June 08- the shoes, the food, the glamour!

[pureeandpearls]

Struggling to load pages these days and saw we were over the 900 so took the liberty of starting a new thread.

BDQ, I love my job! My boss is great - she is v understanding with childcare issues, lets me work flexibly and is encouraging and supportive. I like the place, I like the people, they think I'm good - hope I haven't jinxed it!

Our new house is at Darnley - do you know where I mean? It's also sort of Nitshill, which is quite scary, but a lot of it has already been bulldozed regenerated. You and S (and Viva and C) will be more than welcome to visit - once we've got the garden sorted we can chuck the rugrats out and drink wine philosophise deeply.

Gosh, quiet here today. Typical of you lot when I have some time to post! I have set up a Christmas food thread in the Christmas topic...

I know it well whinegums. I lived in Priesthill when I was a nipper and my Granny used to live in Nitshill. Very handy for giant shopping centre, the name escapes me! I'd love to come for a visit when you're all sorted!

I am so proud - C realised the clocks were changing, and slept for an extra hour this morning!

whinegums glad the new job is going well, and the move is moving forward!

BDQ go and do some more revision!

spider I have a pumpkin, I shall go and investigate this recipe it sounds lovely!

Rolf - I do a similar thing with cookbooks, spend more time reading them than actually cooking.

Abdn- glad you got to see Josey and Oli.

Neenz - bike ride sounds fun, I don't mind getting wet on that sort of thing if I can get into a hot shower at the end!

Whinegums - have fun sorting out the move and hope you all get well soon.

Will have a look out for the economy gastronomy book, watched some of the programmes, the recipes looked good but I was really shocked at how much they were all spending, and wasting on food and didn't get any new tips about saving money. But then again I am pretty tightfisted already .

DH woke me up at 2.30am getting up to go cylcing, I didn't get back to sleep for ages so had a headache and felt rubbish when J wanted to get up for breakfast. J is now having a nap and DH is snoozing on the sofa, I've had a nap too and feel a bit better. Bit of a wasted day though.

It's already getting dark here, stupid clock change.

the biggest single thing that's helped me cut down on costs is this meal planner. It's brilliant! Seriously saved my sanity and my fridge. We plan all our meals and buy what we need and it's worked really well for us.

I am totally exhausted. I think daylight savings should be abolished and we we should stay on the same time all year!

Viva just tried to google for the pumpkin chowder recipe and the copywrite on the Guardian website has expired. However, my own post on this thread came up!

So, this is roughly what you do:
Peel and chop 1kg of pumpkin into 2.5cm dice.
Fry the cubes of pumpkin in olive oil so that they soften and colour slightly (in batches if necessary).
Then add to the pumpkin 2 chopped cloves of garlic and 4 chopped red chillies, and 1 teaspoon each of ground cumin and coriander.
Pour in a litre of veg stock and 2 cans of coconut milk.
Let it simmer for 20-30 min until the pumpkin is cooked through.
Add in some fresh, chopped coriander leaves.
Put it all in the food processor and blend until smooth (or lumpy if you like lumps).
It freezes well too.

Ktpie and AH - yes the big thing from the book that has helped me is meal planning, and making a thorough and strict list each week of what we need. The EG book has also helped with having leftover stuff to give P at tea time. I think he is eating more variety now (as are we). Agree though that some of the people on the programme were shockingly wasteful. I am also getting braver with buying one big thing (legs of lamb, massive pumpkins) each week and then turning it into lots of different stuff for the week and the freezer. The downside is that it certainly isn't speedy gastronomy. There is quite a bit of chopping and cooking involved.

pumpkin soup recipe looks good, I try to make one every year so I'll try this one

PILs visited last night - find it a complete trauma every time. So, given that MIL hasn't seen A in quite a few weeks (she's always busy), you'd have thought she'd want to spend time with A. But no, while DH and I scurried around the kitchen getting the food ready, A crawled around the kitchen empying the cupboards and making a mess while MIL appeared to be nosying around my house. At one point A had crawled into the dining room, MIL came downstairs and said to him loudly "oh, is no-one even looking after you" .

And at one point, after having been upstairs for 10 mins, she came down and said "I see you've moved A's cot into his own room" - - WTF was she doing snooping around .

Sorry for the rant, had to vent

Glad to hear Oli and Josey are well

whinegums - glad the job is going so well

just noticed my skirt just sold for £40

Still not keeping up, but thought it might make you all laugh (it did me) that DH signed a card to me "DH".

Not much time to catch up, but lol PP at your DH!!

Abdn - I agree about the putting the clocks back - was up at stupid o clock with E this morning!Thanks for the Josey/Oli update

Hello to everyone else

Our offer is in the post apparently - it's all a bit casual, bank holiday tomorrow so we have to wait until Tuesday for it!

I agree that meal planning really helps, and sticking to a list when you go to the shops. I've also started digging old packets of dried stuff out of the backs of cupboards every now and then and trying to make something from them, uses it up, makes a cheap dinner and makes more space in the cupboards.
Thanks for the recipe Spider I will write that down.

Allnew - I hate people poking round my house, in particular my Mum and MIL so know what you mean. In fact that story sounds just like something that would happen with my Mum. How annoying.
Brilliant news about the skirt.

PP - is it your birthday today? Happy birthday!

Deb, well done on the house front by the way. I did read your posts, but never got around to adding my congratulations.

Viva, you are a jammy git, B was up extra early at 5.30am. I'm going to bed very soon tonight, I've decided to take my extra hour in having a super early night as I didn't get it this morning.

BDQ, a visit to your old 'hood is definitely in order then.

Allnew, well done on the skirt, but I'd be well pissed off with MIL too.

Ktpie, I'm planning a lot of digging around in our cupboards over the next few weeks, I don't fancy moving food to the new place, so there'll be some interesting concoctions going on.

LOL PP.

We kept S up an hour late last night so we got up at usual 7am this morning which was good. I remember being in a mad panic about it last year because at the time his sleeping pattern was roughly 6pm -6am. We spent a week pushing back his bedtime about 10 mins per night so that we could maintain his carefully structured routine. This year, just keep him in the bath till he goes wrinkly .

Oh meal planning, a def winner here too. We're so much better than we used to be, although could be better. Time is our enemy at the moment though, when we're both finished studying maybe we could spend more time cooking...

Penguin
Allnew how much did the skirt cost you in the first place? £40 is a lot for an ebay buy! And at your MiL.

I find I need a mix of meal planning and having the makings of quick storecupboard meals. I never get the balance quite right though!

You all sound so organised!

I forgot all about the clocks changing, but since half term started Thea has been sleeping in really late so her 10am wake up (ie now 9am) was fine! She's got a cold, poor thing. DD1 was quite feverish as well and spent most of the day asleep on the sofa. I don't know if we've had a mild dose of swine flu in our house, actually. DS1 was unwell for a few days last week with some of the symptoms (mild fever, loss of appetite, aching limbs, exhaustion, headache) but it just seemed like normal mild flu, tbh. DS2 hardly ever gets ill and he has the least healthy lifestyle of all of us. If he had his way he would eat nothing but white food and would spend his free time gawping at screens. He doesn't get to do these things but has a very strong affinity with white trash culture

I can't handle anymore stories of amazing sleeping babies! We started our day at 4.40. In bed now, trying to compensate, night all.

...and this morning we mercifully got a lie in until 5am. Not impressed at all with this clock changing business.

Ali - we were up with you yesterday and up with you today. I managed more sleep last night though so I'm not the screaming wreck I was yesterday. Dh is never being allowed to go offshore on the clock-change weekend again.

One of my recent boden purchases (10th Septh, knitted henley dress) has developed a whole in the the front - definitely a flaw. I know they are supposed to be good with returns and such but 90% of the reason I shop there is to avoid hassle and now I'm going to have to try to return it etc. . Serves me right for buying there...

Rolf love the description of your DS2 as having an affinity for white trash culture.

Morning all. Having to work today so enormous shock to the system!

abdn sorry about dress - Boden supposed to be very good with returns, so hope it's not too much of a PITA for you.

I'm sure it'll be fine, I'm just lazy and find that when things like this happen it takes away some of the 'treat' that the dress was in the first place IYSWIM.

And it's a school day here !!!!

just called Boden and they are sending the replacement and a returns envelope to me right away. I'm amazed - best customer service I've ever heard of. I was imagining waiting weeks before they recieved the faulty dress in the mail...

That's good AH about Boden. Sympathies for being on your own for clock change weekend. At least yesterday we team tagged it. This morning DH was getting up at 5.30 anyway, so no point in leaving P to cry really. Still, I have booked myself into a class at the leisure centre this morning, so P is going in the creche for 90 mins this morning . (I realise grinning about putting your child in a creche probably nominates' me for one of Puree's bad mother awards)

ah Boden generally are good on customer service. Also there stuff usually good quality an lasts for ages (have got some stuff that worn loads for work that is about 7 or 8 years old) .

deb great news re house !!

pp happy birthday and lol at dh an the card.

whinegums glad job going well.

Bit broken this morning as e up from about 3am and wouldn't settle as wailed every time got into her cot. Not sure why- just one of quirks of being a toddler. Wanted to play but I wouldn't let her so may not be that tired. Probably aftermath of amazing 13 hour sleep on saturday.

Better go as breakfast time