Sniff

Eileen - bear spilled wax due to one of those strings of events that are almost inevitable. I was burning a large candle in the centre of a very stable table. Bear stood up too quickly, had a dizzy moment and, as he is rapidly approaching six foot tall, had a sort of blast radius as he stumbled and knocked over the candle. The candle went out straight away, but there was wax everywhere as it had been burning for ages and was mostly liquid. Some of the dratted stuff got onto my newish bag and soaked in. I was so unimpressed.

Wherethejourneytakesme - you need a black belt in shopping these days. I wish I had the energy for the challenge.

Sharon - I think we are all going to see a sudden jump in costs and it's going to be hard to keep up. I hope that you don't need too much of the ibuprofen.

Bless - I think I'm going to have to have a page per item in the price book as you suggest and work around it like that. I used to wait every year until the tinned soups came down to 50p per tin. The sale was around the same time each year in autumn and I bought loads. That was at a time when a tin was normally around 80-95p per tin outwith a sale. Now the same soup and the same brand is £1.45! When I saw a sale a few weeks ago that worked out at around 60p per tin, I bought a dozen. They will last maybe two months. It's a challenging time.

DH and I both have sore throats, sniffles, coughs and are full of aches. We can't call it flu, but it's not very pleasant. I ended up cancelling not only the hair dresser appointment, but also our trip to the theatre that we planned for tomorrow. I didn't do a big shop, though I booked a delivery for Sunday. This morning I was seriously worried that I wasn't in a good state to drive! I am not a ray of sunshine.

On the other hand, I made the soup! And it is so much of a win for me. Months ago I bought a pack of stew vegetables that had been marked down. There was a carrot or two, parsnip, swede, and an onion or so. I chopped them up and bunged them in the freezer. Today I pulled them out of the freezer ready to go, added some lentils, a stock cube and water, a little oil, turmeric and cumin. It took very little effort because all the veggie prep was done and I could leave it on the simmer for half an hour and it would be ready. Then DH liquidised it and it was lovely. It felt really warming. I think I shall watch out for those marked down veggies more often and make sure that they're prepped. 

I feel really good about it. And it's made me rethink the freezer and how I use it. At the moment there is a lot of beige stuff in to suit bear, but I can pick that up quite easily on a day to day basis. It would make more sense to freeze bargains. If I remember correctly (which is not guaranteed), that bag of veggies cost something like 43p, down from about 80p or 90p. There aren't any packs currently on the Tesco website, but Morrisons have a kilo of frozen casserole veggies for £1.55. Even with the lack of waste, the frozen stuff is still a lot more expensive. DH and I had a good meal out of it, and DH had seconds. I'll probably throw the dregs away because there isn't much space at the moment, but even though bear utterly rejected the soup, there were still three good portions. If I had managed it better and perhaps added a potato, there could easily have been two or three portions going into the freezer. If you add the (probably) 43p to the cost of the stock cube, lentils, spices and oil, and even the bit of bread we had with it, it still would not have been a lot per portion. It didn't even take much cooking. 

And that is where I need the price book. Not everything that is marked a bargain is actually a bargain. I'll still be buying my frozen onion. But I need to recognise a bargain when I see it and use it properly. 

Writing stuff - I put a small post about what is happening on my writing blog here. I'll be taking a few stories down on Sunday. It will be incredibly good for me to have a sort through.

Hugs and good health to all.