Frugal Blog - Stir Frying, Recycling and Planting Onion Sets

Scottish Multimedia | Stir Frying, Recycling and Planting Onion Sets

The sun didn't exactly shine today, nor was it particularly warm, but the overcast, cloudy sky held back the rain for long enough to steal a few hours in the garden. Not before time, I might add!

H succeeded in completing the reroofing of the shed, so that should hopefully put an end to the leaks. While he was busy doing that, I decided to make the most of two small raised beds that were made nearly 3 years ago from the old kitchen units we ripped out when we first bought this place. Since then, these recycled wonders have been used to grow my leeks. They have served that purpose well; so well, in fact, that I am still picking leeks without having sown or planted any since 2012. I brought the three largest ones in to use and dug up another dozen smaller ones that have now been transplanted into the crocus bed… read more

Getting Cheap and Cheerful with Courgettes

Courgettes, Courgettes and more Courgettes!

 

 

Yes folks, it's 'that' time of year, the time when even your lonely, single courgette plant that survived the tragedy of snow and gale force winds in spring starts sprouting out courgettes. Two of my plants survived, but they're producing well, despite taking an early battering. I rescued these and transferred them to flexi-trugs on the patio.

 

 



As you can see, two plants make for a massive display, so you need a fair-sized space for them to grow. Mine are doing fine in their pots with about £2 worth of compost in each pot. Seeds were free, as I had them left over from previous years.

 

 

Nowhere sells courgettes about here and I was never a fan of them until I began growing my own. Now I know how frugal they are, I won't miss them out in future growing plans, that's for sure. This one plant has already given me two large courgettes and there are another three there that should be ready for picking soon. As long as I keep picking them, the plant will keep producing them until it's worn out - I'll let you know when that happens. In the meantime, I'm cooking with courgettes.

 

 

This is for tonight's dinner - I don't even know what it's called but it's all home-grown (some from a friend's garden) and I guess you could call it organic in as far as no chemicals or pesticides get used. I prepared it last night while making dinner using what was left over from the vegetables.

 

INGREDIENTS

 

1 courgette

1 large onion

2 beetroots

2 large potatoes

 

METHOD

 

Peel or scrub the vegetables then slice them.

Arrange them in rows in a roasting tin. (I sat mine in a loaf tin liner to make it easier for lifting them out and to save on the hot water when washing up afterwards.) I drizzled them with oil, covered the tin with foil and then baked the lot in the oven for 45 minutes at 200 deg C. Tonight, they'll get finished off in the oven with some cheese grated cheese over the top and served with grilled chicken. The veggies that didn't fit into the tin were set aside and cooked with last night's meal.

 

We call anything like this 'Bowl Food'.

 

 

In the wok, I stir fried some chicken with onions, courgette, beetroot, sliced potatoes, tomato and basil. It got seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and some spice mix. Next, I added a pack of savoury rice - 6 packs for 99p from Approved Food* - and boiling water, then left it all simmering until the rice cooked. (Whoever asked if the cheap packs of savoury rice could be fried, the answer is yes.)

 

 Once cooked, it looked like this: 

 

 

 

It's a bit of a carb-fest cooking with rice and adding in leftover potatoes but there were only a few slices left over from doing the baked veggie dish. So, that's two meals each sufficient to serve two adults for about £1.35 plus an estimated 40p for electricity for cooking. Chicken price is based on using 225g chicken breast, which costs £5.00 per kilo from Muscle Food*

 

Next up will be courgette and chocolate cake - it tastes delicious!

 

Check out the frugal gourmet tab at the top of this blog and join in the foodie discussions on the frugal food section of the forums. I'm still banging on about bread in there after baking a huge  25p loaf this morning.

 

 

 

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How to Stretch the Frugal Grocery Budget

Rural Living and No Supermarkets

I'm often asked how I manage to keep the grocery budget so low when we have no easy access to supermarkets and, therefore, no access to all those lovely yellow stickers and 'reduced' items everyone seems to always be boasting about online.

First of all, I have a small budget, so it has to stretch much further than one set in a more urban location. You very rarely get the opportunity to buy 'cheap' groceries when living in a rural area, so growing your own fruit and vegetables of any description is always a good idea. We also keep hens, ducks and quail for eggs.

Until recently, we were a household of three, but we're mostly down to two, nowadays, with occasional fluctuations. Previously, the grocery budget had been set at £1 per person per day for everything but I have increasef that to £1.25 per person per day, to add a bit of luxury. For a household of 2, that's going to be £912.50 for 2013

.If you can buy vegetables in bulk cheaply, there's no real need to grow vast quantites of, say, potatoes, carrots or onions when you could be growing or rearing something a little more exotic (or expensive) in your garden. This winter, I have bought bulk sacks of potatoes (£9 for 25kg), carrots (£1.99 for 10kg) and onions (99p for 4kg), so these should see us right through until spring. Meanwhile, we have all sorts of fresh herbs, quail eggs and even saffron being produced in the garden.

When prepping the veggies, I can boil a huge pot of potatoes then mash and freeze the surplus into margarine tubs. Adding a bit of milk powder to the mash means that it doesn't go watery once defrosted, it tends to be more creamy. I sometimes do carrots or swede in my mash, too, as they boil well together. Excess carrots can be washed, chopped and blanched for freezing or else stored in crates of sand. I have to admit to never having tried over-wintering them in sand, as I prefer to have them at the ready for using in stews, soups and casseroles.

Food miles - do they matter?

I would love to be able to grow, buy or trade everything locally, as in within cycling distance of the house, but that's never going to happen. 'Local', for me, needs to mean 'buy British', which is what I try to do as much as possible. I grow what I can in the garden and we have a local store in the village, which is about 7 miles round trip from here, but prices can be unaffordably high on a frugal budget.

We no longer have a car, so home deliveries are now paramount - but no supermarkets deliver within our area. Solving this problem is what led me to the' frugal four', although they have, since, reduced to the 'thrifty three': Approved Food*, Food Bargains* and ROSSPA.

The above sites offer rural frugalers every opportunity to save money on grocery shopping. The first two sell close to sell-by and/or past BBE date foodstuffs, often in bulk, with a fairly reliable and economical delivery service. The latter is an ever diversifying farm shop that sells fresh produce, including British meat, fruit and vegetables online and delivers overnight. Let's face it, for someone without a car who lives at least 20 miles round trip from their nearest small Co-op, the £5.50 delivery option is excellent value. It would cost me more than double that for a taxi, as I'd never manage to haul 25kg of foodstuffs in a shopper on the bus. Apart from that, there is no bus!

This afternoon, I took delivery of both a ROSSPA and an Approved Food order, but I'll start with ROSSPA, as that's where the 10kg of carrots and 4kg of onions originate. I ordered the following:

• Kitchen towels x 4
• 750g unsmoked gammon joint
• 1.2kg fresh Cumberland sausages
• 1.2kg fresh Scottish beef mince
• 1.3kg fresh British pork chops
• 2 x 5lb bacon (approx 4.55kg)
• 10kg carrots
• 4kg onions
• Cinnamon sticks
• Pickling spices

The boxes always arrive overnight with meats packed in polystyrene boxes (complete with chill packs) and everything else bubble wrapped and surounded by egg cartons... now yoy know where I get all my packaging and where I store the eggs when all the birds are laying! The above order came to a grand total of £36.90 including postage and packaging and arrived within 24 hours of ordering, despite this being a very busy week for all concerned.

The first thing I do is work out how many meals are among the order, to gauge the price. Everything gets split up into alternative packaging and then straight into the freezer. (I double checked with ROSSPA and all their butcher meat is fresh, none pre-frozen.)

Here I have to admit to falling foul of plastic freezer bags, but I do reuse any containers I have available, including those saved by my less frugal friends and relatives, from takeaways.

From my £36.90 order, I easily have sufficient meat for at least 35 meals for two, plus several pots of soup. Even the bones from the pork chops can be boiled to make stock for a decent pot of broth and each pot is enough to feed two of us for several lunches, especially when cooked up with plenty of vegetables and some rice, grains or pulses.

Homemade soup can cost less than 5p per portion to make - see homemade soup recipes for costings - so you can see how the items listed in today's post could feed us for many weeks. I'll probably stretch it much further than 35 meals by adding extra carrots and onions to the mince and making spaghetti bolognese, lasagne and chilli. Cue the pasta maker, as egg pasta is really cheap to make when you have your own garden hens laying eggs. (Little 'Bernice' started laying again just a couple of mornings ago.)

As 2013 will be the first year the household will be without a car, it will be a huge learning curve. I'm sure we will manage, especially after having had this month to practice on the bikes. Thankfully, a friend has offered to deliver me a Christmas turkey at the weekend, when I can pay her for her troubles. I just hope she finds me a little one, as the 2012 grocery budget has almost been depleted.

The homemade 'pink fizz' is fizzing away in the kitchen. I gave a friend away a bottle of it this afternoon, so let's hope it tastes as good as it looks.

Back to the kitchen for me - I still have almost 20kg of cooked chicken to organise from my Approved Food order. I was a bit dubious of ordering this in bulk but, having tried one bag last order, I opted for 10 x 1.95kg bags this order, at a total cost of just over £35. The cooked chicken is boned and chopped - looks to be all white meat - vacuum packed in its own juice and past BBE. It is brilliant for chicken curry, sweet and sour, pies, hot pots, in wraps and even served with gravy as part of a frugal Sunday dinner. It also appears to be safe to freeze after opening the pack - I am living testament to that, as is Scruffy cat. :) It looks like I'll get at least 6 meals for two out of each pack, so a cost of less than 30p per serving and no need to cook.

Frugaldom
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Stocks and Shares of the Frugal Variety.

These Pay Dividends of a Different Type!


No, I'm not talking the London Stock Exchange, NASDAQ or Wall Street, I'm talking home made stock and the freshly picked produce that my garden shares with me on a regular basis.

But it still pays dividends!

Having roast chicken for dinner is always the precursor of Frugaldom stock trading. I trade the stripped chicken carcass for a lovely pot of stock! Obviously, you may choose to take (or make) this with a pinch of salt, but I prefer mine seasoned with the addition of pepper, as well. It's a pretty hot commodity, in my honest opinion.

Stockmaking all looks rather messy at the start, but boiling the bones is the only way to get all that lovely flavour into the water that will later become your soup. Strain off the juices and, for a lower fat version, allow the stock to cool, chill it and then skim off any fat.

I tend to make my stock over the period of few hours in the slow cooker - frugal and almost impossible for it to boil over when left unattended. If you have cheap rate overnight electricity, this is the best time for slow cookers, just use a timer switch.

This time of year is brilliant for thick soups, stews and broths and I always serve them with wedges of freshly baked bread or dumplings. I usually set aside a small carton of the extra meat that is always left over, then this also gets added into the final dish.

From the garden, earlier in the week, I had gathered sprouting broccoli, patty pan squash, beans, turnips, carrots, 5 courgettes and onions, plus I also had a mugful of stewed tomatoes to use up, from making pizza for yesterday's lunch.

Everything except the runner beans has gone into the soup pan and is simmering gently along with a decent helping of red, split lentils and a heaped teaspoonful of turmeric, for added autumn kick.

Despite this all sounding like a very strange concoction, the only ingredients that were paid for in cash were the lentils and seasoning, so this really is a frugal meal.

The pan used holds 6.5L of liquid, so I usually make 5L of soup, meaning that there is always plenty stored in the freezer for winter warmer snacks, lunches or suppers.

Never be afraid of experimenting with stocks or soup-making.

If you are vegan or vegetarian, use your scrubbed peelings, stalks, tops and tails to make a vegetable stock. Season it with whatever herbs or spices you prefer and then freeze the surplus for later use. Simmering some spaghetti in the stock makes for frugal noodle soup, while using this same stock for cooking such things as rice, pasta or cous cous always gives that extra bit of flavour and a few extra vitamins and minerals.

Within the realms of frugal living and housekeeping, there is probably no cheaper option than homemade soup. It is also one of the most nourishing foods for sipping when feeling under the weather or otherwise off your food.

We love soup, especially because you can make it from almost anything.

I'll upload a photo of this latest soup as soon as it is ready. Until then, I can't tell you how it looks or tastes, as this truly is a use-it-up recipe.

Edit: This soup tastes delicious! It is much more colourful than I had expected it to be, but looks very appetising.

Lunch for the next few days and enough left over for several servings to go into the freezer.

The tomatoes give it an interesting look, much less bland than ordinary green pea soup and much more interesting than chicken with rice.

We now have the big debate - to blend or not to blend?

NYK Media

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Saving Money in the Kitchen with Frugal Meals

Another Frugal and Filling Meal - Pea and Ham Soup

Having bought a large, smoked ham hough (known elsewhere as a ham hock) for £2.00, it seemed frugally fitting to make sure I got my money's worth out of it - so I did!

After about 3 hours in the slow cooker, the ham was removed, stripped from the bone and used to make ham and cheese pasta. By using all the ham plus a whole 500g pack of pasta, there was enough for at least two meals for us, so we're off to a good start.

The water used to cook the ham was then topped up and the slow cooker set in motion to make 5 litres of lovely stock for soup-making.

Once strained and returned to the pan, I added carrots, onions and a full kilo of split green peas, plus the usual salt and pepper to season.

That's it! Let this lot simmer away slowly for a few hours and give it a stir now and again to make sure the peas are all cooking evenly.

My slow cooker is a 6.5 litre, 300w model. By the time the soup was ready, I had 5 litres of the most delicious, thick and very filling pea and ham soup. Protein from all those pulses and some vitamins from the vegetables - nourishing, warming and frugally filling.

Thick Pea and Ham Soup

Ingredients

5 litres of ham stock (homemade)
500g chopped carrots (homegrown)
1 large onion, chopped (homegrown)
1kg of split green peas
Salt and pepper to season

If the soup gets too thick for your liking, simply add a little bit more water. I like to keep mine topped up to the 5 Litres, then serve it thick with a slice of home-baked bread.

You could, of course, use lentils or yellow split peas, but I fancied some nice green pea and ham soup, which freezes just as well as any other type. This recipe can also be used with homegrown peas.

Considering one tin of shop bought soup serves two people, then 5 litres of homemade soup should provide you with up to 25 portions for a total cost of around £1.30, including the electricity you used for cooking. It's quite a luxury at 5p per serving! Mine cost a bit less than this, as I had bought my split peas in bulk while they were on offer at 49p per kilo.

Estimated costs will be slightly increased if you need to buy stock cubes, carrots and onions. We grow most of our own and plan on growing all our ow veg as soo as the new garden is fully up and running.

Dried pulses may have 'best before' dates on the packaging but they should last for years if kept in air tight storage containers. The same applies to dried pasta, flours, sugar and, lest we forget, chocolate. I never miss a chance to stock up on any of these items when they are cheap. As always, the rule of this game is only ever bulk buy foodstuffs that you know you will use. Food waste means automatic disqualification from the game, otherwise.

Cutting the Grocery Budget with Frugal Food

Spicy Courgette Soup - a Frugal Recipe at 4p per portion.

Every year, I set myself a target budget for grocery shopping. I've done this for so long that it has become more of a game - some might even call it a standing joke.

For the past few years, I have set my challenge at £1 per person, per day. And I have stuck to it!

The truth of the matter is, with finances being stretched to the limit, food waste is something that we cannot afford, nor should we tolerate it!

Elsewhere on this planet, there are people starving to death while many of us here, in this wonderful, 'developed' part of the world, take up ridiculous, faddy diets in an attempt to shift surplus fat. Sadly, at the same time, many also buy so much food that a percentage of it inevitably ends in the bin. Weird!

Frugaldom cannot afford the luxury of binning food, although it can honestly be said that I could afford to shed surplus fat! (But that's a whole other challenge.) In exchange for our happy-go-lucky lifestyle of simple living, splitting time between building up a home, earning a meagre living and developing a productive garden, we have given up on big luxuries like dining out, holidays, new cars and designer wear. All savings made, for now, are being ploughed into the house.

Without further ado, here is how I am currently coping with the glut of courgettes that are being harvested from the garden. I have only two plants, but I have lost count of the number of courgettes I have picked from each - certainly many more than I would ever have afforded to buy as part of the regular grocery shopping.

If you have read any of my posts about cooking chicken, you'll know that I can get at least three main meals from one (shop bought) bird and I always make stock from whatever is left. This time, with only two of us here, I have enough chicken for 4 main meals, the cat got fed and the stock got made. So what's next?

SPICY COURGETTE SOUP

INGREDIENTS

3 litres chicken stock (homemade)

1 large onion, chopped (homegrown)
Approx 500g chopped carrots (homegrown)
5 large courgettes, chopped (homegrown)
Coriander (None growing, I had to use ground variety from the spice rack)
Teaspoon salt

Teaspoon ground pepper

Teaspoon turmeric

I had been boiling rice for having with our chicken curry and like to add some turmeric or a touch of curry powder along with salt, to give the rice that lovely yellow colour and a bit of added flavour. Worrying that the soup may end up looking a weird colour once the courgettes had all cooked down, I reckoned the turmeric could also add a bit of colour and a bit of a kick, into the bargain. Next year, with luck, my new crocuses will provide us with saffron for such uses - frugal gourmet needn't cost the earth, it simply needs the earth in order for us to grow such fine delicacies.

The soup was simmered in the slow cooker for several hours then left overnight to cool. I then blended it (using a stick blender I bought several years ago for under £5) before splitting it into lunchtime sized portions.

I got 10 adult portions from the above, but can't really cost it up exactly when the sums are so small. All the veg came from the garden, the stock was a by-product of the chicken, which cost me £4.99 locally, and the herbs & spices are all things I have on my shelf. The electricity used was minimal, having opted to use my 300w slow cooker. At a guess, I would say the electricity used would amount to a maximum of 3 kWh, including making the stock. On our current electricity rates, this would work out at just under 37p

Looking good for around 4p per portion. Even if you had to buy stock cubes and vegetables, soup remains one of the cheapest meals to make if you are prepared to mix and match with your ingredients.

This started out as a bowlful, except H had already eaten half of it with a slice of homemade bread by the time I remembered I was meant to be photographing it for this blog post. He was slightly amused when asked to set down his spoon and step away from the soup while I pointed a camera at it!

This courgette soup is nourishing, very warming on a chilly day, handy for serving in a mug as a tasty snack and, most of all, you get a lovely hot kick from it, depending on how much of the spices you use.

Try it for yourself, adapt the recipe to suit your own tastebuds, thicken it with lentils if you prefer, and make the most of what you've got in stock. This is a seasonal soup and it freezes well. Frugadom highly recommends it and will be making another batch next week, as there are another 4 courgettes almost ready plus a couple of patty pan squash, which will also get added.

WE LOVE SOUP!

Quail hatch in progress - STOP watching, GO and pick dinner!

Japanese Coturnix Quail Chicks in Assorted Colours.

Yes, this really is the second blog post of the day, but I need to keep certain people up to date with the hatching progress.

First of all, I find it very difficult not to sit watching proceedings but the eggs were left in the incubator this time, as opposed to being transferred into the hatching box, which has a viewing window. This means I've been unable to peer in, so had to keep myself otherwise amused for most of the afternoon.

Bread has been baked, freezer has been repacked to fit in today's order and numerous cups of tea have been enjoyed on the patio.

Some weeding got done, the duck pond got topped up, more eggs were collected (and sold to neighbours) and then it got really hot outside, so more sitting about on the patio. By that time, I could make out at least 7 chicks bumbling around inside the incubator, but I daren't open the lid at that stage as the sudden drop in temperature and humidity can affect the rest of the hatch.

Outside, I cleared and swept a small space under the kitchen window, repotted some plants, planted the first of the strawberry runners into individual pots, sowed another row of peas (can but try) and then potted up all my herb cuttings.

From left to right, I don't know what the first plant is, the second one grew from wildbird seed, the third is Thai Basil, next it's the parsley seedlings and then the rosemary, which I rooted from sprigs I bought reduced to 10p in the supermarket.

 The herb cuttings are an assortment of three types of mint - common, lemon balm and grapefruit - two types of thyme and several cuttings from my hardy curry plant that survived the -10C winter last year.

If I can get all of the above to develop into healthy plants, these will go into planters and get sat out on the little cobbled yard at the front of the house.

Dinner time arrived, so I did the frugal act of pulling some carrots and picking some peas. I also brought in some lettuce, a couple of courgettes and an onion, as I was desperate to see how these were doing.

As you can see by the photos, the onions are doing really well and are quite huge, considering how late the sets went in and the fact that the person who gave me them thought they'd be past their sell by date. Not in the least! These are growing great guns! I can hardly wait to pull them up and get them dried for winter use. This one will be going into tomorrow's spicy stir fry along with the courgette and some homegrown chilli peppers.

So, has anyone tried to count the quail chicks in the photograph? I can see 12, so am really happy that we've managed to achieve over 40%  Even I am surprised at how many of these eggs are hatching, as they were neither stored correctly, nor turned daily prior to being incubated. These were simply surplus to requirement eggs that I decided to set in the off chance that a couple of them might be fertile. :)

Nice result, so far.