Frugal February…

 So there we are then - the end of the month. Were we frugal? Reasonably I think - it was after all far more about intentional spending than “spending nothing” - and it does feel as though we’ve used the month well in terms of refocusing.

The final main food shop of the month is the one above - Lidl again, and that shop earned my next level of the threshold spend coupons too - a free pack of biscuits this time! I made use of some special prices through the app again too - apples at a very advantageous price, and 15% off our favourite butter, plus pate and salad. The bakery item was the freebie from last week’s bakery spin to win thing -  I don’t make a special trip to claim those but if I am in there anyway, then I may as well grab them. 

Total shopping for the month came in at just over £200 so a long way above the previous month’s tally. I expected that though with stocking up various bits and the farmers market trip too, and it still leaves us with a bit of credit left from the months budget, so that is a win. 

Planned spending:

- The electrical works we had anticipated having done have been pushed back a little which is fine, the money is still set aside for those and they will happen early in March.

- my car needed two new tyres ahead of its upcoming MoT Test -  this isn’t a surprise though and again money is budgeted for that. As usual I shopped around, although happily our local independent place turned out to be cheapest.

- both cars needed their tax renewed in February -  both have now increased from the previous zero band to £20 per year, it will be interesting to see how long it stays at that level now! 

- we booked a well priced hotel room for an overnight stop ahead of our planned camping trip in a couple of months. It will give us a free breakfast on the way down which means we’ll be able to just head straight for the campsite and get set up rather than needing to find food when we arrive in Cornwall.

Elsewhere, we had a couple of Thursday evening beers, a Chinese takeaway with visiting friends, and I had a lovely day out in London with another pal, just beers in some cracking pubs and a lunch in Wetherspoons, the company and conversation was the most important thing! A good chunk of my personal spending money for the month remains intact, which is very useful!

Blogging about stuff like a Frugal month certainly keeps you accountable - I’d forgotten quite how much! I don’t intend to continue with a full-on frugal month through March, but I will definitely still be keeping an eye on spends, and the meal plan will be made up from the fridge, cupboards and freezer again. I will continue with keeping an eye on Olio as well as that’s proved a nice bonus. 

Robyn

Frugal February…

 

Food spending was budgeted to be up quite a bit this week as it was our favourite local farmers market, and having not gone last month there were some bits we were low on. 

First up was Peter for lamb - £1.75 for a bag of “bones for stock”, but these as usual have plenty of meat left on them and will make a fantastic stew. Also sausages, a pack of meatballs (I do have some in the freezer still but those are already featured on the meal plan) and his final pack of liver - always popular and it makes a delicious liver, bacon and onion tea!  We had our usual treat of a sourdough loaf from lovely Adrian, then popped back outside to see Catherine on the other meat stall. I made the decision to buy the big 2kg pack of beef mince, plus a smaller pack of pork mince for a change - those have been portioned up before freezing. A piece of haslet for lunches - our weekday rolls frequently feature yellow stickered bargains so this is significantly more spendy than usual but it’s something we absolutely love so we’re very happy to buy it! I grabbed a minute steak too - so good for stir fries. Total spend at the market was £53.10 - and for great quality food, and especially meat where we are happy with the provenance, I’m very happy with that. One of the reasons I can squeeze a lot of meals out of a relatively small amount of meat is that meat this good has so much flavour- so you actually need less of it in a dish. Of course we are aware that we’re fortunate to be able to afford to buy like this, and certainly that’s a privilege that not everyone has, but often simply because you do end up using less, it really isn’t that much more expensive than a standard supermarket budget option.

Elsewhere the main weekly shop cost £24.69 - in Lidl again this week, and I claimed a free bakery item from the spin to win and chose a big punnet of mushrooms as my coupon plus threshold spend reward. Not the best value thing I could have had, I usually opt for the 7.5kg sack of potatoes but we still have enough of those from the Christmas veg wars so the mushrooms were chosen as something which I was going to buy anyway. A separate trip to Aldi for tomatoes saw a spend of £1.38 - and the rarity of having literally just bought the thing I went in there for! 

Spending elsewhere has been mostly guided by necessity- we have both been hit by the nasty lurgy that’s doing the rounds - and various over the counter medications have been purchased as a result. We’ve plans for a project in the garden which will require a fair bit of sanding - so a pack of basic face masks are winging their way to us, and my car has had a tank of fuel - although both MrEH’s diesel and oyster credit have been stretched by him sensibly electing to work from home for much of the week to avoid infecting his colleagues! Well, at least there is some benefit! 

Robyn 

Frugal February…

"Story Telling" - Devon. 

Why when the idea of this couple of months of keeping purchases low, are our freezers currently pretty full again? Batch cooking and free food - that’s why! Batch cooking saves on both time and whatever energy source you use for cooking - even making sufficient for a second meal of a dish you enjoy and popping the spare portion in the freezer works - and the time savings are at both ends too, as it gives you an “easy win” meal for a night when just popping something in the microwave or air fryer to reheat is an absolute bonus! 

How does this translate into reality for us then? Well first up was a big batch of dried chickpeas - the well priced tinned chickpeas I often purchase weren’t available, and they’re something we eat a lot, so I turned to the large bag of dried in the cupboard, half filled the slow cooker with them, soaked for 12 hours or so then slow cooked overnight - this turned into about 8 tubs for the freezer (I freeze them in roughly the same drained weight you get in a standard tin), plus a portion that I turned into humous. The last of the Christmas “veg wars” 5p parsnips and shallots were turned into a batch of soup - 4 portions there. I planned to make cottage pie for an evening in the week, so made double, using lentils and finely chopped mushrooms to make the mince stretch further - and while I was at it cooked sufficient lentils to give 5 tubs of those for the freezer too! 

Free food has come from two different sources. First off, the Olio app - an anti food-waste organisation that takes end of life food from various supermarkets and aims to distribute that to those who will use it, in this area Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Co-op all get involved. A couple of Saturdays ago I spotted some bread going begging just half a mile away so requested it, got the nod and walked up and back - 4 loaves of various sorts stashed away in the freezer saving us from needing to make rolls for lunches for a while, and providing several weekends worth of breakfast toast to boot. Earlier this week we gained some potted supermarket herbs, a couple of sticks of lemongrass, and a pack of Lebanese flatbreads - again, all free, and will all get used!  Then my Mum offered us a couple of packs of “beige buffet” type bits she had bought for Christmas and not used, and now didn’t fancy - so those too got stashed away in the freezer! We’re quite happy to take food other people won’t eat - as long as we know the origin and it’s things we will actually use ourselves it seems to make sense to avoid it going to landfill after all. We’re also not shy about using food past its “best before” date - “use by” is of course a different matter, but best before are ultimately advisory, and if you’re confident to trust your eyes, nose and taste, you soon find out that most things last a lot longer than you expect that they will! We have a local friend who isn't as brave on this front, but she's quite happy to give us a shout and say "can you use..." - and generally, yes we can! 

If you’re interested in saving yourself some pennies and preventing some food waste, then have a look at a couple of apps - Olio I’ve already mentioned, and there is also Too Good To Go -  not free, but much reduced “surprise bags” of reduced food from supermarkets, coffee shops, bakeries and even restaurants. It works particularly well to grab food on the go sometimes - especially around stations or in town centres. You never quite know what you might get, particularly with the supermarket bags, but if you are content to be inventive in the kitchen there are bargains to be had.

Robyn 

ps - I've been really enjoying just using relatively random photos that catch my eye for blog posts, rather than taking something "for the sake of it" - and it's made me think that I may well start a "looking back" series of posts too, with the story behind particular shots that I find in my archives and think deserve an airing! 

It all adds up…

Windows - Manchester

 Trying to refocus on the finances this month has looked a bit like this…

- Opting to terminate a regular saver account a month early in order to re-open the same issue of the account right at the end of its release- this means losing a months interest on the one as closed, but then keeping the 7.5% rate on the reopened one for the 6 months of it’s term AND being able to open the new issue account once that was released.

- Remembering that I was due a £25 Amazon voucher from a bank account switch I did at the end of last year, tracking down the email and claiming it while I remembered!

- Doing the quarterly review of our savings so we can keep track of where we are in relation to our savings goals - we’re fortunate to be able to save and so try to ensure that those savings work hard for us.

- Emailing to cancel a magazine subscription I took a trial on - 5 issues for £5 was a good deal, the main subscription is more than I’m willing to pay though. 

- Renewing my car tax as soon as the reminder came through - my car now costs me £20 a year in tax, but forgetting to renew could work out a lot more expensive! I write a quick note on the reminder confirming when I renewed too in case I need to check it later.

- Remembering to check my loyalty apps for shopping coupons and offers - the 20p off milk at the co-op is always useful, I made use of reduced prices for a couple of bits in Lidl and will claim a free vegetable item next week. I don't generally specifically plan my shopping around making use of offers, but once I know what I need, I will look to see if there are offers I can use.

- Ensuring I have a reminder set for cancelling a free trial of Apple TV before I get charged for it. We’ve had a 3 month run to enjoy watching some different bits and bobs, and may pay for a month here and there in the future, but right now it’s not a priority.

- Free seeds with a magazine subscription - 10 packs this month, and almost all things we’ll use. There will be some seeds we will buy for the season, but the freebies shape what we choose to grow. Yes, we pay for the subscription, but £35 a year for 12 magazines and lots of seeds is a decent deal.

- Free kindling for the fire - we save almost all our cardboard, and use a combination of that and MrEH’s newspapers (that he would buy anyway) for the base of our fire. On top of that we use twigs and short lengths of stick (always gathered from places to where the council would otherwise clear them up, never from woodland) or pieces of broken down pallet.

- Free fuel for the fire - MrEH’s newspapers again, pulped up then squeezed into a brick shape in a former - they then get placed on metal racking to dry out. We make a big stack of these through the summer, and use 1 or 2 each night the fire is lit - they give off stacks of heat and help to make the logs we pay for last longer. It also means we're re-using the newspaper rather than recycling it. 

- Sorting out a return for the new toaster we had to buy which turned out to be absolutely DREADFUL! Think toast on one side, plain slightly warm bread on the other, then burned edges within a few moments when you try to re-toast to even things up. Were we keeping it? Absolutely not - it will be winging its way back and we're searching for a better option! 

- More goodies from Olio- flatbreads and herbs, this time. 

All these on their own are small things, but it’s those small things, and doing them consistently that makes the difference. A few pounds saved here, finding a way to do something for a bit less cost there, and before you know it that’s money freed up to improve your quality of life in other ways. 

Robyn

Frugal February…

 

A 3-tube day at Leytonstone…

A Friday with no other plans generally means I opt to get the shopping done, freeing up weekend time for far more interesting uses. This week was no exception, as we combined our usual Friday morning walk with a trip to Tesco to top up stocks of our preferred wholewheat couscous and also some branded orzo on offer at £1 a box. I don’t usually buy branded pasta but this price was very competitive indeed - and in the absence of the discount supermarkets stocking it at present it made sense to pounce. 3 packs of each = £6.90 spent, and were stocked up on two staple items that get well used in this house. 2nd stop of the day was the main shop - Lidl this week. An impulse spend of £2.99 of personal money for one of their beautiful miniature roses - a bright yellow one. We have a red one of these bought several years ago and it’s thrived, so I’m hoping this one will do the same. I made use of 2 coupons for free bakery items - one from a Moneysupermarket email gave us a free croissant, and the other was my free item from last week’s shop being over the first spend threshold on the app. That sorts out a nice treat after tea today! £25.75 spend on the shopping, with just a couple of items still to get over the weekend and a fair few bits and bobs stocked up on too. Finally for grocery shopping was Farmfoods - somewhere we visit occasionally mainly to stock up on a few particular items - this time round two big jars of MrEH’s coffee, 12 tins of tuna, 4 bags of sugar (at 2 for £1.60 this is by a long way the cheapest place to buy it, and this will stock us up ready for any preserving we decide to do) and a couple of tins of sweetcorn too, total spend £23.18 there thanks to another voucher for £2 off a £25 spend.

A planned general spend on Friday was a couple of frames needed for various pictures - some more black & white prints of my photos, and a mounted railway poster print from York last weekend (we wanted a souvenir of the weekend and this seemed perfect, and at £10, very reasonably priced too). The frames totalled £9.98. Final spend for the weekend was another £5.12 for the yogurts and tomatoes I didn’t get on Friday, plus a box of seeded oatcakes.

Part of the reason meal planning works for us is that we treat it flexibly. For various reasons the original rough plan for Sunday lunch didn’t work this week - instead I opted to get some turkey chunks and bacon bits out of the freezer along with a lurking roll of puff pastry and made pasties - two of which were eaten on Sunday, with the others getting popped into the fridge for swapping in to the plan on Wednesday evening. A flexible plan - albeit one that takes account of ensuring that food that needs using gets eaten - is far more pleasant and practical than one that is so rigid it’s difficult to stick to.

We did end up with one unplanned spend this week as our poor old toaster finally toasted its last - can’t complain, it was a wedding present nearly 26 years ago so it’s given good service! We’re replacing with a “long slot” version, better to cope with different sizes of bread - our old one dated from a time when bread came in a fairly standard square-ish size, and we’ve often found ourselves having to repeatedly turn slices round to get them evenly toasted. If the replacement lasts as long as the old one we will be very pleased! 

Robyn

Frugal February?

Stunning rainbow over the river - Dartmouth, 2025

Shall we? I've debated about this the past few years but the month has always come along and had lots of plans in it, which involved (budgeted for, and so acceptable) spending, but that in turn feels like it slightly defeats the object of a frugal month! This year there ARE some plans - but nothing particularly major, and  so it feels like a good time to give it another go.

Aims this time are as much about being mindful around spending as around "not spending" as such - there might be beers on a Thursday evening after work, or a trip to the pub on a Friday, but that will be thought through and we'll ensure that we'll get value from it. We've got friends visiting mid month - and that will probably mean a takeaway. I may make a trip to Waddington later in the month to see the Reds training - hoping for more success on ALL counts than the last trip up! As usual the challenge will cover the food spending, general household spending, and my personal spending, but not anything that relates specifically to MrEH only. 

We still have plentiful food stocks, so are aiming to continue the good work of last month's careful shopping and detailed planning. I'm intending to turn my attention to the cupboards as well now - there are lots of odds and ends of things, and bits that have been hanging around for a while and that we either need to use or just to acknowledge that we're not GOING to use them, and to get rid. If it came with us when we moved house, and hasn't yet been used, then we will be taking a hard line! First step on this is going to be a bit of an inventory I think, and from there I'll start planning how we can incorporate various ingredients. The fridge is already looking a little barer than it was, and freezer 1 in particular now has very obvious space in it, maybe by the end of a month we can aim to get freezer 2 empty and turned off - that would be a win! 

Food wise then:

• Use what we have
• Audit cupboards and fridge and target lingering contents for use 
• Aim to get working through last year's home grown fruit and veg from freezer 1
• Remember that we still have kale in the garden to use
• Start gradually moving over stuff from freezer 2 as room appears!
• Continue to be considered and mindful about special offers and bargains
• Make sure that meal planning continues - it's not only cheaper, it's also easier!

If nothing else, I'm aiming to treat this as a bit of a re-set, and a good chance to stop and think before spending. A return to the "money mantra" of "Do we need it, do we have anything else we can use instead, have we checked whether that's a good price". The food account in particular is looking lovely and healthy at the start of this month and it would be nice to continue to build on that. 

Food spending this month has started off with a £20.97 spend in Lidl on Sunday - we opted to stop in and shop on our way home from the weekend in York which was slightly risky as I had no access to the meal plan - I took the approach that I could if needed modify things later though, and it was better to get the shop done rather than having to squeeze it in after work on Monday. It included the purchase of 3 packs of the Deluxe branded West Country butter which is a favourite, and I had the offer of 15% off, making it several pennies a pack less than the regular (not so nice) one - win! Also a pack of an interesting looking Polish (I think) cheese for £1.99, everything else was our standard sort of weekly purchases.  Awful traffic necessitated parking near my office on Monday so a purchase was needed to allow using the supermarket car park - that was one of my usual "defaults" - an 85p pack of noodles. 

Anyone else fancy making this a Frugal kinda February then?

Robyn

Frugal Friday…

 You would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps meals have been a bit stingy over the past few weeks, but there there you would be wrong. As much as the challenge has been about keeping costs low, it was also about the fact that we had an awful lot of food in stores and frankly it seemed like a good way on focusing on using some of it! 

In the course of the month the meal plan has included leftover Christmas turkey in roast dinner form, and as an ingredient in a stir fry and a risotto, a rather tasty cottage pie using venison mince, a stew made with some of the meatiest lamb “bones for stock” I have ever encountered - only £1 for the bag of them and they produced three good portions of stew. That was a very budget offering actually as the veg involved was mostly from the Christmas veg wars! Also a quick cheaty biryani which combined a yellow stickered  sachet of sag aloo rice plus a reduced price chicken breast, along with some added veg - one of those meals that delivered way more taste than the sum of its parts!. I made katsu curry sauce for the first time on Friday - just a BBC Good Food recipe…well, actually 2 recipes which I sort of combined, but very tasty, and it’s nice to have a different form of curry to add to the repertoire. 

For this final week of the challenge spends started a little earlier than anticipated - on the way back from the theatre we called in at Sainsbury’s and spotted a couple of packs of branded falafels reduced down to 71p a pack - not much debate was needed about that, they went straight to the freezer when we got home and will get used as part of a couscous/veg bowl over the coming weeks. £1.42 well spent. The first main shop was done the following day - £7.46 in Aldi including a couple of packs of toasting muffins with 30% off - straight to the freezer for those, too. Other than that, the regular citrus fruit and apples, a pack of peppers as they had the “wonky” ones with plenty of red included, and a bag of coriander to use with the curry on Friday evening and through the week too. 

Saturday saw a trip to the farm shop as of course it is marmalade season- Seville oranges were required! I took the chance to buy a bulb of smoked garlic - and ingredient I use a lot but not easy to get- and MrEH made a convincing case for one of his favourite brand of yogurts - this is the only place he can get the brand locally. We also pounced on a decent looking rustic bread baguette reduced to 50p which got eaten through the day. Total spend £6.88 there, and we called in to the supermarket on the way back for milk, tomatoes and a couple of bananas- another £2.82. 

Only other spend of the week was another couple of bananas - but MrEH bought those and must have paid cash I think so they’re not forming part of my calculations!  By my reckoning that is a total of £18.58 for the week, and there will be no further shopping trips this month, so that is us officially DONE! A quick tot up suggests a sub-£60 spend which quite frankly I’m really pleased with. The grocery account has started the year with a nice little boost, we’ve made a bit of a dent in our food stocks, and it’s made us get our act firmly together with meal planning, too! 

Now- time for February, I wonder…can we have another go?

Robyn

Frugal Friday

Last Saturday was our local farmers market’s 200th market - congratulations to Don who has been organising these markets for so long now and has made the monthly trip out there such a delight. We wanted to go - but had a proper chat about it, and agreed that as there was nothing we needed, and we were already up against it on time due to another commitment, we’d skip this one. It would have been lovely to grab a sourdough loaf from our favourite local baker, but instead we opted to use the things we have (ingredients and equipment!) and instead bake a loaf at home instead on Friday evening ready for toast the following morning. Had we gone, undoubtedly we would not just have bought the loaf, and while I love supporting our fab local producers, I really do want to focus on "using up" rather than buying more, at the moment. 

I bumped our usual “main shop” day from Friday to Sunday due to other commitments, but that gave me a bit of time to make sure my meal plan and shopping list were both done before heading to the shop. I know I mention this a lot, but I really do find that shopping with a list is the best way by miles of keeping grocery spending properly under control, and the meal plan means I’m not trying to manage shopping AND working out what we might want to eat through the week too, always a recipe for spending more. It also cuts down on time decision making on weekday evenings when, by the time we arrive home, we usually just want to be eating as soon as possible!

This week was a pretty standard week aside from the fact that we needed some frozen veg - peas and sweetcorn. Both things we always have in the freezer as they will work as a main veg component of a meal or a handful thrown in to a dish to bump up the veg element. Frozen veg is brilliant too - frequently fresher than the so-called “fresh” options due to often being frozen immediately after  picking, meaning far more of the nutrients are retained. Bonus of course is that it also tends to be cheaper than fresh, too! As can be seen from the receipt, that "main shop" was a £14.74 spend. 

MrEH has a banana for his breakfast most days, but the quality in Aldi on Sunday was terrible - he stuggled to find the single good condition one he eventually opted for. Generally he will opt to pop in on a Tuesday morning to get those for the remainder of the week, but on this occasion I needed to  make use of the supermarket car park near to work on Monday as thanks to the traffic we opted to park closer to my office than normal - this means needing to be "a customer" and so that was the obvious time to purchase the remaining 'nanas! 3 of them cost me a further 48p. 

Further use of the supermarket car park on Tuesday meant "being a customer" again - this time the purchase was a bag of onions - at 99p not the absolute cheapest option I could have gone for but the cheaper-per-kg bags were full of teeny tiny onions, of the sort that one might lose the will to live peeling, so I felt the 19p extra was a small price to pay for sanity! I would have needed to buy onions next week anyway, so this seemed a sensible choice.

Total spend for the week then £16.21 - so the highest week so far, but that figure also includes the frozen veg and onions which will carry forwards to future weeks, of course. The fridge is starting to look quite bare now - there are still some parsnips and the last couple of carrots, plus a red cabbage from the Christmas 5p veg. Plenty of potatoes and shallots out in the shed too. Bargains like that are brilliant for stretching the budget - just be sure to keep the items in the right conditions and get them used before they pass their best. Food over Christmas costs most households a pretty penny so we absolutely have to make  sure we get the best use out of it.

Time to move forwards into the final week of the challenge, then! 

Robyn

Frugal Friday…

 

Week 2 then - and we’re still going well. I usually work my grocery weeks from Friday to Thursday as generally speaking it works best for me to do the main shop on a Friday - it’s quieter than weekend shopping for a start. This week fitted that pattern, so I started by checking my Lidl app for anything too good to miss - nothing this week though, the things I was given offers for were all things we already had plenty of. I’d made a few mental notes of things that appealed from the freezer, and so put my meal plan together along with a list of things I planned to batch cook this week, then built my shopping list from that to include the usual bits and bobs like fruit. Milk and bananas go on the list as standard but tend to get bought later in the weekend. 

The photo above shows the starting point with this week’s “main shop” done at Aldi - and yes, includes some off-list bargains which were definitely worthwhile purchases. The tomatoes are a staple item - I have a small box of them daily with my lunch and I know they usually last well, so buying them reduced doesn’t bother me as long as - like these - they still look really fresh.  Citrus fruit and apples are regular buys too - I had a single pack of apples on the list this week as we still had a few left, but the packs of small ones were on offer and are better value - we will just take two each of those to work with our lunches. The family pack of mushrooms I have started buying recently - I prep and cook the lot then pop them in the fridge so we have them ready for throwing in meals during the week. I was keeping my eyes peeled for good reductions - the pate came up first, 75% off but an unknown original price - however I knew these had already had a price reduction, so I was reasonably sure they would be 25p each at most with the reduction, and each pack does two days lunchtime rolls for both of us, so good value, and one of each flavour grabbed - even better value when they ended up costing just 7p a pack! Further round the store were a few other Christmas reductions - the final two packs of Lebkuchen on the shelf for 29p are weekend evening sweet treats for a couple of weeks - and I couldn’t bake something myself for that price. The salt flakes I had been debating about since they appeared on the shelves before Christmas - I had already bought the garlic and smoked ones, but was unsure how strong the chilli might be in these. For 49p though I think they are definitely worth a try, and will keep us going until we can stock up on the Cornish brand we usually buy. Finally the little pack of Christmas themed sprinkles were just too cute to leave behind for 29p - they will look great decorating mince pies or cupcakes next Christmas! A £7.46 total spend then, and that felt like good value. 

We had to make a trip to Farmfoods over the weekend as I had spotted they had a really good deal on the washing liquid we use - although this comes from the same budget as the groceries I’m not including cleaning stuff in this challenge, but while in there MrEH found a reduced to clear section we hadn’t previously noticed and nabbed a couple of 6-packs of big-brand crisps at 67p each and a couple of sachets of flavoured microwave rice at 34p each so we nabbed those - £2.02 food spend there. He takes a bag of crisps daily to eat with his lunch and those work out nearly 5p cheaper per pack than the supermarket variety pack we usually buy, so well worth having. The rice sachets are Indian spice flavoured, so I’ll almost certainly use those to make some sort of quick biryani inspired meal. 

We popped back to Aldi for bananas and yogurts and handily MrEH spotted jars of mincemeat for 29p each - the “Specially Selected” range too, so we nabbed two of those to stick in the cupboard for next Christmas. £2.39 spent . Final spend of the week was also in Aldi - some more bananas and the milk - plus a box of mince pies for 9p - well, as MrEH said, it would have been rude not to at that price! 

That gives us a total of £13.93 for this week, and a few extra odds and ends stashed away with that too. Now- time to get my head around next week’s meal plan I think! 

Robyn

Frugal Friday

 

Unrelated Alderney Sunset - May 2025

Well here we are at the end of week one - and so far we do seem to have been sticking to the plan!

In the spirit of using what we have, I decided to have a little review of various reward card points we might be able to use for things that are needed this month. As I mentioned last week we had a £6.75 balance on an Aldi gift card which got used against last week’s “main” shop. A good start to the month! We do have £10 in claimable vouchers on the Morrisons card - but we are saving those to assist with the shopping we always do ahead of getting our ferry to the Hebrides - when we call in to Fort William Morrisons and stock up on some bottles of beer and odd and ends for the first couple of days, so those will continue to amass until they are needed.  I do have Tesco club card vouchers - but generally prefer to use those for rewards rather than against shopping- that said, if I reach a point where any are expiring better by far to just spend them! I have a £2 voucher in my Asda rewards wallet at the moment, and £2.50 ready to spend on my Nectar card as well. The real winner here though is an £11 balance on my Boots advantage card - I must remember that should any toiletries be required! I try and remember to review the offers on the Lidl & Co-op apps weekly as well to see if there are any that would be foolish to let go - this week for example the Co-op app offered us 25p off MrEH’s daily paper and 20p off milk - as he has a subscriber voucher for the paper (so pre-paid) that meant the full 45p of savings came off the price of the milk, taking a 4 pint bottle down to £1.20

We had agreed that if we spotted any real bargains in terms of stuff we would definitely use, we’d buy them, and so when a large chunk of Stilton - one of MrEH’s favourite cheeses - appeared in front of us in Tesco for £2.47 we agreed it was worth a purchase. We also bought bananas - 55p for 3.

I had to make use of the supermarket car park local to work during the week, and that did require me to be a customer (not unreasonably) so a packet of noodles got added to stores for 85p.

Total cash spends for groceries this week then - £8.61. We have used various bits up - scraps of pastry from the Christmas baking made into tartlet cases and filled with a potato, onion, ham, cheese and cream mixture (so tasty!) The last of the Christmas sprouts, chestnuts and bacon (chucked in the freezer on Boxing Day to avoid them being wasted) were used with couscous, toasted seeds and some bargain priced mushrooms I’d bought on New Year’s Eve and promptly forgotten about. The last of the Christmas ham formed a nice sauce for pasta with home grown tomatoes from the freezer, some of the 5p shallots from the Christmas veg wars, some more of those mushrooms and a blob of crème fraiche, and the last of the Christmas sausage rolls were reheated and teamed with mash and beans for a tasty tea. I've been adopting an approach of "what catches my eye first" when I open the freezer this week - but intend to revert to proper meal planning for the remainder of the month as I know that works best for us. 

And today we start the weekly cycle again with a visit to the shop, so I had best get my list written! 

Robyn

Frugal Friday

A frosty morning view!

The time feels right for a bit of a challenge to start the year - December was unsurprisingly a spendy sort of month - in between various Christmas foods, presents to be bought, and a few trips out, and ending with a long weekend in Norfolk just after Christmas. January will also have a few (planned!) trips out, but we can certainly do a lot better on the food spending front!

We have two full freezers, and a well stocked store cupboard thanks to making use of vouchers for money off a set spend in Lidl a couple of times during December. We also made excellent use of the cheap Christmas veg - and we’ll be aiming to use every scrap of that.  Christmas left us with plenty of leftovers as well - the turkey got carved up and divided out into portions  - sliced with gravy to make future roast dinners,  chunks for pies, pasta or curries, and “gribbly bits” perfect for risotto and similar. I also purposely over bought on a few bits, and did my usual thing of buying two large gammon joints while they were on special offer - once cooked they were each cut into two with one feeding us over Christmas and new year, and the remaining three bits stashed in the freezer. 

As we were away between Christmas and new year we didn’t have too much chance to pounce on any Christmas bargains, but we did happen upon a big pack of chicken breasts in Waitrose for a bargain price - those were cooked immediately with three being turned into a big pan of chicken orzo bake with plenty of 5p Christmas sprouts, a jar of sundried tomatoes and half a pot of cream left over from making cheesecake. Very tasty, and fed us both for two main meals with a final single portion being set aside and squeezed into the freezer for a lunch one day when one of is on our own on a Saturday. 

Money wise - the aim is simply “as little as possible”. To assist with this I’ll be meal-planning. Asked around items we have in already - so the shopping list should consist of pretty much entirely fresh stuff. I also started out with a small balance left on an Aldi gift card acquired when we did an insurance renewal last year. 

We are always pretty hot on avoiding food waste round here, and we’ll be keeping the focus there. This morning I’ve taken the final scraps of some pastry and turned that into a couple of little tartlet cases - the pastry scraps were a mix of sweet and savoury so I need to have a little taste of the cooked edges I trim off to decide if a I can get away with a savoury filling or not! MrEH had the oven on anyway as he was making a batch of rolls for lunches next week - so it made sense to pop the pastry in at the same time. Lunch used up the last of a focaccia I made for Christmas Day tea - we ate very little of it on the day as we were all still stuffed from lunch, so it had been in the freezer! Slices of the Christmas ham, and pickle (me) or chutney (him) turned that into a delicious sandwich. 

One of the main things for me to focus on with this challenge will be avoiding the temptation to shop for bargains - remembering that it’s only a bargain if you actually needed it in the first place! If we are in a shop anyway we’ll check for reductions, but there will be a proper thought process employed about the purchases. If my list for a week’s main shop is short enough that I can just walk round to Aldi that is what I will do - as that in itself is money-saving too, of course, saving on fuel for the car to go elsewhere. That is what I did this morning in fact - with a list consisting of just fresh fruit, some tomatoes and yogurts.  Total spend for that first shop was £10.28, with a cash spend of £3.54 once the voucher was employed. Well still need to pop somewhere else over the weekend for milk and bananas. 

So that sums up what the plan is - I know we are far from alone doing this sort of challenge this month too, on all counts a focus on “using what we have” is a solid start to the year, after all. I intend to try to make weekly Frugal Friday posts during the month updating how we are doing - so a proper old school blog challenge! 

Robyn

Into 2026 we go!

 

A seat with a view - Sheringham

Happy new year  - I wonder what 2026 has in store for us all? 

As usual, no New Year’s resolutions here - the closest I will get will be some planning in my notebook and some intentions set out. There won’t be umpteen new habits, a diet that smells of sadness, or a “New Year, New Me!” plan that’s guaranteed to make me feel like I’ve failed by February 1st! 

There are some odds and ends I would like to do - for a start to work on my fitness a bit more - firstly by getting back to some regular yoga again. My lovely pal Jenni over at Not Really A Farm did a fantastic challenge during December of starting her day with Yoga - often by candlelight - and I’m in awe! The only thing I can usually manage to consistently do first thing in the morning is to have a cup of tea, so I certainly won’t be making any plans to copy her, but I would like to get back to doing some regular stretching and flexibility work again, and for me, structured plans often work best, so I will have a look for a suitable monthly programme to start me off - very possibly something from Yoga With Adriene on YouTube.

Later today we will be sitting down to revisit our financial goals for the year, something we always do at this point in the year. Talking things through means we can ensure we are both on the same page with our plans, and that we are both happy with the money that goes into our various savings pots each month as well. That in turn streamlines things through the year - and means we can make the best possible use of our funds. 

We’ve got various plans already for this year - with more time available to us now that the Great British Beer Festival is no more, we want to get back to doing more regular camping trips, I’m hoping to squeeze in a few more air shows, and we already have some fun stuff planned with friends too including a trip to York to help a close friend celebrate a milestone birthday. As usual we’ll be heading off to the Hebrides later in the year, and we intend  to get back to a Cornwall for the first time in a few years too.

We also have plans to get at least one major job done on the house this year - hopefully this will be replacing the rather perilous front steps, although depending on how things go through the timer it could turn out to need to be the roof - we’ll have to wait and see on that one! Like so many of these sorts of tasks the biggest step will be in deciding exactly what is to be done, and by who - we need to take a deep breath and get started I think, and once we have started I suspect it will become far less scary! 

I’m intending to start the year with a bit of a financial reset and challenge - prompted by the two groaningly full freezers and an expensive month on the food front in December - I’m going to get things planned out in my head (and very possibly that notebook!) and will get a blog post sorted on it once that’s happened though - as we all know, writing it here = accountability! 

Robyn

Frugal Friday…

Homemade Scotch Eggs! 

It’s getting tougher to be frugal isn’t it? While we are still doing many of the same things we did when tackling the original mortgage, it feels rather a lot tougher this time round, and particularly on the food front. Back in those days our monthly food budget was around £150 - and we used to save a reasonable chunk of that most months in order to enable big purchases like a whole lamb from time to time - now, £250 a month gets transferred to our groceries account and it’s frequently a struggle to stay within that! 

Of course, in reality, 10 years has passed since those £150 a month days, and while a lot has changed, a lot has also stayed the same in terms of our approach. We still mostly cook from scratch - although always with an eye out for a yellow stickered bargain that we can incorporate into our meals. We make most of our own bread and rolls for weekday lunches - although very much appreciate the odd artisan-type loaf as well, and of course if there are reduced price goodies in the bakery section that beat the price we could make bread for, then we are all over that! Areas where we are still very happy to spend a bit more are still much the same - eggs (always free range),  meat (chickens are always free range, and most of our other meat comes from the stall at our local farmers market, or at least the supermarkets “posh” ranges where we can be more confident of its welfare standards) and cheese - because life without decent cheese is barely life, surely?! We’re also not quite of the same mindset we were then - these days we are more inclined to go for slightly more luxury variations of things where there is a food or a flavour we particularly appreciate - I’ll pay a bit more for British tomatoes for example, or for a variety of apple that we really enjoy eating - we are probably far more inclined to buy based on “likes and wants” now rather than being quite so price-focused as we once were. That’s fine too - and while it does impact a little on our future plans, sometimes a good life now has to be prioritised over future planning. we definitely still aim to  make savings where we can though - and my recent discovery that air-fryer scotch eggs are an absolute winner means that this Scotch-egg fan can enjoy really good, tasty ones at a far lower cost than the better shop-bought options! 

Of course there are still areas where sometimes a saving comes along and surprises us - this year it was insurances. We always follow the golden rule of doing the comparisons for renewals roughly 23 days out from the renewal date, and never simply accepting an autorenewal. in spite of that the past few years have seen prices increasing, and the insurance claim I was forced to make when an idiot in a van rolled backwards in the region of 8' to smack into my vehicle on the way to work one day didn't help! Thankfully common sense eventually prevailed there, and that claim was changed to "No fault" on my part earlier this year after the idiot's insurance company finally paid for the damage. That combined with a general drop in pricing across the market to ensure that both MrEH and I saw a fall in our premiums this year. Breakdown insurance prices stayed much the same, and in fact I opted for an autorenewal there having looked at options elsewhere, and MrEH switched to the same company that I have been with. The home insurance surprised us both when the renewal quote came through with an immediate saving on last year's premium. As this was for cover we were happy with, and a quick look at the comparison site suggested we weren't going to make much - if any - saving by switching, we've left this one where it was too. 

As for the scotch eggs, if you want to have a go at making them, the recipe can be found by searching "Air-Fryer Scotch Eggs" on the good old BBC Good Food website. On this occasion I opted to use a budget supermarket's delicious chorizo style sausages, and some bacon that was bought yellow stickered a few weeks back, and popped in the freezer. The breadcrumbs are, as always the ends of loaves that have been blitzed up then frozen, herbs from the garden and the eggs were from one of those "15 mixed weight" boxes - often the most economical way of buying them. I reckon they cost me around £1.10 per Scotch egg, but it would probably be possible to cut that back a bit by using a more basic sausage and upping the seasoning a little. You could also omit the bacon, in reality, although it does add to the succulence and flavour. In any event they fed both of us for a couple of meals, and tasted delicious! On this occasion they were also cooked at a time when our electricity cost was super-low - thanks to our Octopus "Agile" tariff. As much as getting frugal is getting tougher - there are still ways of making a sneaky saving!

Robyn

Frugal Friday…

At the beginning of  the month we were able to celebrate the first big milestone in our “Clear the mortgage early” adventure this time round as we dipped under the £100k barrier. The celebration wasn’t huge, fancy or expensive - just a Chinese takeaway from our favourite place, with a toast drunk in a nice beer (that we were given free by the brewery when we placed our usual order with them for beer at Christmas - just to make it all the more frugal-Friday suitable!) 

To recap, we took our original mortgage for the flat in 2003- one of those Northern Rock offerings for those who had no deposit and needed to borrow the full value of the property or - to clear other debt - even more. In our case it was 110% - clearing some graduate debt of MrEH’s at the same time - starting at £103,500 on the then traditional 25 year term. Initially we just paid the required amount, but then a few years in thanks to a conversation with a friend the lightbulb flickered on and we started overpaying in 2007. That mortgage was cleared in 2016 - 12 years early, and those overpayments saved us in excess of £30k in interest! Because of the point we took it out, and when our product renewals occurred, we never got the benefit of the super low interest rates that were being enjoyed for a few years either - our lowest rate that time round was 4.34% - although as we both remembered the highs of 15% during our childhoods that still felt pretty low to us! 

This time round the figures aren’t altogether different - £115,000 borrowed with an interest rate of 4.03% - the term this time though is just 16 years, and we are aiming to be done with it a long time before THAT point I can tell you! The key thing I was looking for when we were searching for our mortgage product was that it allowed overpayments, at least the standard 10% of the capital amount per year, and ideally more, but still when I happened on the deal we eventually plumped for - a 5 year fix with unlimited OPs allowed - I did slightly worry it seemed too good to be true! It’s not though, and while we are a long way off the 10% OP level right now, it’s good to know we can OP without limit right to the end of the term.

Overpayments are happening much the same as before - first thing was to round the monthly payment up to a nice round figure - in this case just an odd pound and pennies, although that might yet get tweaked up a bit more. Then there is the “money we didn’t know we had” - so savings on bills we haggle down for example, or better deals being offered on things. Recent examples there are cancelling our satellite TV deal in favour of watching streamed (and currently just free) content, and a better deal being offered on broadband in return for us signing up for a new 2 year deal early. Fine by us when they are offering a £7 a month saving on what we were paying! Those bits and bobs get transferred into the overpayments pot (a savings account attached to one of the current accounts) and when that hits £100 I transfer that to the mortgage. At the end of the month I usually make an additional overpayment of the odd pounds and pence plus £100 - although that depends a little on what surplus we have in the joint account for the month. We still pay our council tax on the old 10 months payment schedule, so for the two months that’s not payable that money also gets thrown at the mortgage - a nice boost in the early part of the year. Finally there is any unexpected financial gains - so the tax rebates MrEH got last year for sorting out some stuff around his pension payments for example, and the payments our building society makes to account holders from time to time get transferred to reduce the mortgage figure too. 

So - what difference is all this making, you might ask? Well - some figures, a bit rough and ready as I don’t have the spreadsheet (well yes, of COURSE there are spreadsheets!) to hand, but monthly interest payments have already been reduced by a noticeable chunk - and of course that in itself means that the payments we make are having more effect. Had we just made our standard payments we would have roughly £106k still outstanding, and around 14 and a half years still to pay. Instead the figure stands at £99,400, give or take a few pounds, and the term has been reduced by a year - even if we stopped overpaying right now, that change is locked in. Down the line of course this also creates a big saving in interest - yes, even on a relatively small mortgage! 

If you currently have a mortgage, even if you can only spare enough per month to round your monthly payments up to the next £10, overpaying is well worth doing. Just a small amount every month can mount up - and for a lot of people now their mortgage interest rate is higher than anything that £10, £20 or £50 would be earning in savings too - so it’s a bit of a no-brainer! If you’re fortunate enough to still be on one of those super-low rates then a better approach is to stash those small amounts into a savings account earning a good rate of interest, then make a lump sum overpayment once your rate increases. If you check and your mortgage alows overpayments, then why not just make a start and see how you go?

Robyn

Frugal Friday…

Remember I said a while ago that I would pop up every now and again with one of these posts when something notable occurred to me to write about? Well, here we are - and it’s going to be another one on the subject of energy! 

After writing in my recent post about a year in the house on the subject of having to get used to not needing to load-shift electricity use to make the best use of a time-of-use tariff,  we promptly upped and jumped straight back onto one again! Not Economy 7 this time - with gas for our heating and hot water these days that would not be good for us at all, but instead one of the smart tariffs that our supplier (Octopus) offers. It’s called Agile - and we’ve really thrown ourselves in at the deep end here  as on Agile the unit price of your electricity changes literally every 30 minutes! 

The idea of Agile is that it directly ties your electricity prices to the wholesale rates - so when energy is at its cheapest to the suppliers it is also cheapest for the customer. This encourages those on the tariff to use more energy when the grid is greenest, and as little as possible when the draw from the grid is at its heaviest - usually 4pm - 7pm. On occasions when more energy is being generated than can be consumed, we can even be paid to use electricity, not something  you get on too many tariffs these days!  

The 30 minute changes are a lot to get your head around - you need to be prepared to plan use of things like the dishwasher and washing machine to make the best use of the tariff.  It’s worth it though - I got a full load of bedding washed and tumble dried the other night for pretty much nothing! It can also be a bit “roundabouts and swings” - while Sunday’s use averaged at around  16p/kWh, Mondays was very slightly above the current capped rate for our area thanks to an apparently rare day with relatively high rates all day. Meanwhile we woke on Wednesday morning to 3.5kWh used for a grand cost of 8p -  towels washed and tumble dried and the dishwasher run as well - but low and negative pricing meaning the lot cost us less than our usual overnight base load. 

Snapshot showing the prices in the early hours of 16/10/24

Looking at the average prices is the way to go for sure - that and working out minor changes that will have a decent result. On Tuesday evening for example had I cooked my tea at 6.45pm I would have been using electricity at 35p/kWh - holding off just 20 minutes dropped that unit price to under 20p, AND meant I was using energy when the grid was under less pressure, too. There will undoubtedly be times when we do opt to use the energy at the higher price, but there will be a lot more when we don’t I suspect! 

So you might be thinking “this sounds great - where do I sign?”  by now - but beware, it really isn’t as simple as that! For a start there is always a possibility that rates can shoot up - there is a cap but it is set at £1/kWh - and while it looks unlikely to happen, it’s important to accept that it could happen.  The mitigation on the concerns about that is that if there did look like being a point where it seemed the tariff was going to suddenly get very expensive for more than a short period, jumping back to the standard variable tariff should be easy and quick.  As said before, this is not a “set and forget” tariff either - you really need to be willing to get stuck in, plan use of appliances etc. on that note, having appliances that you can set on timers is also useful. On my experience so far if you could just shift use to the “standard” off peak times you would make a small saving. If you did that and avoided use during the peak time slot almost completely that saving would be slightly larger, but the best gains are to be made by really choosing to run as much as possible when prices are at their lowest. In short you need to be wiling to adapt your lifestyle a bit - and probably also be someone who likes a bit of a challenge! It’s not one to jump in to on a whim - I’ve been keeping my eye on the Agile prices for about the last 6 months, and MrEH has been in on the act for the past couple of months prior to us making the decision, too.  I have also been following the chat about it on the MSE Forum, as well. Only when we felt we had sufficient information to make a solid decision did we decide to take the plunge. We will now be keeping a super-close eye on our costs, in fact MrEH is planning to work on a bit of  spreadsheet to help with this! 

If you did decide that a switch to Octopus with a view to considering Agile might be for you (or even just a switch to one of their other tariffs) then what I can offer you is a referral code which would gain you as an incoming customer £50 energy credit, and as the referring customer I get £50 too, so win/win there. This post is in no way an advert for Octopus by the way, but we have been with them for a while, including making use of their “move home” service to carry our energy account straight to the new house last year - that went so smoothly we never had to even register with the deemed supplier here - the switch had happened by the time we got the keys! Overall we have been really pleased with them - when we have had cause to contact their customer services problems have been dealt with swiftly and efficiently, usually a good test of an energy supplier. If you did want to join Octopus using my code then clicking on this link will take you to their website and share the code too: https://share.octopus.energy/topaz-macaw-702 

I’ll report back when we have a few months of solid Agile use under our belts and let you know what we think at that stage, and any more pros and cons I have found. 

Robyn

Making good use…

 …of the things that we find..! I mentioned in my last post that we’d been doing a bit of foraging again, and that has continued this weekend with another batch of plums picked from trees literally just around the area we live. We’re lucky that when the town was planned and built, one thing factored in was lots of trees, and that included a LOT of plum trees, so within a quarter mile radius of home we were able to pick this lot…

I already knew I wanted to make another batch of plum sauce - this time a darker, more “Chinese style” version, so the first step was to find a suitable recipe. One for “Five spice plum sauce” seemed to hit the flavour profile I was looking for, although we hit an immediate stumbling block there when I realised too late we had no five spice powder - oops! Thankfully we DID have all the actual spices I wanted in there - cinnamon, cloves, allspice, black pepper and star anise, so we set to grinding them up where needed. I substituted a little over the half of the stated half-cup of water for light soy sauce, and left out the half teaspoon of salt that was called for as a result. Garlic - also not in the recipe - went into the mix, and once everything else was prepped we ended up with a pan-full like this… 

It was the simplest process from there - literally bring it to the boil, then turn down and simmer for 30 minutes or until the plums had collapsed, stirring frequently. Then pull out the whole spices - I had also used some rather elderly dried galangal root so we pulled that out too as it was quite fibrous-looking - before blitzing with a stick blender until smooth. MrEH had meanwhile been prepping the bottles for it - in our usual way, a thorough clean before pouring boiling water over bottles, lids and the ladle and punnet we were going to use for filling them, then it was a simple case of filling the bottles while they and the mixture were still hot. We got 4 decent sized bottles from a kilo of (free!) plums, with the other ingredients all being storecupboard stuff, and I reckon each bottle will do 4 stir fries, so this is feeling like very decent value indeed! The sauce is every bit as richly flavoured as I had hoped, with an underlying slight heat from half a teaspoon of (smoked, in our case) chilli flakes, and a depth of sweetness and umami from dark brown sugar and the soy. 

We still have at least another kilo of plums to use - so we will be back into the recipe books today to see what we might do with those! 

Robyn

Where are we at, then?

Well, it’s been a while (again), no? Here we are having been in our glorious new house for SEVEN FREAKING MONTHS - how did that happen? Well anyway, we have, and so here we are at just the right time to start focusing on the garden! 

First up - some scene setting. Our sellers liked being “in” the garden but also liked it being fairly low maintenance, so we inherited some plants (the most fabulous campanula, a large and possessive lavender, some ornamental grasses (bleurgh - not a fan), a very pretty jasmine, some foxgloves, and invading through the fence from next door a winter jasmine (hurrah - as our cuttings brought from our old one which in turn was originally bought in memory of HRH The Cat and Jazzlet-Doglet didn’t survive) and what might be a honeysuckle - we’re still waiting to see on that last.) We also inherited some gaps where some of their favourite plants used to be, and a fair number of quite determined weeds… there is a small lawn, and then quite a lot of patio - far more than two people who enjoy sitting outside, but only need a relatively small area to do so, needed, so a plan was hatched… 

A couple of weekends ago, lovely-Steve-the-Handyman came round with an assortment of tools and a good deal of determination, and cut/prised/bashed away at a roughly 4’ x 12’ area of patio - to create a new vegetable growing bed. It turned out to be a little more challenging than he (and we!) expected - in places the concrete base was over 3 inches thick, and there was more hardcore and rubble than you would even believe underneath it! Eventually though after about 4 hours of his time, one ever so slightly poorly drill, a fair bit of swearing, several chunks of slab and concrete that even he and MrEH between them struggled to move, and a further 5 hours of our time the following day involving a lump hammer and brick bolster, plus 4 tip-runs (and several more still needed) we ended up with a hole in the garden that would shortly swallow what felt like sufficient compost to keep a small garden centre going for months. And THEN, we ended up with this…

And yes, we’ve already started planting in it! In true “EH Style” we’ve gone as frugal as possible - and our planting is designed and planned to provide us with foodstuffs which either we use a lot of, or which are expensive or difficult to buy. In the back right corner is a redcurrant. We had one at the flat, and briefly debated whether we could move it, but had to decide that it wasn’t going to be practical. The new one was acquired from the half price section at our local branch of a large orange DIY chain, and doesn’t seem to have objected to the lengthy delay in planting it’s had to face while we got our act together with the garden! The other large plant in there is, as you can probably spot, a rhubarb - high on our list of “plants we want when we have space”. Along the edge there are a couple of small sorrel plants. - which won’t mind the shade that the rhubarb will undoubtedly (hopefully!) end up casting…

Sorrel…

… and a thyme, which should quite enjoy what might end up being a fairly sunny and liable to be dry spot in that corner, as well as clambering around the edges of the slabs a bit to soften things. The other end has courgettes - three plants, which from past experience is enough to leave us needing to eat a LOT of courgettes AND casting around trying to find folk to give them to. We’ll also be getting some potatoes in there (excellent for breaking up the soil in the bed’s first year) and also probably some rainbow chard - we’ve grown this before and it’s a really good versatile leafy summer veg. I will probably also be adding some more bits here and there round the edges - almost certainly more herbs - I’d like a fennel for the back left corner, and I already have thyme seedlings on the go ready for more edge-softening… the back “might” get raspberries - that one still requires thought. 

Elsewhere in the garden we have also been busy - and busy reusing resources we already have so far as we can. Having removed a big chunk of patio in one place, we’re now increasing it’s size a little elsewhere - a line of reclaimed slabs along the “top” end now have herbs in pots on them…

…and some more are being used at the bottom end to widen the path there and make the area more user-friendly. It won’t be the most aesthetic result, but it will be functional. More reclaimed slabs have been used to line around the edges of the compost bin - we had a bit of an annoying vermin issue there when we first arrived - and the whole and part bricks and blocks we dug out of the new bed have been used to make a rough and ready “wall” across the back of the new bed to avoid any risk of a garden fork skewering the electric cable that runs there. Three gooseberry plantlets carefully dug up from the flat are all settled in and doing well, sadly it’s starting to look like the Bay we also brought with us might not have survived, although we do still have a spare in a pot if needed. 

Lots of sowing of seeds has also been happening - the mini greenhouse (bought for a bargain price in Wilko’s closing down sale - the price was so good we bought a spare one, too!) is full to bursting…

…masses of potted-on tomato plants, sunflowers, a big pot of miniature round carrots, various herbs (parsley, choices, that thyme, coriander, lots of basil) and various other odds and ends. 

In one of the raised beds on the other side of the garden we have a little thicket of Broad beans - SO nice to be able to grow those again as they are one of my favourite veggies! 

Meanwhile a trough of cut-and-come-again salad leaves and spinach is going great guns on the patio table - we’ll be able to start lightly harvesting from that soon, and I will be getting another trough of each sown at some stage too I think. The table is enormous, was left (with our agreement) by our sellers, and is far bigger than we need, so we’ll be using a good bit of it for now for various pots of salad we think - hopefully it might keep them out of the way of slugs and snails and will also make them super-easy to harvest too. 

Still to get sown in a few weeks will be more beans - runners this time, and back to our long standing favourites “Polestar” there. Most of our seeds were bought at the end of the growing season last year for very reduced prices - we’ve always favoured this, and as long as they have enough date left on them to enable them to be sown the following year it can be a good way of making home-grown even more affordable. Once the shops want to clear the space for other goods, they often sell seeds at rock-bottom prices so it’s well worth keeping your eyes open. Other little money-saving ploys in the garden include using the run-off from water for washing up (our boiler is in the loft so it takes an age to run through hot) to fill watering cans - as we are now metered we are paying for it, so I’d sooner it went on the garden than down the drain! 

So there you have it - your whistlestop tour of our little fledgling garden. It’s not huge - just an average sized town garden really, but it’s plenty for us to be getting on with while we get back into the swing of having proper growing space again. Just so you know, this entire post has been written sitting in the garden too which has been rather delightful. From my comfy seat in the corner it’s rather nice to survey the space which is hopefully going to go a good way to feeding  us, as time goes on - and yes, of COURSE I’ve been enjoying a cup of tea, too! 

Robyn. 

Frugal Friday…

 Time for an update on that grocery challenge I mentioned I think, don't you? 

Obviously we're now approaching the end of the month, I’m pleased to say costs have stayed generally  low in comparison to normal, and I'm beginning to feel that I am getting back to basics on the way we plan meals, ensure that food waste is nonexistent and make the best use of the resources we have.  There was a slightly bigger than expected shop in week one as I had lots of coupons from ThaT SupermarkeT which it seemed wise to use - they provide us with a combination of  additional loyalty points (and those points are then doubled in value, mostly to be used towards things which we would otherwise pay cash for) or indeed actual money off, not to be sniffed at! So we topped up on a few things, hit a spend threshold, bought a few bits which while we might not need them right now, we will certainly use, and wandered out with a not-too high spend and a nice wodge of extra points. We also took the decision to head to the Farmer’s market last weekend as we are unable to get there in February and I wanted to make sure we had sufficient meat to take us through. 

One thing I have found really helpful to make sure we make the best use of the food we have in is to run with a rolling meal plan - so once a week or so, I jot down the things I've got planned for the  next few days, then whole of the following week, and then some rough ideas to choose from for the week after that. I start with thinking about what we have in the freezer, fridge and cupboards (no larder any more, sadly!) - do we have eggs nearing the end of their date? Is there half a butternut squash in the fridge that needs using? Is there still a tub of that nice bolognese sauce I made the other week and froze a few portions of? I fit certain types of meals to particular nights of the week, too - Mondays are generally something really quick - a previously batch cooked pasta sauce from the freezer with some spaghetti for example, because who the heck wants to cook anything complicated on a Monday evening? Tuesdays I do something that can easily be split into two as MrEH has rugby training - couscous with roasted veg and some form of protein element is a big favourite - he can either eat it cold or heat it up depending how he feels, but all he needs to do when he gets home is assemble and eat. Wednesday and Thursday nights often involve a bit more cooking, and Fridays are usually something tasty, that might involve a bit more prep and cooking time - occasionally even an actual recipe! Weekends tend to be a bit more of a free-for-all depending on what else we have going on - on a Saturday I'm often just sorting lunch for myself for example as MrEH has headed off to rugby, so soup and bread or a toastie hits the spot nicely. Where possible I love to do some form of roast dinner on a Sunday - and that always provides us with more than the one meal as well. Last week's roast pork gave us a generous helping each for Sunday, then fed us again on Tuesday (with couscous) and Wednesday (stir-fried) plus there are another two double-helpings in the freezer - one in the forms of slices ready for another roast, and the other in chunks - that will probably be stir-fried in a future week.

I know I have said this before but starting with a quick review of anything you might have about that needs using is probably the best way I know of avoiding food waste, beyond the obvious planning and buying just what you need, of course!  As I mentioned the other week, it's often possible to prevent things from going past their best by making something out of them there and then - my soup was a good example. However, you can also sometime rescue things which you're not in a position to cook with immediately. Sweet peppers for example can be chopped and frozen (ideally spread out on a sheet of baking parchment or baking liner, then tip them into bags or tubs when frozen solid). Mushrooms hovering on the edge of slimy can be chopped and oven roasted with a drizzle of oil, then frozen in the same way. Green veg benefits from a light blanching in boiling water - then cool it as swiftly as possible and again, loose freeze for ease of use. we do, after all, spend a fair amount of our annual income on ensuring that we are fed - so it does make the best use of that money. 

One thing I have switched up recently is that I am doing a lot more of my shopping at a budget or “discounter” supermarket - and I do think it’s saving me money too. The one I use most these days also has a nice app which rewards you when you reach certain spend thresholds in a month - today for example I went back in after my main shop as I was able to claim a free bakery item - a nice crusty sourdough style loaf worth £1.99 - like all these things the trick is to shop normally and not be seduced into spending more to hit a particular level - although it has to be said if I was just a pound or so off one of the levels the week before the end of the month I might add something for the storecupboard into the trolley to push us over. If you shop there a few times a month, the app will probably be worthwhile for you though.

We’ve resisted the call of the takeaway this month although there was a meal out - pizza in a pub with pals last weekend, and most delicious it was!  (And also from our personal spending money, not our food budget!)

I know - not particularly frugal! (Tasty though!)

It’s looking like we’ll have about a £75 underspend on our January budget - possibly slightly less, but in that region, and I’m pleased with that. It’s been really good to properly focus back on a frugal challenge again this month, and I do feel that it’s also been beneficial to get back into the habit of proper meal planning again too.  Allowing that we are still fairly well stocked, I’m going to roll the challenge on into February as well so I’ll keep you posted on how we go. There will be no Frugal February his year I don’t think as we do have a couple of things planned through the month which will involved (planned and budgeted) spending, so having something to focus on and keep our heads in the thrifty game would be good! 

Robyn

Plotting and planning...

River Stort - 14th January 2024

I was doing some reading back over the blog (on the basis that at least someone is still reading it, then!) and it's got me all inspired to maybe make some fun plans for the new year to share with you all - what do you think? First up - and as always really the cornerstone of everything, will be the financial stuff...

With the new house, our financial situation has changed fairly dramatically - although the new mortgage isn't particularly huge by many people's standards, we are working on precisely the same approach as when we had the mortgage on the flat (which was in fact slightly smaller than this one!) - that being, that we want to see it gone! As a result, and learning from our experience first time round, we made our first overpayment this time immediately - in fact, technically, before the first contractual payment was made - which was a pretty good feeling! We've overpaid each month since then, and will be continuing to do this going forwards. As before, the "saved" money from the two "free" Council Tax months will also go across to the mortgage as this has always been a good easy win. One thing that is an absolute joy this time is the ease of making overpayments - a complete contrast the faff last time round with having to phone up each time we wanted to make one, now I can simply pay money across whenever I feel like it from our banking app! It feels like a great novelty, even if I am perhaps driving MrEH (who keeps a proper tally of our overpayments, interest saved etc) just a little crazy by occasionally paying off odd amounts to bring us up to a nice round number outstanding! 

We're now working to a completely new budget as you might expect - and that is under fairly constant review at the moment. We are also still aiming to stash a decent chunk into savings each month - currently we can save at a higher interest rate than the mortgage is costing us, so while it makes sense to pay some money off against the mortgage, it also makes sense to ensure that the majority of our monthly surplus is still allocated to savings.  We have new savings pots - for things for the garden among other things - and are also having to adjust to having to carefully pick and choose what we say yes to doing, as the balance of what we want to do financially doesn't allow for the fairly regular weekends away we were able to agree to previously. We're also actively working to make savings where we can - and as always, as those savings are made, that money will be squirreled away into our Mortgage Overpayments Pot - from there, each time the balance reaches £100 a little chunk is paid to the mortgage. 

One substantial change we have to our plans for 2024 is that there will be no Great British Beer Festival - the decision had to be announced that we were unable to hold the festival this year due to issues with the venue. It's disappointing - as these days it forms a massive part of our year - but we will still be working hard in the background to ensure that when the festival makes its return in 2025 it's the best it has ever been. From my perspective this will mean some changes to the airshows I can attend as well - plus enabling me to do the whole of the Royal International Air Tattoo for the first time ever - although it doesn't actively clash with GBBF, it is at the time of year when MrEH and I are both frantically busy with stuff relating to it, so I shall be making the most of that one this year. As always, I am saving monthly towards airshow fun and games to come - this means that I always know that the money is there for the tickets and accommodation for the places I want to go - a real win! 

On the house front, there really isn't a huge amount of work we need to do - but there are a few things we would like to get done in due course. Of these the most pressing is to remodel the garden which currently has rather more patio and less growing space than needed - to a man with an angle grinder will be required to change this, and we want to get it done early in the spring as that will then make a big impact on what we can grow to help with feeding ourselves in 2024.  Beyond that, there are a few internal cosmetic bits and pieces - which we mostly have the paint for already, and then we are into potentially slightly further off jobs which we may start pricing up but are unlikely to do anything about actually getting done in the near future.

Personally, I'd really like to get back to more regular running again. A back injury last year lead me to stop running AND cycling - as the type of injury it was can be made worse by both those things. There's been no improvement for not doing them though, so I am now beginning to add a little bit of running back into  my life again - and I'm loving it! So nice to be back out there again - and all the more so because I am being kind to  myself, if it's wet, I'm not going. If it's so cold I know I will be uncomfortable - not going! So mostly when I'm getting out there at the moment it's lovely bright crisp sunny weather and that is by far the nicest weather to run in so far as I am concerned, so that's brilliant! The gym has been completely abandoned at the moment as that definitely was making my back worse, but I do want to get back to adding in some proper strength work again - that will be home-based, for now at least. Oh - and yoga! I KNOW that's good for me - helping with suppleness and strength - so that is something else I want to add back in - but let's take this one thing at a time, eh?! 

How about you then? Is there plotting and planning afoot? Have you changed things in your life dramatically and are now having to readjust to the differences those changes mean? Do stop by and tell me! 

Robyn