Day 9 of 31 - Making Something Different Every Day in March
It's Sunday, I had a friend visiting this afternoon, I haven't done any crafting, but we did get a second duck egg and not one, but TWO chicken eggs from our feathered friends in the garden, so that made my day!
Friend brought me a carton of milk from the village store while on her way here, so that will take me up to 5 empties for another project that I want to try - making a vertical garden using a pallet, cup hooks, garden canes and recycled milk cartons. 'Mishy' from sunny Suffolk will be running this year's 'vertical growing pods' challenge in the Frugal Forums. My delay in starting this project is that I get so few plastic milk cartons here - I mostly get UHT in the waxed cardboard litre cartons. I'm saving what I can and will ask a neighbour if they'll save me some.
Back to today - what did I make?
The extra milk and the eggs are a clue - the duck egg shell has been kept to make another tiny planter and the eggs got combined with the milk not to make French toast for breakfast, as I'd envisaged, but bread and butter pudding!
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| Frugal bread and butter pudding |
Ingredients
Eggs
Milk
Bread
Margarine
Sugar (I used my homemade vanilla pod sugar.)
Sultanas
Cinnamon
Method
I used 3 slices of homemade bread with the crusts removed - these get turned into breadcrumbs and go in the freezer. Cut the bread to preferred size and spread with margarine/buttery spread. Sit these in an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with sultanas or raisins, sugar and cinnamon, then repeat for the next layer of your sandwiches. Beat the egg and milk together (as though for scrambling) then pour it over the contents of the dish. Add another sprinkle of dried fruit, sugar and cinnamon then cover the dish in tin foil and pop it into the oven until the egg mix has baked. Mine took about 40 minutes at 180 Deg C in the mini oven.
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| Bread and butter pudding |
This is very filling, so the 3 slices of bread is sufficient for 4 servings, at least. We ate ours hot with a little extra milk over the top. You can microwave this dish and it cooks in minutes, but I was already cooking rice to go with some sweet chilli chicken. It did mean that I was able to warm all the plates on top of the mini oven and have a warm kitchen.
Making... Important Decisions!
Owing to the nature of Frugaldom, it derives very little by way of income. Let's face it, you read this for a reason and it's not because you have a huge income and millions in the bank. My blog caters for a very specific section of society - those living below the breadline. I am a genuine frugaler who genuinely lives on my £4,000 and I earn less than minimum wage: I NEED to be frugal. I NEED to steer clear of debt and attempt to save to protect my own future. But I also NEED to earn my income in the first place. For the majority of my working life I have been self-employed, which means no unemployment or sickness benefits to fall back on and no employer paying my tax and insurance, or even guaranteeing me an income in the first place.
However...
Online is where my business exists and that is where I need to focus my energy. I have several blogs, forums, websites and social media accounts so I have had to give this a great deal of thought to help determine the right route to take.
If you would like to follow Frugaldom on Twitter for the frugal living, money saving, penny pinching, budget busting, cost cutting blogs that include baking, making, cooking, crafting, gardening and recycling, then you should follow @Frugaldom
If you would like to follow NYK Media, where I write and blogs for my income while pursuing a career as a frugal entrepreneur with an active interest in horse racing (it can be frugal, I tell you!), then please follow the newer account @Frugaleur Just as we have money-saving and money-making challenges on the forums, so too do I have money-saving and money-making Twitter accounts, blogs and websites.
Back to normal tomorrow with the workaday things and ever hopeful of some sunshine soon. We ended up with more fog here this afternoon, then the rain returned this evening. I need to get into the garden soon!
NYK, Frugaldom
I did a milk carton garden last year but really struggled to keep them watered. They dried out a lot and the water would then run around the side of the compost and out through the drainage holes, leaving the compost still dry. I think the compost/soil in them would benefit from some capillary matting at the bottom to catch water - possibly, or else chopped up into the compost. Or the compost needs something in it to stop it drying out in the first place. They only got the sun for a couple of hours as well!
ReplyDeleteI for one enjoy reading what you write.
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