The Food Cupboard Challenge, Austerity August ... and Re-registering my Ration Card

 

It's the first of August, my gosh how quickly the months are passing by at the moment and it doesn't even feel like Summer.  I've been sleeping under my summer-weight duvet but with an added quilt on top, it's the only way to stay warm.  I've spent most evenings watching television wearing my fleecy jacket for warmth and days dashing out between showers to pick what vegetables are still growing to add to my meals. 

And talking about food, at the top is this months photo of the top part of the food cupboard.

Last month it looked like this.

Suddenly there are proper gaps appearing, helped a little bit by me taking a jar of jam and a tin of lentils to the flat ... not to be eaten together I hasten to add.

I decided that it was now time to look at what I have in the lower cupboard and start to include these things more in the day to day eating to go alongside the freezer stash.

And the reason for this is that I have decided on an 'Austerity August'.

I am determined to spend no more than £10 each week on food, and with that I will get any absolute essentials that I need while I work my way through the foods that I already have.

The fridge is sparse ...

... very sparse!!

After my thoughts and post on retirement the other day, and then sitting and thinking about all the Challenges I have set myself both this year and in previous years, I've come to the conclusion that they were all leading me to this point.  I love that in every single Challenge I have ever done I have learnt something new, either about myself, about how to do things or how to change things going forward.

So, I am giving myself just over eighteen months to get myself to a position whereby I can retire a year early and have enough in my savings account to still be able to draw down a similar amount as though I was earning wages.

When I put together my recent findings about ultra processed foods, my desire to live cheaply and simply, my food cupboard challenge whereby I have been eating down the excessive stores that I had built up, and then thought about my previous limited times living on the rationing amounts available in the UK during WWII, when food was limited and expensive but mostly natural ... it was almost as those had been practice runs.

So I think I am going to go back on rations, and I'm not going to mess about.  

I will have Austerity August to get me in the right financial mindset and start my bank account feeling a bit healthier and then I will go straight back to basics, paying with cash, buying and eating simple foods in the WWII quantities that made us healthy as a nation ... and see what it can do for me.

I guess it's time to register my Ration Card then.

Sue xx

Frozen Assets ... and Retirement

 

The freezer drawers have been bugging me recently, it would seem with me they are either super organised or a complete mish mash of half opened packs thrown in any available gap.  So I decided to stock take yet again and go from the latter to the former in the space of a few hours.  

I think it was having that perfect new freezer with all it's empty drawers at the flat made mine seem all the more messy and out of control when I got home.

Taking everything out and wiping out the tiny annoying bits of spinach that were stuck everywhere took only a few minutes, so I decided to make a note of what was in which drawer and put everything back nice and neatly.

A proper stocktake. 🗠😀

It's always surprising to see how much food you have when it's usually out of sight behind a door isn't it ... and I've only done two of the drawers up to now.   I have a lovely amount of vegetables in the drawers, enough to keep me healthy for a good few weeks.  Now all I need to do is combine them with the things in the food cupboard and I should have lots of lovely meals at no extra cost to me.

Which is a good thing as we have been talking about our retirement plans over the last week or so, and Alan has finally handed in his necessary 18 months notice, ready for his actual retirement date of April 2025.  

As I am not due to retire until May of 2026 (providing they don't move the goalposts yet again), I would like to actually retire from the day job at the same time as Alan, closing the company down and finally being free.  To be able to do this I need to have a dedicated savings pot of one whole years basic salary, this way I will be able to continue to draw on that for the final year before my State Pension kicks in.

So being able to save money seems even more important just now ... time to sort out the last drawer of the freezer then!!

Sue xx

Tiny Garlic Breads and Tiny Jars

 

I had some of these in the freezer last week and decided to eat them over a couple of days.  

One is supposed to be a serving size ... but one little garlic bread really, they are diddy!!  I like at least two any time I have them

The first day I had them with some pesto spaghetti, Tenderstem broccoli  and peas.

The next lunchtime I decided to turn them into two tiny pizzas, gosh they were good this way. 

INGREDIENTS: Fortified Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (16%), Garlic (4%), Flat Leaf Parsley, White Wine Vinegar, Rapeseed Oil, Salt, Grape Must, Yeast, Black Pepper.

The ingredients for the little garlic breads are relatively good too, although I don't understand why there is 'Grape Must' in them.  😕

This photo shows the Basil Pesto that I was using up from the food cupboard and it highlighted to me why it's been taking me so long to work my way through everything, this tiny little jar lasted me for four different meals.  

First use on the spaghetti and then on these miniscule pizzas.

A couple of days later it was used as big blobs dotted all through a cheese, onion and tomato quiche.

 I love using it this way as it adds a real depth of flavour to the whole quiche, it works well dotted onto a pizza too, whether it be a homemade one or a store bought one and it's something that I do regularly.

And finally I finished it off on another bowl of penne pasta, which I don't seem to have taken a photo of.  Four days to get one little jar out of my cupboard.  It will be Christmas before my cupboard is empty at this rate!!

Sue xx

Homemade Oat Milk, Menu Planning and Ingredients

 

I'm getting to the stage of the Food Cupboard Challenge where I am mostly running out of ready made things.  I say 'mostly' as there are still some pasta pot type things and I'm sure there must be some things in the bottom cupboard that I could just tip into a pan and call a meal.  But I have been concentrating on the top cupboard this past couple of weeks.  I went in there yesterday to get a carton of almond milk and found I had already used up the last one.

So with no time to soak almonds (they need at lest six hours or preferably overnight), I decided to make some oat milk to go on my morning weetabix. It's a simple milk to make:

 I just soak 60g of oats for half an hour or so in my Nutribullet cup, drain them, rinse them a couple of times and then put them in back into the cup with 450ml of fresh cold water, and blend for about 30 seconds.  Strain through a fine sieve ... I usually do it twice ... and then decant into a clean bottle and put into the fridge, it's much nicer chilled.

These measurements give you a pint of fresh oat milk.  You will have to shake it up every time you use it as without emulsifiers it does separate.  It's not my favourite sort of homemade milk but when you're waiting for your breakfast it's a nice quick one to make.

I added the leftover oat 'mush' to some scones later that day.

The original recipe is in this book, on page 20.

I haven't been shopping for a few weeks now and I am starting to miss the supermarkets, I've actually found myself watching more YouTubers than usual doing food hauls to get my fix!!  But I quite like that things are visibly finally starting to go down both in my cupboard and in the fridge.  In fact the fridge is so bare I have been wiping down the shelves as they empty ... it's like a long drawn out spring cleaning.  😄

I thought I would make a menu plan for this week to make good use of what's left in there, incorporating some things from the cupboard and the freezer too. Before anyone jumps in and says that I'm not eating enough veggies etc etc, I will be adding things to these planned out meals, but I'm not restricting myself to writing down what ... I'll wait until the actual mealtime and see what I fancy, sometimes I am in the mood for lots of vegetables and sometimes I have to make myself eat peas.

The main point of this particular menu was to space out the last four bread rolls and three slices of bread that I have in the freezer.  I want to try a week without bread next week and I know if there's some lurking anywhere in the lodge I will cave in and eat it, so what I have in has to be used up this week.

Now it's time to grab my hummus, chop some celery and carrots and have my lunch.

Sue xx

Alan and Eric, A Recipe ... and Spot the Difference - the Food Cupboard Challenge

 I was looking through June photos and found that there were lots that I hadn't shared with you.  I thought this one in particular needed sharing, as I love it so much.

Just us on a nice early morning out with the dogs in Morecambe.  Because it was so early there wasn't the usual queue of people waiting to have their photo taken with Eric Morecambe on the promenade.  So we thought that for once we would be tourists in our own neck of the woods.

Sadly the dogs won't face forward if it's not me taking the picture!!

3rd June

For my own benefit ... and for you if you like to play Spot the Difference.

6th July.

There's not a huge amount of difference, but doing this is stopping me from shopping for cupboard items as I know exactly what I have in.  This challenge has also highlighted to me that at the moment I tend to eat mainly from the fridge and buy replacements for the fridge over and over.  It's proving to be a good long term experiment.

Of course there is a lot more food in the bottom cupboard as well, and in the past week or so I am starting to dip into it for things that I no longer have in the top cupboard.

The two missing cans of chopped tomatoes were used in this pan of Roasted Vegetable and Tomato soup that I made as this weeks bulk cook.

I just roasted all the vegetables that were in the bottom of the fridge drawer when we got back after our weekend away.  Just for half an hour in the oven, while they were roasting I sautéed an onion for a few minutes with some garlic from the freezer, added two tins of chopped tomatoes and then tipped the vegetables into the pan and gave it all a good whizz up.  I like my soups relatively smooth, so this is my preferred way to do it.

I had one bowlful straight away for my lunch, we had one portion between us as a starter with some garlic bread last night and the remaining jars of soup are now in the freezer.

Sue xx

Weekend Shopping ... and Admitting I Gave You Clues to a Puzzle You Would Never Be Able to Solve

 

While I'm still doing the Food Cupboard challenge and trying to eat down the contents of the cupboard I've not really needed to go 'proper' shopping for a long time, but I do like to have a few treats in for the weekend and this morning while I was running some other errands I decided to call into Booths for this weeks shopping.

As you can clearly see it's virtually all treaty bits ... but hey, I deserve a treat.  And YAY Ten Acre crisps are back in Booths. 😁

Dangerously for me our Booths now has a 'donated book' bookcase, raising money for local charities.  I found these two on it this morning. 

I loved the television series of 'This is Going to Hurt' so it will be interesting to see if the book is as good, or perhaps even better, and the other one well that's right up my street isn't it.  Alan thought I already had it but he was thinking of Hovel in the Hills ... which is a real favourite of mine.

October 2017

Now after much searching on both of my blogs I have to hold my hands up and admit that I think I have given you a teaser that you would never be able to solve on your own.  I was sure, in fact I was absolutely positive that I had blogged all about us buying our Welsh flat ... it would seem I didn't.  I must have done it all on Facebook!!

I'm sorry ... well at least a bit sorry. 😏

November 2017

In early 2017 when we were living in North Wales, we received a sum of money that we wanted to use in a sensible way for our future, so we decided to use it to buy a flat near Llandudno.  We had by this time already paid off the mortgage on our Welsh house, so we just re-mortgaged that to make up the rest of the money that we needed for a cash purchase.  

Our idea was that once we were too old to be able to manage on the smallholding, we would sell the Welsh house, move into the flat and use the money from the sale as our pension top up money.  In the meantime we would rent out the flat so that we could repay the mortgage as quickly as possible and not have any debt.

11th December 2017

We bought off plan, choose all our fixtures and fittings and the garden surfaces etc, and then on our way through to Llandudno to walk the dogs each week we would visit 'our flat' to check on progress.

27th December 2017

It grew quickly, and it was brilliant watching the progress and chatting to the workmen each time we visited.

11th February 2018

The day we got there and found that the scaffolding had come down and they had started on the pavements and roads was a good one.

11th March 2018

And on our next visit we could walk on the road and pavements and have a peek through the windows ...

... and even check on our 'garden'. 

9th April 2018

And just a month later the tree was getting it's leaves and the soil had been covered in grass.

So that was the birth of our flat.  Within a month of it being completed we had tenants in, a lovely young family who stayed for just over a year. Then they had a windfall and bought a place of their own, our next tenant was a nice young man who had a 'temporary' work contract in the area.  He has literally just given his notice in this month and will be moving on.  While he needed the flat and was happily paying his rent each month it seemed wrong to sell it so we held onto it.  Our mortgage had been paid off after just over two years so it has been completely ours since 2020.

Our plan was to sell it as soon as he moved out, once we had repainted and re-carpeted it, but then I had a brainwave and we had a change of heart.  With the property market being on a bit of a downer at the moment and sales slowing, we have decided to hold onto it for a while and use it ourselves as a sort of holiday base near the seaside.  Which cuts out any need for me to buy a caravan!!

We will be revisiting the flat next week and deciding what it needs before we start to furnish it very minimally so that we and the animals can use it on a regular basis.  After a while once the market picks up we hope to sell it on to a local couple or family as a starter home.

So it wasn't a cottage, or a narrowboat, a motorhome or a caravan ... it was a flat.  And one that you knew nothing about it would seem!!

Oops!! 😎

Hope you have a great weekend.

Sue xx

Spot the Difference ... and Three Year Old Marmalade

This was the food cupboard on the 1st of May ...

... and this was it on the 3rd June.

I decided to put these photos on a post more for my benefit really so I can see how I'm doing.  I've been really trying not to move things around when spaces appear, but the urge is great and a few things seem to have switched places.

Nothing has been added to the cupboard except my latest prescription of Vitamin D tablets and the baking potato in the little white bag, it needed to be out of the basket and the light and in a darker place as it was starting to sprout.  

Oh, and I have just spotted a single pack of Aldi Wheat Biscuits, Weetabix by any other name.  My little tin only holds two and a half of the inner packs and I topped it up the other day from the box on the little drawer unit.

There is also one jar of Lemon Marmalade missing from the cupboard since the photo was taken as I opened it for a slice of toast yesterday, before we set off for Morecambe and the annual Vegan Food Fair.  Once opened it lives in the fridge ... due to it being three years old now. 

Happy Birthday Little Miss Marmalade, you're still as delicious as the day that I made you. 🎂

Sue xx

Food Shopping ... and Monday Meal Prep

 

Although the money part of the challenge is now over (I ran out of cash), I am still shopping mindfully and making sure that I only buy what I really need ... and of course the occasional treat.

This week I bought the items above from Booths while we were there on Saturday morning for Alan's now almost compulsory weekend breakfast bacon roll.  Of course I never refuse to go with him as he treats me to a toasted teacake and a coffee ... it would be rude not to.  😉

We had to nip to Sainsbury's before we went home for some printer paper, so I took the chance to browse the plant based offerings.  My usual spread was on offer, but only in the smaller tubs.  At first I thought, no that's too much plastic, then I thought but that would be a handy sized tub for freezing leftovers or single portions of  curry etc ... so I bought two.

This week I want to try and use up all of the fruits and vegetables in the fridge drawers, some things have been in there for far too long.  So this Monday's meal prep consisted of chopping some of the vegetables for a salad mix and some to make a tray of roasted veggies.  I washed and wrapped what was left of the celery after using some in both of my prepared trays and took the outer leaves of the lettuce off and wrapped it carefully ready for use.

Of course once the roasted vegetables were out of the oven it would have been silly not to have some for my lunch, so I made a quick portion of cous cous and sat in the sunshine, enjoying the fruits of my labours.

As well as the veggies shown here I have some cooked beetroot, half a bag of Tenderstem broccoli and half a box of cherry tomatoes, so I want to make sure I eat everything up this week.  I'm on a mission to eat more healthily as I have let things slip a bit recently ... gosh it's so easy to do isn't it.

Sue xx

The Big Relaunch of the Food Cupboard Challenge

The big relaunch of The Food Cupboard Challenge .... haha, now that sounded great didn't it, I couldn't resist.  😁

Actually I just mean that from today onwards I will be doing it properly.

I will resist every temptation to move foods from one place to another.  I find that this is one of my biggest failings, I see a gap in the top part of the food cupboard and have an immediate urge to fill it, either with shopping or with something from another place.  It means I quickly lose track of what I have and what is where, I think it's mostly because I would like all my food to be in the one place.  Who knows maybe if I do this challenge properly this time that will actually happen.  

Now that would be good!!

So yesterday, with this post in mind I took these photos.

For posterity, and to see exactly where everything is right now at the start of the Challenge ... and of course because a peek inside someone else's cupboards, especially food cupboards is always a nice thing, so they are for you as well as for me.  😄

Even the little drawers have filled up again with all the lovely foodie gifts I was sent for my birthday.  The thing is, when you tell all the family that you don't want any more 'stuff' you get edibles and toiletries instead.  Which means that I am now fully stocked up in all departments ... and very happy about it too. 💝

The little wire shelves above the drawers have barely changed in appearance since the start of the year. A couple of the packs of biscuits from the glass jar have been eaten and some of the tiny jars of jam from the larger of the two cream coloured enamel tubs have been eaten for breakfasts.  Oh, and the contents of the granola jar have changed as it was refilled from a different box.

These shelves have only changed in that the jars have been topped up and the pepper pot is a different one, the cream coloured one I used to have leapt off the shelf and broke in a cloud of pepper ... atishoo!!  🤧

And that's all the ambient food in the house, of course there's stuff in the fridge and freezer, oh and I've just remembered the spice drawer and the extra spices that I found recently in the enamel teapot, and posted about here.

Thank you for all the comments yesterday that overwhelmingly said you would be interested in continuing to watch my ongoing food expenditure successes and failures, hopefully by relaunching this challenge I will be able to keep myself on the straight and narrow and really limit the spending for the next few months.

I'm going now before I remember any more food stashes and have to continue confessing to my huge stock of food.  Anyway it's time for me to do my online banking now as Alan has just been over with a document for me to sign and reminded me to check to see if my wages are in my account yet ... if they are I could go shopping, or maybe not!!  😁

Sue xx

And with a Final Flourish ... I've Bust Through the Budget

So my non-challenge Challenge of living off the money that I made through selling things last year came to an end yesterday, with a final 75p being spent on top of a £10 Booths voucher.  Adding that to the money spent during April it sent me over the budget.

It was a good job I looked in my bag yesterday as the voucher would have run out last night, so we made a quick pit stop on our way out and bought just enough to make good use of it.  

The half dozen eggs and Vimto were Alan's choices ... it seemed only fair to buy him something with the voucher as he does help me collect the money on the Booths card by having a copy of mine in his wallet and using it every time he shops there ... and the larger pack of eggs and pastry case were my choice.  We are going to Mum's to watch the Coronation next weekend and I thought being able to rustle up a quiche for us all to share, alongside the little sandwiches and scones that I plan to make would be a good idea.

 A final Challenge spend of 75p in cash and a £10 Booths voucher.

I'll not list all the expenditures as to be honest it's all gone a bit to pot and my challenge diary money reckoning page is a scribbly mess.  I realised yesterday that I had included some items for the foodbank in my spending, that had been bought on the same receipt as my shopping in March and I had completely missed off a small spend in January of £5.85.  

I went down a worm hole of trying to make corrections and then thought, 'what the heck ... does it really matter'.  So as far as I can work out by the last day of April I had spent my full challenge pot of £592.20 plus an extra £12.57.  So, basically I have bought everything that I needed and occasionally just fancied in thee first four months of the year for an approximate total of £604.77.

Which averages out to just over £151 a month, or £35.57 per week for the first 17 weeks of this year, and I'm happy with that.  Especially as it also includes non-food items such as haircuts, books and an MOT.

Although the Challenge as such is over, I have enjoyed keeping tabs on myself so much that I will be continuing to log what I spend in the challenge diary and see how I react to the rules being even more relaxed, even if the rules were only shadowy guidelines in my head to start with.  

Maybe I'll spend the next four months just logging the money that I spend on food, now that would be interesting to me while I continue to work through the Food Cupboard food stash.  

In fact I have just re-photographed the food that I have here at home and I am intending to almost re-start the Food Cupboard Challenge ... only this time I will not be moving food from place to place as gaps appear.  Doing that has meant that some places look just as full as when I started back in January.

Do you want me to continue to mention my spending on here or are you all totally fed up with facts figures and photos of my shopping?  I'll leave it up to you.  😀

Sue xx