Do I Go On?

 

With fuel prices of every description soaring over recent weeks, and things only set to get worse as the vehicle fuel prices start to affect the prices of everything in the shops I am seriously wondering if I should even go on with my Challenge.

Just over two months into the Challenge I feel de-railed and unsure of what I'm doing.  My total No Spend Year failed miserably and now my Low Spend Challenge may go the same way.  Am I just down because of world events or what ... I really don't know.

Alan needed to top up his tank yesterday to get to work and for half a tank of diesel it was over £70, luckily for us fuel for the vehicles is a business expense so it doesn't hit us too hard in our personal pockets, but it's still shocking.

The food prices in all the supermarkets are creeping up and not slowly, they leap up in 10p or 20p increments which must be absolutely terrifying for those people truly living on a tight budget.   I feel wrong in so many ways to be playing at having a tight budget just for budgeting's sake.

Anyway I'm thinking long and hard about it all at the moment, I thought it only fair to warn you.

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

An Extra £5 ... and A Good Store

 

Yesterday I got my latest Booths voucher through the post, now it's only for £5 but when you're doing a ten pounds a week housekeeping Challenge, suddenly £5 seems a lot of extra money.  

As any vouchers or coupons that arrive after the start of the Challenge are outside the Challenge total funds this can be used for anything I want.  I have one £2.50 Tesco voucher still to use up within Challenge funds and of course there are the Sainsbury's Nectar points still included for now.

 It didn't take me long to figure out that this particular voucher would mean I could buy myself a little treat for my birthday, which is next month ... something to look forward to.

What would you buy yourself for your birthday with a £5 supermarket voucher bearing in mind that this particular one is a slightly more upmarket supermarket.  If you don't know Booths, it's along the same sort of lines ... and prices ... as Waitrose but is a family owned supermarket that specialises in local produced products and supporting the local area that each branch is in.  They are a good store.

They have already removed all foods that have any connection with Russia from their shelves and have started a cash collection point for the people of Ukraine in every branch, which they are going match pound for pound up to the value of £15,000. 👍👏💖

As I said they are a good store!!

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

The Last Tomato

Yesterday I made a slight inroads into the No Fish Fillets from Aldi ... I had one on a bun for my tea as I just wasn't that hungry.  They make a nice quick snack as they cook in the Remoska in around 20 minutes and on a bun with some mayo are delicious.  I usually add some lettuce but I have run out of all salad stuff now.

 I had used the last of the salad stuff ... which was a single tomato ... the day that I photographed the contents of the fridge as it just looked so lonely.  It's surprising how even just adding a tomato to a slice of toast makes for a more filling breakfast.  I always cook fresh tomatoes in olive oil with a sprinkle of garlic powder ... yummy 😋 

I hadn't realised that there were four boxes of the No Fish Fillets in the freezer ... that's what happens when you keep putting things in and putting things in without eating through the older contents.  It's oh so easy to buy something you fancy or make something and freeze the excess and then just dip into the top of the drawers and eat those things within a week or two, leaving the older stuff to languish forgotten and unloved.

Now I have it in my head what I have I will build next weeks meals around some of it adding the salad stuff that I have just put onto my shopping list for the weekend.  I do like to have some fresh stuff in, even if the shelves of my fridge look a little bare there's usually food to be had in the drawers.

Sue xx

 

Reminded ...

 

Yesterdays little foray into filming the contents of the freezer drawers and putting them on my YouTube channel for all the world to see, was a really good way of reminding me exactly what was in there and it has already encouraged me to use some of the things that I found lurking in the depths.

This mornings mid-morning drink instead of being another cup of coffee was a delicious smoothie made with some of the banana, half of the baby spinach and half an apple.  I will have another one tomorrow to use up the other 'halves'.

Very tasty and a very pleasant change.

But I still need a coffee to wake me up, time to put the kettle on methinks 😁

Thanks for everyone that watched the little clips and special thanks to those of you who clicked on the thumbs up and the couple of you that subscribed.  It makes me realise why those YouTubers I watch regularly always beg on every video that they put up for likes, comments and subscribers to help with their sites algorithms.  Of the almost 500 people that viewed the videos only a few liked them and even less subscribed ... it's a good job I didn't do it for the numbers.  😄

I guess it's similar to the statistics we get on our blogs, so many read from all over the world, a much lesser number subscribe and only a few comment.  But it was really interesting to delve into the facts and figures of a new media.  I'm off to check my blog stats now, I haven't done that for ages.

Sue xx