Food Price Comparisons Over 25 years

Food price comparisons

These figures are based on cheapest supermarket prices found locally but they can be reduced if you are fortunate enough to live near a community larder, stores offering Too Good to Go or are in an area where food rescue via the Olio app is possible. Nowadays, we have so many options available to us to help cut food waste and food costs. Stick with the basics in your kitchen cupboards, keep tabs on your condiments, herbs and spices and anything is possible. The pennies make the pounds and a penny saved is a penny earned. Frugaldom is, ultimately, about frugal living and freedom - it is in the name. 

I began publishing articles about frugal living and money saving in 1999. The first ever challenge was known as 'The Scottish Pound' and was published in a local Scottish newspaper (Now You Know) as part of a challenge to make a main meal for a family of four every day for a week for under £10.00 The recipes and ingredients were all listed at the time and we did come in under budget.

As the years progressed, the challenges grew, then in 2007 almost all were transferred onto the Moneysavingexpert.com forums. Initially, it was the 'Living on £4,000 per Year' challenge but it later became known simply as the Frugal Living Challenge, as everyone's budget is unique to their household and circumstances. Other challenges included starting a business with £10, buying a house without a mortgage, £1,000 in 100 days, and the sealed pot challenge - one I am about to reintroduce, but with a slight twist. There was also a rather quirky little savings challenge knowns as the 'EEK', which represented the Everything Else Kitty. The original frugal living challenge still continues to this day. The motto remains the same, 

"The less I spend, the more I can afford."

How to make bread without bread flour

• #Frugal Living
• #Recipes
• #Money Saving
• #Food on a Budget
• #Money Challenges
• #How to...

 

Now You Know how to make bread without any bread flour!

I got through January spending less than £30 on groceries for the household but ran out of bread and bread flour. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, so let's get inventive.

 

Running out of bread and bread flour is normally unheard of in this household but it can happen to the best of us, especially when trying to empty cupboards and stick to a grocery challenge budget of £1 per person per day, so I spent less than half my allocated budget just cooking from what is already here.
As long as you have ordinary flour, eggs and milk then you can make pancakes.
If you have just the flour and milk, you can make flour tortillas.
Better still, as long as you have yeast and good old-fashioned, all purpose, plain flour then you can make your own budget bread.

BARGAIN ALERT

Brown Bread and Roll Mix only £1 for 3.5kg*

Here's how to make bread without bread flour

• 1 1/2 cups warm water (approx.)
• 2 tsp dried yeast
• 1 tsp of salt
• 2 tsp oil
• 4 cups plain flour

I added a scoop of wheatgerm to mine, so it needed another spoonful of water, then made the loaf in my breadmaker. You do not need a breadmaking machine, this recipe will work equally well by hand in the usual way - knead the dough well for 5 minutes, rest/prove for an hour, knead for another 5 minutes, rest/prove for another hour, then shape and bake as normal, either in a lightly greased loaf tin or on a tray.

 

I was quite sceptical about whether or not this loaf would rise, as I have never learned the actual differences between each of the various flour types other than the obvious differences between grain types like wheat and corn but as you can see, the loaf rose as it normally would had I been using proper bread flour.

 

The load was baked as normal white bread on the 1.5lb setting and this did it perfectly. The loaf turned out the tin without a problem and sounded hollow when tapped on the bottom. It got wrapped in a clean, cotton tea towel until it cooled enough to slice. Don't get me wrong, this isn't the first time I have baked bread with plain flour, as I do tend to dilute bread flour with plain flour to save money when handbaking or if the bread mixes aren't available on offer, but this was the first time I had tried baking a full loaf in the breadmaker without having any strong bread flour in the recipe.

 

Once cooled, the load sliced as any other bread would slice - so we had to sample it with some homemade blackcurrant and bramble jam. It tasted delicious!

From now on, I will not be paying extra for strong bread flour - I'll sit back and wait for the bargains to appear and, in the meantime, keep a better stock of cheap, all purpose plain flour, which currently costs 45p per 1.5kg bag from most big supermarkets. I have, however, managed to order 3 x 3.5kg of cheap bread and roll mix from Approved Food to replenish stock and I'll add on an extra couple of bags of plain flour next time I get the chance of it. I'm guessing that I'll can dilute the bread mix in similar fashion as long as I add an extra sprinkle of dried yeast.

You can add herbs, spices, garlic, sultanas, seeds, grains, nuts or whatever else takes your fancy - play about with it to find what you like best and don't forget to share your results and photos with fellow followers of frugal living in Frugaldom's forums.

* My affiliated link

Puff Pastry Pizza

Reducing the food budget to £5.00 per person per week for all meals may seem challenging to some but for others, it's a bit of a game where we try to use up everything so we are wasting nothing. Puff pastry pizza seems like a great idea to me, but does it work?

I had half a block of puff pastry defrosted after making a pie at the start of the week - it is National Pie Week this week, did you know that? Anyhow, I had defrosted the pastry, therefore I couldn't refreeze it, so I decided to try making a flaky bake, puff pastry pizza. Rake out the rolling pin and let pastry flattening begin! I rolled it into a circle large enough to fit into my pizza tray.

I have a tube of double concentrate tomato paste with chilli, so I diluted a half cupful and spread that on as the tomato base. Next up, some of the bacon bits retrieved from making this week's pan of soup (bacon & lentil), as these all get removed from the stock before I add the vegetables and pulses.

The cooking bacon costs 80p per 500g pack from supermarkets, it makes a full pan of stock for soup and at least 2 meals for two of us after that, so it's a fabulous bargain to have as back-up in your freezer.

Meanwhile, I diced an onion, chopped a tomato and added a portion each of mixed peppers and sliced mushrooms with seasoning and herbs to quickly fry these for faster cooking.

A bit of added luxury for any frugal budget has to be some mozzarella cheese! At only 46p per pack from supermarkets, a half pack is sufficient for a large pizza. (This is a 30cm/12" diameter pizza tray.) You can pretty much add any leftovers to a pizza but I have never, until now, tried making one from leftover puff pastry. Wish me luck!

The quickly fried vegetables got poured over the top - onions, mixed peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes - but anything goes when it's pizza, especially if you are adding more cheese.

I used supermarket's own smart price cheddar to top my pizza tonight, so here's hoping the mini oven can cope with baking all this lot into something tasty!

I needn't have worried. The puff pastry pizza worked out a real treat when baked at 200C for about 25 minutes. However, I can't recommend this temperature or time, as my mini oven is now running on just the lower element, so keep an eye on your pizza if baking in a conventional oven. This one will do us for two meals, so guess what's for dinner tomorrow night? I'll probably follow that with more of the raspberries set in jelly, too, as I'm now trying to use up all the garden-grown berries I have stashed in my freezer.

Don't get me wrong, if you are one of these people fortunate enough to have access to coupons and live within walking distance of a supermarket, chances are you will be able to buy discounted pizzas cheaper than us rural dwelling frugalites can make them, but we know exactly what's in our pizzas, they are made to our specifications and appreciated for what they are - open top pies that can be adorned with all sorts of leftovers. No easy access to shops is one of the things that townies often overlook when trying to state the obvious about money-saving in the kitchen. From here, our nearest supermarket is 20+ miles away and we don't have a car, but recently, we have been blessed with a trial delivery service by Asda, so their vans have suddenly become a very familiar site on our back roads and farm lanes.

Join us in www.frugalforums.co.uk to keep up to date with the £5 per person per week for all meals challenge.

Puff Pastry Pizza

Frugal Grocery Shopping

Many of our UK readers may have seen the company 'Approved Food' pitch to potential investors on popular TV series, 'Dragon's Den' and, for many viewers, this could have been the first time they had ever been made aware of the existence of such a company. However...

For the money savvy shoppers who have followed our frugal living challenges since the beginning, you will have become familiar with such cheap food supplies, having seen the rise and fall of several over the past five or more years.

NYK Media and Frugaldom have been supporting Approved Foods since 2009, so it is easy to see how much money has been saved during that time. None of the items are past sell by or unfit for consumption but many have passed their 'best before' dates for quality control. However, it is safe to say that most dried, canned or pickled foods have indefinite shelf lives if kept properly and some things, like honey, can last a lifetime.

Read more here…

Approved Food on Dragons' Den! (Frugal Shop)

 

Looks like there could be a huge surge of interest in our old friends at Approved Food, as they take on the Dragons in the den tomorrow night.

The programme should make for very interesting viewing, but also makes me impatient to hear what millionaires think of the likes of us, who spend our money on past sell by foodstuffs. It also makes me wonder if the result, which would have been known some time ago, during original filming, is what drove up the prices on site, making much of what's available now more expensive than standard supermarkets! Still, it was an innovative business from the start and they deserve all the publicity they can get. I just hope they don't cash in on the already impoverished who may see a pile of cheap crisps as a better bonus than some reduced fruit, bread or vegetables in a regular store.

Perhaps I should have completed order last week, rather than see the items in my basket gradually disappear out of stock. I think the phrase, "A significant investment in a new 60,000sq ft site is the company’s fourth move in just six years," pretty much sums up how busy the company, now known as Approved Group, has become since we began shopping there.

Can you believe that was 6 years ago? Well done team AppFood!

Approved Food on Dragons' Den! (Frugal Shop)

Homemade Sliced Sausages

It is so easy to make sausages when you opt for what we Scottish frugal living folks term square sliced (also known as Lorne) sausages, that we'd be daft not to try making our own frugal versions. Better still, you can add almost anything savoury into them to make them as nutritious or luxurious as you like!

At this time of year, British gardens aren't particularly productive but the frugal kitchen cupboards, fridges and freezers are, invariably, filled to the brim with what's been leftover from last year's budget and a festive period that seems to last for weeks. I have often made sliced sausage in the past to use up leftover turkey, bacon, pork or beef with stuffing, but I don't normally go out of my way to make sausages. Today, however, I decided that it was time to use up the last of some soy mince that had been lurking in the cupboard since buying 6 sachets of the stuff for £1! You'll can guess that this was quite some time ago. It was well past 'Best Before' date, but this means nothing much to frugalers, as we all know it's the 'Use By' dates we need to watch. "Best Before" dates are usually on very long shelf-life foodstuffs that can literally last for years. (Apart from fresh eggs.)

INGREDIENTS

See how to make frugal homemade sausages here (Photos, ingredients and instructions included.)

www.scottishmultimedia.co.uk/blogs

Oats with Everything

Analysing the annual £4,000 challenge budget resulted in an attempt to cut meal costs to £5 per person per week during 2015. As we continue our quest for financial freedom and a healthy, happy lifestyle with time to enjoy interests outside of the work place, don't forget to spend time doing what you most enjoy. "Mould your career around your lifestyle and not your lifestyle around your career." What a great quote!

The final 8 apples collected from last year's windfalls. I had no space in the freezer for any more stewed fruit, so these had been wrapped in newspaper and stored in a cardboard box. As you can see, they had begun to wrinkle, so I rehydrated them a little before cooking them. Frugal rehydration simply means I soaked them in a basin of tap water for a few hours.

After a good swim, the apples were fine for peeling and stewing down with some sugar and sultanas. Then it was time for the crumble to get added: oats, flour, sugar and margarine. Yes, we do have a sweet tooth here and it doesn't help with the fight against the flab during winter. (Or summer, for that matter!) Continue reading…

Cheap and Nutritious Meals

More than halfway through January and we are already looking ahead to see how we can save extra and do more during February. Time flies when you are enjoying yourself, especially when juggling a fresh, new budget. Meanwhile, we still have meals fit for a King, priced for paupers and easy enough that even the kids can make them - what could be better?

The new regime for 2015 involves slashing the grocery budget to an average of just £5 per person per week for all meals, so it is taking come creative thinking. The above soup no longer will have just a carrot grated and an onion chopped into it. Instead, it will have a portion of mixed vegetables served with every bowl to make it up to 2 portions of our 5-a-day in one meal.

We do have the advantage of a well stocked kitchen and the additional benefit of home-grown and freely foraged foodstuffs in the freezer, plus a full cupboard of preserves, all made from free fruit, but in order to reduce the overall average, I now need to focus carefully on both the nutritional values and the costs. I guess that's why we Scots love our oats - we can eat them with practically anything! So, after a hearty breakfast of porridge, sometimes with a handful of sultanas or berries to boost the '5-a-day', it's onwards towards soup-making for lunch.

At the moment, you can buy cooking bacon for 80p per 500g pack, so I recommend this for making your stock. Along with a 500g pack of split peas or lentils, plus a grated carrot and chopped onion, this combination can cook you up 3.5 litres of soup without a problem and leave enough stock for flavouring the meals you make with the resulting cooked bacon. I made the most of the current Asda offer for half price lentils and now have 10 kilos of them in stock, as they worked out cheaper than their split peas!

After slow cooking the 500g of bacon to make stock, this left about 350g of what looked like streaky bacon, so it was all chopped up and separated - lean meat in one tub, streaky bits in another. I salted the water, as the bacon isn't smoked. This is how I intend using the meat:

7 Main Meal Suggestions: Continued…

Oat and Sultana Energy Cookies Recipe

Just because we are embarking on a super-duper new food budget regime does not mean that we need to cast out all our luxuries, so here’s how we are dealing with the £5 per person per week for all meals challenge.

Breakfast is nearly always porridge, as a 1kg bag, costing 75p, provides sufficient for 20 servings. But I prefer to think of it as 7 days for 2 people will use up 700g porridge oats, leaving 300g each week for baking or other recipes.

PORRIDGE
2 x 50g scoops of porridge oats
5 x 50g scoops of water
Sprinkle of salt
Cook in microwave on high for about 5 minutes (depending on wattage)
Serve with a little milk and 30g of sultanas
7 days for 2 people will use up 700g of a 1kg bag of porridge oats, leaving 300g for baking. Sultanas are one of our 5-a-day and a 30g serving per person per breakfast for two equates to just 420g sultanas, leaving 80g for baking. So here goes...

OAT & SULTANA ENERGY COOKIES
100g porridge oats
80g sultanas
200g SR flour
100g sugar
170g melted margarine

Mix all of the above into a soft dough.

Split into 24 pieces, roll into balls and flatten into round cookies,

Read more here …

Day 2 of Extremely Frugal February - Free Seeds!

28 Days of Extreme Frugal Living

Day 2 of 28, I have spent £6.64 of my household budget and hopefully got the beginnings of some pepper plants.

Sweet Pepper seeds

Bit of a lazy Sunday here, although I did have a couple of visitors who stayed for tea and a natter. One picked me up a carton of milk on her way through the village, which accounts for my cash spend of the day, and the other brought me a gift of cheese and UHT milk, plus some gorgeous nail polish I had recently admired. In exchange for such gifts, I helped out with some book keeping, gave away some recycled folders for filing receipts and rehomed some old magazines. I love Sunday trading!

Today was Candlemas - not that we celebrate it in any way - so I had been weather watching, expecting the storms of recent to descend on us once again. As one of the sayings goes,

If Candle-mas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be two winters in the year.

However, the day dawned bright and stayed clear - if the old wives' tales and folklore are true, we have winter ready to make a ferocious return. I can already feel the temperature dropping since the rain clouds departed. It was 7 degrees C indoors this morning, it's now 15 degrees C after having the little stove burning all day. I stood firm against using any coal today. Was that extremely, I wonder?

DAY 2

Spending:

Paid friend for the milk she got me from the village store - £1.62 spent. I also asked that she buy it using a £10 note so I could do a simple swap and have change in the house because cash by way of spare change isn't easy to come by when you live in a rural location. I didn't want to dip into the coppers jar, nor would she have wanted 162 pennies! I gave her some gardening magazines to pass on to her dad, who always appreciates a look at these after I'm done with them. I get them given to me from another neighbour whose greenhouses I look after whenever they're on holiday.

Heating:

Only Wilbur, our little pot-bellied stove, has been lit today, so 'he' has probably consumed around £2.50 worth of logs. I was vigilant and used the stove top for boiling kettles of water and for making pots of tea while visitors were here, then cooked tonight's dinner over it.

Eating:

Porridge for breakfast, cooked, as usual, in the 700w microwave for 5 minutes and costing 12p for 2 people.

Lunch was a sandwich with homemade bread and hedgerow jelly. I'm not too sure how to price this, as all the fruit and berries used in the jelly making are foraged for free locally. I guess with sugar bought at 75p per bag, it might cost around 25p per jar to make, so pennies per serving plus allow about 5p for bread - we'll call it 20p for lunch for 2.

Stove top cooking

Dinner is another chicken fillet (£1) diced and spiced using some free seasoning I got with my last MuscleFood* order. (My friend referral link will automatically give you 4 free chicken fillets with your first order.) Peppers cost me 99p/3 from Approved Food*, so I used half a red and half a green (33p) in tonight's meal, along with the remainder of the mushrooms I got from a neighbour. I do return the favours - I supply the neighbour with hen and duck eggs when the feathered friends are laying plus fresh herbs from the garden and she supplies me with freshly baked cakes, newspapers for recycling and any little bits and pieces she can't cook before it spoils. It's a great set-up and one shared by several of us about here. I also had some leftover boiled potatoes that I had popped into the fridge on Friday night, so these went in with everything else to create what I call 'frugal bowl food' - a mishmash of flavours served in a big bowl.

We have drunk much more tea than normal today. It is loose leaf tea that was being cleared at 40p per 500g bag from Approved Food, so I bought 6 bags of the stuff in the hope that it will last the best part of 2014. It's not like dried tea leaves will go off if they're kept sealed, is it? I did the same with coffee beans, but bought 10kg of them. I reckon it costs us about 2p per cup of tea, although H takes sugar in his, so that costs an extra 4p per cup! Average is 3p, so I shall allow 36p including milk for all the tea that has been drunk today!

Overall mealtime spends for the day - £2.01 including tea for guests plus another 30p for the packet of custard creams demolished while chatting, so £2.31

FREE SEEDS!

How extreme was my frugaling today? Well, having used up what I had left of a red and green pepper, I saved the middles from them and, with a bit of luck, these little seeds will grow into some lovely sweet pepper plants this summer. I'll keep you up to date on progress as soon as I get some of them germinated.

Today's extremely frugal February day cost a whopping great (edited) £6.64 plus the unseen costs of running your own home. I could have put my foot down and been extreme by not having shop-bought custard creams to save myself 30p but, like I say, I'm not all that extreme. Plus, I do love a bit of bartering while sitting catching up with friends, neighbours or family over a cuppa.

Edit: I had to come back and add another 21p to today's budget after H decided we needed pudding for supper - more homemade rhubarb crumble and custard! I should have put my foot down and said no, but as a mere house-sharer, I can't really do that.

NYK, Frugaldom

Frugal Bytes - Historic Shopping Prices

Clearing Clutter is so Time Consuming!

Following on from my previous post about list-making, I managed to tick off a few items from the list:

• I made laundry liquid
• I baked biscuits
• I did the floor plan for the redesign of my kitchen space
• I picked and pickled some beetroot
• I began sorting out the next box of old paperwork

The trouble is, I need to read all the paperwork before I turn it into firelighters and this current box contains the receipts from my 2007 moneysaving challenge. Folder one turned out to be the year's grocery shopping receipts!

 

Now I don't know about you, but the changes in food prices over the years are something that greatly interest me, so I had to browse these receipts and find out which products were escalating in price, which were fairly constant and which, if any, had actually reduced.

 

Priority note - I bought cigarettes in 2007 and the cost, then, was £4.27 for 20 of the cheapest available. Not having bought any for some years, can anyone tell me how much 20 Richmond King Size now costs?

 

As you'll see by the receipts, I had the choice of two main stores - our local Co-op or the Somerfield store in town, which has, since, changed to Sainsbury's and had an Aldi store built next door to it. Still, it's a 20 mile round trip to Co-op and a 40+ mile round trip to town, so Co-op needs to suffice for most things.

 

The biggest price increases over the last 7 years, for me, have been in the following products:

• Chicken (£2.98)
• Bread (57p)
• Biscuits (HobNobs 42p)
• Firelighters (49p)
• Cheese (£1.67)
• Butter & margarine (99p for 2)
• Baked beans (18p)
• Sugar (76p)
• Washing up liquid (14p)
• Total for the above: £8.20

Based on current supermarket prices for the same items, the above items would now cost me £16.62 That is MORE THAN DOUBLE the price of 2007! Detergents seem to have escalated in price to beyond belief, while a decent, mature cheddar cheese is slowly creeping out of reach unless it's on offer.

 

You can see now why I now make all my own bread, biscuits, firelighters, laundry liquid and cleaning products! I do allow myself the luxury of washing-up liquid, but at FIVE TIMES the 2007 prices, it isn't used as liberally as it might otherwise have been, that's for sure!

 

NYK, Frugaldom

Crispy Critturs - the next big thing?

The basis of this article that's buzzing around is absolute truth and I am following the story with great interest, mainly for the following reasons: 

• I'm a fan of frugal living

• I recycle everything I can

• I am always interested in affordable protein sources

• I keep poultry

• I am an avid supporter of frugaleurs (frugal entrepreneurs)

Crispy Critturs - the next big thing?

… According to World Poultry, "For direct human consumption, insects are governed by novel food regulation in Europe, but the researchers say insects are unlikely to require pre-market safety assessment, as many non-EU countries have already demonstrated a history of safe use..." - See more here

Food Prices Past, Present and Future

Food Prices Past, Present and Future

Having kept notes, I thought you might be interested in seeing my price comparisons. The average price increase in foodstuffs since 1999 to 2013, when comparing my 'shopping list' of cheapest available items, amounts to almost exactly 100% But of course this only holds true if you have easy, cost-free access to a modern, all singing, all dancing supermarket…

… But what does this mean in real terms to the supermarket shoppers of today? We keep on ploughing our energy, time and money into making ends meet, while feeding the household and saving what we can, in the hope that the sun shines and we don't have to afford too many rainy days. - Read more

Moneysaving and Healthy Eating - The Food Budget

Can You Really Feed the Family a Healthy Diet on £1 per Person Per Day for all Meals?

Why do so many quake in their shoes when they suddenly realise that they are heading into debt or, worse still, sinking further into debt, and scratch their heads in disbelief at today's prices? This blog post came about after a recent (animated) discussion about the cost of living in today's modern British society. The other person failed to distinguish the difference between the cost of living and the cost of their personal lifestyle. (In my opinion, food, fuel and energy waste seem to play big parts in their lifestyle.)

Why do we see such ridiculous food waste in Britain when there are countries across Africa and Asia still susceptible to famine? On more than one occasion, I have been told that if it concerns me so much then I should go post the waste food to the starving people. This attitude makes my blood boil!

…

I set myself the challenge to spend no more than £1 per person per day for all meals and I have stuck with this for the past several years… What I have learned is…

Read more here and try out the free meal planner to ensure you get your 5-a-say even on a frugal budget.

Frugal Living and Working :: Frugal Food Forums

Frugal Living and Working :: View Forum - Frugal Food - Cooking, Baking, Winemaking on a Budget

This is just a short blog to remind all of our readers that as well as this frugal blog, we also have Frugal Food Forums where we regularly discuss topics such as home cooking, foraging, preserving, bread making and, of course, our grocery challenges.

Whether you are trying to cut costs, reduce waste or generally make a difference to your diet, there is bound to be a forum topic to suit your needs.

From edible flowers to hand made chocolates – food is a fantastic subject and we would love you to join us in the forums discussing how to get the most for your money when feeding a family on a small budget.

Now that we are into porridge, soup and hot puddings time of year, we can start experimenting with simple ingredients and cost out the ingredients while also looking at cooking costs. With the utilities companies already bumping up the prices of electricity and gas yet again, now is a great time to join us in the battle to beat the home budget, be it in energy, food or general household shopping.

How many meals can you make from a single chicken?

How many meals can you make from a pack of mince?

Could you feed your family on £1 per person per day for all meals and still afford the toiletries, laundry and cleaning products in that tight a budget?

Do you forage for fruit and berries to make your own jams and jellies?

Have you ever tried cooking with cucumbers?

Can you bake a loaf of bread for 25p?

Would you like some soup recipes?

Can you make your garden (or other growing space) produce basic ingredients that could become a meal?

Have you baked cakes from courgettes?

How do you make your pickle and/or relish?

This is your invite to join us free in the FRUGAL FOOD FORUMS

Tonight, I will be joining in the online discussion about food that’s being hosted on Twitter. If you would like to take part, simply sign in to your www.twitter.com account and search for/follow @Frugaldom We use what’s known as a hash tag (# this is a hash tag) word for following the discussions, so look for #dghour and you should be able to see all the comments made by those attending tonight’s Dumfries & Galloway based food discussion.

Mark your diaries – on 9th November, I will be hosting an hour-long discussion on the topic of moneysaving. Everyone is welcome, even if you have no other connection with Dumfries and Galloway than being a follower, reader or member of the Frugal Blog, Frugal Forums or Frugaldom websites.

See you there, don’t forget to share!

NYK Media, Frugaldom

The Cost of a Homemade Loaf – 25p

The Cost of a Homemade Loaf

After reading a report on the BBC website regarding the cost implications of baking your own bread I had to respond! By all means, cost it the way they did and you could soon be out of pocket but if, like me, you bake all your own bread for the purposes of moneysaving, then think on... we 'knead' to know how to do it on a budget. Here's how: read more

Cheap Coffee Beans

Cheap Coffee Beans

Seeking out the best bargains isn't always easy! Prices don't necessarily determine what is and what isn't a bargain, that's for sure, and all too often we can fall for those fluorescent stickers and stars that have us brainwashed into thinking they represent a cheap and cheerful buy. Lookalike names fool us into mistaking them for something better and, as a household of coffee drinkers, I have been caught out by this when searching for cheap instant coffee. Read more…

 

NYK in Frugaldom

What's a Girl to Do when it's Lean, Mean and Flaunting Itself at Me?

Dear Musclefood,

We aren't body builders, we're just muscling in on your bargains! :)

 

Please note that I am using my personal 'refer a friend' links in this post. This is simply too good to miss, so grab a friend or neighbour (or anyone you care to grab, for that matter) and combine your orders so you can benefit from superb overnight free delivery. Fresh produce straight to your door, ready for portioning up and then filling your freezer. Shortened link is http://bit.ly/1bDkSEK
 

Premium Chicken Breasts - 1-1.15kg
SPECIAL OFFER: Buy one get another FREE!

Simply add to basket and enter code JUST8 at checkout to claim.

 

It's a definite win/win situation here and I can honestly, with my hand on my heart, personally commend this company. I think we shocked them a little by shopping on their site as frugalers, rather than bodybuilders, but there's nothing wrong with muscling in on a lean, mean bargain when it's flaunting itself at you, is there?

Here's how to make the most of the deal: visit the website - this is where you can claim your four free chicken breasts - and then go to the link that says 'lean meats', scroll down and select 'chicken'. From here, look for "Premium Chicken Breasts - 1-1.15kg, Was: £9.75 Save: £1.75 From £8.00" - do not click to buy, instead, click to view the offer. Once you do this, you will see some additional information on left of the page that says "SPECIAL OFFER: Buy one get another FREE! Simply add to basket and enter code JUST8 at checkout to claim."

Good luck with this, the offers are all on limited timescales, so I hope you are quick enough to be able to make the most of them. On a gram per gram comparison, not even the cheapest supermarkets within a 50 mile radius of here can compete with these prices. Perhaps you could set up your own food co-operative for local friends and family - any excuse for a get together when the order arrives!

Chicken is one of the main sources of meat protein for many of us who follow a frugal lifestyle, owing to its versatility, availability and price. When we get the opportunity to stock up on chicken breast fillets, we take it! I thought my bargain was superb at £5 per kilo but this is even better.


For those who prefer cooking a whole chicken, there's another deal available, whole chickens for £4 each. In a frugal household, one single chicken breast can feed 2 to 4 people, depending on portion size and meal type, but one single chicken can feed many more.

 

Frugalers can make even a small chicken feed a dozen people no problem and still get a pot of soup out of the bones. (See forums for stretchy chicken recipes.) So, when I also spotted this offer, I almost fell off my seat!

 

Whole fresh chickens for £4 each - that's 5 chickens for £20 and enough there for 60 meals plus sufficient stock to make soup enough to last the entire winter. What's more, if it's delivered free then there's no added expense of driving to the supermarket or trying to balance 5 chickens on a bike! Call a friend now, make the most of free delivery or else fill your freezer... if you have any space in it.

 

By splitting an order with friends, all of these bargains are yours for the taking. My freezer is going to be over-flowing at this rate! It saddens me, somewhat, that I have almost no space to fit in any more bargains. I hope home of you can take advantage of this fantastic, lean, mean offer! In addition, there's usually a free sachet of seasoning and all that lovely packaging to be recycled! Also of importance to my fellow frugalers, your very own refer-a-friend link and bonus loyalty points when you become a customer of Musclefood.

 

Thanks to a couple of lovely fellow frugalers who have already signed up and ordered these bargains, my loyalty points credit has now increased to 1224. You can earn points by spending, referring friends and by writing short reviews of the products once you have tried them. It's like a frugal living dream come true!

Off in search of more money-saving opportunities now, catch you all later,

NYK in Frugaldom.

Frugal Living, Inflation and Recycling

Can Frugal Living Beat Inflation?

 

As reported by the BBC (and many others) today, "The UK's inflation rate rose sharply last month following an increase in tuition fees and food prices."

 

The current rate of inflation is said to be 2.7%, with the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation - which includes housing costs - rising to 3.2% But I am not even going to pretent that I understand these convoluted figures. Complicated calculations may be something I do occasionally enjoy but I can't equate certain items as being essential when working out my own basic cost of living. I did, however, take the time to ask if shrinking pack sizes were taken into consideration in the Government numbercrunching and, you'll be pleased to know, THEY ARE!

Of course, based on individual item costs versus diminishing quantities, the rate of inflation on some goods is many, many times that stated. I mean, look at the price of cheap minced beef. The pack sizes have not only reduced to 400g but the prices have increased by as much as 25% in some cases. Even tins of corned beef might be beyond the most frugal of grocery budgets nowadays!

Another thing that really bugs me about all these shrinking pack sizes is that we are being driven headlong into a waste not, want not spiral that's going the completely wrong way! Rather than companies reducing their packaging, which they do appear to be trying to do, they are now forcing us into buying twice as much, because one single pack no longer feeds the household! This matters not a jot if you are buying your fruit, veg and fresh produce loose, but onthe whole, disposal of packaging remains a major problem - unless we simply pass the problem on to the Government by binning everything and then wonder why services need cut to cope with the increased costs.

We now need to get even more creative with our grocery buying, batch cooking and recycling. What can we do with all these extra plastic cartons while, at the same time, trying to shop for bargains and buy sufficient quantities to feed the family?

Well, one thing I am now doing is keeping each carton I buy - why should I have to pay for something that's discarded straight into the bin?

As soon as the contents have been prepared, it's a simple case of refilling the original container for storing the food in the freezer. (Additional point of interest - keep mushrooms dry and wipe or brush them clean, rather than peel them or wash them. You get more out of the pack.)

These containers work well for most things except onions, as they aren't strong enough to seal and prevent the smell leaching through into your freezer.

A word of caution on storing food in recycled cartonss - always, always, always wash and sterilise the empty containers before refilling them and don't pour hot food into them, as most are so flimsy that they'd probably melt.

By reducing our food waste, reusing anything we can and recycling everything that can possibly be recyclyed, we can, in actual fact, get creative enough to beat our own household inflation.

www.frugaldom.com
www.frugaleur.com

February's Frugal Grocery Challenge

Cheap Meals for £1 or Less per Person per Day

With a grocery budget of £1 per person per day, it is getting more and more difficult to afford too much meat in the diets, but it isn't impossible, so long as you aren't expecting steak or roast beef too often.

I've been carrying out my own version of frugal grocery shopping for more years than I care to mention. Originally, during the 80's, it began with keeping hens for eggs, baking bread by hand and cooking whatever I could from scratch, making the most of a slow cooker.

Times have changed slightly, with the emergence of the huge supermarkets. By the late 90s, we had the bread wars, where it was possible to buy a cheap loaf for as little as 4p, rendering it a complete waste of time and energy even contemplating self-baking it. But again the times have changed and the cheapest loaf (of questionable quality) is now approaching 50p. So how does a household manage to survive on a tiny food budget?

From today, 1st February, I am going to cost up each of the meals we eat in a day. I'll try to do this for the full month - time permitting - and see how far off the £1 per person per day we really are.

Breakfast is usually porridge during the colder months and let's face it, that's most likely to be about seven months out of the twelve if you live in Scotland. (There's a section of the Frugaldom Forum dedicated to cheap meals and how to help keep the cost of grocery shopping within a tight budget.)

19p PORRIDGE FOR BREAKFAST

Porridge oats currently cost me £1 per kilo and one kilo makes approximately 20 to 22 portions.

• 1 x small cup (45-50g) of porridge oats
• 2.5 x small cups of water
• Good pinch of salt

I cook mine in the microwave, it takes about 6 to 8 minutes, depending on how powerful the microwave is. Don't forget to stir it halfway through and let it stand for a minute before serving. Serve with milk and a sprinkle of sugar (if prefered).

Allowing 8p for the salt, milk and sugar, this costs approximately 18p per serving in grocery costs. My microwave is 700w, so a 5 minute blast with this costs approx 1p, making the REAL cost of a bowl of porridge each morning 19p per serving.

If you have a handful of dried fruit with your porridge, you can easily add on another 10p, so maybe best save the fruit for mid-morning snacks. (The recommended amount of porridge oats per serving is 45g.)

24p PIZZAS FOR LUNCH

I very rarely buy pizzas, nor do I specially bake pizza bases. I find that using homemade bread works equally well and is a great way of using up the end slices. These taste more like French Bread Pizzas.

My breadmaker does 2 x 450g loaves at a time, so they cost around 35p for wholegrain by the time I factor in the electricity. Assuming each loaf slices into 8-10 slices, I allow 4p per slice.

Getting your minimum 5-a-day fruit and vegetable servings each and every day can sem expensive, so it's a case of making the most of what's available at the right price. Tinned tomatoes, whenever you can bulk buy them on offer, will always be your friend. They don't really go out of date or go off as long as the cans aren't dented, so no need to pay too much attention to the BBE dates stamped on the end.

Today's pizza lunch included 2 of our 5-a-day by way of chopped red pepper, onions and tomatoes. I keep bags of chopped peppers in the freezer after buying them whenever I see them cheap. At the moment, I am buying peppers with my ROSSPA orders, at a cost of 80p for 3.

Ingredients

80g diced onions (5p)

40g chopped peppers (7.5p)

Tin of tomatoes (33p)

Salt, pepper, pinch of mixed herbs (1p)

Bread - 12p

20g finely grated cheese (11.5p)

Total cost = 70p, that's less than 24p per pizza, plus leftovers for the freezer.

While the grill is heating, I give the veggies a couple of minutes cooking on full power in the microwave to soften them up, then I add the tin of tomatoes and seasoning. This all then gets microwaved on full power for a further couple of minutes to make sure it is all properly heated. This is your basic pizza sauce mix.

Lay your bread out on the grill tray and slightly toast one side before turning it over and covering each slice with the sauce, followed by a sprinkling of your grated cheese.



20g of mature cheddar



Grate the cheese as finely as you can, using the smallest side of the grater. This enables you to stretch the 20g cube of cheese much further. I use mature cheddar cheese, as we all prefer the flavour, but I'm sure there are cheaper options. To give you an idea of quantity, here is what 20g of cheddar looks like. It is a tiny amount, but that's the price of cheese nowadays, it's extortionate! We need to be economical in that department!

 

Freeze any extra sauce

 Surprisingly, the above sauce is enough for 4 pizzas. I made only 3, so the extra tomato, pepper and onion topping has gone into a margarine tub for freezing. If you don't use it for a quick pizza, it's fine for adding to bolognese or chilli con carne. Is also nice with a little chilli added and served with fajitas in place of shop bought salsa.

If all your ingredients are costed now, it's like having free ingredients when the time comes to use them in your next meal.

NYK Media
Frugaldom