Moderation March 2015

It isn't all pie in the sky! Beating down the cost of food in an effort to reduce how much money we waste while grocery shopping can be the easiest place to start saving, especially if you are adopting a more frugal lifestyle while focussing on a healthier diet.

 
Welcome to March, month of mad hares and, hopefully, the final throws of winter for us here in the UK. Hopefully, the temperatures are beginning to drop for our readers in Australia and snows begin thawing for our Canadian frugal friends. We've survived the festive sales, the New Year sales, St Valentines Day and the Frugaldom February Fitness Challenge, now we have Mother's Day and Easter to contend with before springing fully into spring cleaning - or so I am led to believe!


Where last month was about losing pounds, namely the surplus gained over the festive fair season, March is about gaining them, marching proudly onwards in an effort to repair the rest of the damage that could have been done, especially by way of finances. We also need to reclaim cupboard space in preparation for the year ahead. And so through to winter we go, once more. It's that circle of life that gets us from one year to the next until we fall off the merry-go-round.

Moderation: Moderate - Balanced - Reasonable - I am neither over-indulging nor depriving myself of anything, but I will be saving money while enjoying the finer things in simple life, no matter what.

In the Kitchen  

Making savings in the kitchen is the easiest place to start and it needn't result in deprivation, unless you have chosen to deprive yourself of anything specific during the days of Lent. (I do notice quite a few mentions of cakes, biscuits, chocolate, sweets and alcohol when this topic arises. However, as a good non-pursuer of such faiths, I choose to motivate my lifestyle by moderation most of the time, not just for a few weeks of the year.

March has been named as our frugal month of moderation in the forums for all those taking part in the various money saving and lifestyle challenges. I have already looked back at my previous budgets, each having been charted in spreadsheets since bringing my frugal living challenge online officially. The following is from a few of my previous grocery budgets:  

• 2011: Annual grocery spends - £1,298.16
• 2012: Annual grocery spends - £1,227.59
• 2013: Annual grocery spends - £964.80
• 2014: Annual grocery spends - £916.06  

As you can see, year on year, my overall grocery spends have reduced and yet I have still been able to build up a suitable stock pile of dried, tinned and preserved goods. There were three of us in the house during 2011, so a drop occurred in 2012 when the household reduced to two.

For 2015, the new challenge is to hammer down the grocery budget to £640.00, which equates to £520.00 for foodstuffs and £120.00 for toiletries, medications, cleaning and laundry products.  I cannot guarantee that this will be achieved, as it actually works out at just under £5.00 per person per week for all meals, but with food prices continually falling and us now having access to one of the big supermarkets, I think it is entirely possible. It is even possible to include some luxury items, like biscuits, cakes and desserts. In many cases, such things cost less to buy than to make.
 

In the meantime, if the ingredients are there, then homemade is always preferable.  Flour can be bought for 45p per 1500g, sugar at 49p per kilo. This morning, I made some luxury choc chip cookies for this afternoon's visitor using the tried and tested 1, 2, 3 recipe:

CHOC CHIP COOKIES

• 100g sugar (5p)
• 200g melted margarine (32p)
• 300g self raising flour (9p)

The above is my basic starting point, to which I added an egg (10p) and extra flour, (3p). You can add about 100g of anything at all, be it grains, seeds, chopped nuts, chocolate, dried fruit... I chopped up a 100g bar of cheap supermarket (30p) chocolate for these. The mix does more resemble crumble but it kneads together like dough. I make the biscuits individually by squeezing then rolling a handful of the mix into a walnut-sized ball and then flattening it, rather than having to knead/roll/cut.  There should be enough in this to get 24 cookies but I opted for making larger ones today, so will probably get only 18. To make them extra luxurious, I added an egg and a little extra flour to bind it all together, baked 12 on a greased tray and have wrapped the remainder of the cookie dough in polythene to refrigerate for later use. The tray was baked for 10 minutes in the middle of the oven at 180C, then the biscuits transferred to a wire rack to cool.  

Total cost for luxury handmade choc chip cookies - 89p - this is assuming you have paid full price for everything, but my margarine cost less than half that quoted and my egg came from one of the garden hens, so my luxury cookies actually cost only 63p. You can, of course, reduce this cost by making plain cookies, as opposed to using the chocolate. As I use a mini oven for baking, the electricity costs are minimal and contribute to the overall heat in my otherwise cool kitchen.

If you would like to follow the progress of this or any of our other money saving, frugal living challenges, feel free to join us in www.frugalforums.co.uk where all the information is fully accessible to members only - not even the search engines get in to the members' only sections.

NYK in Frugaldom.

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 …

2015 Frugal Living Challenge

A very belated welcome to the 2015 Frugal Living Challenge - along with my sincerest apologies for not having taken the time to blog for the past few weeks. what with floods, gale force winds and other circumstances beyond my control, I have fallen behind. It's been a time of battened hatches and mugs of hot chocolate.

Over the past month, life in Frugaldom has been a little chaotic, to say the least.

As you can see, the wet weather took its toll on the tin man and the log border of the new path when high tides combined with torrential rain resulted in the burn bursting its banks and flooding the orchard. The water didn't lie long and there was minimal damage, but the weather has done its best to wreak havoc without sending us any snow this winter, so far. The howling gales, however, ripped apart the polytunnel.

Onwards and upwards - we've a challenge to meet.

For yet another year I am going to attempt my £4,000 annual budget. I have no mortgage, no car, I house share and we both work from home, meaning minimal work expenses. I have managed to succeed in this challenge since first publishing it in 2007 and it gets easier every year, allowing more and more savings to be invested elsewhere.

For 2015, I am looking at the following budget for the entire household… continued

Writing, Tree Planting and Money Saving Entrepreneurs

I suspect November is going to be a very busy month, possibly the busiest month of my life! Frugal living, as a lifestyle, is quite time consuming, what with money challenges, gardens, cooking from scratch, DIY, taking up to 10 times longer to get anywhere when cycling or walking and let's not overlook many hours at the computer, eeking out a living. So what's so different about November?


Image design by Elizabeth Doyle


First of all, November is NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - and it has been running since NYK was publishing 'Now You Know', which makes this challenge 15 years old! It is literally a challenge in which anyone interested can attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words within the month of November. I have registered to take part!

Next, we are expecting to take delivery of 420 mixed native species trees that the Frugaldom Project has been awarded as part of the Woodland Trust's nationwide World War I Centenary. The saplings are being delivered to Thrift Cottage during the first week in November, along with canes and protection spirals. We will be having a Frugaldom planting event on site to create a brand new harvest woodland to commemorate the outbreak of the Great War of 1914-18.  This is quoted as being, "a once-in-a-generation tribute for those who lived and served, by creating a growing legacy that will stand tall for centuries to come." More than 16 million people, not to mention countless animals, died during the conflicts. Throughout Britain, people will be planting trees out of respect. We hope to have all our trees planted in time for 11th November and then continue developing this project in any way possible.

Fast approaching the 13th and 14th of November and the Scottish Business Exhibition, which is another event I hope to be attending. It's for all budding entrepreneurs and frugaleurs, an opportunity to learn from some experts. Tickets can be claimed free, you just need to register through The Scottish Business Exhibition (http://www.thescottishbusinessexhibition.com) or New Start Scotland (http://newstartscotland.com) web sites.

That almost takes us up to the 17th November and the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week (www.gew.co/) which is when we start our 2014 moneymaking challenge in the Frugal Forums at www.frugalforums.co.uk This year, once again, we are working with a budget of £10 start-up capital to see how far we can take, or how much further we can develop, our business ideas.

I think that's enough to be going on with for now. In the money savings stakes, I have been fortunate enough to bag myself some of that super-duper, ultra cheap sugar that Pound stretcher is currently selling ay an incredible 49p per kilo. This is thanks to someone in the family who is coming to stay for a few days and asked the question, "Is there anything you need from the shops?" Not sure they expected me to ask for a load of sugar, mind you, but the same bag costs over £1 in the village store and a visit there involves a 7-mile round walk or cycle!

NYK in Frugaldom

Frugal Blog - Slow Cooking Beef Silverside

Scottish Multimedia | Slow Cooking Beef Silverside

It's a rare treat to have beef in the Frugaldom household but such a special occasion arose today, with the arrival of a spectacular roll of Silverside that went straight into the slow cooker! This one's not for vegetarians or vegans, so look away now.

We're meat-eaters here, so the protein option of choice is normally chicken, thanks to it still falling within the realms of affordability, being readily available and so versatile. But look … read more

Frugal Living and Working • £1 per Person per Day Food Budget

Frugal Living and Working • View topic - £1 per Person per Day Food Budget

Having been working flat out to get everything ready for tomorrow’s big ‘first day’ of challenges on the brand new frugal forums, I thought I would try out the live blogging feature that so you can all see what the future holds for us here in Frugaldom.

I am far from finished overhauling the web site but steady progress is being made on the frugal front. That, to me, is the most important one, even if it is the one that doesn’t earn me my income.

Without further ado, please click through and find out how simple it is to become a part of one of the best little online communities for like-minded individuals I have ever had the pleasure of joining. And yes, we really do follow a £1 per person per day food budget and share how we do it…  Read more here

Day 7 of Making it in March - Making New Food Grow

Day 7 of 31 Days of Making it in March - Making Things Grow!

A photo blog to celebrate making new food grow!

Lettuce seedling

 

We are now one week into this 31 day challenge and on the first day, I made some mini-propagators by recycling plastic cartons. I sowed some peppers in one and lettuce/salad leaves in another. The above is a photo of the very first lettuce seedling to pop its head through to prove there is still life in the old seeds. (Blog post here)

 

Vegetable scraps

 

During February, we did the 28 Days of Extreme frugaling and decided to have a go at making the end of the cabbage take root and grow some new cabbage.

Red cabbage in pot of water

 

I started this experiment off on 17th February, I set the leftover part of the red cabbage into a small jar of water then had to replace the jar with a tin. (I needed said jar for my mini macramé hangers.) (Blog post here)

 

Tiny shoots beginning to appear

Three weeks into the experiment and I can already see signs of the red cabbage beginning to form new leaves - isn't this amazing?

Tiny new red cabbage growing from old one

A closer look at the tiny new cabbage leaves beginning to emerge from between the old leaves. I am totally fascinated by this ability to regrow vegetables. I have done this with my spring onions and celery in the past but had never tried a cabbage until now.

Roots beginning to grow from red cabbage base

A look at the base shows a multitude of new roots forming. I have now sat my green cabbage in a bowl of water and will be keeping it that way from now on, cutting off what I need and then replacing it in the water. This method worked well in the past with lettuce, too!

I haven't had any time to craft anything today as I had quite a bit of web work I wanted out of the way before the weekend, but I did manage to pop out into the garden and sow the rest of the peas and beans - a few had already germinated while they were soaking, so I decided I'd do the same with my sweet pea seeds and see if I can achieve some success this year. Two years ago, my sweet peas were quite spectacular but last year not a single one grew when I sowed them straight into the ground.

NYK, Frugaldom

Day 6 of Making it in March - Secret Books and Turkey Burgers #MIIM

Day 6 of 31 - Reminiscing, Recycling, Crafting and Cooking

15 years ago



NYK newspaper

NYK Magazine

Today was National Book Day, so I thought this would be an excellent day to review my own book interests - writing, editing, blogging, publishing and even recycling an old book that was destined for the bin.

 

First, a quick look back at our first ever publication named 'Now You Know'. It is 15 years ago this week since issue 1 hit the shelves in March 1999.

 

I'm dedicating this post to all the writers who have taken part in our writing, publishing and crafting projects over the past 15 years!

 

To each and every one of you, I am truly grateful - you helped create NYK despite all odds. The financial aspects of every project played a pivotal part and we may not have 'made it big' but do you know what? We survived it all and are still here to tell the stories. So many memories, from our frugal wine tasters/reviewers (The Plonkers) to our grocery challengers, recipe contributors, roving reporters and wannabe investigative journalists who got our little monthly rag into all sorts of pickles! Bring back Millie May, Eddie Elwood, the Woman Zone and every other part of it, I say! Jordan, Armand, Rovin' Ronnie, McDade, Rosemary, Derum...

 

OK, getting back to recycling, let's not pulp, bin, burn or bury this book, let's try...

 

Making a Secret Book

 

Making a secret book

 

This is quite self explanatory but I have to hold up my hands and say that it is much easier said than done when it comes to making something like this. As a bibliophile, I had a serious problem finding a hardback book that I could bring myself to mutilate! After several attempts, I failed to put the knife into the bedraggled Greek text copy of Homer's 'Odyssey' and, instead, had to opt for one that was rescued from someone else's bin!

 

Step 1 Cover the book in kitchen film the way you used to cover school books. Include a few of the front pages to allow for any sticky mistakes while gluing. Close the book and paint all around the page edges with a clear-setting glue. I used ordinary PVA glue for this. Sit something heavy on top once you're done and leave to dry.

 

Making a secret book

 

Step 2 Open the book carefully to make sure all the pages remain glued together. The cover and first few pages should be glue free, as they were protected by the kitchen film. Draw a box on the top page. I used a small ruler and drew the ruler's width in from the page edge. Next, using an awl or nail or similar, make a hole in each corner of the box you just drew; these will be your cutting markers. I used a crafting blade for this next bit - carefully begin slicing out the pages within the lines you just drew, cutting from one corner hole to the next. This creates the secret compartment within your book. I lined mine with a piece of glossy paper. Next, paint glue around the inside cut edges to bind these together. Close the book, give the outside page edges another coat of glue, sit a heavy object on the closed book and leave for the glue to set. I'll upload a photo of the finished project tomorrow - my glue hasn't fully set yet.

Edited in - photos of the finished 'secret book' using old batteries to show the size of the storage space inside it. Would have used a bar of chocolate or wad of cash if I had any of those things - I like the chocolate idea best! :)



The secret book.

NOW, LET'S TALK MINCE!

Turkey mince, that is! Remember I mentioned the superb offer I managed to bag from MuscleFood*? 400g Norfolk Turkey mince for £1, maximum 5 per customer? Well this is what I have done with the first pack.

 

Making fresh turkey burgers

 

Ingredients: turkey mince, onion, herbs, salt, pepper, bread crumbs, egg, cheap sage & onion stuffing - I mixed all of these together in a baking bowl. If you don't have breadcrumbs, here's how I do mine:

 

Making bread crumbs

I'm sure I'll be showing my age here, but  does anyone remember making these as children helping mum in the kitchen? We'd simply rub two pieces of dry bread together until it crumbled. It seemed to take forever! Nowadays, it takes seconds to chop some dry bread and give it a whizz with a stick blender. Store all your extra crumbs in a bag in the freezer.

 

Making turkey burgers

 

After scrubbing up and getting in there, mixing the meat, I removed 4 handfuls and shaped each in the same way you make fishcakes. These got coated in bread crumbs and then fried in a little oil. Served with oven-baked hash browns and mixed vegetables made for a filling meal.

 

The remainder of the mix has now had the last of the bag of frozen mixed vegetables added to it and has been refrigerated for cooking tomorrow. I'll slow cook it with some gravy and then treat it like 'Nile' mince.

NYK, Frugaldom

* Friend referral link includes code for 4 free chicken fillets with your first order.

Day 28 of Extremely Frugal February - Pizzas and Cannelloni

It's the Final Day of February! We Got Triple Nominated!

First of all, some exciting news! Our frugal blog has received three nominations into the 'MAD Awards this year - isn't that great? If you would like to nominate, the web address for this blog is http://frugaldom.blogspot.co.uk and you can vote for us either via the badge on the right hand side of this page or else by going to http://www.the-mads.com/ and nominating from there. We have been nominated into categories for BEST THRIFTY BLOG as well as BLOG OF THE YEAR and MOST INNOVATIVE BLOG, but I'm not quite sure how that happened. :)

Now look away if you are easily offended by weird food concoctions and past BBE dates!

Cheap bread and roll mix - 99p for 3.5kg

Last night was a late one - we met up with neighbours and went walking in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis after seeing the alerts for sufficient solar activity to bring it this far south. We stayed out until about 1am and saw nothing. I was so disappointed, having convinced myself that we would catch a tiny glimmer. It just didn't reach our corner of Scotland, despite being reported as far south as Essex. I did spot four meteors/shooting stars streaking overhead, though, and the sky was amazing with the millions of stars on display.

By way of compensation, my Approved Food* order arrived today, all £15.01 of it! 400 bread rolls' worth of mix for £3.96, so that's less than a penny per roll and enough to see us to the end of the year. Bit disappointed in the quality of the potatoes but I have my seed potatoes at the ready to start chitting (sprouting prior to planting) them soon. With luck, we'll be eating home grown by summer.

Now for some really extreme frugaling!

 

When opening the orders, they are always strapped with the nylon braided tapes. I have used these in the past to make streamers to hang in the garden as bird scarers but I thought I would try a bit of weaving. Seems to work, so I won't be throwing any more in the bin - I'm sure there are plenty of other things that can be made from them.

 

I used up the remaining 4 mini-naan breads from the open pack with another tin of tomatoes, herbs, pepper and a single portion of cheese for each of us - I had my usual pickle with mine.

Last night's chilli con-coction was too much for two people and H doesn't really like chilli, so I can't serve it 2 nights in a row. I went rummaging again and came up with a plan - but now the leftover chilli and rice has turned into another 6 meals! Look away now if you don't like to see the 'before' version of frugal meals...

Mixing the rice and chilli concoction with sage & onion stuffing

I mixed a cheap pack of stuffing with last night's leftover chilli and added the rice into this, as well.  I haven't a clue how this is going to turn out but I do have a vague idea of how I expect it to taste.

Filling the Cannelloni tubes with the mix 

I've less than half a box of the cannelloni tubes left but after filling the 11 of them, I still have some of the chilli mix left to use - I spy cabbage!

Filling in the gaps to use excess mix

 I peeled off a large cabbage leaf, split it and wrapped this around the remainder of the chilli concoction mix - haven't made stuffed cabbage in a while! The last scoop of mix got packed into the corner of my dish.

Frugal version of cannelloni - Frugalloni

I poured the jar of tomato and herb sauce over the filled pasta tubes and used half of the 25p tin of cheese chopped over the top. The other half has been wrapped in tin foil and put in the fridge for later use. This is my largest lasagne baking dish, which usually provides enough for 6. Everything was crossed in the hope this tasted OK.

Looks OK to me! Tasted lovely!

Baked the dish in the mini oven for about an hour and then gave it a quick blast under the grill to bubble the cheese. It tastes excellent to me, even H was quite impressed with it! We followed our Frugalloni meal with a bowl of 10p strawberry instant whip - not the healthiest option, but there has to be some vitamin and calcium content in milk dessert, hasn't there?

This living on £4,000 for the year is still fun! I have been doing this for years and, as all the debts slowly disappeared and savings began to build, I stuck with it to enable me to build up more savings. This year is no different and it's certainly no easier, what with the price of electricity, coal and fresh produce forever increasing in price. Hopefully there will be a point at which the garden has been sufficiently reclaimed and redeveloped to provide all the fruit and vegetables needed by the household but, until then, most foodstuff needs to be bought. Spending during February has been kept to an absolute minimum, although there were still a few pounds spent on non-essentials.

My £4,000 is for absolutely everything relating to the household except Council Tax, as I have no control over the price of that - it is compulsory and costs just shy of £1,000 for the year. We don't pay the waste water part, as there's no drainage system where we live, but we do have mains water here, so that chare is included in your Council Tax if you live in Scotland. Extremely frugal February has seen the following spends:

Groceries: £36.39
Electricity: NIL - I topped the pre-payment meter right up to last us all winter
Coal: £70 for 5 bags
Other: £6.32 + £7.52 in vouchers for coffee filters, firelighters and some thermal mugs.
Telephone & Internet: £15.79 (line rental paid in advance for 12 months)
Deliveries: £10.50
House Insurance: £145.78 (buildings & contents for 12 months)
Donations: £5.00 to a very brave friend who is doing a charity abseil down the Forth Bridge in May. (See here for details)

Total cash spends for February £289.78

Monthly average budget is £333.33, so I am about 13% under this month, despite a couple of big spends. I haven't ventured further than neighbours' houses other than our late-night walking expedition in search of the Northern Lights.

Tomorrow is day 1 of 'Making it in March'. It's about making absolutely anything except debt - food, gardens, clothes, gifts, recycled goods, savings, money, changes, amends... almost anything goes, you decide! You can join us free in this forum (registration is free). Before anything else, I still need to sew my blanket together!

NYK, Frugaldom

*Friend referral link.

Day 26 of Extremely Frugal February - Chocolate and Guinness Mug Cake!

Day 26 of 28 - Absolute Indulgence!

Today began as any other day, except there was a glimmer of sunshine. I stuck a washing on, looked out the window and the rain began again - typical!

Went exploring in the kitchen and decided that the time had come to use up the last dregs of the can of  'scootie' cream, so had a quick browse online for an easy recipe. As you can see by the photo, I found one! :)

I'd defrosted a carton of carrots overnight, so today's batch of soup is 4 litres of carrot and lentil from ham stock. (I used stock cubes I got slashed to 10p per pack because they were past BBE date.) Once cooked, I mashed the carrots into the soup. This will keep us going for now and most of it will get frozen for later use, defrosting as needed.

My breadmaker is still behaving beautifully, but I'm down to just one bag of bread flour and one tub of milk powder. A quick check on Approved Food found 3.5kg bags of white bread and roll mix for 99p and Marvel milk powder at 75p. An equally quick check on the supermarket comparison site showed the milk powder to be a phenomenal saving, I have placed a small order for next week and hope everything is still available by the time they despatch my order. £15 well spent, in my opinion, even if it did mean adding in some more cheesecake mix, potatoes, 4kg sugar and a couple of fajita kits to make it up to the minimum order of £15.

Having finished off the last grains from a tub of salt while preparing the bread dough ingredients, I thought there must be something 'waste not, want not' that I could do with the empty container, so here's how you can do similar:

 

Carefully trim the top off the plastic salt container and leave a tab for hanging it on a hook or attaching in to the wall. Find a design or picture you like from an old magazine or similar and cut it wide enough to wrap around the salt tub. Any paper will do, as it's just to disguise the tub. You don't even need to do this if you are happy with a salt tub hanging from your wall. I selected a glossy page from a magazine and it is simply held in place with a piece of sticky tape so it can be easily replaced at any time. This is the tub I made today and hung on the wall above my desk -  I decided to use it for holding my glue sticks and general purpose scissors but I reckon they would also be handy for things like knitting needles or for assorted cooking utensils, if hung in the kitchen.

 

Other things I did today: had my first attempt at making the fabulous microwave Guinness Chocolate Mug Cake as described by Kirbiecravings.com And I have to say that, despite what happened, this cake is EPIC!

Ingredients for epic choc cake

MICROWAVE GUINNESS CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

 

4 tablespoons plain flour
5 tablespoons white granulated sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg (I used 2 small bantam eggs)
2 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3 1/2 tablespoons milk (I used Marvel)
splash of vanilla extract - didn't have any, so this was omitted
3 1/2 tablespoons oil
5 1/2 tablespoons Guinness

Just whisk all of the above together into what looks like brown batter. This is like death by chocolate and calories! There is no way I could fit it into one mug, so I greased two and split the mix between them, then zapped one in the microwave on full power for just under 2 minutes - my microwave is 700w. I found that half the mix in one mug was still too much because the sponge rose, hit the top of my microwave and toppled over the edge of the mug! I'd suggest quarter of the mix and use this to make 4 awesome cakes.

 

Lucky for me, I had the remains of the aerosol can of cream in the fridge, so this got used up to accompany tonight's fantastic dessert. I had a tiny piece, just to try it, you understand.

 

Wow! Guinness chocolate cake

I can't even begin to explain how this tastes - it is like no other chocolate cake I have ever tried! It really is like chocolate heaven on a plate. Not recommended if you are dieting, have gall bladder problems, sugar intolerance, diabetes or any other health-related problems. This cake is probably best served after a 10-mile run or a hike up Ben Nevis! But oh boy, would I hike up the Ben again just to get this when I got back down to Fort William! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

 

The ingredients are sufficient for 4 servings

I think this deserves to be served hot with ice cream, as it needs to be eaten quickly after cooking it in the microwave, so guess what else I made this afternoon? Another batch of ice cream! The second half of the chocolate mix has been split between two much and is in the fridge for tomorrow! Yum!

 

NYK, Frugaldom

PS: Next - what to do with an empty Guinness bottle and yes, I saved the plastic cap off the cream can because these make excellent little jelly moulds. :)