A bit of a drama

It has all been going on here today....

(image from guardian.co.uk)

The FH has been carted off to hospital in one of these, by two lovely chaps, this afternoon.

I followed behind some time later once I had the girls safely home, and we left him in the A&E department, waiting for a bed on a ward, and to begin tests and treatment.

Basically, the poor love is awash.  He has severe water retention, causing shortness of breath and all sorts of other horrible symptoms, and so they are going to try to get rid of the water to start with, and then move on to preventing it building up again.

He has been taking anti-rejection drugs for his heart for 13 years now, and this is a side effect - chronic kidney disease, now at stage 3.

We are home again, a little worse for wear, but thankful for all the messages of support and offers of help we have had from local friends here.  

Monday's monitoring

The electricity meter was read this morning as usual, and we are ever so slightly up on last week, by a few pence, but given that the FH has had the electric blanket on constantly for the last three or four days, I guess that is OK.  We are still well within our monthly payment figure, even since it has been reduced.

The budget from last month looks surprisingly good!  Considering that I paid for a load of logs [£75], taxed the Skoda [£100] and insured it as well [£260], and still managed to get £755 or so into the savings pot, I am pleased to consider the first month of the new year a success.  I haven't bought a magazine, either - although I have picked up free ones in the supermarkets, including a new one in Sainsbury's about Living well for Less.

There are areas where I still feel that I am spending too much, like on my own special gluten/wheat/dairy free  needs.  This is going to be TMI for some, but I have to eat a couple of seed bars each day to keep things moving - and I know this to my cost because I tried to cut back at the end of January when the budget was beginning to squeak - and the system got bunged up and then exploded.  I felt rather rough!  So there are a couple of ways of looking at this - carry on as I am, see if I can buy them in bulk and get them cheaper somewhere, or make my own.  That will be the experiment of the month...I am very healthy at the moment and pleased with the investment I made last year to see the homeopath, so this is a little hiccup in the grand scheme of things.  I am feeling so much better in lots of ways.  I am a worthwhile investment, so I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

I have made a great start to the February house cleaning and tidying challenge.  I have cleared out our bedroom, found the carpet under the dust and fluff and rubbish/clutter, and sorted out my clothes.  Going from a size 18/20 to a 14/16 has meant that there are lots of clothes which are too big - so I have 10 supermarket bags of clothes to take to the charity shops this week, and my side of the wardrobe is looking rather less stuffed than it did.  I have brought two boxes of books back downstairs, and I have had three bags of rubbish out as well.  I am pleased with my morning's work in there.

I have also finished and typed up the next unit in the Faith & Worship course I am doing, and it has been emailed off to the tutor tonight.  It marks the halfway point - unit 9 out of 18!

Hope you have all had a good day xx

Not so frugal food

Because the FH wasn't able to attend the cook-off yesterday afternoon, I promised to re-create the winning recipes for him to taste here this afternoon.  

I went to chapel with the YFG this morning and then we and the EFG nipped off to Lidl's as I had a voucher to get £5 off when I spent £35 from an offer on their Facebook page.  With all that has been going on this weekend, this was my first opportunity to use it, and also the ideal chance to grab some mozzarella cheese, vine ripened tomatoes and some basil, in order to make these pizzas.

The winning recipes were Caprese Pizza from a Pampered chef book, and the White chocolate fudge cookies from Lorraine Pascal's book, Home Cooking.

To begin the pizzas, I made up a batch of pizza dough from a packet mix.  It had to be rolled out and then cut into three sections, like this:

I then pressed a garlic clove into some oil and brushed it over the dough, and sprinkled Parmesan cheese over that.  It was then set to one side to rest for about 15 minutes, whilst the tomatoes and mozzarella were patted with some kitchen paper to remove excess moisture and set aside.  Then the dough was baked for about 10 minutes.

When it came out of the oven, the tomatoes and mozzarella were layered up on it like this, and it went back in the oven for 10 minutes.  The aroma was lovely!

When it emerged the final time, some chopped basil in a tiny bit of oil was slathered over it, and it was served.

The FH is still ill, on his fourth day in bed, and with little appetite, so I hoped to tempt him to eat a little with this - so this was his portion.  He did manage to eat it and said it was delicious.

The other recipe was rather challenging.  The recipe says that the mix makes 6 cookies, but they were enormous - so I made more reasonably sized ones, and it turned out 16.  These use 200g of white chocolate, so they are quite heavy on the chocolate, but they are just like we used to buy when I was a child in a cookie shop in Cambridge - and again, the smell is lovely!  

They do spread rather as they bake!

And finally, since the EFG and my diets don't allow us to indulge in pizza, we had sticky chicken and green veg just in time to watch Call the Midwife at 8pm.  

And I think that will do for today.  Hope you have all had a good weekend, and we'll be back tomorrow - I have looked at January's figures and they can come in tomorrow's monitoring post.

Finishing post

I made it through the last couple of days, and all things have come to their conclusion - the Village Celebrity Cook-off has happened, and £200 is added to the coffers of the chapel, to pay for all manner of things to keep the place open.  Lots of people want the chapel to be there, especially for weddings, funerals and christenings, but Sunday to Sunday, we never see them back again, and it is left to the faithful few to keep the doors open for everyone else - and actually, we are pleased to do it, because it means so much to us to be there week after week.  It is there for us too.

We had a lovely afternoon and the chapel was heaving - far more people came than had bought tickets, so we were surprised, but pleased, to see them.  They just got their tickets on the door and kept coming.  The two contestants, the village nurse practitioner and the headteacher of the village primary school, were both amazing in their individual ways.  The headteacher had brought hats and badges which reflected famous chefs  and cooks like Mrs Beaton and Gordon Ramsay, and Nigella - with a fetching black wig.  The nurse passed around sweets and regaled us with stories of making Werther's Originals-flavoured vodka in the dishwasher! The headteacher won by just the one vote!

Having hosted that event this afternoon, on top of gym all morning, and the dinner and school washing tonight, my feet are aching and I am definitely ready to go to bed shortly.  It has been a great day and we have achieved a lot - we have some wonderful friends and villagers here.

January saving success

(image from bbc.co.uk)

We did it - we hit the savings target for the month and squirrelled away £755.17 for our future.

It was a bit of a struggle towards the end of the month, but I am so pleased that it has been achieved.

I have started on February's savings by putting the £158 monthly Council Tax payment into the savings account: I budget for 12 payments, but of course we only make 10 to the council, so the other two are ready for the savings pot.  I have also added the £50 to the Travel Fund for the EFG's next School bus pass, which means we have made a good start on February's total.  £208 down, only £542 to go - and it is a shorter month, so it might be easier.

I will do the end of month analysis over the weekend, as I have to get going now - busy day ahead and the FH still in bed.  I had 90 minutes this morning in the EFG's bed, and it was bliss - I slept!

February Challenge

(image from captainclean.co.uk)

It is moving towards Spring now, and time to get the house in order!  This month's challenge for me is to get the house really clean and tidy, using frugal methods and products.  I need to set up and learn to maintain frugal and regular house cleaning schedules and routines which will see me through the year.

I am going to be trying out some home made recipes for laundry and cleaning products, and hoping they do a grand job so that the house is sparkling by the end of the month!

Thursday meal

No photo today because the EFG and her laptop are not here to get the photo off the camera - the desktop pcs that we have are too old to have the right slots to pop the memory card into, so we have to rely on the laptop.  We have had sweet and sour chicken with rice tonight, after I got back from depositing the EFG and her friend at UJ's house.  I have arranged a lovely chap to bring them home again tomorrow in the late afternoon, so that saves me another round trip down there.  He works in the area and will pick them up for me after work and bring them back.  

I have made the Mars bar cake from Lesley's blog here for the chapel coffee morning tomorrow.  It was incredibly easy and I just scaled it up to fit into a Swiss roll tin, so my chocolate is not quite as thick as Lesley's but it still tastes good, according to the testers here who declared that I couldn't let the general public eat it until they had made sure it was OK - so noble of them, don't you think?!

And the FH has had a day in bed.  He has caught up on his sleep....and I am longing to do the same.  I may sleep in the EFG's bed tonight, since it will be empty, in an attempt to get a little more rest than I had last night.  

I hope you are all keeping well xx