Pancake Day

So it's pancake day, and while I don't usually go nuts over traditions, I had the day off work anyway so why not.

Recipe: Whisk 3/4 cup of milk with an egg. Add a cup of self-raising flour and a tablespoon of sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla (optional). Pour a small amount onto your medium temperature frypan and cook for about 40 seconds. You'll see the bubbles pop, so flip them when you can see holes that don't disappear. Cook the other side for another 40 seconds.

Enjoy.

In my arrogance I hadn't checked my cupboard properly, and it turns out that I only had plain flour. Whatever, too bad, I made them anyway. They're not as light as they would have been but they are perfectly edible once covered in cinnamon sugar! (If you used plain flour like I did, then flip them once the outer edge stops being shiny.)

I also had a lonely-looking cake mix sitting in my cupboard so while I already had a messy kitchen, I made that and whacked it into my mini oven. (YES I found a cake tin small enough to fit a nine-litre oven, it's the mini loaf pan from Wilko if anyone is curious). Vanilla cake with chunks of Galaxy chocolate shoved into it. Victory is mine ♥

As an aside: I usually buy Tesco Buttersoft, but as Sainsbury's is a closer supermarket and I'd run out of butter, I bought home Sainsbury's product instead. Bad move! It's too hard to spread and tastes quite unappealing. If I wanted to eat something unappetising on my sandwiches I'd have used the cheap cooking margarine already in my fridge. The remains of that Sainsbury's product will have to be used for cooking. Boooo.

Spendy Spenderella: 150 pounds on driving lessons, I was very pleased that I could arrange it online and set up my first lesson myself, only to discover my instructor is so heavily booked that following lessons will be ten days apart! This is near-on pointless, I know how to drive, I just need practice time. I called the school only to be told that if I cancel a lesson I'll just lose my money. Grumble. Stay tuned, at this rate passing my test will take seven years.

Winner and loser

...that's me this week. I finally managed to get signed up with EE to take advantage of the corporate discount on phone plans. It will save me a good ten pounds every month, as I've been on pay-as-you-go until now which is rather pricey. So, savings!

And as a reward for reducing my spending and better managing my budget, my credit score has been walloped. Punched in the face. The simple act of entering a phone contract. Boooo. My electoral roll address has finally updated, but it barely helped with that overall score. The bank still won't touch me for any kind of unsecured personal loan to try to knock out the fast-approaching deadline on the previously-mentioned Large Bill which is hovering overhead and being rather annoying.

Large Bill company has not tripped over itself in offering to work with me (I did offer to make an arrangement to pay them back, as I know my financial situation will improve dramatically in a few months' time). Unfortunately what I got was a vague note that they don't do arrangements, they would expect to take action on this, but then an ambiguous sort of indication that they would wait and see what I could manage. Um... yeah thanks? At the same time their sales team are calling me every day! I've taken to not answering the calls from the sales team... so they upped the ante today and sent me a link by text message, which was a promotional video inviting me to spend fifty thousand pounds (insert me crying with laughter here).

At least they have a sense of humour!

I also cancelled my Spotify Premium account. I do love it, but that's ten pounds more I can use on bills, and I've noticed lately that I rarely listen on my mobile (which is the main aspect of Spotify Free that's lacking, compared with Premium).