often wait in for electricians, plumbers etc. Having a Mum like that is very very useful.

I would love to cover her in diamonds and give her flowers every day. Unfortunately, it is just not possible.

So I do like it when I can find a way of saying thank you to her. Today was just such a time.

One or twice a year my Mum takes her turn holding the monthly soup and cheese lunch at the local community centre where they live. It attracts local people  - mums, farmers, the elderly, church leaders etc and they come together to eat for an hour.

When Mum hosts the event she normally provides 3 choices of soup and has to get in about 6 loaves to feed everyone. I offered last week to make the bread for the “do”. She happily agreed. Hence the reason why I did not have time to blog yesterday evening.

I got home at 7pm and by 11ish had two loaves of white bread made and two flat goats cheese focaccia (I decided it was not the time to experiment with new breads). I had, it appears, seriously under judged the amount of bread required, but mum knew that and so had dusted off her bread maker (cheating?) and made 3 loaves of her own.

This morning, I got up at early o’clock and made my way to my parents to drop off my meagre offering.

I arrived at 7am, it was lovely to spend half an hour sitting with them having some breakfast before tootling off to work. That has not happened since I left home.

Anyhoo, just had a message from Mummy to say everything was gobbled down with my focaccia going first at a rapid rate. Is it wrong to be a teensy bit smug?

Thanks Mum, for everything you do for me, and I am glad I was able to help, albeit in a small way. It cost time and not money. Loaves work out at about 30p each to make yourself.

However, when I arrived there this morning there was a replacement bag of strong white flour waiting for me...Bless Her.

Thank you Mummy, honestly just listening to me helps more than you will ever know.

I have an unexpected free evening tonight, no class, no Chap, no ironing. It's actually a little bit freaky. I am wondering if I might have the necessary time to paint the nails.

Ah but wait, nope there are still radishes (radi?) to be dealt with.

Frugally yours

Abigail

x

Fruit n Nut

Back to work today with a bump - like most of the population.

Get up at 6ish. Wash, clean anything needs to be scrubbed. Make bed. Turn off electricals – straighteners etc. Look in mirror to ensure you look neat, when “OH MY GOD!” I screamed. Three ma-hoo-sive spots in the chin area and 1 extra nose growing on the right of my neck.

Spots for me are a physical sign of 2 things – stress and poor diet.

Stress can show its self physically in many different forms  – insomnia, irritability, panic attacks, eczema, headaches, eye twitches… well you get the idea.

I have been very stressed and this last week, a lot of junk food has been consumed with precious little fruit and vegetables. Result – The Big Dipper on my chin.

Work is very difficult at the moment and the bank holiday has mostly been spent eating rubbish with The Chap – Chinese, pizza, bacon sandwiches etc.

There is only two ways for me to get rid of spots, stop being stressed at work and eat well.

Since I cannot stop working, then it is time to try the latter.

So this morning, I deliberately did not take anything into work for lunch. Then at 12 I wandered to Asda. It is not a supermarket I usually frequent as I do not have one locally to where I live. I know from when I do visit it is cheap.

I was only going to buy fruit and nuts for lunches this week, I was expecting it to come in at about £6. Final cost £12. You can see the exact breakdown on my shopping page, but here is the photo I surreptitiously took whilst waiting to pay.

I get most of my fruit nowadays from the market, as it suits a singleton. No prepackaged goods, less waste and I can choose quantities. “1 onion, 2 bananas, 3 potatoes and a leek, please Mr Market Seller”

£12 I thought was ludicrous, but I was caught in the trap of needing food now. It does make lunches this week cost £3/ day.

However, lunch was healthy

(well ok apart from the snack a jacks) and nuts are expensive totaling £3.05, but I felt a lot more alert all afternoon than usual and hopefully a few weeks of lots of fruit and veg will help get rid of my “takeaway tummy” that is making me feel obese.

No wonder kids are eating chips, crisps and biscuits. Buying fresh fruit and vegetables for a family of say 4 must be so expensive. It will be cheaper to give high fat and low nutritious snacks than a banana or kiwi thus creating problems for these kids later when the grow up overweight. Not to mention a highly specialized diet with no exposure to other textures and flavours.

Interesting side point my weight is currently 11stone. I am happy around 10 -10½ stone (well I would like to try Victoria Beckham 7 stone, but NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!- lol), at the moment I feel big. Trousers are tight, and certain clothes are being avoided.

However I have just checked and for my height 5ft 7 according to this site I am in the perfectly acceptable weight bracket. Goes to show the impact of the media doesn’t it? Never the less, lunch will continue to look like this for a little while, and by the way it was delicious.

(disclaimer – I just googled height to weight chart and this was in the result. I take no responsibility for it’s accuracy)

What physical signs do you get when stressed?

Frugally yours

Abigail

X

P.S. Family, friends and visitors have all been contacting me about the radishes. The truth of the matter is you cannot taste them at all on a pizza. With so much topping – mushrooms, onions, sweetcorn and 2 cheeses. The radishes got lost.

However, I have been ashamed at the thought of throwing away the last of the unending sack of radishes I bought. So watch this space for more top radish information! lol

A BIt Radish-ed Out

Remember on Friday when I mentioned that I had a bag of circa 30 radishes. God Know why I bought them. Am not even that keen on Radishes.So I had a few suggestions.

Thank you for taking the time to respond with your good ideas.

Here's what I did.

Saturday I grated about two thirds of them, and added a third of a cabbage and a carrot. A massive dollop of mayo, a plop of mustard and it was good to go.

Actually, it tasted much better the next day when everything and seeped in together.

Thanks Frugal in Norfolk -great idea!

Still a third of the radishes left to go. I contemplated The Minnow Diaries idea of roasting them, and went with that, but instead put them on top of a home made pizza.

So this was dinner. Home made radish pizza with radish coleslaw on the side.

I am a bit fed up of radishes to be honest now and have to eat the rest tomorrow.

I still have about 5 radishes left. Sod the frugal life, I am throwing them away and not buying a radish again for a long long time.

Frugally yours
Abigail
x

Food Waste Friday

Reducing food waste one day at a time.

Food Waste Friday. I have great news. Nothing thrown away at all since last Friday. Brilliant isn’t it?

Now before I start with the self congratulations I do have a rather pressing problem to resolve. This is it.

What the heck do I do with a bag of radishes bought over a week ago that whilst “officially” are out of date. Look perfectly edible to me.

How the heck am I supposed to eat all these radishes? I mean everyone likes the odd radish….

I desperately do not want to throw them away, but save going round offering them to neighbours I am fresh out ideas.

Why the hell did I buy it? A warning to those visiting the supermarket without a list I suppose.

I am obviously living on borrowed time, but so far am bereft of ideas what to do with a European food mountain of radishes.

Answer on a postcard…..please….and soon.

No plans or tasks set for this weekend – save getting up early and going to the bank tomorrow to use all my coins saved to pay off extra from my credit card. Boring? Maybe, but I will walk back to the flat with a little extra skip in my step.

Frugally yours
Abigail
x

Ebay, PayPal, Dress and Debt

Yesterday, I wrote about how obsessed I was becoming with paying off my debt as soon as possible.

I will give you an example.

Last night getting ready for bed I suddenly remembered (don’t ask me why but I did) that I had over £10 credit sitting in an online account. I grabbed the laptop and logged in to check. Sure enough I was right. A few swift key punches and the money was transferred to my bank account.

A few more keyboard punches and it was knocked off the Credit Card.

Ok it was not a lot, but it was something! And “something” helps.

£10 is about 1% of my debt. Only another 99 £10s to find.

I will give an updated debt figure at the end of the month.

I joined PayPal last night too. I still have to wait to go through the authorisation process, and then link PayPal to Ebay. But, at least I am doing something. I am trying.

That pleases me.

Well here it is, an update on my latest sewing project. Another wrap dress.

I am writing this now wearing the original wrap dress. It is so comfortable.

I have made a few changes and cut the “cross over” at the front lower. It will not be quite as low when finished as I am intending on piping the raw edge. I prefer these dresses when worn with a vest top underneath in a contrasting colour.

Currently the sleeves are only tacked in and need to be machined. The piping needs to be completed and attached. There are some artistic details to finish on the ties and the hemming. At my rate of sewing about 3 –4 hours and it will be done. Hopefully another goal down in a couple of weeks.

Not quite a No Spend Day today. Bought a coke at lunchtime for £1. About £15 spent since Saturday.

With a long weekend approaching, I am really looking forward to 3 days off work. So far the Chap and I have nothing planned, but I would not mind a cinema trip, other than I just want to not spend. He is over in Scandinavia this week with work, back tomorrow and back over next week. Poor guy, he works hard. So I have promised to cook tomorrow night at his place. I am thinking just a pizza made from scratch with this easy crust recipe.

What are you doing this extended bank holiday weekend? And does it involve spending?

Frugally yours

Abigail

x

One Goal Down.

I have a new follower – Rachel. Good day to you! Thank you so much for visiting! X

Whoo Hoo! 15 followers, am I almost a cult?? :o)

Hand on heart, all yesterday I was planning on posting today about the wrap dress. Then I started thinking about May Goals and that got me started on bread, which got me reading my new Hairy Bikers Bakeation Book. Ooooo I love it so. Such a shame the series has now finished.

So yesterday I decided I was going to make their Rosemary Focaccia Bread.

Mentally, running through my store cupboard ingredients I realised – no rosemary and living in a flat – no garden to pick it from. Hmmmm will have to pop to the shop to grab some then.

A couple of hours later and I am in the car driving home from another horrid day. “To heck with this!” I thought “I am not spending more damn cash!”.

One of my favourite things about having made bread for a couple of months, is you feel a bit more confident about making substitutions in a recipe.

After reading Home Joys’ blog and her 6 part post on sugar I have for the last few weeks been substituting refined white sugar for maple syrup which is a natural sugar and better for you. 2 teaspoons of sugar called for? Put in 1 tablespoon of maple syrup instead.

So I did the same with the Hairy Bikers recipe. Once you have made bread a couple of times you can feel when a dough has been kneaded enough and apart from alterations to a bread basic recipe e.g. less flour and more olive oil, it was very straight forward.

(disclaimer – I am not a bread expert and have only been baking my own since February.)

After the second proving, is when I should have added rosemary. Hmmm, a quick review of the fridge revealed the opened Dutch Goats Cheese I bought two weeks ago when I was in Amsterdam. That will do!  Grated about a quarter of a very small wheel and sprinkled it over the bread after dribbling the bread with more olive oil and salt / pepper.

Came out looking like this, and tasted absolutely delicious!

"G” at the office this morning was raving about it when I took in half as an office treat. Her favourite of everything I bake is “my” Nigella Lemon Loaf. So G measures everything against that.

We might have a new favourite on our hands. It was perfect at 9.30am with our second cup of tea of the day.

Another May Goal down!

And,  a No Spend Day today, and aiming for 2 in a row.

And finally, thanks so much for the ebay information Mrs No Spend. All very useful. Will get set up on PayPal over the next couple of days and then start the selling! Excited but nervous.

Frugally yours

Abigail

x

It Is All About the Bags today.

Sorry for the radio silence for a few days, this weekend was busy busy busy.

Mum and I had such a lovely day mooching around the shops together in Birmingham. We spent ages looking at every stall in the rag market, walked all round Sefridges. Wandered into a few shops and had a coffee together.

She bought me some material for my next project (my last birthday present) taken from this Amy Butler book I got for Christmas (also from my parents).

I am going to make the bag on the cover and should be ready to start in 2-4 weeks. I love this book there are about 12 bags to make with insutructions and the paper patterns are held in an envelope at the back - brilliant idea. I have a similar book for clothes by someone else.

This is the material. The red cherry is for the outside and the plain red for the handles and the lining. Really looking forward to getting started.



It looks orange in this photo - it is actually all cherry red

I will try and remember this evening to prepare a post on my wrap dress with photos so you can see how it is developing. Really pleased so far.

*******************************************************************************************

I am obsessed with my debt at the moment.

I wake up thinking about the wretched thing and I go to bed at thinking about it.

Just focussed on how to speed up reducing the amount I owe. On my May Goals page I stated I wanted to pay off an extra £40 this month on top on the £201 I knocked off last week for May.

Well, I emptied my rainy day coin jar last night and bagged everything up ready to make an additional payment on Saturday morning. (my hands were filthy and I am amazed at how much cents, drachmas, euros etc I have picked up.) It will reduce Credit Card 1. I will reveal exactly how much on the next debt repayment post at the end of May.

I have also finally joined Ebay and am going to try and get rid of some clutter to help clear space and earn money. I have never sold anything before (much more of a “buyer” than a “seller” – hence my current situation) so this could be interesting. Any hints on how to sell items would be most gratefully received.

And finally, in line with my obsession to pay off my debt, I am really trying to curb daily spending.

 

Some supermarket shopping on Sunday: £4.58

Drinks etc since Monday - £1.00

Total: £13.06

Not great, I think I can do better and will not spend more than £3 between now and Friday.

Quiet week this week, The Chap is away with work and evening class has been cancelled. So maybe a little baking, ironing and catching up on chores whilst in my PJs – sounds like a good “no spend necessary” plan to me.

Frugally yours

Abigail

x

Coffee & Hot Chocolate and a sandwich on Saturday  - £7.48 (outrageous!)