Well I believe Christmas went well for everyone. I made 2 types of chocolate chip cookies (milk & white) for everyone and I did make a beef roast to take with us to my husbands parents and I believe everyone liked it (I hope they did if they did not I would prefer to be told then lied to). However my chocolate yule log cake did not come out well in fact half of it came out half of it decided to stick inside the pan even tho I did use cake release stuff and quite a bit of it to boot. Our daughter said she had a great Christmas and she got what she wanted for Christmas so that is good! Our son thankfully does not understand Christmas and so was not bothered by what he got, well all right that is not 100% true! He saw cadbury chocolate buttons and well that is all he wanted for the rest of the night, he even took his sisters which she was fine with as I promised to get her a new bag of chocolate buttons. As for my husband and me we received some lovely gifts and we of course like like, however we both wished that we would not have gotten anything from anyone as it quite honestly makes us both feel like we have not given the same monetarily back if you will.
As for the future I am hopeful, I currently have all I need in order to make three meals a day from scratch at home. However I will hold up my hands and admit we did get pizza one day mostly as I was worried about using the gas for anything as the gas supplier was messing around down at the end of the village and I am paranoid! Plus I could find nothing on why the hell they were out here so rather be safe then sorry!
But as I said I have everything I need to make three meals a day for at least the next 16 days! We have loads of fresh potatoes thanks to our Aldi & Lidl stores selling 2kg (4.4lb) bags of white potatoes at 15 pence (19 cents) a bag! so we have around 70-80lbs of potatoes. I plan on planting any potatoes that start to sprout so we can hopefully get a little crop for later in the year, so hopefully this coming spring & summer will be good and we will have a nice little crop of white potatoes.
Where was I? Oh yes meals! I have made a meal plan that Starts Dec 27th and runs to Jan 11th which means I will not be going shopping for the next two weeks. The day after Jan 11th is a Friday and that day is when I normally go shopping and so I will most likely go shopping on that Friday to pick up only the most needed items like milk, fruit, yogurt for the kids (if not sooner on that one!), brioche rolls (these are a must and I'll tell you why later down) and so on. So all of the breakfasts are pretty much the same across the board a choice of cereal, oatmeal/ready brek, toast, pancakes for weekdays and on the weekends air fried potatoes and eggs are added to the previous options.
The luncheons (lunch) choices vary i.e hotdogs, chicken nuggets, spam, tuna, crispy fish fillets etc and all would be served with either fried potatoes, chips (fries) crisps (chips), as a sandwich, or with crackers. Each day though will have a set luncheon.
Dinners also vary like the luncheons i.e fish and chips, egg fried rice, chilli and cheese with crackers or what have you, mini pizza's, savoury rice with vegetables and chicken or fish, breakfast for dinner etc. I will also be making my own bread, and biscuits (american biscuits that is) along with any sweets like cakes, cookies etc.
I believe I stated in another post I have already organized a budget (if not well now you know!) I already know for the most part what is going out and what is coming in ( I do need to track down our yearly payments and get an idea of how much we will pay this coming year for those). I will need to change our shopping pattern i.e I will need to send the husband to get animal feed every fortnight. The first fortnight he will get two boxes of 48 cat food pouches (that should last our cat about a month), two bags of cat litter, one 15kg (33lbs) bag of dog feed (should also last the dog a month), one 10kg (22lb) bag of rabbit feed (that will last about two months for our three rabbits), and eight 20kg (44lb) bags of layers pellets (that should last them til the next fortnight) & that will cost roughly £143 ($182.30). Then the next fortnight he will get another eight bags of chicken feed and that will cost £72 ($91.79), So a total of roughly £215 ($274.09) for the first month and the second month would be £200 ($254.97) as the rabbit feed will last two months. I estimate that the dog food, cat litter (both bags) and rabbit feed will cost £15 ($19.12) each, the cat food will cost £26 for both boxes and all sixteen bags of chicken feed will cost £144 ($183.58).
Now that the animal feed has been broken down I believe I stated in a previous post I was going to allot around £240 ($305.96 currently) a month I may reduce that down to no less than £150 any given month as we currently have loads of personal care products like shampoo,conditioner, body wash/soap, face wash, feminine products etc. I know I can currently get around 5 months worth of toilet tissue for £40.50 ($51.63) that is 160 rolls in total or 32 rolls per month. My husband has been thinking of getting a bidet attachment but I always thought they were very pricey but I did find one on amazon for under £10 ($12.79) as a return in new condition so we bought it, we did get it yesterday and we fitted it last night it seems like all the parts are there so I am very thankful and hopefully this will help reduce our toilet usage but only time will tell on that one. As for food I will be looking for cheaper options on meats both before sales and after sales & of course eat less meat and even raise our own chickens specially for meat not just eggs at this point. As well as eating more in season produce. I will also be planning my garden in the coming weeks and starting seeds for that, I will need to choose plants that are quite hardy and tolerant either side of the spectrum. Now I mentioned my son above with food and said I would explain, well the long and short of it is our son was referred to the local pediatrician team by his speech and language team to see if our son was on the spectrum and well the pediatrician believes he maybe and has ordered more testings and has encouraged us to handle this as if he was on the spectrum including dealing with food items. He is also interested in seeing our daughter to test her if our son comes back as on the spectrum. So if anyone reading this has a child on the spectrum who is very picky and fussy when it comes to food how did you get them to try new things and how did it go?
I know this coming year will be quite tight money wise but I am hopeful that a few tweaks here and there will help reduce our costs, I'll be able to grow and raise a bit more of our own food as well and with any luck I'll be able to get our son to eat more then just a handful of foods. Until my next blog post dear reader I hope you have a wonderful day or week and hope you are blessed with whatever you need.
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