Frugaleers Flying into the New Year All Welcome on the January Thread

[SpottyTeacakes]

New thread hopefully someone can add some old links?

Morning.

bantam. A few years ago now, I won a competition to run the London marathon. Actually, I was running it anyway (had a good enough marathon time to get automatic entry), but the comp meant I got an elite athlete coaching me, full kit, expenses in a posh hotel, all my sports drinks/gels and... my diet analysed by one of the Olympic teams nutritionists. Never won anything before so this was a big win!! I didn't actually run my best time (they were coaching me to achieve a really fast time, but a bit too soon), but I got coached by said athlete for a couple of years after and did do some stonking times, which I look back on now and can only dream about (long term injury stopped me running for a long time). I have done 6 marathons altogether.

adora Rancheros pie is essentially chilli, minus the beans and, in addition to the 'hot' chilli spice, add in 'warm' spices such as cumin, all spice and sultanas. Layer with sweet potato slices, and cook in the SC. Yum!

pointless I ignore the sell by/use by dates too. If it's not mouldy, it's fine.

Quiet day in, as absolutely full of cold and back to usual reality tomorrow, so actually trying to not keep going (I will). Should be NSD then.

Perusing HFW recipe books for vegetarian inspiration, some super ideas actually, reminds me to flick through more often, instead of usual stuff.

Should be a NSD today. £3.64 put into the penny challenge thing.

Having a bit of a budgeting nightmare this week. I'm not sure when the next tax credit payment is, so I don't know how long I'm going to have to make this one last. Assuming next Monday since it got paid on the 31st, but it's a massive PITA.

need I'm doing that now. We have a ton of recipe books but some are barely used. I'm trying to cook 2 meals from one of them a week. This week it was Chinese food made easy by Ching-he hung. The BBc show. Super tasty Singapore noodles and 5 spice chicken. Might try Levi roots book next week.

Washing on. Washing up from last night done. Back in bed with a cup of tea.

DH has taken ds1 swimming at the local hotel with some friends and then ds1 has a haircut booked for later. Hopefully less than £20 all together and taken from present money.

I'm feeling very Sunday night like. DH back to work tomorrow and he is supposedly away all week. Not a good gentle reintroduction to dealing with the two on my own! It's been lovely being Christmas as I've been able to have a break from it but I feel like it will be Easter before that happens again!

I think from this month I will bounce out my maternity pay as soon as it comes in. I think we'll need to try and down grade sky and drop our cleaner to make it work though so expect to be £200 short. I hope not though.

On batteries, and Fluffy mentioning Aldi batteries - is everybody using rechargeables? They are a lot cheaper.

what that's awful you feel sick about going back to work, im sure if you're already doing well and you can see how you'd feel not having to go back you can make it work.
was thinking of heading to the shops to get lentles for leftover ham, but might use up eggs instead and not fill the cupboard (with things I pick up whilst out)
DH is still ill but gets Monday off, I'm back tomorrow so need to get on top of a few things and then make extra dinner for lunch when at work.

We love looking through all our recipes books, we keep a list of things we want to make then refer to it when we're a bit stuck for inspiration. I try to do either a new recipe or something we haven't had for ages at least once a week.

Thanks for the foodie advice folks!

DH has just taken the DCs to Tesco. The idea was that we use the £15 giftcard, but can we find it...? Course not

Did a small list for top up stuff, we were very late to get started this morning so haven't done our kitchen inventory yet but I've told DH we ARE doing that this afternoon no matter what.

what we ditched sky completely last March. We have Netflix and just got now tv. Depends on what you watch on sky but it works out loads cheaper. I think dh got the box and three months entertainment for £10. I've just bought 2 months movies for £10. It's £6.99 a month for entertainment (for us this works as we only used to watch sky 1, Atlantic and living) and an additional £10.99 for movies. But you can buy vouchers on Amazon.

Ipsos we are switching to rechargeable batteries. My lovely (and insanely generous) friend got the DCs a train set for Christmas, and as part of it he got rechargeable AAA batteries and a charger (he made them open the batteries first - so funny as they were trying to work out why they'd been given batteries as a present :o). I'm going to get some AA ones that we can use for the Wii remotes and such, since the charger takes both types.

Also I made the decision to transfer some savings to pay off a big chunk of the credit card. Big sigh, but sensible. Hoping not to use the credit card anymore (we had to when we were paying childcare for a while but that's not an issue at the moment) except we will probably need to for DSD's bus pass, which is £152 a quarter.

REALLY determined to be sensible and record everything this year, and particularly be careful with food because that is a big issue. Both with poor planning/wastage, and spending too much on meals out (just stuff like McD for convenience so bad for us as well as a waste of money!) because I'm too disorganised and/or ill to cook.

Aargh! Just noticed that DD has dropped her ID card (which gives her half price bus fare) so that's £1.50 wasted, and DH didn't take his keys so doesn't have his Clubcard either. See, this is the kind of disorganisation that costs money, it all mounts up! He did take bag-for-lifes though so that's something.

eBay items listed. If all sell for basic start price I'll make £99 (or thereabouts).

£6.49 bedside lam as mine broke
£5 on a bulb
£21.49 on a floor lamp. It was £39.99 then reduced to £26.99 and I deserved it yesterday with an extra 20% off but when j collected it today they tried to charge £26.99 until I asked her to charge me what I reserved it at!

We almost bought a sideboard for £170 as it said 'display only' from £399 but when I asked she said 'no you can't have that until the warehouse ones have all gone I can order you one now but it'll be delivered in six weeks' so I said no

Okay, I have sort of given up physical activity for today as I am so full of cold, but have managed to vacuum all upstairs, 3 loads of washing and to sort out more of DD's room.

Em, you are one step ahead as I have just put aside my Ebay items so far, I'll list tomorrow. Some tack and a snap back of DD's.

However, I've opened a Help to Buy ISA for DS and set up a standing order for £50 pcm. He's only just 16, so many years before he will buy a house. £50 seems doable to this account, as we save other stuff too for the DC.

£7 in Boots on Lockets and ear plugs.
£10 Sainsburys for cleaning products and ham for sandwiches. Didn't feel well enough to call at Aldi, but resent Sainsburys prices tbh. However, have deleted said items from my Morrisons order.

I just bought crackers for half price from Tesco and started my Christmas 2016 spreadsheet. Deeply weird.

Hi everyone. Have been lurking on this thread for a while and hope it's ok if I join. I've just worked out to use the talk app instead of going through explorer so it's so much easier to actually contribute!

I started using YNAB last year and love the theory but I found myself topping it up over Christmas with savings so it kind of defeated the point. Am aiming to actually stick to the budget this year!

Started badly yesterday though. I used to get online deliveries from Tesco but we got sent some vouchers you can only use in the shop. Dragged two kids there in the rain and what did I do - forgot the bloomin things!! How annoying!

£54 in sainsburys. Bah.

If you oversalt a stew a peeled whole potato in reduced it not sure if it will work for gammon though

Hi Luxy. Sorry to hear your health hasn't been the best. Gammon can be incredibly salty. I usually soak mine in a pan of water, and drain twice/refill with fresh if at all possible. Can you 'dilute' the taste a touch, by using any of the following ideas?

sandwiches, with lots of salad filling.
Risotto, using minimal ham and lots of other ingredients.
pea and ham soup
With chips, with a fried egg and grilled pineapple on top (DS adores this!)
In wraps, lots of salad filling, as above.

Sure you can slice and freeze too.

Bought DH his birthday present £85 (ouch, but budgeted for).

Luxy I'm not keen on the texture of gammon done in the slow cooker. It does tend to be salty anyway. I make a pasta bake with leftover gammon, peas and cheese sauce with breadcrumbs on the top.

I know. If it helps, I have bought incredibly salty joints before too. In my straw poll of one, I think it's when I've bought a less expensive joint, we treated ourselves to a pricey joint over Christmas, which was delicious. However, you may have had a different experience.

Wondering if there is anything else where spending less is not 'best'?

Tanking down here, and due to do so all week, which is incredibly worrying given the floods. Even the pony was glad to be in his stable, which is rare, he will happily stand in all weather with no wish to come in.

Yes throw the potato away.
And yy to soaking or boiling first seems to be the advice but I never do and use supermarket gammon but always unsmoked.
Raining all day here too. Baking to use up some bananas. Got Morrison's brisket and the far is horrific over half the joint. Not impressed will stick to butcher brisket