A lot of folk seem to be doing "Stoptober" challenges, and SFT is continuing her "Stretch It Out" for the month of October as well. "That Supermarket" have sent me a load of "£4 off when you spend £40" vouchers, which is most kind of them, but I'll not be using many of them! We do need a new paper shredder for getting rid of personal documents etc, and I have a voucher for a saving off electrical products too, so I may be able to combine the two in that spend...
My plans for the month are to continue to stash as much money from the food budget away as I can in our Clubcard Plus account. In spite of taking some cash out of it for spending money at Ludlow we were chuffed that we'd still managed to spend under our grocery budget last month - you might remember that the CC+ is where we save a good chunk of our holiday spending money so the more we can amass in there the less we have to save by other means!
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| Sunset at Sidinish, North Uist |
Last weekend was distinctly frugal - and about time too after the last few weeks! I worked an additional day on the Friday, the Saturday was a combination of foraging (rosehips, crab apples, blackberries and quinces) and rugby, via a trip to the farm shop for the bulk of our shopping. Sunday we popped to the fairly-local outlet shopping place as I have worn through the soles of my trainers (which I use all the time for walking - they're super-supportive and far lighter than my walking boots for pavement based walks) so they needed replacement. I've had my moneys worth from them - they've done me for 18 months and goodness knows how many miles, and in any event they were free from a lovely friend in the first place - thanks Cheri! I found a pair which fitted me well for £38 - a fraction of the price I would have paid for them on the high street no doubt. Other than the trainers the only personal money I spent all weekend was £1.65 for a half pint of beer at Brentwood Rugby Club - bargain!
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| Harlow Saints - 2011 |
The rest of our Sunday was spent cooking - a crumble to use the last of the apples we brought back from Devon, along with the blackberries we foraged on saturday, extra crumble topping was whizzed up at the same time and has been frozen for future use. Also muffins for Mr EH's breakfasts, and flapjacks for mine, and a big slow-cooked pot of lamb stew - which stretched the neck of lamb we got when we bought the whole lamb into 4 meals. I also cooked a root-vegetable bake - we had assorted root veggies needing used after our purchases at Ludlow, so I julienned beetroot, swede, potato and carrot and layered them up, doused them in cream & milk mixed, topped with cheese and breadcrumbs, and threw them in the oven while the muffins cooked - a large one did a meal on its own for one night in the week, and the two smaller ones accompanied sausages. I love weekends like that when I cook up a storm and pack the fridge with meals for the rest of the week - it makes life so easy when you get home after a long day!
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| Crab Apples... |
The other "Frugal win" this week was hitting £250 in our "Virtual Sealed pot" savings account. This is purely from stashing away the odd pennies and pounds from our current accounts. When I started saving like that I had no real ideas what to spend it on, but now we've decided that we're wanting to squeeze in an extra Hebrides trip in 2014 - so it will be put towards that. A great incentive to save more, too!
Robyn
4 comments:
Sorry I removed my first comment as it didn't read how I meant it to :)
I just wanted to say you are doing brilliantly with your food budget and eating good quality food to boot. Cooking in batches like that is a great way to make use of your fresh foods before they start to deteriorate. I sometimes get irritated when people use manky past their best veggies in dishes, why not just batch cook earlier and get the best nutrition from the food they have bought. They wouldn't buy manky veg so why leave it to get in that state before eating it? Maybe they just over buy in the first place?
I agree with dreamer about people leaving their veg in the fridge to go wrinkly. I had masses of tomatoes and courgettes to use up this week, so I added red onions, garlic, a few dried herbs and cooked the lot, which amounted to 3 roasting tins full. I put some of the veg into pasties, which worked out at 8p each as I only paid for the puff pastry and a sprinkle of dried herbs - everything else was homegrown. The rest was frozen for future use - some will fill canneloni tubes, some will be blitzed down to make pasta sauce. J worked too hard growing the stuff for me to leave it to become past its best.
Great news about your virtual sealed pot!
You do seem to see a lot of people routinely telling of things they've done with "past its best" produce - it does make you wonder a bit doesn't it! I think we all get caught out occasionally - I know I do, but it's usually when I've ended up with a bit of a glut of something because I've bought reduced (or in the case of that flipping huge marrow, because there's just SO much of it I have no idea what to do with it all!)
Maybe it comes down to the same thing as the people you see telling how they never put their heating on, then stating a monthly payment for gas & electric that is double what I'm paying! ;-)
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