I'm off the drink for January... .

If I've heard this phrase once its been uttered a million times in my presence in the last few weeks. Lots of people seem to be eager to gain the benefits of health, wealth and happiness that giveing up drink for one month will bring.
Sure amn't I one of them?

So DAY 14 of the great drink shortage today. I wonder if we'll all last until the 31st?
It's surely not that hard. Met a guy last night who told me he too was off the drink for January. Except for on Saturday Night.

What's going on on Saturday you may ask? Some UFC thing in Dublin.

If we are only doing it for one month why break the fast in the middle...a bit mental. Shows a definite lack of resolve if you ask me...

However the boy is due home this weekend so a few glasses may be required.

Recession Session

The weekend shall now be dedicated to saving moola and organising my life.

I even went so far as to travel to Dun Laoghaire today. Met a friend for coffee and then did a little shopping in Pennys.

Pennys, is, i'm discovering, the new mecca for frugal fashionistas in Ireland. I found some real bargains. A T shirt for two yoyo will see me cutting quite a dash playing indoor soccor tommorrow. It was packed with cool looking student types, long legs and long hair. I found a pair of shoes for five yoyo and some belts for only one yoyo each. Totally bargainous! And before you ask I didn't spend loads!

On the way home I chickened out of cleaning the car all on my own. I know, I know it's a great workout but it's fecking freezing out! So I compromised by getting the cheapest possible car wash. It was an excruciatingly painful eight yoyos and only seemed to last about 30 seconds.

I wasn't much impressed by it to be honest. It got the thickest layers off the car but left a lot to be desired.

Not like the shine, I always got from the guys who cleaned my car in Dubai.
Real workmanship that was, those guys took pride in cleaning the old car.

The machine in Merrion did not seem to have much desire to please. It left a large lump of bird shit or something on the roof of the 206. And there were still some grimy bits on the mirrors etc. I'll have to give it a bit of elbow grease yet. Maybe I should have gone for the car wash one stage up?

I then hoovered it myself. Big change for me. I mean I don't think there is a need to call the UN over infringements of my human rights, not like that wagon who wrote about her terrible life since the recession made her cop on, in last weeks Indo weekend. It was a good workout though and hopefully it will be nice to sit in a car and see out the windows for a change!

I ended up driving all over ringsend looking for a bottle bank! Still no luck. Hope the car doesn't end yup smelling like a brewery! Normally i wouldn't mind but i'm off the drink for the rest of Jan too so that would be no fun at all.

Now I've another pot of veg soup on the boil. Made a fabulous omlette for dinner with cheese, pasta sauce, wholegrain mustard and a bit of bell pepper. It was lovely! Herself would be proud.


Better go check on the soup! Let's hope it tastes better than last weeks...

See you later folks!

Cabbage Soup

So what's new... the bloody cold weather has us reaching for the extra duvets and turning on the electric blanket.

The chilly weather meant that sneaking to bed early under the duvets felt a bit like being the grandparents in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory.

Only without the cabbage soup. Well almost....

The twin drives to save money and to save calories are coming together now.

We had a good clean out of my cupboards in Dublin to discover I had no less than five packs of stuffing mix. Something I was obviously craving!

Ella came up with some super tips too.

I ate the soup ( not cabbage soup of course!) we made for lunch all during the week which was good. Though I'm not sure the chicken we put in it was ok. It tasted weirdly strongly of chicken. Ella suggested that a good dose of food poisoning would help the cause. But this is really not a good way to either lose weight or save money.

We decided to team a number of diets together in the hope that a total detox would really get our New Year off to a fantastic start.

So, if we take the activia challenge and also the Special K challenge we should really be super healthy. With the added bonuses of amazing digestive systems!

I did think about moving my biggest meal of the day to lunchtime but the erratic selection of food I tend to find for lunch is a problem. Sometimes I don't even have time to move away from the desk for lunch.

Perhaps the cabbage soup diet is the way to go after all?

New Year, New Me, New Diet....

Well here we are again another year and another diet. Today we took down the christmas decorations and wrapped them up for another year.
We also raided the cupboards for food. It was a food raid on the house!!
So we gathered all the food we could use to make dinners and set about having a real recession session....
So we took some left over chicken and made a stock with hot water....and threw in loads of chopped veg and made a zero point soup..yummy for those bleak january days.

Then we had some leftover mashed potatoes so we added some egg and onion and made some potatoe-cakes.

Being thrifty is the newest coolest way to be...and myself and herself are the queens of cool.

Then we hit lidl and aldi to try and supplement our rations with other stuff...