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 !