Forgotten how to haggle

After one day in Thailand it would appear that we have forgotten how to haggle. We unsuccessfully managed to haggle the beach guy down from €4 for the sun loungers and the tuc tuc driver down from €4 for a 5 minute journey.

Never mind I’m sure we will get into the swing of it over the next couple of days

Loads of Stuff in the Bin

Loads of food ended up going in the bin. In fairness there is a bit of an excuse for some of it because we were off to Thailand on holiday so it was the last of the stuff we had. So in total in the last week we threw away
2 leeks – €1.50
2 Lemons – €0.6
1 Avocado – €1
2 apples – €0.66

Break In

I sleep very lightly and it would be unusual for me not to awaken at least once a night when either of the children stirs in their sleep. We leave the door to our bedroom open for this reason. So it was no surprise on Saturday night when I woke up in the middle of the night. What was a surprise was the sound that woke me up. Even in my semi-dazed state I instantly knew it was the sound of our front door opening – it has a swishing sound as the weather proof barrier passes over the tiles in the porch.

It was 4am and Barbara was asleep beside me, there was no reason the front door should be opening.  I got up out of bed thinking I must have left it open when Little Waster 1 and I came back from cycling around the canal – this wouldn’t have been the first time. Several years ago I had similarly descended the stairs to find a neighbour in our hall who was just checking to see if everything was okay.

As I reached the bottom of the stairs I noticed a shadowy shape in our porch, which was entirely dark. As I approached they fled. When I got to the front door I found the lock on the latch and couldn’t get it to lock. The lock had stuck a few times in the past and I assumed that it had just gotten stuck open and some opportune burglar had come to see if there was anything worth taking.  Using the other lock I secured the door and pottered around the house for a hour or so until I could go back to sleep.

The next day when Barbara went out with Little Waster 2 she immediately noticed that the lock had been forced open. At this stage I was very grateful that I was such a light sleeper as I didn’t like the idea of someone prowling around our house. Talking to our neighbours it appears that someone is targeting houses on our street, which is normally very safe, as there have been two other attempted break ins.

We have decided to be more security conscious and will now make sure we always chubb our front door and leave a light on at night. We might even start using the alarm. Cost of replacing the broken lock was €30 and we will likely have €20 cost in getting additional keys cut. This is however a necessary expenditure and doesn’t get added to the wasterous score – unlike the €10 that I spent on a hammer becuase I couldn’t find my other one.  I also burnt 3 slices of bread adding another 20c.

Roast Swede and Apple Soup

Last weekend the supermarket had a special, selling 3.5kg of potatoes, a head of broccoli and a net of 3 swedes for €3. Since I needed the potatoes and broccoli anyway, the swedes came effectively for free. They posed a bit of challenge though, since I don’t really like swedes. I looked on the net for inspiration, rejected anything that promised “to really bring out that lovely turnip flavour” and built on a few suggestions to invent a soup recipe of my own. (And in the process, I discovered that rutabaga is the same thing on the other side of the Atlantic.)

Though I say so myself, it was quite yummy, in a hearty vegetable-y kind of way. I made twice the amount stated here, but that gave 1.6L of soup so I’ve halved the amounts for the basic recipe.

Ingredients:

1 swede

1 apple

1 onion

a couple of cloves of garlic

~750ml of stock and/or water, to get the appropriate consistency (1.5 pints)

What to do:

Peel the swede and dice into fairly chunky pieces

I blanched the swede (ie boiled it for about 10 mins) as I had read this would result in a milder flavour

While the swede is being blanched, peel and quarter the onions and apples, coring the apples too. Peel the garlic cloves but there’s no need to chop.

Put all these in a roasting tin with some olive oil and roast at 200 C for c 40 mins, until the swede is tender.

As we had roasted a chicken that night we made homemade stock. Blend with the veg.  Top up with water or more stock if needed to get the desired consistency and season to taste.

I added salt, black pepper and a little chilli to give a mild kick.

Party

It was Denali’s 4th birthday last Thursday and we had a party for her on Saturday. This had the potential to be an epic wasterous day. We were inviting 10 kids and 8 adults, which when combined with the four of us meant a full house. I had visions of plates of half eaten food and plastic tat all over the place.

We spent a lot of money  - €25 on party decorations, €75 on plastic junk for props, prizes and party bags, about €50 on food and €50 on booze (for the adults). Barbara cooked a fantastic train cake for Denali who was gratifyingly impressed.

In the end just about nothing got put in the bin and everyone had a great time so overall a great success. I honestly I don’t think anything can be added to the wasterous score at all.

Massive Shop

Barbara did a massive shop in Tesco (€200), which really needed to be done because we can’t get everything we need in Lidl or Aldi.  Overall this really isn’t too bad except that I had already spend €155 in Lidl the previous day – this was mostly wine, beer and stuff for Denali’s party. So while we didn’t waste anything over the weekend we did spend an awful lot of money.

Looking over the receipt from Tesco a couple of things popped out as being very expensive.

Vanilla Essence – €6.99

1Kg Roma pasta shell – €3.79

Just goes to show that you can’t put anything into your trolley without looking which is close to impossible when you have two small children pulling on your arms.

Weekday whirl

Weekends may be the worst time for throwing food in the bin, but that’s probably because during the week we barely get a chance to look in the fridge and see what might be getting to the end of its life. With two more or less full time jobs (mine a little less most weeks, but Caelen’s substantially more), our evenings are one long rush from work to creche to home, getting everyone fed, putting the house in some sort of order, playing with the kids, getting them to bed and having a little time to relax and spend together.

Often we find that in the earlier days of the week we cook the things that are easiest and quickest to do, rather than checking what needs to be used up first. By Thursday or Friday we’ll come home in a rush to find we only have things that require too long to cook, or worse, only limp or mouldy vegetables that go straight to the bin.

As part of our wasterous project, we’ve tried to bring a bit more planning and discipline to our meals to avoid this happening, and we’ve been doing reasonably well. We’re remembering to marinade meat and have it ready to pop in the pan the next evening. Last week we roasted a lovely tray of peppers and courgettes on Wednesday and had them on Thursday stirred through pasta with some good olive oil. The week before we made a nice big batch of bolognese sauce and froze half, which was a lifesaver when the end of the week rolled round and the cupboard was bare. We need to find a few new recipe ideas to inspire us here, because it makes all the difference if we are just that little bit more prepared.

Gas Bill!!!!!!!!!!!!

We just got our gas bill for the period of 1st November through to the 5th of Janurary. It was nearly €250!!!

No really, no kidding, I’m serious. Just how we use that much gas I have no idea.  Except for during the Christmas period there was no-one at home during weekdays. I can’t imagine what it would be if one of us worked from home. My feeling is that there has to be something wrong – maybe our boiler is super inefficient or the underfloor heating isn’t working as well as it should.

Another thought is it might be something to do with the fact that the water in the central heating tends to lose pressure.  I go up to the attic about every two months and let more water into it and when I did this a couple of days ago the pressure was all the way down to zero. Maybe the heating system works inefficiently if the pressure is too low? Now that I say it that seems to make a lot of sense. Maybe I should check the pressure more often than every two months.

Saving Money on our Broadband

On other ways that we could potentially save money – NTL just pushed a flyer through our door informing us that they would be upgrading their network in our area. This would allow us to get our broadband from NTL rather than Irish Broadband.  Having a look at their website it would appear that this could save us about €216 in charges and the €20 in electricity that it takes to run the Irish Broadband antenna.

The only downside there is to this is the terrible reputation that NTL have for customer service and although we have had a pretty awful time with support on Irish Broadband in general I find it is better to stick with the devil you know. Still you can’t sneeze at a €226 saving and supposedly better connection speed. Then again we Irish Broadband might drop their charges if we called them up and asked for a discount.

Other Good News

The European Central Bank (ECB) dropped its rates by 0.5% last Thursday. This is great news for us because our mortgage tracks the ECB rate.  This will translate to a €80 reduction in our monthly mortgage repayment, which is nearly a grand over the year. Over the last 8 months the ECB rate has dropped a full 2%, cutting nearly €4k off our annual mortgage cost. There are talks of further cuts in this year and I’m not sure if that should make me happy as if there are it will almost cetainly mean the ecomony is still in the crapper.

Heating and stuff

I left the electricity on all day Monday while we were at work. That adds a further €0.2 to the wasterous score.  Turned down the amount of time that the central heating comes on in the morning from 1 hour 15 minutes to 30 minutes and turned off the immersion altogether. I doubt the immersion was using any power as it has a thermostat and the central heating would have kept the water hot enough.

I wonder about the wisdom of having the central heating comming on at all in the morning. Barbara says that she is keen for the house to be warm when we get up. However we normally sleep with the window open in the bedroom and we leave the door of our bedroom wide open so we can hear if one of the girls wakes up in the night.  Mind you on cold days I am glad of any heat there is in the house.

Weekend Wastage

Normally the weekend is the worst part of the week for wastage. The last of the stuff that we bought the previous weekend finally ends up getting put in the bin. We’ve had Saturdays where we dump €15 straight in the bin.

This week was pretty good, mostly becuase we are making a real effort to use all of our food. We ended up throwing away just 2 apples (66c) and a couple of clementines (20c). However, I left the power on all night (Barbara had already turned off the Sonos and when I went to bed I saw that it was off and assumed everything was off too). This results in an additional 20c wasterous score.

In other news we did a Lidl shop, which cost €135 which is kind of a lot considering there was no wine or beer in the trolley.  Some provisions for Denali’s birthday party and a goose breast for Sunday dinner added considerably to the total.

I finally got the spanner out and turned off the radiator in the ensuite. We also measured the amount of electricity to run the dishwasher on a short cycle when set to ‘economy’. It uses 1.5KW, much ends up costing us about 30c. I would think we run about 5 loads a week so that runs to about €75 annually, which feels like value to me. I must get around to checking what the washing machine uses.

More Food in the bin

We threw out half of a sweet potato that was about to go off. We had roasted in on Sunday and forgotten to eat the remainder of it all week. This adds €0.5 to our  score.

On Wednesday Meeda (aged 1 1/2) turned on our dishwasher when it was nearly empty. We only noticed after the thing had filled with water. Rather than just let the whole thing run its wash cycle we turn it on to rinse only. Still reckon it used 1/2 KW so another €0.1 added to the wasterous score.

I still haven’t turned off the radiator in the ensuite. Wondering now if if this adds onto our wasterous score eveyday that procrastinate/forget about it?

Update – 9th of Jan

1 Head of broccoli in the bin – another 1.49 added to the wasterous score.