More Simple Savings in September

Into week three of our 'Simple Savings in September' Challenge and the courgettes are still growing - fabulous plants that just keep on giving more and more - I cook them in everything at this time of year, even omelettes and chocolate cake.

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Having already begun setting up the project and welcoming various visitors, my thoughts are continually wandering over there, plotting and planning the overall lay-out and design of what will become a horticultural farm or smallholding with its own nature reserve. It has to be self-sustainable, in keeping with the frugal living ethos and with open access to allow our members the opportunity to become a part of it. The first plantings have been done but with all these … read more here

More Simple Savings in September

Simple Savings in September – Garden Foraging

Foraging is frugal fun whether done in your own back garden or along the roadsides and through the local woodlands. Today’s post is about garden foraging at Thrift Cottage and picking the last of the home grown produce as part of our Simple Savings in September challenge.

You don’t need a garden to grow or harvest your own food. Check out the photo blog and… read more here

Frugaldom Project Developments

In search of the lonesome pine

A river runs through it

If you could, wood you…?

What else can I say?

We have some major Frugaldom Project Development news to share… read more here

Frugal Blog - Seed Sowing and Recycling Fish Crates

Scottish Multimedia | Seed Sowing and Recycling Fish Crates

Despite a cold, windy and wet start to the weekend, the rain eventually stopped and allowed us time to get out to play in the garden! The cheeky robin was delighted to see us digging and was soon down to help!

It was afternoon before I was able to venture out but I went prepared to do battle - gardening gloves, kneeling pad, hand tools, seed packets all in order - checked and double checked to see which could be sown outdoors in April, diary and pen, camera charged, egg carton of chitted potatoes, the germinated peas and lettuce seedlings from the window sill and last, but by no means least, I donned my golden wellies!

Weeding needed done everywhere I looked, so I started with… continue

Doing the Monster Mash with Autumn Root Veg

Oh, Sweet Potato, you are HUGE!

Frugal food is in abundance at this time of year and my fresh egg supplies are, thankfully, still plentiful. Duck eggs, hen eggs, bantam eggs, quail eggs... not to mention the glut of cucumbers I'm still harvesting, plus apples, berries and plums. So much for so little and all there for the picking to help keep the grocery budget to a minimum.

 

Here in Frugaldom, we seldom sell eggs. It's more a case of giving them away and welcoming all sorts of gifts in return - home baking, greenhouse produce, garden produce, even furniture or DIY items that neighbours no longer require; I'll trade for anything useful!

 

Today's egg deliveries have been done: I set off with my supplies and came home with carrots, onion and sweet potatoes to add to the potatoes, squash, marrow, beans and lemon drizzle cake from last week's exchanges. I love this way of life, it's just so money savvy in a waste not, want not sort of way. Today's sweet potatoes are absolutely massive!

 

What does a frugal living person do with their root veg and squash? We do the monster mash!

 

Big pot of water on the hot plate and then let's start peeling... a few potatoes, a few carrots, a huge sweet potato and then, finally, the last of the squash. I don't salt the water to boil these and there's a very special reason why - chicken stock! My feathered livestock like this over their breakfast.

 

Once all the vegetables are cooked through, I simply drain off the water into a bucket and it gets kept for using in the garden, the poultry feed or else into the stock pot to make soup. Zero waste.

 

Brightly coloured monster mash can be made using most types of root vegetables, it's not just the preserve of potatoes, turnips and swede. I season them accordingly with salt and pepper, add a knob of butter or margarine, a splash of milk and then get mashing. Any surplus can be frozen, but I add some powdered milk to that before splitting it up into empty margarine tubs, it seems to help prevent the mash from going watery when it thaws.

 

This autumn coloured monster mash makes for a very orange dinner and I normally serve mine with vegetable-laden stew. The veggie mash is much more nutritious than simple mashed potatoes.

 

Not content with my autumnal coloured main meal, there's still the glut of apples to deal with, so crumbles galore! Add a bit of colour (and a few extra vitamins) by including a handful of stewed berries or a tablespoonful of homemade hedgerow jelly, which is what I did here. I do like my food to be colourful!

 

This crumble was made using wholemeal flour mixed with the sesame and sunflower seed bread flour.

 

We seem to have a real-life micro community here, based on a few neighbours who can see past the 'frugal living' eccentricities and see the lifestyle for what it really is - a caring and sharing one that doesn't like waste. Not only did I return home with my bag of vegetables, I was also given 2 small bolster cushions that I can recover and a bag of wool oddments. What a superb day's trading it has been in Frugaldom and not a penny spent.

 

Right, I'm off to finish making my free Velux blind so I can get part 2 of that blog post done. Hopefully, the blind will be completed tonight and hanging in the window by bedtime.

 

NYK, Frugaldom.

The People's Supermarket Got Me Started!

Tonight was one of those rare occasions when our TV actually managed to pick up a signal. We managed to see a full episode of Landward, then watched 'The People's Supermarket' with great interest. I'd caught part of one episode previously and then clicked to follow @TPSLondon on Twitter. Not having the benefit of superfast broadband in these rural parts, I can't watch any reruns online, so my research has been severely restricted - Twitter, Facebook and their website.

Twitter bio says:
Name: People's Supermarket

Location: Holborn, London
Web http://www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/
Bio: The People's Supermarket is a bold new venture which allows a community to come together and take charge of the food they buy and eat.
 
Sadly, tonight's TV episode appears to have been the final part of the series, ending with the shop picking up a few more members and trading briskly enough to warrant its immediate survival. There's even a suggestion of another store!
 
With around 650 members paying £25 each per year to join the TPS project, unless I'm wrong, membership has generated a mere £16,250 before deduction of admin costs. That's equivalent to less than one week's overheads on the entire project. So, how much bang do members get for their bucks?
 
First of all, it looks as though members need to volunteer an average of an hour per week helping run the store. In exchange for membership and helping out, members are also entitled to a 10% discount on their groceries. Based on the National Minimum Wage of £5.93, membership equates to a total of just over £333.00 per year. My question is, can someone save more than that by joining?
 
THE ANSWER IS YES, OF COURSE YOU CAN! But only if you're a shoppers who is guaranteed to spend an average of £65 (inclusive of discount) every week in TPS.
 
People, there are massive savings to be made here! Everyone tell a friend, relative, neighbour or colleague. Do a bulk shop on whatever items you all need. Batch cook and share. The apples and broccoli in tonight's programme were perfect examples; adapt the diet and the meal plan to suit what's available, join forces with others and share-shop. It's a no brainer!

• You're helping local producers,
• You're supporting your local community,
• You're helping others save money and
• You're helping keep perfectly good produce out of the landfills.

It's second nature to followers of the frugaldom lifestyle but it's also the oldest 'new trend' to hit the high streets! TPS really is a store where every penny and every person counts! And that's coming from someone who has only ever set foot in the City of London once in her entire life!

Let's ask the same question of a typical frugal family. Here, we base grocery shopping on the concept that an average of £1 per person per day is sufficient to feed a family, assuming you are prepared to batch cook, preserve, implement a zero waste policy, grow your own wherever possible and stockpile on any bargains. For a typical 'frugaldom' family of four, even allowing for special occasions, the annual grocery budget is still only £1,500.00  TPS membership may have no appeal to our frugalers, until you remind them that by share-shopping, that exact same £1,500 could buy them a lot more (or cost them less) and provide the opportunity to meet a whole group of similarly minded individuals. Not only that, look at the opportunities to get away for a day into the country, fruit and veg picking.
 
With TPS being open to the general public, I'm struggling to see why the place isn't mobbed on a daily basis. I haven't seen enough of the series to understand the original concept, location or footfall past the door. From what I understand, it appears that the project, while being underfunded from the start, was set up to offer fresh, locally sourced produce at below supermarket prices. This is based on the premise that fresh produce being offered there was unacceptable or unwanted by the big supermarkets.  Misshapen or over/undersized fruit & veg seemed like brilliant buys, to me. I mean, where else can you buy fresh peppers for 15p each without there being a 'whoops' yellow or orange sticker on them? 
 
TPS offering hot food to takeaway was an ingenious idea, although I'm not sure how prices compared to elsewhere. Regardless, it's a great way to reduce, reuse and recycle leftover fresh produce. Followers of the frugaldom lifestyle are well used to cooking up such delicacies on a regular basis and would eagerly flock to bag a few more bargains, given half the chance.
 
Being underfunded from the start, it can't have been easy to get the whole TPS project off the ground. However, there seemed to be a distinct lack of co-operation and communication among the members during meetings. The fact that the majority of existing members didn't seem to be taking advantage of what was on offer clearly proved that the supporters of this scheme are divided. Seeing only 6 people out of 350 members turn up for apple-picking was sad, but that, again, reflects on how precious everyone deems their own time and how disjointed society has become. Time is money, for many. That's the society we live in today and the society that we have allowed ourselves to create.
 
From where I'm looking, there are those who want to pay their money as 'silent partners', there are those who want to be seen to volunteer their services within a less fortunate area than their own (but don't channel their own spending power through the store) and there are those who prefer to just shop - with money saving in mind. For many others, it might even be beneath them to be seen in such a store as TPS! 
 
But the 21st Century has brought a new trendiness to austerity. It's good to be green, it's perfecly acceptable to be prudent and, for all those 'big spending, flash Harrys', saving is uppermost on their minds, whether they acknowledge it or not. Just check out all the current tax evasion strategies being employed within the UK right now.
 
Only by offering lucrative 'deals' can the big spenders be drawn into the picture. Fresh veg boxes are all the rage, lunch packs and snack packs are all the rage, get those frugal entrepreneurial brains into action and create a whole new chain of products from what's already available. How close is TPS to large office blocks or concentrated numbers of lunchtime snackers? If they don't want the whole fruit, offer to cut it into smaller pieces for them and charge them accordingly, ask the guy on the bicycle to deliver in time for lunch or teabreak.
 
The possibilities are endless... aim for FREE implementation of all you can, aim to REDUCE every overhead you can, aim to SAVE OTHERS time, inconvenience and money, aim to encourage DISCUSSION among existing members and spread the word... those are my personal thoughts on the matter.
 
So, where does that leave the concept of a people's supermarket? I don't know about London, (£18,000 minimum turnover to break even every week is a fortune to someone like me!) but here in Frugaldom, there is always a need to set the bottom line and then keep lowering it. If rates are payable, I'd be seeking some form of rebate for the community project. I'd be monitoring every single unit of electricity consumed, every litre of water, every penny of insurance paid and every penny spent on transport. As an active member of a Local Exchange Trading Scheme, the concept is similar - we all pitch in as much as possible and we all pay out as little as possible. There's cashback, promotional activities, free publicity, free advertising and marketing opportunities, free involvement of the general public, free opportunities to SAVE MONEY...
 
The basic concept of The People's Supermarket is brilliant, yet the implementation may be its failing... I'd bring in 'back up' in the shape of the nearest London LETS group or similar. At worst, all surplus produce could be traded out on their points system and then the accumulated points could be offered to other LETS members who were prepared to put in a few hours of work in exchange for cheap fruit and veg.
 
I may be coming across as a bit of a country bumpkin with no apparent concept of city life, but I trust in society's playing fields not being level. And I have worked in a city, albeit Glasgow in the 80's. 
 
Rural living on a frugal budget can, in many ways, be much more challenging than budgeting in or around the big cities. Throughout the UK, I am sure there must be thousands of families that could benefit from being part of a scheme similar to The People's Supermarket. Even if they can't promise 4 hours of their time a month and £25 a year membership, they can appreciate bargains and they do need to eat. We just need to look at the huge success of the newest 'big 3' frugal food stores: Approved Food, Food Bargains and Big Brands for Less to see that it isn't just the low income households who are taking advantage of this type of shopping - we do, afterall, see the vans delivering the boxes!
 
Don't forget to join us in the Frugaldom Forums to discuss Frugal Food, amongst many other subjects.