Spending recap

Here's what I've spent from last Saturday to today.  Having been at home sick all week keeps costs down in one way but on the other hands pushes costs up since cooking was just not something I've been able to get interested in.  So there have been a few frozen pizzas and lots of junk food again this week as well as lots and lots of toast.  I plan to go to the market in the morning though and cook properly, two or three different dishes so that I have leftovers for the rest of the week as well.

0.00 transport
22.32 food necessities
23.52 food luxuries
0.00 food out/take-away
0.00 toiletries
0.00 gifts
0.00 clothes
0.00 house/garden
13.99 medical (1 x cough bottle, 1 x prescription charge for allergy dose - I'm doing a hypersensitisation for my hayfever this year and this is the first (double) dose)
13.30 other (1 x scratchcard, 1 x cooking magazine, 1 x game of Boggle)

Total: 73.13

I even managed to have 4 no-spend days.  It would have been 5 but on one of the days I didn't go out I decided to check ebay to see if there were any games of Boggle on offer and there happened to be one, an English version no less, on sale with the auction ending in less than thirty minutes.  So after a quick check to see how much it costs new I placed a bid and got it.  Even with the postage costs added in, it still cost less than  it would new and it's in really good condition.  The box is a bit worn looking but the game looks like it has hardly ever been played.  I'm looking forward to trying to improve my Boggle skills now.

Flights for 50p? Not so frugal after all

Spending recap

Here's the breakdown of what I've spent from last Saturday to yesterday:

17.00 transport
71.51 food necessities (Full shop last Saturday and two mini-trips to the supermarket with some stocking up of the freezer)
58.41 food luxuries (Dinner out on Saturday, takeaway dinner yesterday and far too much junk food)
7.64 lunch out (1 x pizza on Tuesday, 1 x kebab on Tuesday evening)
2.25 toiletries (Cider vinegar for hair)
0.00 gifts
0.00 clothes
2.36 house/garden (4 x bottles of vinegar)
10.42 medical (Nose salve.  The doctor's visit and antibiotics I got were fully covered by health insurance - they've changed some of the rules this year so no more quarterly admin charge or, apparently, prescription charges)
6.00 other (Overdue fines at library)

Total: 175.59

Notes of a few prices

Just a quick post, more for my own information looking back than anything else.  I'm not going out shopping today, haven't made a meal plan for the week and don't much care.  I didn't make the red cabbage meal I planned for last week so if I feel better enough to cook at some stage, I can make that.  I also still have eggs and I got some frozen chips and some wraps and pitta bread for the freezer so I have more than enough.  Unfortunately, the speck that I bought last week in order to add to the red cabbage has started to smell a little bit off so I'll have to dump that.  If I hadn't been feeling so rotten I might have thought to check it earlier in the week and I could have cooked it separately and put it in the freezer as well.  But these things happen when you're not well.  There's about a glass' worth of milk left in the fridge which is undoubtedly sour by now as well but the second litre I bought last week is in the freezer (I knew I wouldn't be able to get to it before it would go off anyway so put it straight in the freezer after buying it).  It can stay there until I feel more like eating again.  At the moment, the only reason I'm eating is because I have to have eaten properly before taking the antibiotics I was given.  I made the mistake on the first day of taking one after only having had a snack and my stomach did not like that too much.  The first couple of days I was sick I bought a whole pile of junk food as well but the crisps, the biscuits and most of the chocolate is gone now and I'm not buying anymore.  The old comfort foods just aren't quite as comforting as they used to be.

One of the things I also bought was some ham from the counter in Kaisers supermarket.  I got four slices and, silly me, didn't look at the label once she handed me the bag.  I've just checked it now so that I could make a note here of the kilo price and see that not only did I pay for my ham, I seem to have also paid for some sausages that I certainly didn't buy.  But the 1.25 is not enough to convince me to get dressed and go back to argue that point with the supermarket today, three days later.

Smoked, cooked ham from Kaisers: 19.90/kg

Fresh ginger from SuperBioMarkt: 9.90/kg

I may need to go and lie down again now.  I seem to have arrived back at the severe cough stage of this cold and it is exhausting.

The men who made us fat

This is a very interesting BBC documentary that I heard about when it came out last summer, but never had a chance to sit down and watch (and then forgot about).  Since my cold finally did get bad enough again to be off work, I have been watching lots of youtube stuff and I decided to take a look at this.  I was already aware of many of the issues discussed but it is always interesting to see how different people present the data.  As it's a British production it is also a bit more interesting for me, as the ads shown and the cultural shifts talked about are those I remember from my childhood.

It's, in total, 12 youtube videos, I think perhaps three-parts and each part has four 15 minute videos.  I watched it as a playlist so that I didn't have to keep on clicking through to the next one.  Here's the first part of the first episode:

The really interesting thing I found about this comes within the first few minutes.  The presenter, a fairly slim, healthy looking guy, has an MRI done to look at the levels of fat in his body and the although the subcutaneous fat is about as expected, the levels of fat around his organs are about double what a healthy amount is considered to be.  Interesting to know that not all fat is the same.

And I very much like this quote from the final part:

"Putting the food industry at the policy table is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank." Professor Simon Capewell, University of Liverpool 

Well worth a look, even if it mostly just involves the same conclusions and the usual obfuscation from politicians and the food industry.

Chugging along

I still have not shaken off this silly cold but it's not coming back with enough vengeance to justify me staying home sick.  I've used the nose salve the doctor prescribed for me a few times now and it's completely gross. Although it does seem to help somewhat, I'm not entirely sure that it isn't just the mixture that's coming out when I blow my nose (apologies to those who don't want to hear about the things that come out of my nose - that's just the kind of place I'm in at the moment).

It occurred to me over the weekend (not for the first time) that if I really want to have a semi-normal life, you know, one where I eat meals at home every day with the attendant washing-up that entails, I really need to actually be here most evenings for most of the evening.  Working even just till seven and then walking home and/or stopping in to say hello to my friend (and her very cute baby) who has a shop in the bottom of my building means not getting into my apartment until after eight.  By the time I change and have time to gather my thoughts and perhaps get something to eat (assuming it's already waiting for me and at most needs to be heated up) still means nearly nine before I could begin to think of anything else.  And by nine I am really tired and ready to start winding down to go to bed around ten.  But if I don't do at least that much every day, I can forget about being organised enough to actually eat proper food every day and at least keep on top of the daily chores well enough to not need a major catch-up session at the weekend.  Le sigh.

Anyway, at least today I have gotten somewhere.  Despite the minus temperature (okay, it's 'only' minus one here, which for some of you barely registers as cold, but we'd count our minus degree weather in weeks rather than months here and that's still usually interspersed with days of warmer weather), I did walk home from work today.  I was exhausted for a good part of the afternoon, even giving in to a major chocolate craving, but after sitting down for ten minutes or so when I got home, I did actually get up and put on a wash (the fact that I opened up my bedroom window to let a bit of air in may have had something to do with me getting up again - it was freezing).  While I was doing that I also cleaned the bathroom.  Okay, I haven't washed the floor but the rest of the basics are done.  And I put the apples I dried yesterday into a jar, labelled it properly and added it to the stockpile.  I really missed having a good store of apples on hand this summer, when the old ones on sale at the market were just not really very nice anymore but the summer fruit season hadn't really started yet.

And even though when I arrived home I couldn't imagine summoning up the energy to even heat up my planned pineapple rice for dinner and ate three chocolate covered macadamia nuts instead, I did get up after that and put the box away and the pineapple rice is heating up now, along with a small amount of the pulled pork and the onions and sauce from yesterday.  I made less pineapple rice than I planned as I decided to just finish off the open box of rice without opening a new one so really I had two decent portions, which I divided into three smaller portions.  I did feel like I wanted a bit more yesterday at dinnertime but had already divided  the rest between a couple of Tupperware containers and decided to stay strong and not just give in since, really, I was full enough.  But I am really hungry today so I am just going ahead and eating both of the small portions that were leftover.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I had salad for lunch.  Delicious though it was, I think this cold weather does require some more substantial meals.

Now to eat that.  Have myself a nice cup of tea.  And snuggle under a blanket on the sofa while watching a bit of The Bourne Ultimatum.

Edited to add: the pulled pork was a success and I will definitely be doing this again, as well as trying similar recipes for beef.  I will probably tweak the spices a few times until I find a few variations I really like.  This time round, I found that the taste of the BBQ powder overpowered everything else quite a bit.  It kind of needed the sweetness of the pineapple in the rice to balance it out a bit.  And I'm trying to figure out how it ended up so spicy (in terms of heat).  Perhaps it was the mustard powder?  It's just a nice amount of heat but definitely more than I was expecting.  Definitely a keeper recipe although since it's so delicious it's definitely easy to eat an awful lot of it.  Four portions is doable but expecting five was a bit too ambitious, methinks.

Sunday night chit-chat

As I did last week, I'm posting this on my Sunday evening.  Given the time difference between here and Canada I will have posted before the lead post goes up on Half-Dozen Daily so I will come back to edit this post with a proper link-up and the bonus question.

One of my favourite pieces of Tupperware.  I only bought it in order to be able to demonstrate it at parties and somehow it became something I use every week.

What are you:
Reading?
The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

Watching?
Finally saw The Dark Knight and even watch a second film this evening.  Perhaps Die Dienstagsfrauen, a comedy/drama about a group of women on the Camino de Santiago.

Listening to?
The sound of the dehydrator in the hallway

Cooking/Baking?
First attempt at pulled pork finished and accompanied it with pineapple rice

Happy you accomplished this week?
Made it to the English Speakers' Circle dinner and am encouraged to go to some of their talks this year.  Also very happy that I managed to more or less stick to my meal plan and my budget, as well as plan fresh ones for the coming week.

Looking forward to next week?
Lunch with a very interesting colleague during the week.  Dinner and finally getting to see The Intouchables in a friend's house on Friday.

Thankful for today?
Being able to decide, given the minus temperatures outside for a lot of the day, that it was a good day to not even bother getting properly dressed in, mooching around the place and turning on the heating more than I usually would.  It's nice to have the luxury to do so.

Bonus Question:
What is your favourite board game?

I think I'd have to say Cleudo.  I haven't played any board games for years really, although Clickclackgorilla did introduce me to Boggle when I visited a few weeks ago.  I suppose that's not really a board game but it belongs in the same category for me and is high on my list of things to acquire sometime soon.  I also remember enjoying Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit, although I haven't played either of them for years either.  The last time I played Trivial Pursuit it was the new one (so about seven years ago now I think) and I found it very frustrating because after twenty years or so, I'd only just started to get the hang of the original one!

If you fancy joining in with the Sunday night chit-chat, head over to My 1/2 Dozen Daily and link up.