Preparing for winter 2022/23

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How is best to prepare for the next winter? I imagine energy prices will be huge, I can afford a bit of an increase but I'm worried it will reach my limit.

I'm trying to forward think and plan ahead. I've bought some hot water bottles (in the sales) to put away and I will try and get a good stock of cupboard type foods to ease the food shopping bills over the winter when the energy will be used more. Ideally I want to try and have less other outgoings in November, December and January to cover the increase in my energy bills for that time.

I may also start overpaying a little each month on my energy account, or into a savings account so I have a bit of a buffer.

Any other ideas please?

@RosettaTheGardenFairy I love the name. That's what it will be called in our house from now on.

Thank you for that info @TheNoonBell

I bought the dc snudies in Penneys and they found them in the boot when they were bringing the groceries in and put them on straight away.

If they weren’t able to feel the heat on the hottest day of the year, I’m mildly hopeful their internal thermostats won’t be bothered by the winter cold either!

One of my key winter preps is to make a renewed effort to get ds eating a wider range of food. Lockdown got quite hairy and it would be better for him if he could be a bit more resilient in that respect. Easier said than done.

Hopefully it goes without saying but if anyone does end up cooking over open fires, be aware of the carbon monoxide risks and take appropriate precautions with ventilation.

I second the repetition being good. New posters come all the time. Also when you are under pressure it is hard to think and thinks that have been repeated come to mind.

get out, get the fire brigade out, stay out is one example that I put in use last year

Well, I spent today emptying out the log store at DMIL's house as the last load was literally tipped into it. So it needed to be emptied, floor relaid (there were old concrete roof tiles I could use as the roof was recently redone and 1 section replaced) and hole in the felt roof dealt with (a piece of leftover roof liner from the house job worked ok). And then the existing logs and the other stack in the open out the back all stacked into it. I was a puddle of sweat after it. But it means she's sorted for kitchen stove and sitting room open fire.

Now I just need to build a log store of my own as our old coal bunker only holds about 5 small sacks (the petrol station sized sacks).

I've just had the practice run for winter power cuts. Third time this week that there has been a power cut in the village.

Bedtime routine with a small head torch. I've bought a power bank and better head torch - buy hadn't charged that up! And I had to go looking for spare batteries and a screwdriver.

Think I will have a power cut prep box with everything ready to go. I've got a trangia, fuel, candles, lighters, head torch and a power bank. Just need them all kept in one place with the spare batteries and a screw driver.

I’m debating whether it’ll be cheaper to sit in Starbucks with a coffee while the kids are at school, using their electric for my laptop, instead of going home and putting the heating on?

This weekend i have mostly been washing duvets, bedding, sleeping bags and fleece throws ready for winter. Oh and coats where possible. They’ve been drying in record time. It’s great.

I'm doing the same, GreatBig, and it feels very good indeed. Three lines currently full of drying laundry 😘

@Varoty It would be cheaper to sit in the library than Starbucks (if the Government haven't closed yours)

I've been batch cooking yellow sticker bargains into meals to freeze ready for winter, upped my tinned food supplies. Bought snuddies for the kids and washed all the blankets

Organising for a new freezer for batch cooking.

@Trivester do you have any ideas about getting your DC to eat a wider range of meals? DTS1 (6) is such a beige eater and I lose the will to live with it sometimes he is ASD and I know it's not his fault as such but it's just so tiring.

@ContSalw we already have an 'emergency box' with torches, candles, power banks etc - I must remember to get everything out and check/ charge regularly as necessary though, otherwise I'll be very annoyed with myself when we do have power cuts!

I love a good drying day @GreatBigExpectations it's the only thing making this heat bearable for me really!

I would make sure you have plenty of the food he will eat.

I keep a lantern near my bed and phone with torch in touching distance.

@ClaraTheImpossibleGirl my son has ASD also, he's now 11. He only ate beige foods. He still eats mostly beige foods. He wouldn't eat pasta but started with it plain and grated cheese next to it. Now he has cheese sprinkled on top. He has ketchup on side of every meal. He will eat tinned ham, spam and tomato soup, these are cupboard stuff that I'm trying to get him used to for emergency meals. I think he will eat tinned meats if not in sauces. He has also recently tried and likes tinned spaghetti hoops. At school his class had to design their own porridge and now he will eat that if I let him add jam, milkshake powder, honey etc. Crackers he eats and have long dates. He eats omelette so I'm thinking of getting either dried egg/longlife carton eggs and see if he will eat that. Sometimes he has his normal dinners and I ask him to just try a different food but I never add it too his plate I offer it individually.
When he was about 3 I was advised to get him an electric toothbrush as it desensitises their mouths and helps them adjust to different tastes and textures.
I was also given some printouts about being a food detective. The child marks food with grades. Ie. circling a happy, inbetween or sad face. Grading for texture, taste, colour to make it a fun experiment. Just a little taste at a time.
I try to give him as near to what we are eating as I can.
He won't eat mash but eats whole potatoes. He has just started eating jacket potatoes. If we are having spaghetti bolognaise. He has meatballs instead with his pasta.

I have a 27 year old with ASC. He took cheese sandwiches to school every day from reception to sixth form. He ate plain pasta, sausage and mash with beans and vegetables. He can now make, and eat the worlds best fish curry, great soups and various other dishes. He phoned me the other day to tell me he had olives and liked them.
it takes time but they often get there. We used to put a teaspoon of what we were having on a saucer next to his plate, with no pressure to try. It seemed to work.

DD (16) is also ASD/ADHD and had a relatively limited palate for a long time. A couple of things that we found helped expand it were giving her what she wanted (within reason) but having 1 dinner a week which was called "platter" - put lots of (usually all cold) things on the table which included plenty she would eat but always at least a couple of things she wouldn't but we like - everyone decided what they wanted and served themselves, they could take a small amount of something new and try it but reject it (but only allowed take a small amount until they tasted it - THEN a larger helping was fine as otherwise lots was wasted and we missed out on nice things). But also seeing others eating things they liked but not putting pressure on them to eat it (it wasn't on their plate) and people taking seconds of things meant trying something mid-meal when not hungry worked well and could go unnoticed/unremarked (we would notice it - but not mention it) so she was more likely to try and enjoy it. But leave at least something she liked (big plate of carrots and pepper sticks, or bowl of cherry tomatoes worked well) and 1 thing to try (eg olives) within her reach to keep nibbling on as we all had a long slow dinner.

Or else doing similar with hot meals. Sometimes it was trying to just get her to eat more - and others it was expanding her options. We would put a single pot/ovenproof dish of a dinner in the middle of the table and let everyone help themselves, and take seconds if they wanted.

Or we might have a dish of plain rice along with a curry she liked and another that she claimed she didn't (especially on days I would do a batch cooking for freezer as any leftovers got frozen). Or get a few different dishes from Chinese takeaway but put them all in the middle. That sort of thing.

Thank you for all the food tips @Gilead @BiddyPop and @MaMaisey , some really helpful ideas there! DTS1 actually does like cooking but he only enjoys eating it if it's something sweet he used to go to a fussy eaters group but it all stopped for Covid, and he's a bit too old for it now.

I'll look into it more when it isn't so hot that I could cry most of the time, just have zero energy...

oh and if they decide they do not like something they previously liked, do not give it to them for a couple of weeks iuntil htey have forgotten they declared they did not like it now. sometimes works.

Thanks @BlackeyedSusan, I will give that a go too!

Slightly despairing today hearing about all the food price increases and potential empty shelves (due to the strike) - one of DTS1's staple foods is cheese straws, usually around 70p in Tesco or Lidl but becoming much harder to find silly I know but there are so few foods that he'll actually eat, I'm gutted when one of them is hard to get! We took a picnic out yesterday and his lunch was just so beige... I do try to sneak in fruit & veg but often it will cause an absolute meltdown. Aaarrggghhhh.

Must start prepping for winter by planning to plant potatoes, onions etc - not that we can do it on any sort of large scale, but I think it's useful for the DC to see where food actually comes from, and anything that gets them some fresh air is good.

Has anyone else fixed a good rate for gas/ electricity? Octopus aren't offering us anything great at the moment - our variable tariff may go through the roof in October but I can't find any better options

- one of DTS1's staple foods is cheese straws, usually around 70p in Tesco or Lidl but becoming much harder to find Sad silly I know but there are so few foods that he'll actually eat, I'm gutted when one of them is hard to get!

Could you make some? Just layering some grated cheese in offcuts of puff/flaky pastry makes something like the supermarket ones (I accept they're not the same so may not work for you). I freeze them when I have leftover pastry and then bake a few when the oven is on for something else, as even from frozen they bake quickly. I don't know how much pastry is to buy, but it would probably still work out cheaper than buying a box of them.

I have tried @Cynderella but all my efforts have been rejected, apparently my cheese straws aren't as nice as Tesco's I think it's the 'uniformity' aspect that's missing from mine, part of his ASD is that he likes things to look and taste exactly the same every time - hence his love of cream crackers, chicken nuggets etc.

I even tried getting him to make his own - it sometimes works if he helps with the food prep, so he can see what's going in it - but he refused on the grounds that he 'doesn't like cheese'

Yesterday, I bought 3 large plastic drawer units (I also wanted 2 Med and 1 small but they were out of stock on those) and put them into the space I store my extra food - large ones now have:
Flour, sugar, rice
Cereals
Pasta, Couscous, shelf-stable gnocchi

The smaller ones are for tins, jars, packets etc, and stuff like biscuits as well.

I slightly messed up my measurements so can't fit the coolbox there anymore but I can now access what I have much easier. So I'll see what I have loads of, what the gaps are, and Dh will feel better that it's less messy and "tin hat prepper space".

@ClaraTheImpossibleGirl Have you spoken to your gp for help? My DS is 12 and has a very limited diet, he’s on daily milkshakes from the dietician which thankfully he loves (we add the millions squirty milkshake to make it taste better)

Anyway, this is going to sound gross, but the most helpful tip we had from the dietician was giving him permission to spit. So if he willingly try’s a new food, he doesn’t have to swallow it if he doesn’t like it, we’ve taught him to spit it into a tissue. It’s made him much more open to trying new things.

Another tip we found useful, was feeding him what you know he’ll eat, so the plate looks familiar, but add a tiny amount of new food and encourage him to try it, then slowly increase the amount. We did this when we tried to introduce peas - DS favourite food is tinned sweetcorn, so he’d have 2 tablespoons of sweetcorn and a teaspoon of peas - at the start he’d literally only eat 2 or 3 peas, but we’d give lots of praise and gradually he ate more till he was eating the full teaspoon full, so then we’d give him 2 teaspoons. It takes a very long time, but it was worth it - he’s eaten no veg except raw carrot or corn for over 5 years, and now he’ll eat a tablespoon of peas!

oh and if they decide they do not like something they previously liked, do not give it to them for a couple of weeks iuntil htey have forgotten they declared they did not like it now. sometimes works. Following on from what @BlackeyedSusan said, it can also help if you remind them that they used to like it. I have this a lot with seasonal foods. They forget they liked it and as haven't seen for a while, immediately say they don't. Oh, and peeled courgette is also a beige food

My lanterns are due to arrive today.