Using Up the Food Stash, Making Good Use of Leftovers ... and the Pantry Challenge

As well as using up the contents of the freezer I am slowly but surely working my way through all of my food stash over the coming weeks.  

It makes sense to use up all those things that might go off or go wildly out of date first, especially as while my freezer is full I can't add things to that to stop them from going bad.  The other day I saw just how wrinkly the apples in the fridge were ... far too wrinkly to be eaten just as they were ... so I peeled, sliced and slightly stewed them. 

I also used up one of my two rolls of pastry that had been bought well before Christmas.  It was out of date but not horrifyingly so.  The other pack of pastry had been squeezed into the freezer last week but there was literally no room for this one.

Out of one roll of pastry I got the two apple tarts, two little cheese, onion and potato pies and the one little end piece after rolling out was simply cooked as a thin cracker and eaten as soon as it was properly cooked ... chef's perks. 😀

Not a soggy bottom in sight.  😁

I ate one of the Cheese and Onion pies for my tea the night they were made with some garden peas and gravy and the other one I had for lunch the next day, warmed through in the Remoska and served with just a dollop of mayo.  

The apple pies were shared, one for me and one for Alan ... which he enjoyed while it was still warm from the oven with some salted caramel ice-cream.

I am determined not to waste anything as I work my way through all the food stash, no matter whether it's a fridge, freezer or cupboard item.  To keep me on the straight and narrow and for meal ideas and inspiration I have been watching Jessica over at Three Rivers Homestead regularly.  It's this time every year that she does her pantry challenge, working her way through her enormous stash of home-canned and preserved foods and all those things that sneak into a busy home over the course of a few months.  With a family of ten, including one gorgeous new born baby, she's doing it on a whole different level to my own little challenge.

Here's her first video of this year's Pantry Challenge.

https://youtu.be/tYGf-I1U9vY

Are you starting this year by going through your cupboards or freezers while keeping your spending low?  And do you follow any other bloggers or vloggers that are doing something similar that I might be interested in finding out about and taking inspiration from?

Sue xx

Menu Plan Monday ... Gosh I'm So Organised

 

I want to start the first couple of weeks of this year really using up what I have in my freezer.

When I sorted through it all the other day I found foods that I had forgotten I even had, including a nut roast from Christmas 2021!!  Well now is the time to work my way through all this older stuff and try not to put anything into the freezer until I have cleared it.

I was aiming to have at least two things from the freezer every day and it was with this idea in mind that I put together this first weeks menu plan ... although in the end when I look at it now I have actually managed to incorporate three things each day.  It will be interesting to see how this first week alone impacts on the state of the freezer drawers.

If things in life come up that mean a days meals don't get used, I will simply move that whole day forward to begin next weeks menu plan and fill in the rest of the week from that day forward.

And rather than working from my paper scribblings and eventually getting confused, I sat and typed all the contents of the drawers out so that I can see more clearly what have and be more easily able to tick off what I use.

Here's to week one of slow but steady freezer emptying.

Sue xx

Back Tracking, Spending for the First Time This Year

 

At the start of December and knowing that I had my low spending year coming up I cancelled my subscription to the Radio Times.

I had taken out the subscription quite a while ago when I spotted an offer and it was a good deal for a while.  Then like so many other things the half yearly subscription rate had snuck up and up.  The last time the direct debit left my bank account it was for £72.80 and while not the end of the world I thought it was just something that I could happily live without this year.

My subscription had ended rather neatly with the Christmas double edition and I thought no more about it until I saw my Mum's new copy last week when we visited her, then I had the littlest pang of regret that I wouldn't be getting it.

Yesterday it was my first hairdressing appointment of the new year and I had decided that I would go into Booths on the way back to the car and pick up the latest copy and sod it before then I would go online and re-instate my subscription.

Result!!

When I went online I came upon this offer.

As a very recent former subscriber I didn't think I would qualify for the reduced rate but I did.  So now I am getting the next twelve issues for just £1 each ... instead of the £4 a copy it has now gone up to ... and then the next six months for the reduced rate of £49.60.

So I will be paying for this copy and next weeks copy out of my cash stash and then the direct debit will be coming out of our joint bank account as Alan wants to continue to share the Radio Times with me, and so it will not be taken from the stash.

First money spent this year:

Hair cut and tip = £23

Radio Times = £4

Twenty seven pounds gone in less than an hour - GULP!!

Sue xx

Freezer Food Stash, Removing Labels from Myself

 

Not long after writing yesterdays post I decided that while it was on my mind I would crack on and make an inventory of the freezer contents.  

I'm a great one for prevaricating these days and I find that if I don't seize the bull by the horns and just do something it gets pushed further and further down the list and then falls off the bottom and disappears.  So before the computer had even cooled down I had the top drawer of the freezer out, a few sheets of paper and a pencil on the work top, and away I went.

Sorry about the dreadful lighting, the sky was so overcast yesterday that my hallway kitchen was dismally gloomy.  But if you click on the photo it should enlarge nicely and you might even be able to read my scribblings.

I simply pushed through and got on with the middle drawer while the urge to be organised was great.

I did start flagging after this one and I have to admit to a restorative cup of coffee and a quick blast of Wordle on my phone.

Back to business and the bottom drawer was soon emptied and the contents listed for posterity, well until they are all eaten up of course.

I seem to be able to fit a lot into this little half drawer.  The reason for the large stack of Linda McCartney sausages is that I only buy them when they are on special offer and then simply add them to the bottom of the stash for future using up. They are an assortment of all three of the flavours that I like:  Lincolnshire, Vegetarian and the Red Onion and Rosemary, plus an experimental (for me) Chorizo and Red Pepper.  All bought when they were reduced to £1.50 in Sainsbugs.

Seemingly I now have a total of 41 sausages, the 40 from this drawer and the little lonely sausage that I found wrapped in clingfilm in the middle drawer.

The eagle eyed among you might have spotted something that will have surprised you.  

Yes, I have some fish in my freezer drawers!!  Over the past couple of months I brought fish and eggs back into my diet as an experiment for my health to see if these animal sources of protein had any beneficial effect on my health.  They totally haven't, so once I have used up all that I bought including the tinned fish in my cupboards I doubt they will remain full time.  But I am no longer as rigid in my views as I once was and have given myself permission to remove all the labels that the food police seem to want to place on people.

I am not vegan.

I am not vegetarian.

I am not pescatarian.

I am not plant based.

I am me!!

However, I still don't and will never eat meat and dairy.

Sue xx

A Slow Start, Finally Framed and Inspiration

 

I had a slow start this morning.  

I was tucked up in bed and fast asleep by half past nine last night.   I woke at six o'clock this morning and luxuriated in the warm bed before finally thirst made me surface properly and stagger to the kitchen.  Why is it when you're passed sixty that your brain wakes up an hour before your body every day!!

Anyway I grabbed a cup of hot water and lemon, and then plonked myself in front of YouTube on the television.  I discovered Little Mountain Ranch a couple of months ago and I love Chelsea's videos.  Why I find it a calming start to the day watching someone working away in the kitchen or on the farm I really don't know but I do ... maybe it's simply because I don't have to do it anymore!

I love the muted light in the lodge first thing in the morning, it's very calming and always a good start to the day.  

I rarely put the main light in the living room area on, preferring instead to use the lamp that's on the table between the chairs and the little fairy lights that I decided to keep out after Christmas.  This lighting seems to show all my much loved treasures off so much better.

As you can see from this photo my picture is finally framed and up on the wall properly. 💖

My younger son Jason painted this for my 60th birthday, but because of Covid restrictions he couldn't get it to me for over a year.  Then we moved house - twice!  When I finally moved in here I put it up on the wall with some Sellotape to see if I would like it in this position, I did.  Alan didn't know what to buy me for my birthday in April this year ... and to be honest there was nothing that I really needed ... so after a few months deliberation I asked him to have the painting framed for me.

We took it to the framers in October and he kept saying he hadn't got it back yet, then he gave it me on Christmas day.  I think my choice of frame and mount helps it to fit into the space just perfectly.  It was well worth the wait.

I am loving all these calm areas now that the Christmas decorations have all gone.

As you can see from the clock this photo was taken half an hour after the first one and I was still watching YouTube.  With a nice mug of coffee I settled down to watch Claire's latest video.

https://youtu.be/3gk3Hyaaee8

Now I am inspired and you will not need too many guesses to work out what I intend to do once I have had some breakfast and found a notebook and pencil.

Sue xx

Roots, Mystery Shortbread and Non-Mouldy Bread

 

The last of the decorations were taken down yesterday, including those on my radiator shelf and the anniversary flowers.  

Because of the nature of the 'flowers' being mostly greenery they had dried nicely and I was able to leave them in the jug all month without appearing to have a Miss Haversham type of arrangement dying a sad and slow death for all to see.  

Weirdly the 'sticks with the bobbles on' had new roots so they have been pushed into a planter in the garden .. we'll see what happens there.  The eucalyptus and thistle all had their mouldy ends trimmed and then were put back into the jug once it had been washed and dried.

The shelf was sanded and re-oiled before a new arrangement for a new year was installed.  It's all looking pleasantly sparse and pleasing to my eyes now.

I haven't posted for a couple of days as there just hasn't been much going on.  

We went to Mum's on New Years Day so she would have some company for the first day of a brand new year ... the roads for once were beautifully quiet and we did the journey in each direction in a smidge over an hour ... and we had a good chat but failed to solve the mystery of a HUGE box of shortbread that she found in her kitchen cupboard.  Phoning every visitor she had over Christmas failed to find the guilty party!!

I have been eating such a small amount of everything that my bursting cupboards are offering me, that I have made minimal inroads into the food stash and the cash stash of course has not been touched.  I find the more I have in the less I want to eat ... just one of my many eccentricities.

The plant-based Fois Gras/pate was delicious as is the cheese that I got just before Christmas, but at the rate I'm eating them they are going to last ... and last.

I decided this morning that in a bid to make space in the now over-filled to capacity freezer I would take out a jar of homemade soup for lunch today.  I really hope it's soup, it's not labelled and is slowly thawing to look more and more like pond sludge.

I wouldn't have frozen a jar of pond water ... would I !!

Anyway as long as it's edible that's my lunch sorted and I have one slice left of two week old bread that I will toast to dunk into it.  How does sliced bread last for two weeks with no sign of mould forming ... I dread to think!!

Sue xx

Happy New Year ... Plans, Non Plans and 50p's

Usually with me now is the time that I buckle down to a New Year New Challenge, and I guess in a way it could be called that this year. 

 But there is a big difference this year, I am not challenging myself to see how little I can spend and how long I can make things last, instead I am simply monitoring how long the money that I managed to save through table-top sales and Facebook Marketplace sales, and the bits and bobs of money that I have popped into my little box and my pottery drawer will last me over the coming weeks and hopefully months.

 

There are so many people on social media doing No Spend or Low Spend years that it has become a bit same old, same old.  It seems that us long time bloggers have influenced the influencers to take up the baton and run with it ... making money for themselves in the process.  Good luck to them!

Well I am happy to be out of the limelight, living slowly and simply in my little home and using my savings from the past year to fund this brand new year for as long as they can.

I don't want to buy any clothes, shoes or books in the year ahead as I really do feel that I have enough ... but if I need to I can and I will.  I have food, toiletries and cleaning products that could easily last me a few months and although I wouldn't run my larder down to silly levels it would be nice to run it down to a level that means I don't have to catch flying jars of salad dressing as they fall out of the cupboard ... I actually missed that one and it landed with a crash and my Caesar dressing was no more.

I added up the money from my two little pots and emptied all the cash out of my handbag, and this is what it came to.  I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, I had sort of expected it to be in the three hundreds or thereabouts.

Now usually I would be seeing how much this gives me per day, per week and per month ... and yes you know me so well I did have to work it out:

£1.62 per day

£11.38 per week

and 

£49.35 per month.

Not a shabby amount at all and one that I don't doubt for a moment that I could manage on if I was just to use it for food.  I've done it in the past, I once managed for almost a full year on one pound a day, before I ran out of steam, but not money!!  Even with the rising prices that we are currently contending with here in the UK and in many countries of the world, I feel that I could just about do this, and if truth were told I am almost tempted to give it a go. 

 But I don't need to prove that I can to anyone, not even myself!

I also have a couple of coupons that I will be using to bolster out my cash, and I've just checked and I have Nectar points available too.  I'm not adding them to my cash total as hopefully I will get a couple more over the course of the year, they will just be used up as and when they arrive and should help my money last a bit longer.

I found a couple of unusual 50p's in my little stash of coins.  

I did check online as I've heard that some can be quite valuable

But mine are of no great value ...

... and I would rather pass them on in my spending and let someone else have the thrill of seeing an more unusual coin in their change.

So as it's no great challenge this year I have just put some of my cash into my handbag along with the coupons and I will spend as and when I need to, in any amount that I need to.  All I will do, is perhaps  count my money at the end of each month, monitor how it's going and write it in my diary ... just out of interest of course.  😉

Good luck to anyone that is Challenging themselves over the coming year and I wish you well with whatever you are doing.  Leave a comment if you are blogging about a Challenge and I've no doubt whatsoever that me and my readers will come over and cheer you on.

New Years Resolutions - None

New Year Goals - to read more books, lose some weight ... and have fun.

Sue xx