Books Instead of Pumpkins

 

Although I love, love, love Autumn and all it's glorious colours and naturally available decorations, I have no intention of buying pumpkins, either real, woolly, pottery, fuzzy, string-like and all the other variations that are in the shops at the moment just to decorate my house.  Although, I might be tempted to get a couple to eat when the price goes down a bit. 

Instead, and by very happy coincidence, the three books that I have treated myself to this week are just perfect to add to my radiator shelf for a bit of Autumnal decoration.

I obviously had to get the new book by Nigel Slater, I have all his others after all and he writes so beautifully.  I picked up the Stanley Tucci book just for a flick through and it drew me in so that too was purchased the other day.  

The final book was something mentioned by MoggyMerlin56 on my The Books That I Read in September post.  It really caught my imagination so I had a look at it on Amazon, and then found a copy for 50p on there ... so it had to be mine.  😁

Now I have the dilemma of which order they are in the queue to be read!!

Sue xx

This Week's Shopping

 This new ... and long overdue ... way of eating is proving to be more expensive, but I also think that it's very necessary for me and my health.  

I think because I was determined to eat everything that I already had in the cupboards and freezer, and was trying not spend too much money each week, I have been eating things that were probably not the best, but purchased on a whim at different times.

I've pretty much got through them all now and now it's time to make a fresh start.

What brought me to the realisation that I needed to eat better was a simple box of Garlic Kyivs, gosh these were awful!!  Why was I topping up 'bad' foods with more bad foods ... I have no idea. 

I ate one of the Kyivs with rice and peas, and immediately thought 'never again' for this particular product.  I promised I would say what they were like when I had eaten them so that is why I am posting about them.  

Verdict - YUK!!

The other one went in the bin, which is such a rare thing for me to do, but totally necessary.

I'll take some photos of how my food cupboard looks now, and share it on my next post,  I'm pretty sure that it's quite a bit different from the first photo that I took this year back in April.

My total food spend for this week is £29.87 and I really don't think that I need anything else as I already have a full dozen eggs in the fridge along with leftovers from last week's vegetables, and there's still a few frozen veggies in the freezer.

Sue xx

Getting Ahead for Christmas?

 

Quite a few of our blogging circle are mentioning some of their preparations for Christmas, so I thought I would show you mine.

Sadly it's not me that is prepared really, but I have taken the pressure off Alan.  As soon as I saw the Lucy Almey Bird calendar I knew that was the calendar for me for 2025.  I ordered it and told Alan what 'he' had bought me, and he gave me the money.

It's got some lovely images, and of course I could frame a few of them and add them to my collection of her artwork as they are exactly the same size as my smaller pictures.  The only thing is, I have very little wall space left ... we'll have to move house.  😄

My birthday present framed prints are HERE.  

Alan also saw me looking at the Deliciously Ella website one day when there was an extra 10% off on top of my usual members 15% discount, and said that if I wanted to put an order in he would class that as the rest of my Christmas present.  Who was I to say no, and a 25% discount is not to be sneezed at for such healthy foods!!

Only the biscuits need to be eaten before Christmas everything else has beautifully long Best Before dates.

I packed them away in this drawer.

As you can see my eating my way through the contents of my store cupboard while I try and live on just £100 a month for food has gone very well, all the other drawers are now empty.  In fact I could most likely very easily fit my new gifts into the main food cupboard.

Now I have to listen out for what Alan would like for Christmas, he always says 'nothing, I don't need anything', so I have to listen and take note when he mentions things.

Sue xx

The Second Shopping of October ... and Then the First

 

My second food shopping trip of October was this lovely looking lot and it cost me £45.33. 

After going back through all my other shopping photos prior to this month, I came to the realisation that I have been eating far too many ultra processed foods, and including far too many bread products and things in packets and boxes that just shouldn't be a part of a healthy diet on the level that I was eating them.

This was one of the main reasons for the monitoring of my food purchases this year, and of course the desire to keep the food budget as low as possible.  Having the photos of each shopping trip to look back on is a real help.

So this month I have started a new regime eating many more vegetables alongside more protein in the form of eggs and fish ... with no breadcrumbs or batter.  So hopefully a lot less carbs and UPFs in my diet going forward.

My supermarket trolley.

Happily while I was browsing the shelves in Sainsbury's I spotted that my favourite toilet rolls were once again on offer.  I last bought these in January of this year when they were on offer at £9.95 instead of the usual £13.25.  The twenty four rolls lasted me for 28 weeks, but when I had almost run out they weren't on offer, so I tried a different Sainsbury's own label.  It was partly a price based decision and partly for a comparison of quality.  Those sixteen rolls lasted me just 10 weeks.

It turned out that although the cheaper ones worked out at just 65p per week and these Cushelle rolls cost me 71p per week, the quality and usability of the Cushelle far outweighs the others.  So I am back to my favourites and happily these packs should see me well into the New Year, even if they did slightly blow the budget this week.

The things that I bought for Alan and thus outside of my weekly budget.

The first shopping of October was a dozen eggs, destined to be eaten with lots of the things from the second shopping shown above, but I've not had time to upload the photo ... so here it is.  

They were £4.50 from Booths.

So out of my £100 per month budget I have already spent a total of £49.83 this week, but with £19.70 of that total being on toilet rolls, it means that only £25.63 went on the food from Sainsbury's ... now that sounds a little bit better.  😄

Sue xx

The Books That I Read in September

 

The first 'book' that I read last month was an unusual one ... my own, in a way.

In 2016 I did an almost year long Challenge that I started a fresh blog for and called 'A Year Without ... Clothes, Books or Housekeeping Money'.  Over the course of that year I didn't buy any new clothes, books or anything for the house.  My housekeeping/food shopping money came from our Sealed Pot cash saved up for over the previous year, and lots of M&S and Tesco vouchers and Nectar points, a total at the start of the year of just £504.18 for the two of us.  We did get some more vouchers over the course of that year as we were paying for building work on our old Welsh house with the M&S credit card.

Throughout the year I kept this diary, printing out the blog page for each day and sticking it in.  It made for fascinating reading for me over the course of more than a week of last month.

It was good to have something that I could pick up and put down at the drop of a hat while we had so much going on.  I've kept it, so that I can read through it again in a few years time.  It really doesn't seem eight years since we did that Challenge.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

The first real book that I read was this one.  It was an unusual book and one that after reading about it in a few places, I fully expected it to be.

I really enjoyed reading something so different.

Wintering by Katherine May

I am currently just about half-way through this book.  It took me a while to get into, but now that I am, I'm really enjoying it, and if there's one thing I really want to do at the moment it's hunker down for Winter.

What book do you have on the go at the moment?

Sue xx