Eight Meals for Under Two Pounds

I have been on a mission recently to eat my way through the contents of the fridge and freezer, trying desperately but not always succeeding  not to make too many portions so that the fridge ends up filling the freezer ... if you know what I mean.  

The other day I bought a bag of baking potatoes from Aldi's Super Six, 13 potatoes for just 99p a real bargain.  I decided to use three of them straight away to help use up the last of the celery, carrots and onion from the fridge.

With the addition of some store cupboard staples to add a real blast of flavour I set to chopping and slicing to make myself a large pan of vegetable stew.

I simply add a dash of oil to the pan and then after washing I chop, slice and add to the pan the things that take the longest to cook first.  In went the onions, then the carrots, then the celery and finally the potatoes.

Once everything had been sautéing together for about five minutes, I added all my bursts of flavour and the stock powder with about a litre of water.  It was brought to the boil and then left to simmer for about 25 minutes.

Then it was time to divide and conquer.  

Two bowls of vegetable stew, one eaten straight away and one left to cool.  Two portions of pasty filling lifted out of the pan with my slotted spoon and left to cool.  Then the rest of the contents of the pan were whizzed up with my stick blender and made me just over a litre of nice thick vegetable soup.

I filled my two largest bowls with soup and then froze two more portions for another week ... sorry freezer, I know I'm supposed to be emptying you!!

 

The two containers of pasty filling went into the fridge until the following day.  Then I got out the pastry from the freezer (yay!!) and let it thaw and come to room temperature, before making myself two lovely and very big pasties.

One to be eaten straight away ...

... and one in the fridge.

I did my workings out the next day and found that counting only the foods I used, and always rounding the points of a penny up, my eight portions of food cost me:

3 potatoes = 24p

1.5 onions = 11p

2 sticks of celery = 7p

3 carrots = 12p

2 tsp dried vegetable stock = 2p

herbs and spices = 10p

2 tsp olive oil = 2p

ready rolled puff pastry = 1.05

Total = £1.73.

As I ate each bowl of soup with a slice of toast that added 5p per slice to the final cost of the meals, so I came in at £1.93.

Under two pounds for eight very filling meals.

Of course, you could add all sorts of additions to the basic starter pan using whatever you have lurking in the freezer or fridge.  Frozen vegetables work just as well as fresh and usually cook a lot quicker ... although cooking gently and for longer can greatly improve the flavours, especially with your onion, celery, carrot starter.  

Once you've made the basic pan of stew you could add different things to the stews, the pasties or change some of the soups a bit by adding curry powder or other spices to half of the amount you have.  You could add sausages, tinned or cooked meat or fish to any of the portions and have something completely different flavour wise.   

I just thought I would share this as a basic idea for cheap, warming foods on these cold dreary days. 

 Tonight, I am having the second pasty for my tea ... and I can't wait.

Sue xx

Grow Your Own Advent Calendar

 

I said I wouldn't buy an Advent Calendar this year, but then I saw this really lovely Grow your Own Advent Calendar advertised and went to the website for a closer look.  

When I saw that it was reduced and its cost made me immediately qualify for free postage and packaging, I fell hook line and sinker into the advertisers grasp.

And I am so glad that I did.

Available from Trees Bees and Seeds

What you get inside the box.

A 10m jute rope washing line, 25 little pegs, 25 'Gift Wrapped Surprises' and a seed sack to store all your seeds.

So, once you have it pinned up and stretched out, and all the little envelopes pegged on the line you also have a lovely Christmas decorative garland of beautiful little envelopes.  That I think I will refill with something completely different and use again next year.

Temptation ... it's a wonderful thing!!

Oh, and did I mention that last week in Booths Alan spotted this.  It was actually cheaper than when I bought it two years ago, Alan talked me into it and bought it for me ... 

... and in return I bought him the Lindt chocolate calendar.

So last year I had toiletries and socks, and this year I have seeds and jam ... and of course I have the online Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar once again, the best £7 that I spend every year.

It keeps December interesting for sure.

Sue xx

Plastic Free July

 

It's been Plastic Free July for a whole month and I've not managed to mention it once ... yup, I admit it I am a bad blogger  😄

Most of you know me well enough by now to know that I recycle, I reuse, I most definintely re-purpose and I basically do the very best I can.  Hardly any of the plastic that I do get is single use plastic and the few things that I do get are recycled wherever possible to the correct place.

Something that I switched to at the start of last year when it became increasingly difficult to get washing powder tablets in cardboard boxes, was the smol range of products. 

 I started with a free trial of the washing capsules, which come through your letterbox in a sturdy cardboard box.  The trial proved to me that they did everything that I needed them to do and I signed up for a regular subscription after a week of using them.

The box is so childproof that it drove me to distraction, but if you have children this is a good thing.

There are instructions on how to open it and information on everything else that you need to know.

But I cheat, and for ease of use as soon as mine arrive I tip them into my little enamel pan ...

... and store them next to the little enamel bucket that holds the pegs.

A few months after starting with the washing capsules and when I had used up my supply of fabric conditioner I added bottles of the smol fabric conditioner to my order and trialled that.  It's very good and does exactly what it's supposed to but without leaving you scented like a pine forest or a rose garden.

You can choose how many laundry capsules you want to receive and also how often you want to receive them, ditto with the fabric conditioner and any of the other cleaning supplies that you might want to try.  There are also dishwasher tablets and surface sprays, (neither of which I use) so you could get all your cleaning supplies from one place and through the post

But the most important thing for me is that it gets the washing clean, smelling fresh and not synthetic and everything arrives just when I need it and if my needs change I can update how often I want to receive something.

If you would like a free trial like I did, just click HERE to go to the smol website and choose the item you would like to sample, and for just £1 towards the postage you will have enough of the product you choose to get a good idea of if it's right for you.

This is not in any way a sponsored post, just something that I use regularly and highly recommend.

Sue xx

Challenges

 

I was sorting through my notebooks the other day, pulling one out to use as 'spare paper book' that I can grab when I'm on the phone and need something to write on, and I came across this one.  When I opened it up it had lots of interesting stuff in.   I vaguely remember buying it from Asda as part of a stationery pack during a Challenge over on my other blog ... Challenging Myself

Anyway what should I find written in the back of it but the plans for a different Challenge ... a £1 a Day for a Month Challenge.  I thought it was THIS one.

But none of the foods matched up!!

So perhaps it was for a Challenge that I never quite got round to doing.

Which seems a shame as I obviously put quite a bit of work into the plans!!

I wonder how the prices would compare to those in the shops now?

Now that's food for thought ... and perhaps a Challenge in itself 😄

And while I was over on the other Blog I ended up going down a rabbit hole of immense proportions and reading about lots of my other Challenges, including one of my more unusual ones that saw me splashing out on things every day of the week.

Challenge Three in 2019  'The Shopping Hauls Challenge'.

Which was a really interesting one to read through again and I spotted lots of things that are still in daily use that I bought over the course of that week.  So those few people in the comments who said that I was buying useless things and wasting money should perhaps come round and have a look at all the things that I still actually have.

I have only used about half of the pens and pencils up to now though!!

Anyway I need to get off the computer now, I've been on here for far too long 😀

Sue xx

Smiling ... and Helping in Small Ways

 

I smile every time I open the fridge at the moment, so much colour and freshness ... I really am spoilt for choice.  My meals all this week are going to be based around this beautiful splash of colour.

I am also smiling a the good folk who are booking Airbnb rooms in Kyiv and all over Ukraine, with the sole purpose of getting the money to the people who would normally be renting their spare rooms to visitors to their country.  Instead the people left in the city with those spare rooms or hotels are helping their newly homeless neighbours, but the money received from their Airbnb accounts can really help them out in a very direct way.

 Some people are just good, they will basically find anyway possible to help the other the good people no matter where they are in the world.

Edited to add:

 After reading Jayne's comment below, I went over to the Etsy website and made a few purchases (the Challenge was momentarily cancelled).  One actual thing from a lady in the UK raising money for her family back in Ukraine and two pdfs, the one above that I have printed out.

There are ways to help.

Sue xx

Shopping - My First Visit to the Shop in March

 

Six days into the month, and with a virtually empty fridge when Alan asked if I wanted to go to Aldi with him I was definitely going to say a very clear yes wasn't I. 😀

I had a list of seven items that I needed and had checked them out on both the Sainsbugs and Aldi websites to compare prices.  In Sainsbugs my shopping would have cost me £5.55 and in Aldi it came to £4.67.  It was a no-brainer and Aldi it was, and knowing that I had over £5 more to play with made me think what would I like as well as what did I need.

On my list had been:

Celery

Iceberg Lettuce

Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Peppers

Onions

 Flour

I added:

Grapes

Small Apples

Easy Peelers

Cucumber

and

one more bag of Flour.

I half expected it to be just over my permitted £10 a week food budget but I was prepared for that with the £19.09 of left over money from the first two months of this year in my bag.

As you can see it came to £9.78, giving me 22p change.

What a good result.

As soon as we got back I did my usual thing of washing, drying and putting into bags and bowls all the new foods.  It was a good job I did as some of the onions were a bit iffy!!

It's so lovely to see all the colourful fresh new foods for this week.  

There will definitely be no scrimping for meals with all this and the freezer foods that I showed you last week.  I need to try to remember to take some photos of my meals this week as I use up the new supplies alongside the old ones.

At the moment I am debating whether to spend my leftover £19+ on some long-life food items to perhaps help me combat rising food prices later in the year due to current world events, but I have been unable to commit to doing it yet. I think that this was on my mind when I bought the two bags of flour instead of just the one that I knew I would be needing soon.

 What would you do?  Save the money or spend it on pasta, rice and tinned foods?  

Sue xx

Two Sausages - Four Sausage Rolls

 

I thought I would try to use the last two Linda McCartney sausages from one of the boxes in the freezer and make myself four sausage rolls.  Now I love sage and onion stuffing so I thought that a mostly stuffing filling with just a hint of sausage would be really good.

 I let them thaw for a while and made up a small bowl of stuffing, mashed the two together and cooked them in the sausage roll maker.

Now they were nice and made for a very satisfactory lunch, but they were just a little bit too bland as they were.  Next time I will perhaps add some very well seasoned and 'chilli-flaked' mashed potatoes to the mix and perhaps some cooked onions too.  If I do I'll report back.

As you can see I am still having great fun experimenting with my sausage roll maker.

Sue xx

Not Just Sausage Rolls

 

Three rolls made in the sausage roll maker that I confessed to buying yesterday, thank goodness I had enough cash left over this month to be able to get it.  Only there are no sausages or sausage meat inside these ones,  inside one there is pate and inside the other two is apple from a tin of apple pie filling that I had in the cupboard.  Yes, the sausage roll maker makes four, but they are so good the other one containing some pate didn't even last long enough to be photographed.

They are a doddle to make using this ready rolled puff or shortcrust pastry.  I have tried both now, this one that I bought yesterday and one of my other shortcrust pastry rolls from the freezer thawed out.  You get three pieces from each ready rolled roll that fit into the maker (two at a time obviously 😁) so one of my sets of four 'sausage rolls' was a puff pastry bottom and a shortcrust pastry top ... it worked perfectly with no discernible difference between to two types of pastry,  I think the lid pressing down stops the puff pastry from rising but makes it super crispy at the same time.

As each roll is sealed by the machine while it cooks drippy fillings can't escape until you bite into your roll, so these would be brilliant for school lunches or picnics etc ... or simply sitting on the sofa watching scary movies like I did yesterday.

Up to now we have tried:

Linda McCartney Sausage and Sage and Onion stuffing x 4

Pate x 2

Tinned Apple Pie Filling x 2

And for lunch today I am going to try making some potato, cheese and onion rolls.  The world is my oyster and if it can be cooked in ten minutes, fits neatly into the indentations and sounds like it might be tasty wrapped in pastry it will be being tried.  I see a lot of leftovers being turned into very tasty little sausage roll shaped pies over the course of this No Spend Challenge.

Of course one of my main reasons for buying this ... as well as an addiction to sausage rolls and all things pastry ... was to save on having to put my oven on.  My Remoska can cook some pastry items, so it already saves me a fortune with not turning on the oven but but it does seem to cook pastry slightly erratically, so this little gadget is the perfect accompaniment to the Remoska to save me money on the electric bill.  I can use them covering most dishes and leaving my oven switched off except for larger batch cooking sessions or cakes.

And I intend to make up a big batch of homemade pastry and have the right sized pieces stored in the freezer ready for use to make this even more economical.  And I know I have at least three boxes of these sausages in the freezer, which tasted wonderful when thawed and added to some sage and onion stuffing before being trialled as my very first batch in the sausage roll maker.

Winner, winner sausage roll ... and other things ... dinner.  😄

Sue xx

Mini Potato Pizzas

 

I find myself always on the look out for new recipes, especially budget ones that use some of my favourite simple foods, and those foods which I virtually always have in stock.

겉바속촉! 완벽한 미니 감자 피자! NO 밀가루! NO 오븐! - YouTube

I came across this the other day and although I've thought of a way I can do it to suit me better*, it gave me the idea and that made it worth watching.  I may have watched a few more videos too, but what better thing to do than sit on the sofa drinking coffee and watching someone else cook on a freezing cold day.

There's so many food recipes and ideas online these days, there is really no excuse to stay stuck in a rut, unless you really, really want to.  😀

*Simply make some mashed potato (or use leftover mash) add a spoonful of flour to it to improve the firmness and make it hold together a bit better, and then press out little circle shapes on a non-stick liner.

Sue xx

Sending Letters By Pigeon Post

 

On her blog, Tracing Rainbows the other day, Angela mentioned receiving a Pigeon letter and my curiosity was spiked.  I just had to go straight over to the website ... and wow I fell in love with the designs.  Just look at this one from one of my favourite artists, original Angela Harding artwork just beautiful in every way.

Of course if this had been 'normal times' I would have picked out a couple of designs and ordered some straight way but it's my year of No Spending, so I had to bite the bullet and simply add them to my Wish List.  At least Alan might have a clue about what to buy me for my birthday!!

Summer Meadows Design, just another of my favourites and there are lots to choose from.  If you are as interested as me why not nip over here to read all about The Pigeon Story.

💖💖💖

This is not a sponsored blog post ... none of mine ever are if you are wondering ... but I have acquired quite a few new readers recently so I thought I would just point this out. However, I do like to shout out about useful and beautiful things that I come across in anyway in my day to day life and leave a link for you to discover more about them yourself if that is what you would like to do.

  

Sue xx

My No Spend Challenge 2022 - Adding Up the Cash Stash

This morning I finally got around to adding up the Cash Stash.  

I had built up my little pots of money from various sources, the enamel teapot held the cash unused from the previous years Sealed Pot Challenge as well as the money I have been making recently from selling on Facebook Marketplace.  Then there was the little wooden box that has been collecting all the little bits of change to keep my bag lighter and the tile-fronted drawer that sits in the kitchen was used to save some £2 coins and had money added to it over the course of the year whenever I drew some cash out of my bank account, it was just there for emergencies and was never intended to become part of a Challenge.

It all adds up, and I consider myself to be very fortunate that I am able to do this.  Back in the day when my boys were growing up, any pots of money around the house were but a pipe-dream.  Our only savings were a large whisky bottle that we dropped pennies and two pence coins into ... and even this was raided as emergency food money some weeks.  It's this background that has honed my frugal mindset and which inspires me every so often to buckle my belt tighter and challenge myself to do better with my budgeting.

Do we all really need everything that we have?

So lets go through the cash I had around the house and get it all together to see the final budget for 2022.

In my handbag there was £25 in notes and no small change*.  I don't use a separate purse as this handbag has slots for cards and space for me to keep bank notes nice and flat, these plastic notes are murder to store folded!!

The little vintage money box didn't seem to have that much in ...

... but it all adds up.

Yes, there was £12.44 ... and a Kune!  I had to Google that one, seemingly it is a Croatian coin worth at todays exchange rates 11p, so although it's un-spendable someone palmed me off with more than the 10p it pretended to be.  😁

I'll keep it as a souvenir.

Peering inside the teapot for the first time in months, it looked pretty promising.

And indeed it was.  

The notes, and one and two pound coins were from Facebook Marketplace sales and the money in the polybag left over from last years savings.  A grand total of £117.88.  The odd 6p that you can see on the edge of the front £5 note was found on the ground on a dog walk and had been added to the pot on our return.

The little drawer I knew would be holding the bulk of this years budget.

Oh, that looked so much better ... and there were coupons that I had forgotten about.

A lovely round total of £400, plus the two coupons which are worth a total of £12.50.  

It's lucky that I did dig them out now as the Booths coupon expires in a couple of weeks, and I have no intention of losing £10.  I think I will wait as long as I can and then use this for a fresh fruit and vegetable top-up shop just before it expires.  This should mean that I can get through January with a very low spend.

Seeing the two coupons in the little drawer jogged my mind about my Nectar points, which are given out on any Sainsbury's shop, and which I have built up quite quickly over the course of the past year by buying some of the items that they give me extra points for.  The good thing is they usually issue the extra bonus points on your regular purchases and as mine have been mostly fruit and veg this means that I could continue to accrue many more over the next few months just by buying a few things that I need when they are on offer and then use the even higher points balance to pay for my shopping one or more weeks to have a bit of a top up as the cupboards start to run low.

(It works by for example them offering you 20 points which you would normally only get for spending £20 on something like bananas.  So buying one banana for 12p means you get points as though you have spent £20.  I hope this makes sense for those of you not used to Sainsbury's system.)

* The reason I had no change in my bag became obvious when Alan came in yesterday afternoon just after I had finished all my workings out and said he had found £5.20 in his coat pocket that I had given him along with other coins when we went to the hospital for my consultation.  He had paid for the parking ticket with money from my bag ... and kept the change.  So my workings out were quickly revised to include this unexpected windfall, luckily at this stage my scribbles were still on a scrap of paper 

I have decided to use my free gift Country Living diary as my Challenge notebook for the year, so all the workings out were written down at the front of it.   As you can see I have an average of just over £50 a month, which if I can keep the first few months spend really low will rise, and looking at the amount of food I have in the Lodge this should be quite easy to do.

The rules are still whizzing around in my head a bit and not really finalised, so I will come back tomorrow with a new blog post containing them ... and if you would like the photos I have taken of the Food Stash.  

I have food in the strangest of places, as I discovered when I went to bed last night!!

Sue xx