MY social media feed has been full of two things this week: budget friendly meal ideas and budget friendly holidays.

Easily known the topics I’ve been researching! Let’s get the dinners out of the way first then.

Seems like every two-bit chef worth their salt is cashing in on the fact that we’re all a bit strapped and are serving us ideas on how to feed a family of four for €5 for five days (or something like that). Let me tell you … it’s grim, with not a slice of cheese in sight.

It mainly involves lesser known cuts of meat such as flanks, shanks, shins, skirts (what the?) and my least favourite sounding of all, brisket (not to be confused with the tastier biscuit).

They sound like a tough sell, and like they’d be a tough chew too unless they’re boiling away for 17 hours in the slow cooker with a kilo of chickpeas.

In some ways such dishes are slightly reminiscent of growing up in the 80s. I remember the tripe we’d get when we were kids.

My mum was a great cook  – I’m talking actual tripe, that Cork delicacy, along with drisheen.

I had to refresh my memory as to what they actually are and Google tells me that tripe is ‘the edible, processed lining of a cow's stomach, typically boiled in milk with onions.

Drisheen is a gelatinous blood pudding made from sheep, cow, or pig blood, milk, and fat, often encased like sausage.’

Right, so I didn’t imagine how horrific they were after all  –  no wonder my siblings and I were in the horrors. Livers were another regular as were kidneys.

I’m surprised I’m not actually vegetarian! But I know as pocket friendly as they are there’s no point serving them up here as they’d be rejected out of hand, and so would be a complete false economy – not to mention all the candles you’d have to burn to get rid of the nasty pong in the kitchen afterwards.

Now a cost saving idea I can get on board with is taking shorter showers.

Or at least I thought I could. My daughter came home from school the other day with a nifty little shower timer.

Basically it’s like a water proof egg timer that sticks to the wall of the shower and once you turn it over you’ve four minutes to do your business.

The experts have worked out that reducing your shower time by even one minute can save roughly 10 liters (about 2.6 gallons) of water per shower so it seems like a good idea.

It’s not as easy as it looks though. 

Quite unnerving in fact. One minute you’re day dreaming about casually bumping into George Clooney in the local co-op shop (or whatever floats your boat) while shampooing your hair and the next you realise your time is almost up!

I was half expecting a buzzer or an alarm to go off and I found myself shouting (to the timer) “I’m done, I’m out, stop the clock!” while stumbling around, half blinded from conditioner. Sure the joy is gone from everything now. 

Anyway, so I mentioned that I was also researching holidays as well this week.

That means my social media feed is  flooded with images of happy families holidaying in foreign camp sites, all looking like they’re living their best lives and it’s giving me the pip, big time.

We all know it never plays out like that!

Everyone I see looks lightly tanned with not a heat rash or mosquito bite in sight, all gleefully splashing each other in a very uncrowded pool; there’s no images of adults lugging bags of cheese and baguettes from the on-site shop three miles away from their mobile home in 30 degree heat cursing the fact that they’ve had to buy more bags for life because they forgot the ones they bought yesterday; no images of people trying to decide if it’s worth shelling out for sun beds or not given they probably won’t get to sit on them for more than three consecutive minutes at a time; or mothers trying to sort out a wedgie in their swim suits before being forced down the water slide for the millionth time leaving their dignity behind; or pictures of adults feverishly slathering more sun cream on their crew while going half demented trying to figure out where they know the couple across the way from them at the pool from and worrying if everyone will get scurvy if they just eat bread, ice cream and pizza for the week.

No, that’s not captured in what I’m seeing on line at all. Talk about false advertising!

Sure it would nearly be an ease to me if flights were grounded due to fuel shortages now that I think of it.

Also, this week I found myself getting increasingly alarmed by the number of women disappearing before my eyes.

Not literally disappearing but radically shrinking in bodily size to such an extent that I’ve had to pick my jaw up off the floor when I see them.

Now some of these women, not many mind, are honest that they’re using GLP-1 medications, but most are sticking to the line that they’ve ‘just cut out the rubbish and are getting their walks in.’

Era, come off it. Pull the other one like!

I don’t care either way, absolutely no judgement here, it’s a free world and these are life changing medications, but at least come clean so the rest of us don’t feel too perplexed when we aren’t getting the same results while chomping away on our Ryevita (although I think loading mine up with cheese is where I’m going wrong). 

Now that I’ve that off my chest, let’s end on a high note: this week’s glimmer of joy came to me courtesy of  the beautiful blue bells that are popping up here there and everywhere.

If anyone can take in a walk in Courtmacsherry woods I strongly recommend it – the sea of bluebells and aroma of wild garlic will do you the world of good.

Pick a small bunch to bring home and pop in a vase on your dinner table – it will make those flanks slightly more palatable!