Living on a Shoestring - Meal planning

So, now you have worked out what you have, cut costs and brought in a little more, the next few posts will concentrate on making the most of what you have, starting with meal planning. I have just been doing this for June and so the process is fresh in my mind.

The first thing to do is take an inventory of what you already have in stock. I walk around with a clipboard, paper and pen and write a list of things in the fridge, the cupboards, the freezer and at this time of year, the garden. This month I had lots of split peas and bacon left as every week there was enough spaghetti bolognaise left to feed us for another meal so the bacon dish was not made. This means that I have enough ingredients on hand to cook it 4 times this month.

I find it easiest to theme each day of the week and then cook something to match. For example, Sundays are a roast/meat dish and Thursdays are always soup and rolls, I did adapt this in the hot weather so that the bread dough for rolls became pizza bases and the vegetables for the soup were used to top pizzas which we had with salad from the garden. I could also have served a cold soup.

I also try and include a couple of new recipes, which this month will come from those new cookbooks I got. This means that we don't get too bored with our limit of around £10 per person per week. Now that MasterShoestring is a teenager I do find that I also have to include snacks on the menu and I can't rely on there being leftovers for the following day. One day I made 3 large pizzas and had half left after the meal. Oh good, I thought, those will do for lunch tomorrow ! They didn't last, MasterShoestring ate all the pizza for supper that night !

Now that food prices are rising I don't have the funds I used to for stocking up but I do try and have a little left over to nab a bargain if I see one and I also allow around £40 a month for school meals. I could provide cheaper lunches myself but MasterShoestring likes to be able to go to the cafe with friends and not feel left out. This is a priority, so I make the budget stretch in other areas such as using chapatti flour for bread making rather than more expensive labelled wholemeal flour. It makes a good loaf and costs 30p a kilo instead of 50p.

The good thing about meal planning is that it is flexible, if you have all the ingredients in at the start of the month you can swap meals around and not be reaching for the takeaway menu on busy nights. It also means that if you have the time you can cook ahead and put things in the freezer for emergencies, like someone not being well or the car breaking down and you get home late.

Meal planning undoubtedly saves us money and time so I thoroughly recommend it and if you need help getting started then Bernadine Lawrence's book on feeding your family for £5 a day is a great place to start.

A Lovely Outing

Buckingham is a very attractive town about an hour away and since the weather yesterday was not so reliable that is where we went for my birthday outing. The picture above is the county goal, which was very splendid. The whole town is full of very old buildings and interesting shops. Nearly all of them were closed yesterday, even the tea shops which was a bit of a surprise.

We had gone there to do the circular walk and fortunately the rain stayed off just long enough to let us do it ! It was spitting a bit when we got out of the car and made our way down to the River Great Ouse.

It was lovely and peaceful along the river and the perfume from the flowers after the recent rain was amazing. We did the 4 miles or so and then walked a bit quicker back towards the town as the sky was darkening.

We admired the golden swan on top of the town hall and then decided to head for home for a cup of tea. We had just got in the house when the heavens opened ! We were so lucky that the rain held off whilst we were walking !

Buckingham has several play parks spread out along the route of the walk and plenty of green space, there is even a little waterfall on the grounds of the university, so well worth taking a picnic and making a day of it, when the weather is better.

We paid nothing but petrol and 50p to pump a flat tyre on the way home, so a great frugal, birthday adventure, especially when we slid down the track from the railway bridge to the road below !

Frugal birthday

With two birthdays this week within two days of one another we need to make sure that each day is special but that we don't go overboard with spending on them.

To start with all the decorations are handmade and re-used from one year to the next. This is easier now that everyone is that bit older. For younger children it is still possible to get great decorations from the pound shop. The birthday child/adult has a specially decorated place at the breakfast table and the cloth, candle and flowers are all things we already have on hand. The presents and cards are laid out on the table and the birthday person gets to choose the breakfast. Whilst that is being prepared they open their cards and presents. Doing it first thing in the morning means that everybody can share in the joy before heading off to work or school. It also means that things aren't too overwhelming and anything that arrives later in the day can be enjoyed as well.

If it is a weekend or holiday then the birthday girl/boy chooses the lunch and what we do that day, outing, film marathon, board game tournament etc. Outings are especially popular but these will be something free or cost effective such as a trip to a pick-your-own farm.

Supper is the next special event with the birthday person choosing the meal and rounding off with a singing of 'Happy Birthday' and the blowing out of candles on a handmade cake. 

For very special birthdays or ideas for birthday parties with all ages, especially teenagers, we have a great book called " The Birthday Book" which has loads of ideas in it and I would thoroughly recommend it.

Right, I'm off to enjoy the rest of my birthday !

Having a Water Check

Affinity Water supply the water coming into the house here. Since we also have a well and a septic system we save quite a bit on not having to pay for the disposal of waster water and rarely need to pay to water the garden or clean the car, as we use well water for that. The well does run dry sometimes and then we don't wash the car and use a ate ring can for the garden !

We also have a water meter fitted which has just been upgraded to a more accurate digital one. As a result of this our bill has just been decreased from £14 a month to £9. I was very pleased about this as I think that MissShoestring has been taking a lot of showers ! In spite of all this water saving I still thought that we could probably do more and since we live in an area which is 'water stressed' I wanted to find out how to conserve more.

Affnity offer a service whereby a technician comes round to your house, checks all your taps and fits extra water saving devices if you need them. I had a visit on Friday from a charming young man who replaced the aerator on the kitchen tap, ordered a toilet bag online for me and left a shower aerator for MrShoestring to fit to the fixed shower which can't have a change of head. I was delighted to have the kitchen tap aerator replaced as it has been falling off the tap regularly for the last few months which was very annoying ! We had bought a few different ones to replace it but none of them fitted properly, so it was great to get the correct one for free !

The technician was also a mine of information about water saving. We had been contemplating using a pressure washer to clean the patio this week but I changed my mind when he told me that they use 1000 litres of water an hour ! He said that the water company would prefer it if I used a bucket and a scrubbing brush, so that is what I shall do ! He also said that the water levels in the area were lower than expected at this time of year and that if we wanted to avoid restrictions later in the Summer we should all do our bit to save water now.

I thought this free water check visit was really worthwhile and as a parting gift I received a free shower timer as well. I like a really long shower, it is one of my little luxuries, especially as the hot water is heated by solar power at this time of year. Now, I shall think of the water saving we should be doing and try very hard to have a 4 minute shower using the timer !

Review of " Save Money Good Food Family feasts for a fiver"

This cook book is not by the two lovely people who presented the ITV programme of the same name but by a guy called Rob Allison and it does not contain all the recipes from the TV show. That said it does have some excellent frugal ideas in it and I was glad that I was able to get my hands on a copy.

It is a substantial hardback book with excellent photography of the dishes. At the start of the book there is also lots of good advice about how to store food to avoid waste and how to save money on the weekly grocery bill. Then the book is divided into 6 main sections which includes one on using up leftovers and one on Friday night feasts. There is even a dessert section !

All the recipes are costed on the basis of being for 4 people and costing £5 for the whole dish i.e. a cost of £1.25 a head per portion. Now this is a bit expensive for my everyday budget but there are lots of adaptations which you could make which would make the recipes cheaper. For instance, I would not put chorizo sausage in my macaroni cheese !

The section I found most interesting and the reason I bought the book is the one on Friday Night Feasts. This includes recipes for having your own 'takeaway' at home including Chinese. American, Mexican, Indian, British and Thai. All of the 'feasts' include more than 1 dish and I feel that I would definitely have a go at some of these ideas, especially the Indian and Chinese ones. That's where the cost of £5 for the whole feast seems like good value for money and I will be trying out a few ideas next week during those 2 birthdays.

There is another book I would recommend along these lines and that is "The Takeaway Secret'. That is a smaller, cheaper book and does not have pictures. It does a similar job but without the emphasis on cost saving. All the recipes are still cheaper than a takeaway !

The "Save Money Good Food" book has a retail price of £18.99 and I would not pay that much for it ! I waited until I found a damaged copy on Amazon for £4.99, it had a big crease down the middle of the cover. I paid for it using a Swagbucks gift card and used the Amazon Prime trial for shipping, so the book was effectively free, that makes it good value !!

Frugal Friday

Getting close to the end of the month and with two birthdays next week I have to be very careful to get the food budget to stretch to a few treats, I have precisely 3p left ! So we have done lots of frugal making food from scratch this week !

The big thing this week was requesting a tax refund of over £1000 and I am looking forward to using the money to pay course fees next year. I also downloaded several Kindle books for free and sold some books and CD s to Ziffit to fund MasterShoestring's skills project for the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award.

We made soup, bread, French bread, muffins, yoghurt and ate salad from the garden every day. We sold a book on Amazon and that funded MrShoestring's birthday present to me giving a profit of 60p. I love it when we can get something we want for nothing ! The book we sold was posted using stamps from the Royal Mail survey so that did not cost anything either.

I bought another new cookbook on saving money and eating well using a Swagbucks voucher and then joined Amazon Prime for a month to get the free shipping. I have already cancelled the membership but can use the benefits for a month so shall be investigating the free library of books and films.

A fun thing this week was using the Nielsen scanner to scan all the items in my £11.80 shop from Aldi, having to scan all the items made me really aware of everything I had bought and whether we really needed it. I can imagine that participating in the survey might save us money as I'm only going to want to scan what we really need !

It was Ascension Day yesterday but we were all working so no time to go up a hill and contemplate the beauty of the natural world. We are looking forward to a lovely free outing at the weekend instead !

Have a fantastic, frugal Bank Holiday weekend !

Planting out Leeks

We love leeks ! There are very handy to have in the garden during the winter when nothing else much is growing and they are very tasty. The strong taste also keeps pests away so that means they are usually very successful in our garden.

However, this year the seedlings were damaged so we did not have any to plant out. Freecycle to the rescue ! A very generous local gardener allowed us to have 25 of her young sprouts as she was going away and would not have time to plant them out. We exchanged stories of woe about all the garden pests around here and I went off with some lovely leek starts for free !

We had already prepared the bed so we only had to make some holes and water them in their new home. I am so happy to have some leeks growing and am looking forward to making some leek and potato soup much later on in the year !