Tuesday 16 February 2010

The price of cheese!

We LOVE cheese! Sadly, as we whittle down our grocery budget more and more, cheese is something that becomes a very luxurious foodstuff. So we do manage to have some when needed, I arrange a LETS (Local Exchange Trading Scheme) trade with a friend who frequents places like Costco, where a 5kg block of mature cheddar costs about £20. It's so easy for us all to compare the prices on sites like MySupermarket, but the resulting savings are only beneficial to those of us who live within easy travelling distance of these big supermarkets. We don't. Our nearest town is only 5 miles away and it does now have Sainsburys, but the store doesn't stock many of the 'Basics' products, so we can't take advantage of such moneysavers.

Anyhow, I see by the supermarket comparisons that the best price for mature cheddar is currently around £5 per kilo whilst on special offer, so I'm delighted with my current 20% saving. I just cut the cheese into smaller blocks of around 0.5 kilo and freeze them until needed. It does tend to make the cheese crumbly but as I grate mine for most things, this isn't a problem. Grating before freezing is an option when I have enough space in my freezer, but then it tends to get eaten faster, as lazy son hates slicing cheese. Most times, he'd prefer to do without rather than have to go to all the bother of cutting it for himself. He's a bit like that with bread, too! Mind you, at the rate we eat cheese, I could probably get through 5 blocks/£100 worth in any given year!

Back on the porridge trail, I've updated a few articles relating to the porridge breakfasts. We eat porridge almost every day from late autumn right through until spring. In Scotland, that can mean  October to late May! It's safest to say 6 months of the year could be porridge weather, so budget for at least £73 to last those 6 months in breakfasts. We Scots aren't mean, we just enjoy very basic meals. :)

http://www.frugaldom.co.uk/

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