On Monday, I did a quick recipe post after a busy, and lovely, day. We had a WI committee lunch. The 11 committee members all brought some food, and we invited 11 of the members who make a special contribution to the success of our WI, the group leaders and such.

I took a beef lasagna using an Italian recipe from The Silver Spoon, some green salad and a baguette with garlic butter which was crisped at the last minute. I love to try other peoples food, and Monday I got to try lots. Mushroom Stroganoff (I love this), a chicken and sun dried tomato with cream dish, prawn and cucumber salad, rice salad, potato salad, then several delicious cheeses and a couple of puddings. Yum. The place was awash with happy chatter all afternoon. A lovely afternoon with lovely friends.

On Tuesday it all went a bit pear shaped. My laptop was showing that it was 75% charged, plugged in but not charging. I spent ages on the internet looking for solutions. I tried resetting the battery using a pin through a tiny hole in the bottom, the good old turning everything off and restarting, nothing had any effect. I finally tried a live chat session on the Acer website and after a bit, they said it was a hardware problem and I would have to send it to them for repair. Eek, cue frantic backing up of everything in sight, finding a box and miles of sticky brown tape. They provided a prepaid returns label, and picked it up the next day, which was very good service. This morning I received a text to say that it had arrived. I do hope this means that I will get it back quickly too. I am writing this on the iPad, which is fab for many things, and I often write on it, but usually need the laptop to finish off, and I do a great deal of the business work on it too.

Wednesday was another lovely, if rather frenetic, day. I went to the gym in the morning, then off to the main WI meeting at 2pm. When that was finished, we had the craft meeting straight after, in the same hall. We have started doing this as we hire the hall until 6 anyway, and it gives us more room.

After clearing up the hall, a friend and I had a quick bite, that we had brought with us. On checking the time, we realised we had to hurry to get over to Uckfield in time for the live transmission of Love’s Labour’s Lost. We love these transmissions, we get to see world class performers from Covent Garden, The Met in New York or, in this case, from Stratford upon Avon, with the convenience of going to a local picture house. It was a stunningly lovely performance, witty, funny, moving, and with the gorgeous language of Shakespeare. The women had wonderful dresses on and I kept looking at them trying to work out how they were made. They were all grey silk drapes with gorgeous lace over the top.

We’re going to see what they have set as the second in the series too, Love’s Labour’s Won, or what is more commonly known as Much Ado About Nothing. It will feature all the same actors.

Thursday I went for coffee with a friend, but developed a migraine in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day in bed. I got up this morning, but then spent most of the day on the sofa. At 3pm, I took an Imigran and I’m feeling much better now. I don’t like taking them as they work by narrowing the arteries, and that can’t be very good for me.

All this activity and what not means that I’ve only been to the gym on Wednesday this week, and it’s no longer possible to do 4 sessions this week. I shall certainly try to get there tomorrow and Sunday tho.

I’ve just got a few more recipes to do now, and I can publish Meal Plan 8. I was hoping to get it done this week, but that didn’t happen. I’ve been looking at some sandwich fillings this week and found some interesting things that I think I shall be able to fit into our budget here and I shall be doing something about that soon.

Heathfield have started up a U3A and we will be having the first meeting next Tuesday. I have offered to lead a group on…… Cooking on a Budget, what else. It’s due to run on the 3rd Thursday of the month, which is the week we have the WI book club, so it won’t be too close to any catering events I do for the WI, which would be the previous week in the month. It will be nice to meet some more Heathfield people.

The wonderful mySupermarket comparison site, which I use for all my pricing here, has posted a blog for Valentines. So if you don’t fancy a 2 quid feast of an unusual soup, tapas and cheesecake, nip on over and have a look at the suggestions there.

The best way to save cash on groceries is to use some planning. So a meal plan is a good place to start, then see what you need to make those dishes, and buy only those things. To avoid impulse buys, and we are all prone to those, shopping online, using mySupermarket to compare prices is a strategy that could work well for you. I have often made up a shopping trolley, then reviewed what I’ve got, and taken a few things out that I decided I wouldn’t actually use during the coming week. I wouldn’t do that in an actual supermarket!