Frugal February...week 4

Another good week has been had here - no unplanned joint spends to declare, and just £1 spent from my personal budget - on a cup of tea at rugby on Saturday. My usual £10 has gone aside for clarinet lessons, and as a result I still have £11 in my purse from last week's money. I've not taken any money at all from the bank for personal spending this week so I'm £30 up before I even start. I went for a free walk last friday afternoon - at the local RSPB Reserve which is free admission and parking for members, and on Sunday we did some odd jobs at home and didn't go anywhere to be tempted to spend any cash! We also gained £5 diesel money as a result of giving one of MrEH's team mates a lift from the match on saturday. MrEH's car required diesel again and £57 was spent there.

Our credit card bill for the second half of January and first half of February landed on the doormat on Saturday - and pleasingly quick reading it made! There were the ferries for the holiday on there, and the flights back from our upcoming Orkney trip - both those being booked in January of course. Other than that - the usual travel expenses - diesel & MrEH's train ticket, that £48 for the car tyre, and one or two odds and ends that we spent in January, and nothing else! The freezers and storecupboard are also starting to empty out a little - I've started to get together a shopping list of things we will need to stock up on in March - and we are generally starting to really feel the difference thanks to our frugal month. We've discussed the possibility of carrying on for another month with trying to eat as much as possible from the freezers, and I think we're both in favour of trying to maintain the momentum of not frittering oddments of money "just because". I've already started trying to get together a meal plan for the first couple of weeks of March, with that in mind.

Last weeks shopping...

...Slightly "off list" in that there's no milk, and no bread flour. MrEH still has plenty of milk, and whereas I would usually buy it from habit, I haven't this time, and Lidl was closed (refurbishment, apparently!) and as yet I've not been anywhere else for the flour. "Lunches" have been covered by means of a pack of salami (an occasional treat) and the component parts for some more pate...Sainsburys Basics fish products are excellent, we've bought them before, and this time it was a pack of their Smoked Salmon trimmings (98p) and a pack of Smoked Mackerel (£1.57) along with a pack of soft cheese...which along with a generous splash of single cream, became delicious pate for a total of 7 days lunches for the two of us, plus one additional day for one of us too. I ended the shopping trip with just loose change from that original £10 note, and having spent £12.50 worth of nectar points...

Total spend was £13.89 - £1.39 of which was actual cash.

Making pate is easy - here's how I did the mackerel one...

Two good things to looks for when buying fish...

Strip the mackerel off its skin and break it into rough pieces into the food processor bowl.

Add in about half the quantity of soft cheese to that of mackerel, in this case there was 200g of fish, along with a heaped teaspooon of hot grated horseradish (we use one made by Vinney through choice, although if that's not available the English Provender Company one is very nearly as good) a grind of black pepper and a generous splash of single cream...

...then whizz it all together until it's just about smooth but still with a little texture left. Check and taste for seasoning (I added a pinch of salt) and whizz again briefly, and voila - Pate...

It's delicious too - the salmon one was done in the same way, but I added a little grated lemon zest to that too and a good amount of ground black pepper. We reckon each days lunch fillings for the two of us will cost under 50p which is exceptional value for something this nice.  Finally on the groceries front I spent 76p in Morrisons on Monday (taken from the incoming £5 of diesel money I mentioned earlier) - I arrived there to fill the car up with fuel at exactly the time they usually do their final reductions, so popped in to see what was on offer. There wasn't that much of interest to me, but I did grab 2 packets of ham and two tubs of soup - so that will be 20 lunchtime roll fillings and 2 dinners - working out at just over 3p a serving!

 This week is going to be slightly less frugal than the others I suspect, as we're going to be making a trip down to Devon. Not entirely unexpected, but equally not anything we had any control of the dates for, and inevitably it does push costs up. It'll take a good proportion of a tank full of diesel for a start, and then there is likely to be a trip to the pub somewhere along the line, and some food to be bought too for the journey back if nothing else...we'll see.

Robyn