Simon asked if I'd factored in power, which obviously I should have done. Our power meter has just broken (now I can find out if Maplin will honour the instructions on the back to return it to them for WEEE disposal) so I am forced to fall back on the manual and some rough calculation. I know I did measure the power consumption at one point but if I wrote down the numbers I don't know where.

The manual says it uses 505-550W, so for a 5-hour loaf that will be 2.75kWh. It uses little power on timer (this I do remember from when I had it on the meter) so if we round it up to 3kWh a loaf, that makes the sums easier and probably more than covers the on-timer usage.

The number of weeks of use in the last 18 months has been 72.5 (calculated as the number of weeks of not-paying the milkman £3 per week for bread - 18 months is actually 78 weeks and the difference is from when we've been away).

A guess at our typical usage is 3 loaves a week on weekdays (overnight) and a fourth over the weekend (daytime). Checking with our power supplier, Economy 7 units are approx 6.2p and daytime units are approx 17.1p

3 kWh x (3 x 6.2 + 17.1) = 61p per week on electricity.
72.5 weeks x 61p = £44.17.

The initial cost of the breadmaker was £90, and it's taken 72.5 weeks to clear that with the difference between the money we spend on bread ingredients and the money we used to spend on bread, which means a saving of about 124p a week. But factor in the power, and that becomes a mere 63p per week saved, and another 70 weeks or so (another 18 months) to really break even.

Still worth it.

Edit James supplies some data in the comments below from the same model of breadmaker, using 0.4kWh for a 5-hour bake (the one we usually do). Rounding up to 0.5kWh means I can divide the costs above by 6:
10p per week on electricity, reducing the weekly saving to 134p per week
£7.36 on electricity in the last 72.5 weeks, which takes 5.5 weeks to clear and therefore we will "really" have broken even by mid-September.

We broke even on the breadmaker last month, at which point we had spent £215.72 on the breadmaker and ingredients and saved up £217.50 by not paying the milkman £3 per week for bread.

It is still a source of daily pleasure.

I still love collecting data.

Just under a year ago we bought a breadmaker.

Because my accounting software allows it, I created a little bucket in our savings account and another little bucket in the food+drink spending account. I've been tracking spending on breadmaking supplies (flour, yeast, seeds, etc) and also putting aside £3 per week as that's what we were spending on bread from the milkman before the breadmaker arrived.

By the end of 2008 we had saved up £138.75 and spent £165.27 (including the cost of the breadmaker).

I may have missed some of the breadmaking supplies, as this relies on me inspecting receipts before I enter the totals into accounting software, and some things are used both for general cooking and for bread (e.g. butter, pesto). On the other hand I haven't adjusted the saving on not-buying-loaves even though bread prices have risen in the shops. Even with those uncertainties, it's clear we should expect to break even sometime this year.

Money aside, it's been a big improvement to general happiness in the house. The bread is yummy, makes the house smell lovely, and we've had lots of fun trying out different recipes. We did intermittently make bread by hand before getting it, but that petered out whenever we got busy. We've done other, more expensive, things to make life happier in the last couple of years (e.g. buying a dishwasher, hiring a cleaner) but those have been more about removing hassle, whereas the breadmaker has added a little pleasure to every day.

We were recently inspired to get a breadmaker. A few years ago Tony and I went through a brief phase of making bread by hand. But then we gave in and got the milkman to deliver rather good loaves instead. However, we've recently eaten very tasty bread from other people's breadmakers and so I thought we'd give it a go.

I did the research at Which? and ordered the Panasonic brand of breadmaker that has consistently come up as a best buy (current model SD 255). Amazon delivered it fairly quickly and I made bread with it for Thursday and Friday mornings. These have disappeared within the day as they are just fantastic. We use wholemeal flour and our own loaves were always somewhat dense. The breadmaker loaves are properly risen, tasty, and obviously far less effort (3-4 minutes loading it up and programming it, a few seconds to take the loaf out in the morning). I also really like being able to know exactly what's in the loaf - we can substitute olive or sunflower oil for butter, for example, and know that we can offer it to the dairy-intolerant. There is a special attachment and program for rye bread, and a series of recipes for gluten-free loaves, which I would like to try out.

We currently spend 3 pounds a week on loaves from the milkman, which I am about to cancel, and the breadmaker cost 90 pounds. For my own fun I will be tracking how long it takes to pay off completely (because ingredients aren't free) but already the convenience and control are making it a winner, not to mention that the bread is even better.

Tony knows how to make me happy. He stopped off on the way home from work yesterday and bought me flours.

Very pleasant day yesterday with emperor and atreic and their other dinner guests. Charles has definitely got the hang of unwrapping presents now, and was delighted with his new mini-rainmaker rattle and books (and shiny wrapping paper and bottle bag from our present). He wasn't too antisocial and we had a good afternoon/evening of socialising and conversation from which we were reluctantly torn by the need to go and sleep. We also endorse the Holiday Inn Express near chez Vernon for comfortable sleep, reasonable breakfast and an affordable bill. Charles was messily angelic at breakfast, devouring half a croissant and a small block of mild cheddar while avidly people-watching.

If it might freeze overnight, park facing south, then your windscreen will be clear sooner than anything else. Unfortunately we had parked facing north. Fortunately it was late enough by the time we left that the ice came off easily. The car journey both ways was very easy; the new average-speed cameras on the A14 near Cambridge have really made it much more pleasant to drive along, as there is a much lower incidence of aggressive speed merchants on one's tail. The vast majority still don't understand about stopping distances though. 90 minutes seems to be much nearer Charles's natural limit for tolerating being strapped into a seat and ignored by his mummy, so we were spared hysterical screaming on both legs of the journey.

We went for lunch at the Carlton to help celebrate Ellie's birthday, and caught up with quite a few people we see less often than we'd like. This evening I spent some time looking at cupboards, fridge and freezer and devising a menu plan and shopping list for the week. Last year Tony often made lunch and we would have our "main meal" together between our two paid jobs. It was very pleasant. Now he's working full-time, the window between "Tony gets home" and "Rachel will not have time to digest main meal before bed" is rather small, so I think I will start making the evening meal as much as possible, as well as encouraging Tony to make lots of ping at weekends. That way we might actually get to eat together regularly. I have generally been lazy about cooking since first dating Tony, and my repertoire is heavily biased towards simple low-effort meals, but my first meal plan looks all of feasible, edible, varied and healthy. Let's see how it survives first contact with the enemy.

A couple of weeks ago I had my appointment at the City of London Migraine Clinic. It was a first appointment, and I went armed with migraine diary from the previous 18 months, and spent a good while being examined and questioned in detail by one of their migraine specialists. In some ways I felt I didn't have enough detail for her, but overall it was a very useful experience. She's followed up with a letter to my GP, copied to me.

She made a thorough physical/neuro exam, testing all sorts of movements, and having a good poke and prod over my neck, shoulders, back and abdomen. She took my blood pressure (normal as ever at 112/80). Her notes say the exam was generally unremarkable, apart from being "tender over temporalis muscles and both sternocleidomasteoid muscles". Must find my anatomy book. She was quite concerned about the tension in my shoulders and back, although I pointed out that I'd had a particularly stressful week leading up to the appointment, and has recommended my GP to refer me to a physiotherapist. In the mean time, I should use either heat or a cold pack to ease the tension. (Along the same lines, I decided to get back into daily yoga practice, as it is excellent for easing stress.)

I explained I wanted to come off beta-blockers and she said I should have come off them after six months. Of course, I can't just stop them, I have to "step down" over about two weeks, and I need my GP to prescribe me smaller doses in order to do so. So, another trip to the docs is due before I can get off the energy-sapping things. She recommended that I take 20mg of motilium together with 600-900mg of soluble aspirin dissolved in something fizzy at the first sign of migraine. The motilium is to reverse the usual "gastric stasis" of migraine, and presumably to allow further medication to be absorbed. Can still take my triptan half an hour later if needed.

Finally, she told me that my pre-migraine chocolate cravings were almost certainly an indication of low blood sugar, and I should at the very least have a mid-afternoon snack to reduce the likelihood of low blood sugar in the afternoon (almost all my weekday migraines have been in the afternoon). I mentioned my tentative ideas about the GI diet, and she said that was an excellent idea and I should try to incorporate the principles into my diet as it would help avoid the periods of low blood sugar likely to be triggering my migraines. I have yesterday got around to ordering a bunch of books which I hope will give me a bit more detail than Living the GI Diet - that book doesn't distinguish between foods banned for being calorific and foods banned for being high-GI. It's almost impossible to overeat if you stick strictly to its "green list" of allowed foods, but that's very hard to do. I'm far more concerned about always being able to eat low-GI than I am about losing weight now. So I have coming The New Glucose Revolution (an update to the original "The GI Factor" which has been around for years before the idea became fashionable), The Complete Guide to GI Values, Top 100 GI Foods (actually the 100 foods with the lowest GI factors, which I reckon will be handy) and The Glucose Revolution: Diabetes. Between them all I hope to have enough information to eat for my head.

She made no comment on the quantity of diet coke I consume, except to say it was a good thing to drink the aspirin and motilium in. Yuck, but good for me I'm sure.