The Reckoning

January was a long month and had some unexpected expenses ! The most costly were tree surgery and a parking ticket, altogether these cost us over £400, since neither counted as emergency spending that fund was left untouched, so they had to be met out of current income. As I spent all our saving from 2017 paying for a trip to Norway in the Summer, before I knew about the additional spending, there were a lot of pennies to be squeezed ! Thankfully we managed it and finished the month with a bit under £100 to spare. We put off some expenses until February, like new printer cartridges and paper and MrShoestring and USAShoestring had very frugal birthdays !

We still managed to have fun, with a free trip to the cinema for four of us using gift vouchers from the Nielsen shopping panel and a nice birthday supper saved from the special things that came in the two Christmas hampers we received. I was much better at charging for expenses for the work we do and claimed petrol money. We also generated some cash for the gift account by selling old books and DVDs to Ziffit and musicMagpie. However, I think we are now well and truly decluttered !

MasterShoestring still needs new shoes and the food budget for the rest of us will have to shrink next month to take account of his increasing appetite for school lunches ! However, he is now so tall that he fits in men's clothing which should mean that any clothes bought this year last a bit longer than a few months !

Roll on a nice short month !

A Nice Freebie

The March edition of "Kitchen Garden" magazine arrived in the post today and just as I had hoped, it arrived with 3 free packets of seeds. Since the magazine was also free with Tesco Clubcard points this is definitely a 'win' ! 

The tomato seeds were the 'Mamande' variety which I have never grown, so that will be great to try. I've already sprouted some tomato seeds but they are a bit leggy so as soon as the second leaves start to appear I'll re-pot them much deeper in the soil so that I get stronger plants.

I also got courgette seeds which were the "Zucchini" variety which I grew last year and was very pleased with as they were heavy croppers.

Finally, the last packet of seeds were for celeriac, which we don't like, so I'll give those away or swap them with someone.

The seeds were all from Kings Seeds and would have cost £4.35 plus the postage if I had bought them, so that is quite a good freebie !

I seem to have been talking about magazines quite a bit lately and I do love reading them, so over the weekend I had another go at accessing the magazines available via the local library. After a few goes at getting a password I got the site to work and now have access to over 130 magazines, they were quick to download too, which had been a problem when I tried the service previously. I was delighted and can see that I shall be using fewer Tesco points to purchase subscriptions in the future !

January Challenge 4

The final update on our grocery challenge for this month and I have good news ! The final total, including school lunches is just under £115 ! That means we saved £55 on the normal budget of £170, which will definitely help to fill the dent made by the Boxing Day parking ticket !

In fact we still have quite a bit of food in the freezer, especially fruit and vegetables from the garden, so I've made a menu plan for February where I also hope to save some money in the grocery category of the budget. I'm not sure whether it will be as much as £55, but I'm certainly going to give it a try !

Overall, we spent just over £30 on school lunches, which means that the total for the rest of us comes down to just under £85 and since this also includes household necessities, such as washing up liquid and toilet paper, I think we did pretty well. However, we have run out of quite a few things, like coffee and syrup, so there will be a bit of stocking up to do and a few substitutions to be made to make sure that things like cheese and oil stretch until Thursday when February begins !

I found it an interesting exercise to try and use recipes where we used up things we had and I don't think before I tried the challenge I would have thought that it was possible to get the budget any lower for the 4 of us and still stay healthy, but we did it !

If you are interested in on-going challenges there are a couple of interesting blogs who are trying to keep the grocery spending really low all year, I have found them very inspiring this month. The first is:-

A Challenging Year on a Welsh Hillside

http://achallengingyearonawelshhillside.blogspot.co.uk

and the second is :-

The 1940s Experiment

https://the1940sexperiment.com

Now, to go and reckon up the rest of this month's spending !

LandScape Magazine

I used some of my Tesco vouchers from November to get a subscription to this magazine. I was rather tired of all the fashion, beauty and interior design features that you find in other magazines and this has lots of good reading and plenty of lovely photographs. It is also written in such a way that you could easily keep the issues and read them again another year. One of the drawbacks with the magazine was that it was only published every other month, but I didn't mind has it has a lot of content and far fewer adverts than some other magazines.

However, when the new issue popped through the letterbox yesterday it came with an explanation that since the magazine has been so successful it is now going to be published monthly and I should get some extra issues per year ! The letter did go on to say that if you were paying by direct debit they would be increasing the price to pay for the extra issues but since I got an annual subscription I think I might get all the extra issues for free ! I certainly hope so ! That would be a bargain !

RSPB Garden Watch

Today we are looking forward to taking an hour in front of the sitting room windows and watching the birds in the garden.

The Big Garden Birdwatch is taking place 27th-29th January and all you have to do is record the species you see in your garden over your chosen hour. You can submit the results at rspb.org.uk/birdwatch and it helps the charity keep tabs on what is happening with our native bird species. It has been going on for over 40 years and means that we are now aware that sparrows are in decline and we should do what we can to help them survive, such as not replacing hedging with fences.

We are very fortunate here, as we are right beside set-aside farmland and native beech woods so we get to see a lot of birds that are not on the spotter sheet for the general survey. Birds such as red kites and spotted woodpeckers. We also get pigeons and magpies just like everyone else, but on these dark January evenings there is something quite thrilling about seeing a tawny owl perched on your gatepost, waiting for a mouse !

Birdwatching is a great hobby and very frugal, so why not give it a go this weekend and pick an hour to join the birdwatch ?

Frugal Friday

So I'm not sure if we will squeak through the month without dipping into savings but we certainly are trying ! This week I got 3 free magazines and a local newspaper at the supermarket where I spent just over £11 for the week. I got three  yellow-stickered turkey legs for the freezer and put them away for meals in February.

I made breadcrumbs from old bread and vegetable stock from vegetable peelings, a great saving from something that would otherwise be thrown away. I was also given some Marks and Spencer's money off coupons which I'm not sure that I will spend but which MissShoestring might find useful when she gets a flat.

I went to the library and instead of limiting myself to 5 books a week went and picked up everything I liked the look of and brought home 9 books and 2 magazines. I also ordered 2 books, paying 60p for each reservation rather than buying the book, so I can see if I like them first.

I made tortillas, yoghurt, pancakes, quiche, cake, bread, pasta bake and apple crumble from scratch and bought petrol on the way home from work as it is 3p a litre cheaper near work than it is near home ! I have never understood how petrol prices can vary so much within a radius of 10 miles, but they do !

I washed out a plastic bag for re-use, saved foil for re-use and got a free copy of "Moneywise" magazine. I read about a special offer with 'musicMagpie' on MoneySavingExpert and decluttered some workout videos in exchange for cash for the gift account.

We lost a very old apple tree in the storm this week so MrShoestring is going to cut up what is left for logs for next year, so it looks like we are starting a free log pile for 2019 already !

I hope you are stretching the money into the 5th January week !

Using Music Magpie

I saw that the moneysaving expert website was advertising a code to get an extra £5 on your trade if you traded in some old DVDs etc. with musicMagpie so I thought that I would see what they would give me for some old workout DVDs which ziffit would not take. I was very surprised to find that I could get well over £25 for them, that would help the gift account very nicely ! So I packaged them up and sent them off at the closest post office.

Here's what you have to do. It's not quite as straightforward as Ziffit as there are more options for posting your parcel and if you want to use the moneysaving expert code, which is MSEJAN5 then you have to remember to enter that at the basket before you put in all the codes for your items. I did not know this to start with and entered all the items and when I entered the code they all disappeared and I had to start again ! So enter the code if you want to use it, I think that it might take the money off the prices they give you for the items so you might not want to ! Then enter all the codes for your items and see if they are accepted. When you are ready to complete the trade enter the details of how you want to be paid and choose an option to deliver your parcel, you can have a label delivered to you by post or email. Then send your items off and see if you get the money you were promised !

I haven't been paid yet as I only sent the parcel off yesterday, so we shall see, getting something for items that were just collecting dust on a shelf would be good !

Carrot Cake

We still have quite a few carrots left from all those bargains around Christmas time, they are getting past their best so here is another delicious way to use them up.

6oz carrots

2 eggs

4oz sugar

3 fl oz oil

4oz self-raising flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 oz raisins

Grease and line a 7'' square tin. Grate the carrots. Whisk the eggs ad sugar together and then whisk in the oil slowly. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until combined. Put the mixture into the tin and spread evenly. Bake at 190C for 20-25 minutes. Cool on a wire tray and ice if you wish. Traditionally people use cream cheese icing but we don't like that and find a plain water icing flavoured with orange is a nice, lighter alternative. Enjoy !

Moneywise Magazine

I sent off for a free copy of this magazine and the February edition arrived in the post today. We used to subscribe using our Tesco vouchers, so we got it for free but I discontinued it last year as I found the advice too vague and not sufficiently focussed on actually saving money. Sending off for the trial edition was so I could have a look and see if it was worth getting a free subscription again !

So first of all the magazine has had a design revamp so that makes it easy to read but it is still full of adverts for financial products that are not that easy to understand, Fidelity China Special Situations anyone ? Now we do invest with Fidelity, as they have very low charges, but I don't think that this is their easiest to understand fund ! However, there is a good section in the magazine called 'Best Buys' which could be helpful to MissShoestring as this month it is all about finding a good mortgage deal.

An article I thought was a bit misleading was the one about taking volunteer trips once you are retired. One of our main aims in retiring early is to be free to do more volunteering but the cheapest trip featured in this article costs £895 ! I think the articles should really have been called 'Going on very expensive long-haul trips and paying to be allowed to volunteer'.

To counterbalance that there is quite a good opinion piece by Jasmine Birtles of 'money magpie' fame which talks about showing appreciation to the special people in your life all year round not just on commercial holidays such as Valentine's Day.

Is 'Moneywise' magazine good value for money ? Yes, if you can get it for free, I would not pay the £3.95 cover price as a great deal of the information inside is available at free sites such as 'Moneysaving Expert' and 'Motley Fool'. If you need a little reminder to go and get a few financial things sorted, such as having your savings in the place where they earn the most interest it can be a good read. It also runs good basic articles about real-life finances such as the one in the magazine on renting a flat. So, will I be subscribing again, possibly, if I can do it for free !

If you are interested in having a look at the magazine yourself then here is the link to get a free copy :-

https://www.moneywise.co.uk/free-copy

January Challenge 3

So far the food spend for the month stands at £94.88, this week that includes another £10 top up for MasterShoestring's lunch account and £11.86 at the supermarket. MasterShoestring is probably going to need another couple of top ups for the lunch account as he is eating more than £10 of food a week and there will be another small shop on Friday 26th January to see us through until the start of February on the following Thursday. I'm still hoping that we might squeak through January on £120 for the month !

I did spend slightly more than I was planning to at the supermarket this week as I found 3 very large turkey drumsticks reduced to £1.85 each from £2.40. They weigh around 1kg each and with a few side dishes will make very nice Sunday lunches in February, so I put a few other items back and went just over the £10 I had planned in order to get them for the freezer. Apart from that I only bought milk, fruit and some wheat biscuits for breakfast so was pretty frugal.

Over this past week we ate egg and bacon pie, pasta bake, leftover curry, soup and bread and some more curry on Friday ! I made a cake and a crumble which lasted all week as MrShoestring is losing a bit of weight he put on over the past few months and says that it is easier to stay away from puddings altogether rather than have a small helping ! He lost 5lbs this week so getting serious is helping ! Smaller helpings should also mean we have plenty of food left to the end of the month. The big unknown is how many times MissShoestring will be home for supper ! Still, if we have leftovers they can go in the freezer for another time !

How are you getting on with your New Year challenges ?

Ziffit Offer

If all that talk of sorting photographs and 'Swedish Death Cleaning' has got you in the mood for a bit of decluttering then Ziffit have a special offer you might be interested in. They are offering an extra 15% on the prices they pay fro old books and CDs if you trade with them before midnight tomorrow.

The code you need is :-

JANUARY15

I have been filling up the gift account by sorting out a few books we no longer need and this month so far have posted off 4 parcels and got a total of £54.85 which is very good for almost no work and was a great help with buying things for next Christmas in the sales. So do take advantage of the code this weekend if you have been thinking about clearing out a bookshelf or two !

What to do with all the photographs ?

Another fun way to spend a Saturday evening in January is to look through all the photos from the previous year. We gather them all together, either in print form or electronically and the first thing we do is get rid of the ones that are 'no good'. The 'no good' ones are either deleted or thrown away and then the others are sorted into two piles, ones we would like to keep and ones we can give away in the form of cards or another sort of photo gift.

Of course, all of this takes a LOONG time as there is much remembering of events and good natured teasing about photos that did not quite turn out as expected. After all the sorting the pictures are either stored in an album or sent off for printing so they can be stored in an album. The 'gift' pictures are stored away, ready for crafting though the year.

There is a new book out called " The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning' which is all about going through your possessions regularly so that your heirs won't have to and it has a whole chapter devoted to photographs. I think our annual look through is a good idea and a lot of fun, so it is nice to know that  we're also making less work for our 'heirs' !

Frugal Friday

One of the ways I saved this week was to telephone a venue before going to visit and saved petrol and time by discovering then and there that it wasn't suitable. I also crossed off a few things which were on the shopping list, such as parcel tape and printer cartridges, which can easily wait until next month.

I also used vinegar as a toilet cleaner so I wouldn't have to buy any and it worked really well. I was very pleased to discover a copy of "Kitchen in the Hills' on eBid for only a pound so I snapped it up quickly and also got some free ebooks and some from the library, so plenty of good stuff to read this week !

I collected the new microwave instead of paying delivery charges and it has already proved its worth in that it has enabled us to eat up all the leftovers rather than throwing them away or forgetting about them. We mended the driveway with the neighbours and re-potted the celery plants we had been growing from the ends of ones we had bought at the supermarket. The first one I planted now has some thin stalks of celery, so it does work.

I made yoghurt, quiche, soup, bread, pasta bake and a blackberry and apple pie as well as baked potatoes and a curry in the slow cooker. I planted some tomato seeds. getting ready for Spring and sprouted some cress and broccoli seeds for use as 'greens' at the moment.

We got a £5 Amazon voucher from Swagbucks and used it to buy another book for the train for MrShoestring and a craft book for me, it's not often we manage to get 2 books so that was great !

MasterShoestring is eating a lot of food for school lunches so I'm raising the amount I put on the account each week. I thought that maybe he was buying food for friends but he said he wasn't and I guess he is a 'man' size now and still growing ! So that will make saving on the grocery budget a real challenge next week. Fingers crossed that with the help of " Kitchen in the Hills. A Hovel Cookbook" I can do it !

Another Cookery Book

When I was in Poundland the other day I saw this book, brand new and the companion to Gill's earlier book :-

I had the first book a few years ago but eventually got rid of it as I knew most of the recipes off by heart so thought it would be better off in a new home.

I hadn't seen the second book, so thought that for £1 it was worth taking a chance on. It contains an interesting mix of recipes from very frugal such as Rice and Lentils to full-blown dinner party menus. 

The book starts with a whole section about how to make sure you have everything you need in your kitchen to be a good home cook, like herbs and spices and a basic list of equipment. It is then arranged into six main sections with the last one probably being the most useful as it is six weeks' worth of main dinner menus together with a shopping list for them. The other sections include basic recipes and ideas for leftovers as well recipes for puddings and children's favourites.

Overall I think the recipes are a bit fancier than the earlier book, for instance there are recipes for Calf's Liver in Sherry Sauce and Asparagus Quiche alongside the well-loved favourites of Vegetable Moussaka and Chicken Nuggets.

I'm not sure whether the book will pass my 'ten recipes' test so that I keep it long term but I've certainly got a few recipes earmarked to try, especially the Felafel made from dried chickpeas with no soaking. Overall, I think trying a few recipes from here will be a good way to shake myself out of a bit of a cooking rut and who knows, we may discover a few, new favourites !

Have you got a favourite new cooker book ?

Banana Pancakes

MasterShoestring loves pancakes for breakfast, at the moment he has them nearly every day ! It is a quick and cheap breakfast which keeps him going until the next snack ! This variation is very tasty and a good way of using up bananas which are past their best !

2 cups self raising flour

1/4 cup sugar

2 blackened bananas

2 eggs

11/2 cups milk

Preheat some oil in your frying pan and whilst it is reaching frying temperature mash the bananas in a bowl and then add all the other ingredients and whisk together. Don't overbeat as this makes tough pancakes. As soon as the pan is smoking hot turn it down a bit and pour a half ladle full of mixture into the middle of the pan. Turn that pancake over with a spatula as soon as it is solid. Once the other side is cooked use the spatula to slide it onto a plate and place silver foil over it to keep warm. Fry all the mixture into pancakes, adding oil to the pan when needed. Then share out the stack for breakfast or in the case of a teenage boy eat it all yourself with the addition of syrup or icing sugar !

Another Frugal Gadget

MrShoestring got one of these for Christmas. it's a portable tyre pressure indicator so he doesn't need to go to the garage to check the tyre pressure on the car. This is frugal in a number of ways, it saves us driving on under-inflated tyres which increases fuel consumption and it saves us driving on over-inflated tyres which can lead to blow outs.

A long time ago, before we were married, I drove a Triumph sports car and whilst we were out one day I over-inflated the tyres by accident, one of the tyres blew out before I was a mile away from the garage and the spare was a bit dodgy, so that was the end of our day out. A little boy, around 9 years old, came out of one of the nearby houses and was a great help changing the tyre ! I've often wondered if he became a mechanic.

In all the snow just before Christmas we did let out some of the air in the tyres, just to get a bit more traction on the drive. You are not supposed to do this but it does work in a pinch and getting the car down the drive was certainly a bit easier. However, as soon as the snow was gone the tyres needed pumped up again. At all the local garages you have to pay for air, around 50-60p and MrShoestring often does not have the right change on him when he remembers to check the tyre pressures. So with this little gadget he can check at home and then decide whether or not to visit the garage. We also have an electric pump at home so now with the indicator we can sort the pressures at home.

The indicator cost well under ten pounds, so a few uses and it will have paid for itself ! Well worth having and a useful present for any car driver !

January Challenge 2

This week we only spent £10.01 on groceries and £10 on topping up MasterShoestring's lunch account. So, at present the grocery spend for the month is at £73.02 with 2 weeks and 3 days to go. MasterShoestring is definitely eating more at lunch and I don't won't to have to tell him to eat less as he is very slim already ! So I'm going to budget to spend around £10 a week for the following weeks as well and that way we should still come in well under budget !

This week I checked prices on MySupermarket.com and worked out whether it was worth paying the petrol money to visit Aldi. This week it would have cost money as Tesco was able to match prices on some things, like 69p for rye crisp breads and 49p for tomatoes so I went there as it is much closer. We needed parcel tape but I decided that I wasn't going to be posting anymore parcels this month and I can wait until I am in the big town and then get it at a pound shop. This freed up enough money to buy dried yeast and rye crisp breads. I also got bananas, fruit for lunches, tomatoes, live yoghurt and some milk. We didn't need anything else and there were no really cheap yellow-stickered bargains so I stuck to the list.

I got an email from Approved Foods trying to tempt me back again, saying that I could have free delivery. However, when I went to the website you had to spend £55 to qualify, since that is not in the budget it was an easy decision to click away again. I think I've said before that I do not think that Approved Foods are the bargain they once were and this sort of promotion does nothing to convince me to try them again !

Working with Others

We live down a gravel track which needs topping up with stones regularly. We've recently agreed with the neighbours that we will buy some stones together this month but before we do that all the potholes need smoothing out. Doing this means that we won't have to buy so many stones !

So yesterday and today everybody who could was out on the track with shovels, pickaxes, rakes, wheelbarrows and spades digging out the stones which had become impacted along the edges of the potholes. Once the stones were dug out then they were used to start filling in the potholes.

Working together we were able to do such a good job that I don't think we will have to order very many stones at all. So, a nice way to catch up with the neighbours and a way of saving money together!

Just as well that we might save some money on the stones as the microwave died yesterday ! We don't use it very much, but it is so useful for re-heating meals when people come in at odd times, for instance when MissShoestring is late. I've ordered a new one, so we get a guarantee and it was reduced from £39 to £32 at Asda. I don't have to pay delivery charges as I'll collect it tomorrow on the way home from a job ! However, January is turning into a bit of an expensive month !

Movie Night

One of our other favourite ways to spend a January Saturday night is to have an 'at-home' movie night. We will pop our own popcorn, which is great fun and then settle down under some blankets on the sofa to watch either an old favourite or something new.

Old favourites include all the 'Back to the Future' films for the boys and all the episodes of 'Dad's Army' for everyone else. MissShoestring likes light romantic comedies and everyone likes a good action movie, even if the story is a bit predictable.

MissShoestring has a subscription to Netflix and Amazon Prime so whilst she is still at home we are enjoying watching some of what is on offer there. Recently we saw "La-la Land" and "Wonderwoman", both of which were fine for a movie night at home but I'm not sure that I would have been happy if I'd paid to see them ! So not only do we have a good time we also have a chance to critique the film as we're watching, so that's a lot of fun too !

Do you watch films at home ? What are some of your favourites ?

Frugal Friday

Plenty of frugal stuff going on this week but also plenty of spending, what with the tree surgery and an unexpected parking ticket ! So we definitely need to keep on stretching those pennies !

The first thing we did was make sure that every meal was cooked from scratch and when I ran out of one ingredient I substituted it one another to make sure that I did not go shopping more than once a week. We made roasted vegetables, yoghurt, vegetable stock, quiche, pasta bake, pizza, soup and tortillas, as well as bread, a crumble and pancakes. Also, a rather fancy iced sponge to use up the last of the icing from the holidays.

I washed out some plastic bags for re-use, reused foil and started some new celery plants from the ends of old celery, I've got 3 new plants now ! I used a click and collect service for a new pillow for MrShoestring to save the petrol I would have used driving into town for just 1 item.

I went to a free book club and got free magazines and books from the library and online. I got £5 worth of free shopping at Sainsburys using my Nectar points and used up some past their best satsumas and plums by juicing and zesting the satsumas and stewing the plums. They have been frozen and will come in handy for cakes over the next couple of weeks.

I decluttered the bookshelves in the study again and sent off another parcel to Ziffit, so that should mean a few more pounds in the gift spending column once they are accepted. We notified the HMRC that MrShoestring is earning more this year than we expected, so now all the tax credits have stopped. They have said that they will claim back the overpayment from next year's tax credits. I am glad that we told them as soon as we could so the amount we owe isn't any larger !

All in all not a bad week but all the unexpected expenses and changes have made me glad that we know how to pull in the belt a bit as that is definitely what we shall be doing !

Kitchen in the Hills. The Hovel Cookbook.

My copy of "Kitchen in the Hills" arrived from the library and I have very much enjoyed looking through it, so much so that I thought about buying a copy. However, when I had a look at second-hand prices I was horrified, this is clearly a valuable little gem! The most expensive price I saw was £89.99 and the cheapest £10.25, well I know thrifty recipes are a good thing but is the book really worth that much ?

The recipes are all ones that Elizabeth West used when she and her husband were living up at Hafod in Snowdonia. They were on a very tight budget and got used to making the most of what they had, whether that was greens from the hedgerow in Spring, a pig's head or a few crusts of bread, Elizabeth learned to make something tasty from it.

The book is organised into ten sections with the conventional titles of Soup, Puddings etc. and each section is introduced with a couple of pages of observations and comments about their life in a primitive cottage. These little snippets and anecdotes are one of the things I enjoyed most about the book, those and the section entitled Biscuits and Bonk Bars. Bonk bars apparently are what cyclists eat when they are getting too tired to cycle up the next hill ! I think I could make a few of those for when MasterShoestring gets too hungry to wait for the next meal !

There are no pictures in the book so you have no idea about what the dish is supposed to look like and the instructions are full of vague phrases such as 'bake in a moderately hot oven', these are explained at the front of the book in a piece called 'Some Facts and Figures'. Unless you cook with a solid fuel stove it might be a bit tiresome to have to keep turning to the front of the book to discover what temperature the recipe needs.

I think this book would definitely come in handy if you are watching the grocery pennies and if I saw a copy at a cheap price I would buy it, it even tells you how to make Rosehip Syrup. However, at £10.25 a copy I'll enjoy the copy from the library and then use my existing 1940s cookbooks for frugal, tasty recipes !

Parsnip Soup

We've got quite a few of those discount parsnips which MrShoestring picked up before Christmas which are starting to look past their best, this soup is an ideal way to use them up.

8oz parsnips

1 carrot

1 potato

1 onion

1 bay leaf

bit of oil

15fl oz stock

15fl oz water

mace 

pepper

Chop the onion, potato, carrot and parsnips into small pieces and fry in oil to brown. Add the stock, water, bay leaf, shake of mace and some freshly ground pepper and bring to the boil, simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the bay leaf and liquids using that great little hand blender I was singing the virtues of yesterday ! Add salt if you like and serve with croutons or french bread !

Just right for the chilly, grey weather we are having !

In Praise of the Hand Blender

This little hand blender is the cheapest you can get from Tesco. It doesn't do anything fancy, just blends in a pan and I've had it now for over 9 years. It cost under £10, so that makes an annual cost of just over a pound, which has been a bargain.

I use it on average twice a week as it is ideal for blending homemade soup and tomato sauce for pasta or pizza. Before I bought it I had to pour whatever I was making into the big blender and since I was rather impatient and often busy, I cracked a lot of blender goblets by pouring in liquids which were too hot !

All that changed when I bought this little gadget. All I do now is take the pan off the heat and plug in the hand blender. I make sure that it is well immersed in the mixture and then blend away to taste. If I want some chunky bits left I don't blend so long, if I want it completely smooth then I move the blender around until it is all done. Couldn't be easier and no cracked goblets to be seen.

Afterwards it is easy to unplug and rinse under the tap. Then it is dried and popped in the drawer for the next time. This is one little appliance that I wouldn't be without in a frugal kitchen and I think it is much easier and safer to use than a big blender. I only use the big one now for making hummus and felafel, both cold mixtures so the big blender seems to be lasting a bit longer these days !

Which little kitchen appliance has served you well ?

January Challenge 1

So how are we getting on with our first challenge, the one to keep grocery spending as low as possible? At the moment we seem to be doing quite well, I have bought only things we needed, plus a bit of stocking up for next Christmas and have paid for MasterShoestring's lunches. The total at the moment comes to under £50, so that is quite good.

There are two and a half more weeks left in the month when I will have to pay for school lunches, so that makes another £25 and I'll have to pick up a few things that we are running out of, like matches and golden syrup, but I'm hoping that I can maybe keep the total to under £120. This would mean £50 saved compared to what we usually spend.

Last week we ate well, with quite a few leftovers and bargains being featured in the menu. Breakfasts were generic weetabix , pancakes or granola and yoghurt. Lunches were soup and bread, toasties, leftovers or eaten at school and for the dinner menu we had soup, bread and cake, a pasta dish, slow cooker curry and rice. homemade pizza, homemade tortillas and refried beans and a bargain beef joint. All of it was delicious and don't think anybody noticed at all that I'm watching the grocery budget. In fact, we had biscuits to spare to give to the tree surgeon people on Saturday !

I hope that your January is going well too !

A Bit of Excitement !

The high winds recently made us realise that the diseased oak tree at the front was rather vulnerable and so on Friday we decide to get some quotes to see how much it would cost to have it taken down in a planned way rather than have it fall down !

Now is the ideal time to have some tree work done as the leaves are all down and the tree surgeons are quite quiet for work. However, we were not expecting that the four we telephoned on Friday would all be able to come and give a quote that afternoon !

The quotes varied a lot, with the most expensive being twice the price of the one we decide to accept. The cheapest firm would also let us keep all the logs for free and was able to come and do the work the next day ! It was still expensive and our bank account looks several hundred pounds poorer because of it, but after they started to cut down the tree we realised that it had been a good decision as nearly all the parts of the tree were diseased in the middle. It was also very exciting watching them roping up, climbing into the tree and then planning how to cut it all down safely !

There were three men in the crew and it took them just over three and half hours to cut it all down, chip the smaller branches and leave us a huge pile of logs.

Once the logs are seasoned they will certainly go a long way to meeting one Winter's firewood needs so that will be a little bit of a saving ! The other big saving we realised was that we have been able to do this work in a planned way and shop around for a good price. If we had waited until the tree possibly came down in a storm we might have been looking a lot of inconvenience, as it would certainly have blocked the drive and it was also tall enough, that depending on how it fell, it could have damaged the house. Since we don't own a chain saw we would a have had to pay whatever a tree surgeon would have been asking, at a time when there would have been lots of other people looking for help.

So all in all we are glad that we made the call on Friday to have the tree down and are equally glad that savings can pay for it !

Where is Moldova ?

The board game that is rather than the country ! Every Saturday night in January we try and do something fun for entertainment and tonight it's going to be a rematch with this new game that we were given for Christmas.

Everybody in the family is now over 15 years old so finding a board game that all want to play, that lasts a reasonable length of time and keeps us all interested is quite a challenge, but this one fits the bill. The great thing about it is that no-one knows who is going to win until right at the very end which keeps the interest level high. You do need to know something about the geography of Europe to play but even primary school children could answer some of the questions and you can play in teams too. The object is to gain a line of 5 countries all connected to one another and you can acquire countries using a mixture of skill and luck.

After we had played this game the first time we went back to playing some others for the rest of the evening and very much enjoyed "Ticket to Ride' as well. We decided that we are not that keen on "Settlers of Catan" so having tried over a number of years to play that and like it better we are going to give it away ! The all-time favourite however remains,"Monopoly", which I'm still not sure about as it can lead to arguments ! Fingers crossed that tonight remains peaceful !

We thoroughly recommend a board game tournament as a change from screen-based entertainment so why not look out a few favourites and give it a go ?

Frugal Friday

The first frugal Friday of the year and the month ! So far we are doing quite well and hope you are too !

There were still quite a few Christmassy food bargains to be had so I bought 2 selection packs for half price to be used for 'Saturday' chocolate and promptly hid them, so they will last all month. I also got two packets of Asda finest mince pies for a third of the initial cost and a Whitworths Christmas cake kit for £2. The mince pies will be frozen and the cake kit saved until next year.

I downloaded a few good ebooks for free and  MrShoestring mended the digital radio so with magazines and books from the library we were well set for entertainment. This was a good thing as we don't have television reception and have been watching throughout the internet but that has not been working well this week.

I also got a free subscription to 'Country Living' magazine as a gift from the bank. They offer a reward and I always get a free magazine !

We re-used foil and got a free soup and a coupon for a free tin of Princes fruit in juice. I also got free stamps from the Royal Mail survey which has started again, so that is good ! I froze leftover wine for use in dishes later in the month and made a fantastic soup from all the New Year's leftovers.

A great bargain was getting lovely books about baking at The Works for 10p each. These will make great gifts and have been popped into the present cupboard. I also got a new frugal cookbook for £1 in Poundland so I'll try out a few ideas from there and let you know if it is any good !

Finally, I posted some books that I had had for sale on Amazon to Ziffit and got another tidy sum to add to the gift account, so that was great !

I hope that you have a great weekend and that your first week of the year has been a good one too !

Reading to help with Frugal Living

Whether you want to know how to set up a budget or cook 3 healthy meals a day with the money you have, reading is the quickest way to learn and one of the most cost effective. There is lots of information available for free at the library, in free ebooks and on the internet and utilising free resources will help to signpost you to those ones you want to invest a bit more time and money in. For instance I try hard to order a book at the library or to read a trial chapter before I commit to buying it. That way you can make sure that it is a resource you will use over time. I don't buy cookbooks unless they contain unless ten recipes I can imagine making. Otherwise I just copy the recipe and return the book to the library !

Over the next few Thursdays I thought it might be helpful to have a look at free resources, cheap books etc. which are available to help with the frugal journey. I want to look for new resources to encourage us as well. The first idea I got from another frugal blog and that was to have a look at the cook book

 " Kitchen in the Hills." by Elizabeth West. I have read her other two books " A Hovel in the Hills" and " A Garden in the Hills" all about going to live in an off-grid cottage in Snowdonia in the 1970s, but did not know that she had also published a cookbook.

The book is available second-hand for a very reasonable price but true to my wish to have a look at it before buying I searched the library catalogue and found it in the archives. Ordering a book costs 60p in our library system so if I can collect it myself I do, however, you can't do that with the archives so I've invested my 60p and am looking forward to seeing what new frugal recipes I can glean !

Have you got favourite frugal reading ?

Carrot and Coriander Soup

With all those bargain carrots in the garage and plenty of frozen stock a soup is a great idea for supper tonight. If you don't like yours so spicy then omit some of the coriander and don't put a sprinkle of paprika on top to serve !

1 onion

1 potato

1lb carrots

11/2 pints stock

1 tsp ground coriander

a few coriander leaves to garnish

sprinkle of paprika on top

Chop the onion and fry in a little oil. Chop the carrots and potatoes and add to the pan with the stock and the ground coriander. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes until potatoes and carrots are cooked. Blitz until smooth using a hand or goblet blender and add salt and pepper to taste. Finish with a sprinkle of paprika and a coriander leaf to serve ! Just the thing for the wet and windy weather we are having !

Goals for the New Year

One of the goals for the new year is to have a monthly challenge running as well as some annual ones. This month's challenge is to keep the grocery spending as low as possible. Groceries for us includes household stuff like toilet rolls and cleaning materials and MasterShoestring's school lunches. We have an overall budget of £170 a month and I would like to spend much less than this in January. MasterShoestring's lunches cost at least £10 a week, depending on how hungry he is and sometimes more, so that decreases the budget quite a bit and we still have MissShoestring at home this month as well, so quite a challenge ! I'll be reporting on how we are getting on every Monday in January.

The first thing I did was inventory all the food in the house and then make a menu plan for the whole month. I did not do a bulk shop but have decided to only buy what we need and run out of once a week. This will stop me going to the shops and then picking up extras. I have also hidden various stocks, like chocolate, in places where people can't find it ! This ensures that only the weekly quantity is consumed over the month rather than all eaten at the start !

We have MrShoestring's birthday towards the end of the month and I've already got a haggis and a birthday cake planned ! So if everything goes to plan it should work very well !

Short term goals for the first 6 months include saving £600 towards our Scandinavian holiday and putting another £250 towards my course fees for next year. I'm also hoping to cut down overall spending to £17000 a year. There are a few unknowns, such as what MasterShoestring will be doing after GCSEs, which might mean that we have additional expenses, so I'm not being too rigid about the figure. Also MissShoestring is still living at home and all those hot showers and lifts to the station add up ! We have a plan and I'm quite excited to see how it all works out !

Happy New Year

A very Happy New 2018 to you and yours ! Here's to another successful and frugal year to come !

We shall be singing the following carol today, to the tune from Benjamin Britten and also enjoying a delicious roast beef dinner with beef that I bought at half price before Christmas began ! Challenges start tomorrow !

Here we bring new water

From the well so clear,For to worship God with,This happy New Year.Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew,The water and the wine;The seven bright gold wiresAnd the bugles they do shine.

Sing reign of Fair Maid
With gold upon her toe -
Open you the West Door,
And turn the Old Year go:
Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew,The water and the wine;The seven bright gold wiresAnd the bugles they do shine

Sing reign of Fair Maid,
With gold upon her chin -
Open up the East Door,
And let the New Year in.
Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew,The water and the wine;The seven bright gold wiresAnd the bugles they do shine