Something's Cookin'

For someone who moans quite a lot about how much food costs I rarely write anything about what I actually do with it once I've forked out all my money. Inspired by Karen's great blog I thought I'd give you an insight into what we'll be eating during the next few weeks chez Keshling.
I have been tidying my kitchen cupboards over the last couple days, partly because I have something of a stockpile of food and cleaning stuff (10 boxes of 52 Finish Powerball Dishwasher Tablets, special offer at Lidl - £3.75 instead of £7.50. Should last a year. 10 packs of 300g Extra Mature Cheddar from Lidl - £1.64 each. 24 packs of Strawberry Supreme Dessert at 10p each. 4kg of popping corn at 99p a kilo. And so on.) and partly because my cupboards are a frightful, disgraceful mess. However, hoorah!!! Some are tidy now and I will post 'before and after' pics just as soon as I take some, and before they get filled to the top with crap again. I haven't allotted specific days to my menu plan - I just cook whatever I remember to take out of the freezer the night before, which is usually what the cook feels like eating. And two of the meals have been eaten already. The puddings are made from things I came across whilst turning the cupboards out.

Cheese and Onion Flan with Chips and Beans

Spicy Mince and Carrots with Feta Crumble

Fish Pie with Peas

*Minced Beef Cobbler

Roast Pork with all the trimmings

Cheese, Ham and Potato Omelettes with Beans

Mole Chicken with Savoury Rice

*Prawn Curry, Pilau Rice, Onion Bhajis and Naan Bread

Meatloaf, Spuds, Vegetables

Chili and Rice with Cornbread

Cheese and Potato Pie with Beans

Crab Chowder with Cornbread

Jambalaya with Prawns and Chorizo

Sernik (Polish Cheesecake)

Flapjacks

Lemon Meringue Pie

Mango Fool

Irish Cream Cake

Pancakes with Maple Syrup

Cream Cheese Frosted Carrot Cake

Bakewell Pudding and Custard

Blackberry Crumble and Custard

Fudgie Wudgies

Gingerbread and Banana Trifle

Mincemeat Tart with Meringue Topping

As much Strawberry Supreme Dessert as you can eat lol!

We already ate the Minced Beef Cobbler; the Spicy Mince thing is a recipe from the Daily Mail - we've had half last week and still have half frozen; and the Prawn Curry was really quick, easy and pretty economical. It was just half a bag of Lidl prawns with four big potatoes cut into cubes and parboiled (thanks for the idea Saphy!), a jar of Lidl Jalfrezi Sauce and a tin of Asda Chickpea Dhal thrown in. The rice was microwaved in 90 seconds and I was surprised to see it was marked best before 2007...ooops! Tasted fine though (famous last words!!!). The onion bhajis were yellow stickered from Sainsbury's, 74p from £3; and the naan breads were found in the bottom of the freezer and won't have been full price either. There's still about a third of the curry left so I've frozen it. My Mr Charming is coming home from Uni for a few days on the 11th so I'll make the Fudgie Wudgies (his favourite Brownies) and the Crumble for when he's here.

You can see that almost everything is made from scratch - I often really don't feel like setting to and cooking when I get home from work at 4pm, yet it's so nice to have home-cooked food. I feel very sorry for people who can't cook, or won't try to cook. They don't ever get the satisfaction of putting a meal in front of their family and thinking 'I made that!'. I know it's not a very feminist attitude but it gives me a lot of pleasure to produce something delicious from a few ingredients. I think some women wear as a badge of honour the fact that they don't cook or 'just don't have the time to cook!' As if they're so busy with their important and glamorous lives whilst the rest of us bovines skivvy away at our inconsequential little pin-money (if only!) jobs. I remember when Red was baptised we threw a party afterwards and I'd worn myself out, gone totally over-the-top with the food. French patisserie, a fantastic (I won't deny it, it was) cake in the shape of a cradle, quiches, croquembouche, dips...I'd gone crazy. And the wife of Big Man's sea daddy turned to me and said 'I don't know how you do it, I wouldn't have the time'. Because everybody knows, being a childless legal secretary whose husband is mainly at sea is SOOOOOO much harder than cooking up a 'party-food-for-fifty' storm and coping with a tiny new baby when your family are 250 miles away. That woman never knew how close she came to a smack in the chops that day, and I could have easily blamed my hormones.

So there you have it, the kind of things we eat. The best part is that I either found the ingredients in the back of the cupboards and realised that I could make whole meals from them, or I bought the makings last month, when I overspent on my £250 food budget by about £140 (eeek!!!). I haven't so far bought any food specifically to make meals with. And yes, I DO realise it's only the 4th but I'm pretty sure we can go to maybe the 20th without buying anything other than milk and probably bread. I have a breadmaker but I'm the only one who likes homemade bread....yep, the others here are just weirdos, I know. I'll keep you posted about how we go on.

Just for SP, Spinach and Ricotta Bake

908g frozen spinach, defrosted
340g ricotta cheese

4 medium eggs, beaten
freshly grated nutmeg
salt and pepper
cannelloni tubes
2x400g cans chopped tomatoes
handful of fresh basil leaves, finely chopped

Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4. Grease a lasagne dish. Squeeze any excess water out of the spinach then put in a bowl with the ricotta and garlic and mix together. Stir in the eggs and nutmeg and season.
Using a piping bag squeeze the filling into the cannelloni tubes one by one. Place them in one layer into the dish. Mix together the tomatoes and basil. Season. Pour the tomatoes over the cannelloni and bake for 25-30 minutes. Serve with a green salad or whatever turns you on.

This is an old Slimming World recipe that we've had and really liked stacks of times. What I sometimes do is buy fresh lasagne sheets, cut them into three, put the filling in and roll up like cannelloni - they cook much faster. You can also substitute a carton of passata with basil plus 1T of sugar for the tins of tomatoes. Bon appetit SP!!

Calling Frugalistas!

I have a question. When you have a NSD - No Spend Day - what exactly do you mean by that? Is it a day when you don't spend a single penny on anything whatsoever, or is it a day when you can buy, say toilet roll or bread but not a magazine or a mascara? Some blogs I read say they have had a 'No Personal Spend Day'....I guess they can still buy family food or pay a gas bill. And that's another thing. If a NSD for you means no spending at all, does that also mean you had no direct debits going out for bills too? Today I have direct debits leaving our account for water, gas and TV license AND I will spend a few quid on vitamins. Are they personal spending, because I wouldn't die without them but I have taken them for years? Would that make it a NSD for me?

I guess most people would say that a NSD can be whatever you want it to be but I'm interested in what you guys use as a guideline.

Is It Money-Saving If....

...you decide against buying biscuits and cake at Lidl in favour of baking a homemade cake, which you all then eat 7/8ths of in one sitting?

Looking nothing like the picture but still very scrummy, with a bit of going-mouldy fromage frais!

I had £47 left of my £250 food budget when I went shopping this morning, and my list had food needs for the next 11 days meals. I didn't need much because I have the makings of most things in the freezer or cupboards already. The total came to £52 but that included 6lbs of minced steak at £1.49 a lb - not on my list and limited to six per customer but such a bargain that I couldn't turn it down. But then, when I got home and checked my emails later I had one from Approved Foods. Carb Addict is a popcorn freak and they are selling popcorn kernels at 99p per kilo so I ordered four. Plus another £36 of stuff on top that we didn't really need. I'm not sure why I am the world's worst self-sabotager but I am. I suppose the good thing is I got an extra £200 in my wages for the overtime on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, and even being £50 over my food budget is good for me.

We bought a reduced turkey crown just after Christmas. I cooked it this evening and I hope to get three meals out of it - roast dinner, turkey and leek pie and turkey stew and dumplings. I also got three meals out of the pork loin I bought after New Year's, that was reduced by 50% to £10. I'm just not used to ekeing things out like this, and we still have meat or sausages for nearly every meal; even just a bit of bacon in Egg, Bacon and Potato Bake counts as a meaty meal to me. Thank God I can cook is all I can say - it must be very hard for those who can't or won't home cook. My Red cooked a couple days this week and she's pretty good too....at least she won't starve.

I'm working tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday at my regular job. Wednesday I am doing extra hours as a carer, Thursday and Friday my regular job then Saturday and Sunday I am the chef. Never cooked in a works kitchen before and I'm soooooo nervous about it! Keep your fingers crossed I don't poison any of the residents!!!

Me on Saturday. Except I will be screaming.

Food, Glorious Food!

I am always manking about the cost of feeding my crew on this blog so I thought I'd give you some figures and see whether y'all think I'm right to moan; spending waaaay too much and we're all gannetty pigs; or if I'm doing okay under the circumstances. At the start of 2011 I changed from shopping indiscriminately at Asda (monthly), Sainsbury's (almost daily) and Tesco (infrequently - too expensive for me), to getting my monthly shop at Lidl. It's alright - nothing to tempt me away from my menu plan, unless it's one of their random houseware items -  not too expensive and they normally have what I want. Unless it's marzipan (only stocked at Christmas), suet (whenever I need it they have none, then when I don't they have plenty) or anything on their weekly newsletter that I really love (Rachel's Organic Greek Honey Yogurt for 99p).

Wants it cheap! No fair!!!

So, on Sunday I spent £85.08 on groceries which included £26 on non-food items (loo roll, kitchen roll, socks, plughole unblocker, cat food and dishwasher tablets) so £59 on food. That also included a wholly unnecessary £3 on Belgian Praline Seashells and £2 on Christmas puddings, leaving £54 on meal items. My menu plan was:

Chicken Curry with Rice and Naan Breads

Egg, Bacon and Potato Bake

Spinach and Ricotta Pasta Bake

Pulled Pork in Buns with Chips

Blue Cheese and Butternut Squash Risotto with HM Garlic Bread

Mixed Grill

Meatloaf, Potatoes, Veg and Gravy

I saw 'was' because we've already eaten two of the meals (the top two). I had the rice in stock, as were the naans which were 'Approved Food' specials so I spent £5.97 plus about 40p for the naans and maybe 30p for the rice.That's about £1.67 a head. By some people's standards I guess that's pretty high but for us it's good. The Egg, Bacon and Potato Bake used five big spuds from a 7.5kg sack that cost £2; four eggs from a '10 for 85p' box; one pack of bacon at £1.25; 2T of flour; 2T of cooking margarine; maybe 3/4pt of milk from a '£1 for 2l' bottle; and maybe 200g cheese at £1.48. I think it probably comes out at about £1.25 per head tops (4 of us for the curry, 3 for the potato bake).

We'll probably have the mixed grill tomorrow (because I want Red to cook) and that'll be bacon (£1.25), sausages (£1.49), eggs (cooked somehow, maybe Eggy Fried Bread, at 8.5p per egg - bread is £1 a loaf but we won't eat a whole one!) and beans (41p per tin). That's between 3 people. The pulled pork is a third of a pork loin joint I bought for £10.44, reduced from £21; the buns I have in the freezer and I also have the chips - both were from Lidl. Good quality but cheap. Blue cheese risotto will use up the last of the Stilton from Christmas, plus some reduced Gorgonzola I bought a while back; I have the risotto rice in my storecupboard, and the squash and I'll use some more Lidl frozen rolls for the garlic bread.

It's fortunate that I have well-stocked cupboards, and that I still had a bit of food left over from Christmas, otherwise I might have spent more. I will have one third of the pork joint left after this week and we also bought a half-price turkey crown (£9.50) last week that has been frozen and will make two or possibly three meals. I'm trying to have a couple meat-free meals as you can see. And though it looks like we hardly eat any vegetables it's not strictly true. We just don't eat masses of them!

I suppose some people might turn their noses up at the fact that I don't go to farmer's markets or eat organic but, call me a Philistine, I just don't notice enough difference to pay over the odds for free-range eggs or 'running in the fields all day' lamb. To me, food is food - I don't have any opinion either way about how or where it's produced....I could say 'as long as it's cheap' but that's not strictly true. I buy the best quality that is available to me where I shop. When I've paid my debts off I might go organic, then again I might decide that holidays are more important. It's all about priorities I guess.

Anyway, am I doing okay, do you think? Is food a priority for you? Have I reason to be moaning about how much I'm spending? And could I trim it down more? By the way, I am awaiting delivery of (amongst other things) 3.5kg of Yorkshire pudding mix from Approved Food. I forsee plenty of Toads-in-the Hole coming up! ;D

Pic from here - mine never looks remotely as nice as this!





Everybody's Doing It (Pt 2) And A Year-End SitRep

Yesterday I went through my personal goals for 2012 (*and still managed to miss one off!). I also said that I'd give a year-end sitrep so everyone can see what I've managed to pull off in twelve months. I'm only going to do a quick and dirty post because it's freeeezing in this house, and because I want to get into my onesie and watch a film. Something loud and childish.....I'm thinking maybe Transformers 2. Anyhow, at the start of the new year -

- I'm a happy bunny. We reduced our overall debt by £9,387.83 and whilst I'd hoped it would be £12,000 (and we haven't progressed much at all from the end of June) it represents a real achievement for us. We still managed to go on our lovely holiday, which was partly paid for by Big Man's tax refund, and we've stayed reasonably warm and haven't gone hungry. I'm willing to be more strict with myself but I've come to realise that Big Man has his limits (one of which is refusing to eat the same meal two days in a row, making leftovers an unviable option most of the time) and does like his little extras, such as wine and the odd takeaway. Food is an area where we had epic fails every month. I made menu plans and shopped at Lidl all through the year but either we have expensive tastes (don't really think so) or I'm too extravagant in my menus. I budgeted on average £250 per month for all shopping, including Otto's food, and missed it every time. It didn't help that various kids kept coming home for weeks at a time and then permanently, and expected to be fed! I can't complain about that though ;P. Radical rethink needed.

Fab pic from here

My spreadsheet has been very useful in showing me where we are spending frivolously; I think nearly £300 on takeaways and eating out in a year is mighty high but Big Man thinks it's a piddling amount; I have spent over £140 on vitamins and medication that could've been avoided if I put my repeat prescription in on time (a personal goal for 2012); and so on. It's food for thought.

I have come up with a few financial goals but I feel sure that I'll add to the list. I hope they'll help me to shape up!

1. Remember to take my coupons with me whenever I go shopping. I have a special wallet for money-off tokens and I MUST keep it in my bag at all times! I opened an old letter today from Tesco to Red that had two coupons for double points, valid up to January 1. Big Man paid £300 for a new TV from Tesco on New Year's Day and although he used my Club Card I'll only get £300-worth of points instead of the £600-worth I could've had if we'd opened the letter in a timely manner. Scowl.

Nifty little coupon wallet. Handy, and only a chazzed 99p!

2. We paid £333.61 in bank charges last year through our (for 'our' read 'my', since I seem to have ended up in charge) stupidity and lack of attention. I absolutely refuse to pay any bank charges this year. I will be hyper-vigilant!!

3. Paring the expenses alone is useless - I will have to make additional money in any way I can. I want to make £100 a month on eBay; the money will be handy PLUS I will be able to declutter my 'stock'.

4. Pay for everything I can through Quidco. One of my jobs today was to arrange pet insurance for Otto - he's 8 but still quite a rascal so I think it's a good idea. I compared quotes on Compare the Market, found a policy that seemed right then checked on Quidco for cashback offers. The policy is £9.04 a month (£108 the year) but I get £40 cashback, bringing the cost down to £68. Incidentally, it's costing as much to insure Otto, a basic moggie, as it does to insure me. Something wrong there, surely?

5. Go through all our expenses and direct debits with a fine tooth comb to see if I can't bring the total down even more. I pay £6.99 for phone insurance and I plan to call our contents insurer to check out the policy on mobiles. If I can save £84 a year, well, why not do it?

6. Keep an eye on MoneySavingExpert.com every day. There are some great tips and offers on there. It's a brilliant place for advice too. Plus advance heads-ups on free cinema previews, another of my personal goals.

7. Continue to ask myself 'is this a want or a need?' before I waste money on things. For example, I've read several blogs whose owners wax lyrical over their mini-ovens, and according to my Lidl newsletter they will be on sale there from Thursday for £29.99. I'd like one, but do I need one? No. So I won't spend £30....I'll use it for something I really need.

There's bound to be other things that I just can't remember right now - extreme cold has that effect on me. Overall I guess I am aiming to keep a tighter rein on the finances whilst trying to throw as much spare cash as I/we can at our debts. Not very interesting, just more of the same. Grind away.

Anybody else gloomy about having to tighten belts even more? Or is this whole recession thing passing you by?

* Another personal goal is to donate blood this year and I have already booked an appointment for Friday this week. I'm O Rh Neg, a 'Universal Donor', so I am really just fulfilling a civic duty (she says in a holier-than-thou way:)). One job under way - go, Keshling, go!!!! 

 

Tonight Matthew, I'm Going To Be The Little Engine That Could

It's going to take all of my mongrel cunning and guile to finish this month solvent.
I got paid on the 8th and because our Working Tax Credits have just been renewed and were (I thought) not being paid until the end of the month, all the direct debits and such came out of my wages, leaving me with nothing to pay into the credit cards when usually we throw a stack of money at them. I can't work out how this has happened. There were a couple of biggish things to pay in the first week of the month - Babcia and Dad's wedding anniversary flowers were nearly £50 and the newspaper Memorial notice for V's first anniversary was over £50, not that I begrudge either in the slightest. And I'm keeping a good check on the food bills too - we're at £263 out of a budgeted £350 (just whilst all the kids are home for the hols, then back down to £200). Anyway, I discovered yesterday that we got our WTC paid on Friday so I used them to pay this month's Council Tax (a mighty £177 which, considering we don't get any rubbish collected, is high by any standards) and paid some money off one of the cards. Now there's no more money again until I get paid on 3 September so it'll be tough.
On the plus side Red is paying me back £50 a week from her portering job that will cover the money I've had to lay out for her in the never-ending rent saga. Yes, that's still creaking on. I'm waiting on £53 in expenses from work and have another £30 or so to put in. I did a mystery shopping job yesterday for a whole £7 (yay!!!). I have a little bit of money in my ING account but that's really for Christmas. I have just over £22 in 20p pieces in my calculating cow AND between us we have £5.50 in Tesco vouchers. Oh, and I have about £45 in my Paypal account and made £10 in eBay sales this week but one of the things I sold was given to me by Babcia and even though she won't expect it, I'm giving her the money from the sale...she needs it just as much as I do. Am I going to make it? Let's just say I'm going to make like The Little Engine That Could.....I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.......

Actually, this is slightly creepy.....:S

Now, I have a dilemma. You remember that some of Red's rent money was taken by the housemate who was responsible for paying it to the landlord on behalf of all the housemates? And that I paid, as guarantor, £680 which Red is portering to pay back? Did I also say that on the last day before they were evicted, whilst I was helping Red scour out the kitchen, the landlord rang and said that he'd discovered there was a further month when the rent hadn't been paid....another £340 each outstanding? In a nutshell the landlord is saying that the deposits (£680 each) are now in arbitration because Red owes the 'missing month' and the rent thief owes...well, who knows what she's paid. The other three housemates' parents have already paid everything for them, no questions asked. My dilemma is, do I pay out ANOTHER £340 (see above, where do I get it from?) making it a total of £1360 I'll have had to find, and hope that we get the whole of the deposits back? Or not pay it, write off the deposit and still have my £340, bearing in mind that the five sets of parents were joint guarantors, ie we are responsible together for whoever doesn't pay. Even if I do pay, the landlord could say that, since there is rent outstanding from the thief, we can't have the deposits back anyway without covering HER share. I wouldn't put it past the landlord to make up some reason to keep the deposits anyway, since I assumed deposits were for damages, not rent arrears. He has never proved, to my satisfaction anyway, that the money wasn't paid, although with everything I hear about this girl I can quite believe it. But to ring up on the last day of the tenancy and say that he'd just discovered that rent from the previous November hadn't been paid (this was July) just stinks to me. Plus he is threatening to sue the guarantors jointly which is not good as I am the one out of Big Man and I with a good credit rating. Anybody got any ideas because it's driving me crazy. I am so thoroughly pissed off with the whole episode and Big Man is no help at all. 'Sue him!' 'Sue her!' 'Don't pay any more!' He wants to load the gun but let me shoot it. Will this ever end? Help!!!!

Finally, since some commenters were envious of my 49p toilet roll dolls, here they are in all their glory.

I ♥ toilet roll dolls :)

My New Toy and a Sweet Little Boy

I don't often show things I've bought whilst charity shopping (once, if I remember right) and this sweet little boy wasn't from a charity shop anyway, but from the car boot nirvana we in So'ton call Allington Lane. Cost - 50p.

He's about 6" high and is moulded all the way round...didn't photograph the back though, sorry. There's no maker's mark, it just says 'Foreign' underneath and he's hollow but I'm not sure what you would put inside to be completely honest. Flowers probably, but I think that'd look a bit odd personally. Maybe the remains of a tin of beans in the fridge like in the Heinz advert.  The painting of his skin is really delicate but with time his lips and inner eyes have chipped and almost come off...it wouldn't be too hard to repair with a bit of....mmm, probably enamel paint I'd say. Like boys painted their Stukas with back in the day.

Totally remedy-able worn-off pupils. 

How old are we thinking he might be? I'm saying 50s. Might he have cost 10/- new?

My new toy is something I've been after for a little while and is a useful tool (or so I told Big Man when he said 'don't start getting obsessive about this now!'). It's an OWL electricity monitor. I kept looking on eBay for one but got outbid a couple times; however driving to Wales we were listening to a talk-in about power price rises and someone was saying they had a monitor, which put the idea back in my head. Prices on eBay for BIN are generally anything up to £35 so when someone put this one on at £5 I pounced!!!

If you don't know what these little yokes do, you attach one part of it to the cable between your fuse box and electricity meter and it wirelessly sends data to this bit of the equipment - this shows either how much electricity you are using or what value you are using, depending what you want to see. Obviously you need to put in the price per kilowatt hour. I think it's going to give a very good 'rough' figure but because we have three different prices on our tariff I had to use an average so it won't be exact. In about 24 hours we used £2.25 (ish) worth of electricity. Hopefully it will show us what uses the most electricity, though I'm pretty sure it would be the tumble dryer, were I using it. The kids need training...this morning when I got up at 10:15 I discovered that Mr Charming's bedroom light had been left on since he and Big Man went out at 6:00. Smack hand Mr Charming!!!!

Extreme Couponing

I was going to tell you my exciting news today but I decided to hold off until tomorrow, just to be sure, and write about a show I watched this evening. Did anybody else see 'Extreme Couponing' on Real Time? Over half an hour you meet two different women who use money off coupons for their food shopping and have as a result built up massive stockpiles of provisions. These women clip coupons from newspapers for hours each day and take advantage of the supermarkets' policies of matching manufacturers' coupons to reduce their bills by up to 98%. They are incredibly dedicated, usually have big families and can count on the support of their husbands to help them with the numerous trollies and transactions it takes to save the biggest amount of money. One couple spent over an hour going through the checkout and five hours in the supermarket in total. I can just see THAT being tolerated in Asda.

Watch in awe.....

This girl is 24 and has no children. In the show she ends up with $562 worth of provisions for $26 - they are having a party and needed to 'stock up'. Huh? Apart from the fact that we don't get coupons like that here, most British homes just wouldn't have the room to store those amounts of food. Would we want to? Would you be an extreme couponer if you had the time, coupons and storage space or does it strike you as just a little bit....obscene? I mean, everybody has a right to spend their time and money exactly as they wish, that's a given but all I can think is, why would you want to have all that food and stuff? If it costs you so little why not use your time and energy once a month to coupon on behalf of a homeless charity? This girl does consider that extreme couponing is her talent after all....

Another thing that struck me was that, foodwise all the things that were being couponed seemed to be highly processed - a lot of hot dogs, sugary breakfast cereals, cheese slices, crisps, snacks and ready-made sauces. Nobody seemed to be buying fresh fruit or vegetables, even though one lady was buying what she needed for her monthly menu plan. They all had tens of tins of soup and canned vegetables plus hundreds of rolls of loo roll, bottles of shampoo, cleaning products by the score and boxes and boxes of wash powder. I was mesmerised - it's so very alien to our experience of shopping in the UK, even for the very frugal. Though to be fair, other shoppers were standing around in amazement when these mammoth transactions were taking place so I'm not imagining for a second it's commonplace on this scale in the US either.

I personally am rubbish with coupons. We get so few here anyway really and when I do see one that covers something I actually would use I usually get to the checkout and don't have the coupon with me. Or I get something, take it to the checkout, offer my coupon and find it isn't accepted in the store (in Sainsbury's with a copy of She magazine where the coupon was only usable in Smith's springs to mind. Believe me, I flounced).

So watch the video then book your seat for next Sunday at 9pm, Discovery Real Time (cable channel, not sure if it's Freeview too). It's an eye-opener for sure. Then tell me, could you do it? Would you?

PS -  Regarding needing a compliant husband for extreme couponing, Big Man happened to see the boyfriend in the above video....Snort. 'Bloody daft lad'...

I rest my case.

March/April SitRep

Well, where did April go? I kept meaning and meaning to do a March sitrep so that I could tell you how the frugality is going and before I knew it the month was over. Suppose because I was working two jobs and some weeks three - the time flew by AND it was harder to spend money too. I've made a good few bob from my census collecting job - it hasn't been in the least bit onerous (the weather helped there) and apart from my gun scare it's been very civilised. However, this is the last week coming up so that money will end. I'm still waiting for my cheque from the pedestrian counting gig and for some mystery shopping I did for Secret Shopper. It was the start of March when I did that - a pretty long wait and you're paid in dollars. What's $50 worth? About £30? It cost me almost that in petrol but then again I did have Babcia here on holiday at the time so it made a nice change for her to be driven around the Hampshire countryside. Instead of just driven round the bend by my Dad. Boom boom!! I have a very long day on Friday as a Poll Clerk - my first time! I think we get paid extra because the AV referendum is on the same day...we also get our cheques at the end of the night rather than waiting for it to be sent.

So, down to brass tacks. Over the two months we reduced our debt by £1903.64 - we are both really made up about it. I've brought a £450 overdraft into credit and paid off a couple other smallish debts too....they related to our business which currently isn't pulling in enough to cover the bills without our personal money. In addition we have fines from Companies House to pay plus the £18k personal guarantee Big Man gave for our failed business. We also have two credit cards that we are trying to pay off....both were used trying to keep our old business afloat and one of them was used to pay for a holiday we went on in December 2006. Shameful isn't it? I don't wanna be paying for two weeks in Sharm-el-Sheikh five years ago for the next ten years. The thing with these two cards is the interest. It's totally crippling. The Halifax card asks for a minimum payment this month of £88.45 but the interest to be charged (on outstanding balance of £3988) is £94.89. MBNA is even worse - you think you've paid a big whack on it then find it's really only half after the interest's added on. Sigh. We are both throwing our wages at the cards as a matter of urgency because the repayment of the personal guarantee has been set by the court so we don't worry so much about that, rightly or wrongly. At least there's no interest on that.

One thing I'm having a HEAP of trouble with is the food budget. I budget £200 a month for two adults (three at weekends) and a cat. In April I went up to £300 because Mr Charming was home all month and Red appeared for about 10 days. Oh and PC Furious came for the weekend of course but since he has a somewhat ascetic character I'm not counting him. Well, we have gone over the budget every month so far. I can't understand it because I meal plan and stick to it, and I only shop at Lidl. I shop about every 8-10 days and cook from scratch and we don't have loads of crappy crisps and sweets. I just don't know how other frugalistas seem to do it. I do know that Big Man wouldn't (and doesn't, when I try it) put up with some of the skittering little amounts of food, and more off-the-wall ideas for meals that some bloggers' partners go along with. He's as keen as I am to get rid of our debts but not if it means the quality or quantity of his food goes down. What's a gal to do? I suppose I'll just have to accept that food is never going to be a particularly low spend for us and economise in other ways.

Overall, how have we done since January 1? We've paid off......(drum roll).....£5434.09!!!! Our debts are now just over £40,000 from almost £46,000. Am I happy? You betcha! Can we sustain it? Watch this space!

Cook's Weekly

At a car boot sale last year I bought 50 copies of Cook's Weekly magazine for £2. They all date from the mid-80s and I wanted them because I remember reading Babcia's copies of this (and another magazine from the same era called 'Home and Freezer Digest' - anybody remember that?). I wrote yesterday about finding old stuff from my younger days comforting didn't I? And also I hoped I might find some frugal ideas and recipes between their pages, which I did.

I don't know whether it's something to do with the printing processes in the 80s but everything looks strangely garish and not particularly appetising (one way of being frugal I guess - nothing looks good enough to eat). And I don't remember there being such a reliance on offal either...Chinese-Style Liver anyone?

It's interesting to see how ideas that we take for granted nowadays were just starting to be mooted 25 years ago - there's an article in the December 86 issue that talks about sugar-free items and mentions that research suggests 'a hyperactive child will benefit from a diet low in sugar'. But in November 86 there was a section on cooking for a 'Difficult-People Dinner Party'. The 'difficult people' in question are vegans (who did you think it was going to be???!) and the suggested menu is Carrot and Bean Pate, Curried Vegetables and Ginger and Cashew Nut Ice Cream in case you're interested....
I was quite surprised to see an article on fillings for tacos because I wouldn't have thought Mexican food was all that common back then, certainly not in our neck of the woods anyway!

Each issue also has 'A Run Down The Aisles' which gives supermarkets' prices for various different items...I'm assuming these were current special offers. Co-Op was selling 500g plus 20% free Buitoni Short Spaghetti for 39p and Bird's Whisk and Serve Custard at 19p for 69g. I don't know about you but that's what I'd pay now for those items (though not those brands) in Asda or Lidl. The prices given for Tesco show a far bigger change over the years; for example Wall's Pork and Turkey Sausages were just 79p for 1lb plus 25% extra, whilst Tesco Golden Almond Marzipan was 97p for 500g. I think I paid more than double that for Sainsbury's own brand when I made my Simnel Cake a couple weeks back. And do you remember Fine Fare stores, and Bejam?

Despite some of the recipes being a bit odd (Avocado Mille-Feuille! Bacon-Stuffed Celery! Life's too short to stuff a mushroom so it's DEFINITELY too short to stuff a stick of celery!) these little magazines are packed with hints, tips and good ideas. I found out how to make Sloe Gin, how to boil a tongue, and how to skin a rabbit. For a good laugh there is the 'Memorable Meals' section where a famous person of the day describes their most memorable meal; what they like to cook and where they like to eat. Some I'd totally forgotten about (Debbie Greenwood? Mavis Nicholson?) but here's one famous face who is still around today...

Little did he know that his destiny was to one day be 'King of the Jungle'!!!

February SitRep

Well, I know we're nearly half way through March but, better late than never!

Again I am a happy bunny - we have brought our debts down by £1969.67 in February and I am feeling extremely proud of myself. We managed to pay a whopping £930 off of one of Big Man's credit cards, mainly by using what we would have paid on council tax (if it was April - January) and other bits of additional income (including just under £300 on mystery shopping). February was the first month where I was back on my full-time (to me) wages so I had half as much again. We paid off a house phone bill and a business one that we don't use any more and have now closed. The best news is that, since the start of the year we have reduced our debts by £3530.45. Isn't that great???!!!!

On the minus side we are now going to be laying out an extra £75 a month to pay off a £1500 fine from Companies House for late filing of our accounts. Although it's technically a business debt our business is hibernating for now and because we don't want to wind it up we have to pay this fine somehow. We are also paying out £100 a month to cover a personal guarantee from another business we had that failed. And will be paying for a very long time unless we win the Lotto. We have also had to up our electricity payment to £175 a month from £135 to pay off a big bill caused by EDF not reading our meter properly (and my not reading it myself, apparently). Oh dear, I'm making myself quite depressed now!! It looks almost unsurmountable. But it isn't.

I am expecting to be able to bring in quite a bit of additional income from the end of this month, through April and into May with my Census Collecting job and also the poll clerking I am doing on 5 May. My hope is to make £300 on eBay too in March. I am going to be a busy little bee!!!

Multi-Tasking

Today has been very busy and it's only just ending!

I've baked Millionaire's Shortbread and finally mastered scones (use Trex, plain yogurt and a very hot oven in case you're wondering); made a delicious chicken stew using my homemade turkey stock as a base; photographed stuff for eBay and listed some of it, but not nearly enough seeing as I want to make £300 this month; washed and pegged the clothing out; carried on knitting for my Etsy store whilst watching the last episode of Being Human (Mitchell!!! Nooooooooo!!!!!) then, finally, stripped the chicken carcass for a pot pie and start of more stock. Phew!

Very frugal bloggers will think this obvious but I discovered how much more economical it is to buy a whole chicken and roast it rather than buy chicken breasts, which is what I have always done up to now. Before I started shopping at Lidl I used to pay around £6 for a pack of chicken breasts (I could've bought Value chicken but yuk. Just...no). For £4 I bought a 2kg chicken and roasted it, used half for the stew and have shredded the other half and frozen it. I could've easily stretched it to three or even four meals I guess and I'll try to do so next time round. I have identified food as an area where I can save much more - I have given us a budget of £200 a month and do a weekly menu plan but was over in January then blew it big time in February. BTW, I'll finally post my February SitRep tomorrow, even though we're half-way through March - it's pretty good!

Despite all the domesticity of the day I didn't get everything done that I wanted to so tomorrow when I get home from work I'll have to finish some cupcakes for Carb Addict and his friends then drive them over to his weekday home. Cookie Dough Cupcakes....I'll let you know how they're received next time!!

Chasing A Pound

It's been a real sea-change for me, this frugality lark. There was nobody worse than me for going out with £20 or £30 or even £50 in my purse and spending it all on what I thought was splendid stuff but have since realised was basically rubbish. Don't get me wrong - a lot of the stuff I bought went on to make me plenty of money on eBay or at car boot sales, but equally a lot of it is still sitting around the house as 'stock' and I can't think of much of it as 'good buys' now. I thought that everything I got in a charity shop was a bargain (not always the case, definitely) and whilst I've been lucky and caught onto things just as they became popular, thereby making a fair bit of money on eBay, I have also gone on to squander said money on things I don't need at all. In the past I've sold things for good prices, had maybe £150 sitting in my Paypal account and just frittered it away on more eBay things. I'm such a mug.

But I'm trying to change. I'm trying so very hard that it's turning into my main topic of thought...my mind is twisting all the time over ways to make money. I had a day off work today and spent the afternoon at a classroom session for the Census job. Then when I got home at 6 o'clock I made dinner and started on a phone and computer-based survey job thingy that paid £25. I finished that at 9 o'clock. I've applied to do the Returning Officer job in May for the local elections and I've got a mystery shopping job on Saturday 5/3. I could pick up a lot more jobs for that day but my lovely mum is coming for a visit and I can't expect her to sit in the car all day whilst I drive around the city buying eggs and returning sandwiches. And do you know what I actually heard myself saying to Big Man the other day? 'I could do loads of these jobs if Mum wasn't coming'. My lovely mum, who I haven't seen since December :(

What sort of money-saving monster have I turned into? I've gotta calm down.

Don't You Want Me?

Two interesting experiences today, one profitable, the other costly (to me anyway, in my frugal state of mind).

I went into town with Red as she had been dying to try out Yo! Sushi for ages. Every time she comes home she suggests we go there for lunch so today we finally got round to it. Expensive isn't the word, and I can understand why Japanese people are so small and slight judging by the portions. If you've never been, you sit in a booth and a conveyor belt goes round past you. On the belt are 'plates' of sushi and you grab whatever you want. Each different style of sushi, sashimi or whatever is assigned a coloured plate and the colours correspond to a price. So green plates are vegetarian and cost £1.80. That would be for maybe 3 edamame beans and a julienned carrot. The most expensive were the grey plates at £5 and they are more substantial. Might fill a baby food jar. Well, we had five different coloured plates (none grey) and a tiddy pudding each and it cost, with the tip, £40. I think, we both thought, that it was dear and were pretty underwhelmed with the food. Still, as my granny used to say, 'we'll know another time'.

Second experience of the day involved a trip to London. I was supposed to be taking part in a focus group for 3 1/2 hours and getting paid £100 for it. I joined a research company and this was the first time that I fitted their criteria. I wasn't looking forward to getting home at midnight but who can turn down £100 in their hand these days? After all the other people arrived we were about to go in to focus or whatever we were doing when I was called back. Apparently I was the spare in case they were one short but everyone had turned up so I wasn't needed after all. But I still got paid!! RESULT!!! The very best thing that could have happened - pay for no work. And I was home by 8.30. But do you know what? I can't help feeling a little bit....unwanted. Silly isn't it? I would only have been setting off to get home by now instead of tapping away online but still, nobody likes to feel rejected. Not even when they've got £100 in their pocket..... 

January SitRep

Well, one of the main reasons I started this blog was because I'd been so inspired by other frugality blogs that I thought it might help me. And also because I like to write and share things that happen, but that's by-the-by. At the end of my first month of frugal living I want to share how we've got on.

The great news is that we have paid off £1403.86 in January! I am really made up about it. It was a combination of spending more wisely and income maximisation. I made just under £250 through eBaying; an extra £386 through mystery shopping; and as a result of car scrappage and a water rebate we got an additional £329. A couple of things have been paid off altogether - a small overdraft I had on an account, which I then closed; and a business phone line bill...we are getting rid of the line.

Not so good. I budgeted £200 for food for the month to cover me, Big Man, Carb Addict at weekends and Otto our cat. I also had Red and Mr Charming for the first bit of the month. The food came to £259.26 so 25% over what I'd planned. I did menu plan each week and stuck to it but it doesn't help that Big Man buys things he fancies for his lunch that are not budgeted for - Dairylea Cheese Spread..pate..tubs of sandwich filler...cream cakes. I have been including those costs in to the overall spends but I'm wondering whether I should leave them out. He pays from his own money so....hmmm. What does anyone else think?

Overall I am a happy bunny today. The only thing is that now I start to get a feeling that isn't altogether helpful...a feeling like 'oh, we've paid things off now I can be a bit less strict'. I always do that. On diets I'm the same. I've got to be really strong and stay motivated.

You will all help me, won't you?

Telling Porkies

I had been planning to blog about Toad in the Hole tonight but that will have to wait until I have a new charger for my camera. Instead, after reading a very interesting article in the paper today I thought I'd write about something that really irks me (yes, something else). Water in bacon.

Normally I'm no foodie - to me an egg is an egg; a chicken is a chicken and bread is bread. Unless it's Tesco Value bread in which case it's dampish bog roll. But one thing I am quite discerning about is bacon. Me and Big Man love a bacon and Stilton bagel for Sunday brunch, which is okay because I grill it. But when I'm making a Bacon and Egg Flan and 'brown' (ha ha, as if!) the bacon in a frying pan first I end up almost boiling it in all the water that comes out. What's all that about? I have a couple of cookery books that I use that have recipes from WWII - 'We'll Eat Again'; 'Post War Kitchen'; and 'The Victory Cook Book'. They quite often tell you to fry some bacon and use the fat that comes out of it to fry other stuff in. You couldn't do that nowadays.

So this article, based on Which? findings, was about the amount of water that different stores pump into the bacon that they sell. It said that when the amount is over a certain percentage it should, by law, be listed as an ingredient. In the list given in the paper, Morrisons had both the highest AND the lowest % of added water - their Sizzlers Rindless Unsmoked Back had 13% (!!!!) but their Value Rindless Back only had 3%. Waitrose had the second highest - Essential Unsmoked British Back had 12%. Lidl had the second lowest - their Medalisk has 5% water.
Now, maybe the paper only printed the most extreme examples but it bears out something I discovered last time I made a Bacon and Egg Flan. I had gone to Morrisons with Big Man because he wanted to try some wine his dad Patsy had recommended and I bought some own-brand value bacon ends, just to show willing. You know, the cooking bacon mis-shapes? Well, it was the most delicious bacon I've had in years...thick chunky pieces; not slimy at all like a lot of bacon - quite a dry feel; and when I fried it off, no water came out at all. That was maybe 500g for just over £1. Bargain. I've still got half of it in the freezer, that I am guarding like a miser. All the time I've bought expensive bacon and been disappointed when I could have been spending a pittance at Morrisons and snarfing down delicious non-watery pig. I've been a fool!!!

Where I Confess That I Don't Know When To Stop

One of the reasons I started blogging was to have a record of my money-saving / debt-paying journey. It didn't surprise me but it did sadden me when I finally wrote down exactly how much Big Man and I owe. £44,500. A big chunk of it is a personal guarantee Big Man gave when he started a business...the business went bust last year with an overdraft of £17000+ which, with interest is now £18600 and which Big Man is personally liable for. We also have credit card debts that arose when we were trying to keep the business afloat. Although they're in Big Man's name alone I wouldn't be much of a person if I stood by and watched him fall so this year (and I suspect many years to come) is all about income streams. With this in mind I have started eBaying again but this time selling, not buying. Looking for things to sell illustrated how I got to this state...very little money to spare, some months living a real hand-to-mouth existence and always trying to hide how hard-up we really are. Here's just one example of my folly.

A couple of years ago I started running and naturally bought some running shoes and some running tights. And more running tights. Name brand exercise gear. T-shirts just for the gym. Heart rate monitor. Exercise ball. DVDs. Yoga mat and blocks. Hand weights. More running tights. More exercise gear. Do you see the buying habits of an addictive personality emerging? Having read on MSE that January is a good time to sell exercise equipment I decided to look out anything sport-related that I might be able to sell. I found about 25 items of exercise clothing ALONE, half of which are still complete with labels, the rest of which have been worn a couple of times and are in pristine condition. This is what I always do...I get a new hobby or interest and go totally over the top, buying anything and everything that's remotely relevant. And I come from a family of people who do the exact same thing. Then we find a new hobby and all the 'old' stuff is discarded. I no longer run.

Of course I'm going to eBay the exercise gear but what was I thinking of, buying more and more stuff in the first place? I think a kind of mania can come over some people, I'm one for sure, where you just don't know when to stop. If you're looking on eBay (my biggest downfall) and you see things that only cost a few quid it's so easy to buy 3 or 4 or 5 items without factoring in the postage. You just think of the thrill of getting a parcel. And then put it in the cupboard and forget it.

This is going to be the year when all that stops. I have to change my ways because the last thing I want is to still be living like this when I'm 50, 60, 70. I know it's going to take longer than 365 days but every journey starts with a single step (or something like that). Writing this stuff down is my first step.

" My name's Keshling and I'm an addict....."

"The (wo)man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones"

-William Faulkner



Oh, How Times Change!

I have a confession. I am a charity shop addict and I want to stand up and be counted. After a mystery shop this afternoon (that I was forced to abandon half-way through, but that's another, highly embarrassing story) I had a quick skeg in the nearby charity shops. As part of the 'New Frugality' that has hit Keshling Towers I'd made a vague resolution to avoid buying unneccesary items from charity shops but I saw this item and at 25p it was just too good and useful a bargain to pass up.

Sam Costa was a singer back in the day, wartime years I guess, who became a radio presenter on Luxemburg and Radio 2, latterly with a kind of 'Housewives Choice' show. This book is full of hints (587 of 'em) from his listeners. It was published in 1970 and it really shows how times have changed. Some of them are timeless;
340. Gas Burners..Never light the front burners on the gas stove before the back ones, or your sleeve or blouse may catch alight.
279. Carpets..Coffee stains can be removed from carpets by using a solution of sodium bicarbonate in warm water.
Others are slightly less relevant, shall we say;
416. Unwanted Woollens..Unwanted woollen jumpers and cardigans can be cut down for children, providing the cut edges are then crocheted or blanket-stitched.
Hmmmm....and there's this one;
565. Notes for Tradesmen..Notes for tradesmen, kept in an old photo frame hung on the outside wall, will not get wet or blow away. That'll be notes like 'collect my rubbish you lazy sods' would it?
My favourite, and the one which caused Mr Charming some degree of puzzlement, was;
386. Darning Socks..Use an old electric lightbulb for darning socks. 'What's darning?' asked Mr Charming (18 yrs 9 mths). Before too long we'll be saying 'What's an electric bulb?'
Oh, how times change!

PS. I see eBay has a copy of 'Sam Costa's Handy Hints' priced at £6.27....

Rabbiting On......

One of the schemes I am trying in order to reduce our debts is using up food from the freezer and the store cupboards. I think this was discussed on the MSE Money Saving Old Style forum. I have two freezers - one in the wash house and one in the garage (a freecycled treasure). Whilst rooting through the garage freezer before Christmas I came across a jointed rabbit that had somehow slipped through the dinner net. For the last three years. (The freezer has been cleaned out during that time, just in case you think I'm a total slut - I just kept the rabbit in a perpetual cryogenic state). Anyway, the rabbit looked fine and when I defrosted it it smelled fine...a bit gamey but that's because it's well, game, right? And, dear reader.....we ate it. In a stew with cider, honey and dumplings. It was delish and I, Big Man and Mr Charming are still here to tell the tale! I've always said that 'use by' dates are just a guideline.
In other ways too today was productive. I paid a cheque into the bank which will clear a small overdraft and I can then close the account. One debt down, many to go. I was less successful when I tried to sell a prize I won in a raffle a year or so ago. It's a freshwater pearl and silver necklace that still had a price of £75 on it. I tried Cash Converters and Cash Generator but neither were interested. One said that they would give me £2.99 but to be honest I'd rather give it back to the Red Cross shop that I won it from than skulk off with £3. There's always the car boot once the warmer weather comes and the little animals gambol and caper in the fields...lambs, calves, bunnies....!!

Double Yolk Day

Today, for the first time in over 30 years of cooking meals, I broke open a double yolk egg. And do you know what, I was inordinately made up about it! That wasn't the only good thing that happened today either - I have six listings on eBay and three have bids. Now I've got to be honest here and say that two bids stand at 99p each and one is £1.25....and that the three items together initially cost me £3.98. So technically I'm not in profit yet - there are watchers though so I am ever hopeful. The third good thing is that Big Man finally seems to be warming to the idea of frugality. I have told him that there will be an amount (one that I think is pretty large) for wine in the budget. The problem has been that until now Big Man like me has wanted to be debt-free. Unlike me he hasn't been willing to give anything up. I am hoping that this is going to change from now on. It's not going to be easy but if we're doing it together it might not be quite so hard.