December the 1st.

I am back from my last trip to London. I ended up travelling home through the night on Friday rather than staying over which meant that I didn't get in until 3am. Seem to have a sore throat and slight temperature now so looks like some nasty germs from the Capital got me while I was there.
Anyway, London is properly part of my past now.

Thank you all so much for so many positive and helpful comments after my last post, it is very nice to have your support and the advice that some of you gave is great and much appreciated.

Anyway, after a week of concentrating on 'important' things and working in London, yesterday I wanted to relax and do things I enjoyed which, of course, meant an afternoon in the garden - my sanctuary. We seem to have good weather right now, even though December is here, clear skies and sunshine up here in the Pennine hills.
After digging out the large new flower bed a fortnight ago I ended up with a lot of large rocks, as I always do and in the ultimate in recycling I decided to turn them into stepping stones. I have been meaning to get stepping stones in for ages, but at about £5 a stone in my local garden centre I have not done it. Perfect solution, free stones, so now I can get from the house to the corner covered bench without stepping on the grass (which is squelchy and muddy and terrible right now).

I have dug them in and hopefully I will still be able to mow over them easily as they are slightly lower than the ground.

Well it was an enjoyable and rather easy (and free) job and with luck my lawn might begin to improve as I can avoid stepping on it quite so much in the muddy seasons.

Making lists on scraps of used paper.

A lovely reader has made a request of me to talk a bit about how I do my shopping, do my lists, plan my food week, based on my frugal food challenge this month. I am more than happy to do that as it is a pleasure if a blog post can actually be useful to even one person.

Unlike so many, and contrary to popular belief, I am not very organised. My brain is rather haphazard and my memory is appalling - I am one of those that can go to a shop for 3 items and instantly when I get there have no idea what two of them are, I think my head is too full of the complete script of 36 operas and there is not much room left for anything else.
So my answer is lists. I have learnt through bitter experience of wasted shopping trips that if I don't have a list I will not buy most of what I needed, I will spend more money and I will buy something that the clever old supermarket pushed on me without me realising it.
Some people have beautifully drawn up charts of what their menu plan for the week (even for the month in some cases) will be, and I am in awe of these people, I can't be that organised and it is good for me to have a bit of flexibility in my plan. And there is certainly no beautifully drawing up. In fact mostly the plan is written on the back of an envelope as I can hardly ever find a piece of paper when I need one.

I usually write my list, both menu and shopping list on a Sunday night. It doesn't take long, can be done in 10 minutes if you get a move on and don't get distracted by Antiques Roadshow. Two bits of paper, one for a shopping list, one for a 'menu', I start with writing on the shopping list what the house needs, that may be nothing, or it may be stuff like loo roll, washing up liquid, etc. Also it may be a kitchen cupboard staple that I know that I am running low on - sugar or tea or something like that. This week it happened to be baking powder as I noticed when I made some scones last week that my last dregs of baking powder was best before October 2012. No idea if baking powder loses it's oomph but don't want flat cakes.
Then certain things go on every list just about - eggs, butter, milk, cheese. I tend to get through one of these a week, give or take, maybe a fortnight with butter, depending on baking.
Next I just cast my muddled head through the week, and see if there is any day I am going to be out, whether I will need a packed lunch at any point etc. This week happened to be a very easy week. So then it is worked out, 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches and 7 dinners.
Breakfast is easily dealt with as it will always be either fruit, yoghurt or toast, or a mixture of the three. What fruit is in the basket? Do I need yoghurt?. That is breakfast dealt with as I make my own bread.
Lunch I keep simple, something on toast, a baked potato, a sandwich. I need to quickly jot down 7 possibilites. I know that I have certain things left over from last week, I made sweet potato and blue cheese pasties and have 3 in the freezer, 2 portions of Boston Baked Beans in the freezer so these will be remembered as possibilites. So this week had down eggs on toast, mushrooms on toast, baked potato and cheese and coleslaw, my blue cheese and sweet potato pasties, beans on toast. All can be made from stuff I had in, and it doesn't have to be written in stone as some is frozen and can be used any time, next week, next month even if I don't get to it.
Dinner is slightly more complicated in that it takes more cooking and usually has more specific ingredients. I will think what I have in the freezer, if there is some beef that wants using or some pork chops or whatever. Then I jot down enough for 7 meal possibilities. Pizza went down twice, with my blue cheese and pear topping (there is still some blue cheese and some pears from last week, so well worth doing again. Carbonara will do a couple of meals as I really enjoyed that and all I need is bacon, mushrooms and a tub of Quark (these get jotted on the list) and finally I know I have potatoes in the fridge and some minced beef in the freezer so I will make my favourite comfort food meat and potato pie which will do three portions. So that is it. Scan through all of those things and make sure I have the ingredients, if not, pop them on the list.
Finally I will usually try and make one sweet things, either a cake or  a dessert and here I tend to scan through a recipe books. This weeks happened to be some fruity flapjacks, I had most of the ingredients and popped down what was missing.

As you can see, none of my meals are assigned to a particular day and there is a lot of flexibility in what I choose to eat when, but I have a good skeleton frame-work. I will then look down the shopping list and give everything an approximate price to check there is no overspend, if I know something is much cheaper in a particular shop then I will make a mental note to get it there.

This week my shopping list looked like this:

Baking Powder £1
Eggs  £1  (Free range eggs are this price in Lidl and Aldi, more expensive everywhere else)
Onions 80p
bacon  £2
Mushrooms  £1
Milk  £1.30
Butter £1
Coleslaw 50p
Condensed milk  £1
Coconut flakes £1
Cheese £2

That comes to approximately £11.60 I reckon


And my Menu plan looks like this


Meat and potato pie   x3
Pizza x2
Carbonara x2
Cornish Pasties x3
Beans on toast x2
Eggs on toast
Mushrooms on toast
Baked potatoes with cheese and coleslaw

Now I know that there will be leftovers here and there from this week that will go onto next weeks plan, I may not eat all of those pasties or all of the beans. There will probably be a baked potato or two left.

As for timings, well I know which of those things I will be cooking are very quick and which take most time and effort. The meat and potato pie will take most effort so will probably get made on a day when I have lots more time. Baked potatoes get put in the mini oven in twos, to save time and money. One will be put in the fridge until I want it while the other is eaten there and then. I tend to, kind of, decide each morning what I will eat that day, so if something needs defrosting I can get it out, but I am fairly relaxed with it all.

So it is not an exact science with me, just a 10 minute effort on a Sunday night, It actually took me far longer to write this than it does to make that small preparation and it is great when I get into the supermarket with my list in my hand (so long as I didn't leave it on the kitchen table) and zoom from one place to the other, not looking at anything extraneous  and there is a lot of satisfaction when I see that a whole weeks worth of food has come in well, well under £20. It's a game to try and beat what last weeks was, but I know, for example next week will be more expensive as I need loo roll. Pop it on a list!

Frugal drive week 2

Week one was a big success, I managed to spend only £20 for the whole week. Week two has started with a food shop spend of £15 and I have enough ingredients for a weeks food. The strange thing is that with a bit of planning and a good shopping list I have ended up eating far far better, like a king in fact, than I did when bad habits drew me into random shopping. I think because I have planned to actually cook something at a specific time, I just get on and do it, where as without the plan I tend to just grab whatever I can that is easy. The results have been a batch of scones and pear and ginger muffins in the tin and some absolutely delicious meals that have cost me next to nothing. Roll on week two.

The weather is promising today so I will get on and carry on digging the new bed in the garden. It is looking a right mess at the moment, these things always look an awful lot worse before they start looking better. That is why I have left it until November to do, as the garden is looking tired anyway.

This is where I'm up to so far, as you can see, just a bloody great big hole. Eventually the bed will carry on right to the back wall in a, hopefully, perfect arc. That stone was the biggest thing you can ever imagine to dig out, I can barely lift it!
My method is to double dig then put the turf back in at the bottom. Cover the lot up and then put plenty of manure and soil improver on top and let the worms do their work over winter. I'll probably cover the bed with something as last year when I dug a new bed and left it the cats had a field day thinking it was a brand new huge litter tray. I might get some of the plants that are suitable for planting out at this time of year in like roses but for the most part the bed will just be left until next spring planting can start.

Boston Baked Beans on Sourdough Toast.

Okay, that sounds like something only dear Nigella would think up to call beans on toast, but it happens to be the truth. If you remember (those of you who have been reading long enough) that way back last March or April time I started a sourdough starter and began learning how to make my own sourdough loaf? Well I haven't really updated since, but I am thrilled to say that the same sourdough starter is still alive! That is about 7 months and counting, still as healthy as can be and producing great bread. As for me, I think I have improved no end since those first loaves and am knocking one out about every 5 days or so. This was yesterdays offering:

I really do love making it and I really enjoy the 'dark' taste of sourdough loaves and especially the wonderful toast it makes and the starter is almost like a pet. (for those of you unsure, sourdough is a bread made without yeast but using a starter which is kept alive by feeding with flour and water, it then produces it's own natural yeast)

Yesterday I decided to make my own baked beans to go with the bread. Why? I hear you ask. Is there any point in toiling in the kitchen to make something which is perfectly good out of a tin? Well the only (and rather inadequate) answer I can come up with is why not? The ingredients are very cheap, I know what  has gone in them when I make them myself and who know, they may just be nicer than tinned ones.

Okay, so maybe you don't want to undertake them if you are busy, not really because they are complicated and make you spend much time in the kitchen, they really aren't, but they do involve soaking the beans 24 hours before and then cooking them before you even start the recipe. Not hard, but you can't be spontaneous and 'want them now'.

Anyway, what were the results?

Well they certainly look like baked beans but they were incredibly tasty. Now I have nothing at all against tinned baked beans, a great staple and wonderful to have in, but having tasted my own, these ones definitely do have a more 'natural' taste to them and I can taste what went in them, which is always a nice feeling (which was really the beans, water, tomato puree, cloves, dark brown sugar, garlic onion, mustard and smoked bacon, salt and pepper)

So in conclusion, if I can be bothered I will definitely make them again, they taste great, it makes loads (I reckon the equivalent of 5 tins), they freeze well (apparently) and can be done in the slow cooker so are cheap to cook (as it happens I did them in the oven today through pure impatience because I wanted them for lunch. There again, if I can't be bothered, I have tins of them in the cupboard :-)

Frugal Living UK - back to basics.

November is here and I have to get a bit serious with myself, bad habits have become every day occurrences and it has to stop.
I have become used to handing over my card, not for frivolous purposes, but for every day stuff, but without being aware of what is in the account, this is partly due to the unstructured way in which self-employed people like myself are paid. If you have only ever been in a salaried job, just imagine how tricky it can be when some months nothing comes in at all and other months lots comes in and other months in dribs and drabs. How sometimes you have to chase up payment and don't get a penny until months after you did the work. I would love to be paid a monthly salary rather than lumps now and again, I would love to be paid if I am sick and can't work, I would love to be given pension contributions, but sadly self-employed people get none of these things, sure there are benefits, but definite minuses.
Anyway, to get back onto the point, before I was side-tracked there, I have let things get away from me and it has to stop.

So today I went onto all my online bank accounts to see how serious the situation was and it is not great, not dire, but not great. Last friday I had to spend yet another £140 on my car (gasket blown and lightbulbs replacing) which has not helped the situation. I will be back on track if I can spend only a maximum of £100 on everything (food, toiletries, household, petrol etc) in November and the same in December. A lean Christmas? no, just a well thought out one.
It's a challenge although I know many people (some of you included) who live on less than this so not that serious a challenge. I have a freezer packed full of stuff, I have a lot of knowledge and resources to fall back on looking at cheap recipes etc. The petrol could be tricky, but the car is full and I hopefully can get through most of the month on what I have if I don't take any long trips (exempt from this challenge is having to travel to London for work towards the end of the month - there is no way around that expense and I have just to budget separately for it)
So today I did what I used to do but have got out of the habit of doing: I made a meal plan, a shopping list and took £100 cash out of the bank.
Oh what a joy it was to be back in the supermarket with a structure, order and plan to what I was shopping for, I had forgotten how easy it makes shopping, how satisfying to spend so little, what a great feeling it was.
I spent just £9 on a weeks food (might have to top up buying some milk). Yes, I have a lot of things in the freezer, but even so, it just took some imagination and get out of ones head the idea that each meal has to be something 'special'. Home cooked, cheap food is always special, just because tv chefs like us to think we should be eating bloody pheasant croissants or cod roe curry doesn't mean we have to.
So the challenge is set, let's see if I can achieve it.
The irony is that because I have structured my week, I will probably end up eating even better than usual.

Beautiful weather today, done an hour and half gardening and that on top of the 2 hours I did yesterday has tidied it all up no end. I believe the rest of this week will be wet, so it was good to get it done today.

New purchase

I have been thinking about one of these for a very long time as it is recommended by so many of you, so I went to Argos today and got myself a Mini Oven. Seems perfect for heating a meal for one without wanting to put the big oven on. It was £40 but I had a £10 voucher from someone, so it cost me £30. I had a perfect spot for it above my large oven too.

So I tried it tonight, was a little worried that it might not come up to par, but no need to fear, I waited 5 minutes to heat up, but it was hot before that and I chopped up some potatoes to make wedges and put in a chicken breast. They were cooked beautifully and in slightly less time than the big oven. The power is 1300 as opposed to my large oven which is 2000 so it is uses about 40% less electricity which is good news. So now, when I am making a small meal just for me there is no need to wait for the big oven to heat up and to waste all that space. Hopefully the money I shelled out for the mini oven will come back to me in money I will save by using it.
I will look forward to trying other stuff in it now.

Things are finally happening in the garden

There has been a huge amount of activity suddenly in my garden in the last few day. Good job, it has a lot of catching up to do.

I can almost here the rhubarb grow. I must admit that not having touched it at all last year has clearly made it's root system good and strong. It is well on and has grown every time I look at it.

The 4 inch stem and leaves on this clematis have grown in the last 36 hours.

These Alliums have suddenly taken off. On the right are the gigantic ones and on the left, well another sort, can't remember what now, haha.

Even these delphiniums are coming through. I am most pleased about these, because I found them at the end of last summer hidden under a tree, doing nothing because they were in full shade and were just a tangle of leaves. I transplanted the roots and had no idea whether they would survive. And here they are.

But there is one thing that makes me sad and that is my complete inability to grow rosemary. Yes, this herb which is usually hailed as a herb that 'anyone can grow' seems to hate me. Every rosemary I have ever had has died and yet I don't think that I do anything particularly bad to it. This one is no exception. I hold out a little hope that it may return to life, but it really does look dead.

So to cheer myself up I made a batch of Paul Hollywood's savoury scones. Ironically they are supposed to be cheese and rosemary scones but I replaced the rosemary and made them cheese and chilli scones. Have to say, I love this recipe, it really did take seconds to make and they are the nicest savoury scones I have ever tasted.

That time of year again *big sigh*

My precious seedlings are dispersed to willing (or forced) friends and family, my house has been cleaned, my bags are packed and my heart is heavy. Yes, I am off to London. 4 weeks of rehearsal and 4 weeks of home sickness. I drive down there this evening ready to start Barber of Seville tomorrow morning. Hopefully 4 weeks will fly by? I then have 3 and a half weeks at home and then another 4 weeks of rehearsal through May for Traviata. I am sad that I will miss some of the wonderful changes that will happen in the garden over this time but I am really hoping to get back some weekends this time, if not all - that is why I decided to drive, so that I can be spontaneous and set off driving home at 3 in the morning if I feel like it or if time allows. I can't do what I did last year and be tied to British rail and megabus and it's nightmare prices and timetable peak time hassles.

For once being frugal will have to take a back seat, petrol costs will be huge this month, but for my own sanity and peace of mind it will have to be or I'll go crazy.

On the subject of being frugal, I had a funny experience when putting in my present metre reading to NPower. I put in the gas reading and got an immediate message back saying that it was an 'inplausable reading' because I hadn't used enough. It made me double check, yes I was right - 98 units of gas in the last 4 months. Maybe NPower is not used to a frugal user. Pretty good going I reckon. My combined gas and electricity bill continue to be £32 a month so I am doing something right as the rest of the country seem to have extortionate bills. I used a lot of electricity by my reckoning though - probably from having the oven on - this will reduce over summer.

Well I don't know when I will be posting next, bare with me. I will post if I am back at the weekend or if I get an opportunity and I will try my best to keep up with your blogs. Keep well, one and all.

bye for now.

DanX

Pretty nice bread and butter pud

Making my own bread, when there is just me can mean that I get an excess. I usually freezer any that is going stale and then at a later stage, when I have enough, bake it in a really really low oven and then put it through a processor as bread crumbs (considering I just saw a tiny pack of breadcrumbs in the supermarket priced at £1.99 I can't quite believe that anyone would pay that ever!).
However, I was watching the Mary Berry story on tv the other day and I thought that I would have a go at bread and butter pudding. I a, usually fairly disappointed with a bread and butter pudding but I now know that it was because I was given a 'bad' one in the past. This was delicious, frugal and really nice. I used margerine rather than butter - simply because I had some and was short of butter at that moment, and I didn't use cream, again, because i didn't have any and also, using semi skimmed milk instead makes it healthier. Even without these 'luxeries' it was delicious.

Just before it went in the oven, seemed to neglect to take an 'after' pic.

Mary Berry's bread and butter pudding.

Ingredients

• 150g/5oz mixed sultanas and raisins
• 75g/3oz caster sugar
• (1 lemon or orange, finely grated zest) I didn't bother because I didn't have any.
• ½ tsp mixed spice
• 8 thin slices white bread, crusts removed
• 100g/4oz butter, melted Margering was fine.

For the custard

• 2 free-range eggs
• 300ml/½ pint double cream 300ml of extra milk instead.
• 150ml/¼ pint milk
• 2 tbsp demerara sugar

Preparation method

1.     You will need an ovenproof dish about 2½-3 pint/1.4-1.7 litres volume (18 x 23 x 5 cm/7 x 9 x 2 in).

2.     Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and use some of the melted butter to grease the dish.

3.     Combine the dried fruit, sugar, lemon zest and spice together in a bowl and toss to mix well.

4.     Cut each bread slice into three strips. Take sufficient slices to cover the base of the dish and dip one side of each one in melted butter. Lay them in the dish, buttered-side down. Sprinkle with half the dried fruit mixture. Repeat the layering, laying the bread strips buttered-side up. Lay the third and final layer of bread strips on top, buttered-side up.

5.     For the custard, beat together the eggs, cream and milk in a bowl and pour it over the pudding. Sprinkle with demerara sugar, and then leave to stand for about one hour if time allows.

6.     Bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until the top is golden-brown and crisp and the pudding slightly puffed up. Serve hot, or there are some who insist that it is delicious cold!

Vegetable Growing 2013.

I think a lot of us in Britain can quite safely say that 2012 was not a good year for vegetable growing. It was rather disheartening to nurture seedlings and then plants, watch them grow their first shoots and finally produce little or no edible content at all. It wasn't all bad, I had successful potatoes and my apple tree and rhubarb took nicely so that I will hopefully have something from them soon, fingers crossed. but tomatoes were disastrous giving me only about 20 tomatoes from 8 plants, my cucumbers all died before they grew a single one and even my rosemary looks like it lost the will to live.

So onward and upward, 2013 is another year and we can only hope that the weather is a bit better and the vegetables actually grow.

2012 was always going to be a bit hit and miss for me, to be fair. I had only just moved in to this garden when I should have been starting seedlings off and the garden needed tons doing to it before I could get stuff in the ground.
Now I have a raised bed solely for veg growing and plenty of mixed beds that have been inundated with organic matter, manure, soil improver etc. All this will hopefully give my veg a better chance.

So I have been browsing the catalogues that I get regularly. I like Suttons, Mr Fothergills and Parkers and there is no pleasure like browsing the various sections on a cold winters night. It is easy, however, to get swayed by the lovely pictures of veg and to want to grow everything, so this week I got my act together and made a list of what I actually want to grow and eat this year. The is no point at all in growing stuff that you never actually eat, so that gets rid of a certain amount. Also, when space is a premium, I only really want to grow stuff that is pricey to buy in the shops, so I am going for stuff that I enjoy eating but can be expensive to buy. I am sure home grown carrots are delicious, but I haven't got room to grow many and after all a massive bag is less than a pound.

In the end I have whittled my list down to:

Vegetables

Spring onions
Tomatoes
Cabbage
Leeks
Squash
Lettuce
Garlic
Potatoes
Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Runner beans

Fruit

Apples (eventually, may get one or two this year)
Raspberries
Strawberries
Gooseberries
Red and black currants
Rhubarb

I am going to divide my raised beds into sections - a bit like square foot gardening, but because of the dimensions of the bed the sizes may be slightly different. At the moment in the raised bed are some rather sad looking cabbages, that have been in there for an eternity. By the time other things want planting out I will eat what I can from the cabbages and ditch the rest as a poor job. I will try and get the spring onions, leeks, squash and more broccoli into there, and some cabbage if I can. In pots or growbags I will grow my tomatoes and I have some old windowboxes that will be perfect for the lettuce. I had good success with potatoes in potato bags last year so will try that again and everything else will go where it can.

On top of all of this veg I will plant up all those remnants of seeds I have from last year, I have a whole load that were not quite used up and which I carefully stored. Anything that comes from them will be a bonus, there are things like radish and beetroot among other things.

With the exception of raspberry canes, all the other fruit is already planted from last year so we will see what happens there.

If all of the above grow successfully I will be a happy man, but as half the pleasure is in the eating and the other half is in the growing, I will enjoy myself whatever comes of it all.

Making yoghurt

My sister gave me a wonderful and very thoughtful Christmas present this year, a yoghurt maker. Now I have made yoghurt lots of times before with various results. The method I used most often was to put the milk/yoghurt mixture in a flask for a few hours to maintain the temperature required. The downside of this method was that it was a little bit hit and miss. Sometimes it would come out very well, but other times I would end up with a grainy mixture that looked a little curdled and other times it would separate too much, leaving me a lot of buttermilk and not so much yoghurt. The other downside was that the flask got very smelly. Hard to clean out a flask with a small opening that has contained yoghurt.

Well this yoghurt maker that I was given is very simple. It works on the same principle as a slow cooker, maintaining a very low but constant temperature while the yoghurt is made. It is cheap to run, even cheaper than a slow cooker and the yoghurt it made was absolutely perfect.

The principle is an easy one. 2 teaspoons of live yoghurt and a litre of milk. I always use UHT milk because it saves the hassle of having to boil and sterilise ordinary milk. Put the milk and yoghurt in the maker, turn it on and in 8 hours lovely creamy yoghurt. It is really really good, very perfect.

I am sure it is possible to achieve equally good results without it, but I must admit, I sort of wandered away from making yoghurt because my results before were so hit and miss. This makes life much easier. 

And the best bit? 2 teaspoons of this yoghurt will go to make another litre of the stuff when I am running low. Eternal, cheap yoghurt if I organise myself. This will do breakfast every day and I am going to look up other things I can do with it now that I have such a large, cheap supply (about 80p for a litre of yoghurt)

It turns out that Nigella has nothing to worry about.

I do enjoy my cooking and trying new things and then sharing the yummy results with you here on my blog, but don't let that make you think that things always run quite so smoothly in my kitchen! Sometimes I have disasters!!!!!!!

Yesterday I thought that I would make a homity pie for the first time, this is a very frugal dish with onions and potatoes and cheese and in principle should be delicious.

NOT SO IN MY CASE.

I really did a very poor job of it, even though I followed the recipe carefully. The pastry is not that nice (as you know, pastry is not my strong suit), the potatoes were overcooked which meant that they are more of a mush (that's mush, not mash, mash would be an improvement) and the whole thing has a rather bland flavour and unpleasant consistency.

And do you know what is the worst thing:

I made two of them!

I actually just want to throw them away, but that really goes against the grain. I have frozen the little one and half of the big one (it will lurk at the bottom of the freezer now in the hope that the pie fairy will go in there and transform it into something delicious) and I will eat the remaining unfrozen part this weekend. What a prospect. I'm thinking that maybe with some chips and SMOTHERED in gravy, it might improve slightly.

Anyone any other suggestions to make this unappetising feast better?

Laundry liquid - the results

Well to say that I am thrilled is an understatement  It is not every 39 year old man that get's excited that home made laundry liquid actually works, but this one really does! Makes me a bit odd but who cares.
So I have tried it with first rate results. It makes the clothes come out fresh and clean and I have even tried it on a cold wash with excellent results of fresh clean clothes, no residue.
I used about an American cup size of liquid for a wash, maybe I could use less, I will experiment  but so far so good. I also used a small amount of white vinegar with it in the fabric conditioner section.
No more shop bought washing powder/liquid for me, and I can't really say why it has taken me so long to discover this in the first place!

Frugal laundry care

Hi folks, I thought I would get back to basics with a few more frugal tips.
Today I made laundry liquid for the first time. I have been meaning to do this for ages, but it has taken me a while to locate the ingredients.
I basically used the recipe at Sarina's Allsorts and I trust her judgement implicitly, not least, because she works for a dry cleaners and knows her clean clothes!
There are just three ingredients:

A bar of castille soap
1/2 a cup of soda crystals
1/2 a cup of borax.

Now borax was rather difficult for me to get, for the simple reason, that it is not supposed to be on sale in this country. So I made do with Borax substitute, which is supposed to do exactly the same thing.

So here is the method.

Grate the soap into a pan and add a litre of water. Heat gently stirring while the soap is dissolved. When it is fully dissolved add half a cup of soda crystals and half a cup of borax or borax substitute and stir it all up until fully dissolved.

 Pour into a bucket and add 4 litres of water.

Whisk it up thoroughly together (or use a stick blender if you have one) and then decant into suitable containers. Leave a good bit of the space in the top of the containers so you can shake it up before use as it has a tendency to ‘settle’.

This whole process took me no time at all and made 5 litres of laundry liquid. It will last a very long time and has cost me so little money, probably about 60p. I have plenty left of all the ingredients to make more time and time again, so this is one of the most frugal recipes I have come across.

Sarina reckons to use about one American cup load in a full wash so I will experiment a bit with it over the next few washes and let you know how I get on.

As I say, I trust Sarina’s judgement on cleaning clothes and I know that it will be kinder to clothes, kinder to skin and kinder to the environment. Good stuff all around.

I already use white vinegar as a conditioner in the wash and may just add some drops of essential oil for a nice scent too.

Bulk cooking and a haircut.

Yesterday was cold and blustery and not much of a day for going out. However, I was beginning to resemble caveman and gave myself a scare when I looked in the mirror.

So I took myself off to the Barbers. Poor woman, there have been roadworks outside her shop for 3 months and she is hugely losing business, there is nowhere to park so she says she has lost lots of her pensioners and is now having to dip into her savings. It really isn't fair, particularly as when I left, the men were all either having a cuppa or picking their nose.

Anyway, one severe haircut later and I am back to my former beauty and feel ready to go out again:

Last night I had a bulk cooking session. I was inspired by Froogs in her post here, just how far she makes her minced beef stretch. I thought, if she can do it, so can I.

I had slightly more beef to play with as I had bought a 645gm pack while it was reduced in ASDA the other day. Can't remember what I paid but I think it was just over £2 I decided to use half to make a bolognaise and half to make a meat and potato pie.

Got them both started on the stove but then once the bolognaise was all browned and bubbling I transfered it to my slow cooker.

I got 6 good sized portions out of this, 5 of which are now in the freezer and one in the fridge to be eaten over the next few days. When my brother was over this weekend he had brought with him a bottle of red wine, so I used what was left in the sauce to make it rich, tastes good.

The second half was used to make a meat and potato pie, from my granny's old recipe, always a favourite with me.

I am seriously not the best pastry maker. This is not too bad for me, but my rolling out leaves a lot to be desired. The final result is that the pastry tore in the oven slightly and it looks a real sight. But who cares, it tasted very good and I am slowly improving at it.

I hadn't judged the pastry quantity very well and had some left over. Rolled it out to see how much and found it would fit this case:

So I decided on a quick quiche as the oven would be on for the pie anyway. Used lots of store cupboard bits and bobs, a tin of tuna and some olives, some cheese, 3 eggs and some milk (didn't have cream) and some onions which I cooked slowly until they were a caramel colour.

This will do a lunch or 3 (depending on my greed)

I love baking something off the cuff with some leftovers like this. I had no intention of making a quiche when I started cooking, but for very little money I have a few lunches sorted.

Bulk cooking is definitely the way to make things stretch. In the past I would probably have used all the mince for one thing and not stretched it out with veg and other things quite so much, but instead I have 9 meals out of one pack of mince and 3 meals out of some leftover pastry. I don't know the cost, because I am rubbish at adding up the cost of all the different bits and pieces, but as I didn't need to go out and buy one single thing for all of this, it was all storecupboard ingredients, I know it was a very cheap set of 12 meals.

Elderflower Champagne

I have made elderflower cordial for years now, this is the recipe I use and I urge people to try it, because it is wonderful stuff and lasts right through to next elderflower season if you make enough of it.

For a change, this year, I have made elderflower champagne.

There is a bewildering amount of differing recipes out there so I made a sort of version based on two different ones I found and will know the results in a fortnight.

Here is basically what I did.

Take 7 litres of water and stir in 1.25 k of sugar. Heat the water slightly to help dissolve the sugar completely into there. Now you add your elderflower heads. The amount seems to depend on how much elderflower flavour you want, so I added about 10 good large heads of it, but more and less seems acceptable.

Add the zest and juice of 2 lemons (I zested then squeezed the lot in, and threw the squeezed lemons in whole as well and 2 - 4 tbsp of cider vinegar (although white wine vinegar is used alternatively if you want). Then cover with a cloth and leave for 2 to 3 days. If you don't think that it is fermenting after a couple of days then you can add a small pinch of ordinary bread yeast.

I am now at this stage, having done it 3 days ago. Today I will strain the liquid through muslin and then bottle it up. Left for a couple of weeks now it should make fizz and then I is ready to drink, will tell you what the results are.

I have never brewed anything before (unless you count the 40 litres of bitter I secretly brewed in my wardrobe when I was 15 - wonder if my mum ever knew?) so am looking forward to the results of this very simple process. Sounds just the thing for a hot summers day (if we ever have one).