Life of Pie

The world, according to Frugaldom, is a complete package. We have all we need to create all that we want and if we break it, we have the wherewithal to fix it. Nothing is fake, everything is real - just take the time to look into this amazing frugal bubble that is our world. It's like the life of pie!

Life of Pie!

Humour me, if you will. I'm still the same person living the same frugal life surrounded by the same people, same space and same basic ingredients that make up Frugaldom and the world around me. Yes, some faces and places may have changed, some friends and family have passed along the way and new little humans have been born into our extended family, but nothing much has actually changed. We are still in this same bubble that holds all the secrets and solutions to all the mysteries. It still dumbfounds me that some people just can't see the bigger picture when it comes to looking after our spinning rock as it hurtles around that blazing ball that we call the sun.

Planet Earth (Free Blog Photos)

Don't get me wrong, I'm no scientist, I'm just someone who likes to think more and spend less when it comes to the topics of money and life. I can't stand money but it's a necessary evil in our society. Whether we see it as paper notes, metal, coins, pebbles or digital points, it is merely a number that can represent pretty much anything else, anywhere else. Our imaginations know no bounds and are restricted only by how much we can experience, not by how much money we have. It's like pie - some of us can bake our own from very little while others are happy to pay whatever it takes for others to do it for them.

Our world is a mish-mash of every possible ingredient available to mankind and it is all contained within this giant, multi-layered, bubble oven that's heated by the sun and insulated or protected by the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, ionosphere, magnetosphere, atmosphere and any other invisible-force spheres that engulf our ball of spinning rock. They contain everything, dictate our weather, our climate, our tides and the phases of our moon. As far as mankind is concerned, nothing more gets added and nothing gets lost - it is baking mankind in an ever evolving life 'pie'.

Life of Pie

We have what we have and it is up to us all to keep making pie and sharing it accordingly. Some people will be researching and developing the very basic ingredients, some will be tweaking the recipe, some harvesting and preparing the ingredients and some making the dough. Some will be helping bake this never-ending pie while many more will be contributing to all the various fillings needed to help our spherical bakehouse stay in production and meanwhile, we all need to contribute to maintaining the oven, as a complete break-down would be globally catastrophic.

Sadly, there are those who will always want a larger slice of the pie than others and there are also those who aren't prepared to share their slice with anyone else under any circumstances - they'd rather pig out, get fat and dictate the pecking order. But one would do well to remember that when times get tough, those who spit feathers, bully the flock and crow loudest are likely to be next in the pie, even if it's just to bring peace to the neighbours.

Feed the world... every single person is contributing to the global pie in their own way - even if it doesn't turn out the way we like it.

There is only one way out of this kitchen and it isn't by any earthly door that anyone's ever found. We're in it together and we're in it for life... only you can decide how you choose to contribute. What holds it all together and keeps things going is the balance of nature and our combined, conscious efforts to maintain the equilibrium. I believe this is the very basic principle of life itself and that everything we amount to is what gets returned. Trying to lead a balanced life and helping those who can't should be first and foremost, in my mind. Money won't buy food, water, shelter or even fresh air if this bubble bursts, so why accumulate useless 'stuff' that has no meaning in the meaning of life unless you already have everything you need for a balanced and happy life? By all means, protect your investments, but spare a thought for those who have nothing.

We need to find alternatives to save our bubble from bursting!

www.scottishmultimedia.co.uk / Frugaldom

Day 14 of Making it in March - Frugal Pie Supper!

Day 14 of 31 = More Pie-Making

Sorry this is short but I'm not finding much time in my days for anything creative or crafty while working flat out with the preparations for completely overhauling the main website, but I would really like the bulk of that work done by Easter so I can fit in a frugal break before the major garden work and more renovation work begins again.

All I managed to make today was turkey mince and vegetable pie, plus a couple more of the microwave chocolate sponges in mugs!

 

Don't waste any pastry - use it to decorate

SHORT CRUST PASTRY

160g plain flour
25g lard
25g margarine
pinch of salt
cold water to bind the mix

I simply crush the lard and margarine into the flour the same way I would make crumble, then add the cold water - I think 2 tablespoons did this lot - then pour it out onto floured surface, shape it, roll it and lay it over a sponge tin that's been covered in greased tin foil. If I don't have any kitchen foil, I just grease the tin.

Just out the oven

I suppose decorating the pie counts as making something that's creative. I secure the top to the pie base by coating the rim of overhanging pastry with milk then pressing around the edge with a fork before trimming off the excess using the blunt side of a knife. The trimmings get rolled out again and cut into shapes - leaves this time. Paint the pie with milk, stick on the pastry designs and use the very last of the pastry to make berries to go with your leaves. I draw on the leaves with the sharp edge of my knife, then paint the whole lot again with milk. My pie has been filled with the turkey and mixed vegetables that I cooked then divided up and froze last week.

 

This size pie does the two of us two meals and costs very little to make.

 

At lunchtime, we had some of the lentil soup followed by my third attempt at microwave mug chocolate sponges. But I still can't get them to bake and stay their original height, they always collapse as soon as I open the microwave door. If anyone else tries these, please let me know and pop a photo onto the food section of www.frugalforums.co.uk so I can see.

 

Have a good weekend, everyone. I will do my best to try and make something a little more creative between now and Monday.

Day 8 of Making it in March - How to Make a Duck Eggshell Planter

Day 8 of 31 - Today we got our First Duck Egg of the Year!

White duck egg

Phoebe, our oldest surviving duck, has started to lay after her winter break, so today we had a lovely white duck egg. (I know it's Phoebe's because 'Custard Cream' lays pale green eggs and 'Oreo' lays blue eggs.) Cue an attempt at making one of those eggshell planters to hang in a home made mini macramé potholder.

Scoring the egg shell

I used a filleting knife to gently saw through the narrower end of the egg - don't cut right through, we want to save the egg inside for cooking!

Empty egg shell

Once sliced through enough to open the end off the egg, tip the contents into a dish or cup and put them in the fridge to use up for cooking. (Think I might make bread and butter pudding tomorrow!)

Wash out the shell before priming it

After giving the shell a good wash, allow it to stand upside down to drip dry and then give it a couple of coats of bonding - I used my PVA glue. This strengthens the shell. Omit this stage if you are planning on sowing seeds in it because once the seeds germinate, you can simply plant the entire egg shell into the ground.

 

Painting the eggshell

Once the bonding had dried, I used food colouring to paint this first shell a rosy red! I'll try different colours, depending on what I find in the baking cupboard.

Duck eggshell planter

 

I selected a brown embroidery thread and then knotted up another of the mini macramé hangers. (See earlier post for how to make these.) The colouring wasn't properly dried in time for me to plant up this shell for photographing, but I'll do that tomorrow. I have taken a couple more cuttings from my Money (Jade) Plant, so they should be ready to pot by then.

 

Turkey mince pie

 

And finally, for today, there were a couple of other makes! I made a batch of ice cream for daughter to take home with her and I made some pastry to turn some of the turkey 'Nile' mince into a pie to mark the end of National Pie Week! This one has turkey mince, sage  & onion stuffing and mixed vegetables already added to the filling. As usual, I forgot to photograph it when it came out the oven, so this is what's left of it. There is still sufficient mince to make another pie, so I've frozen that for future use. If I count a pie as 4 portions, my 400g pack of turkey mince stretched to 12 meals, six for each of us here.

 

NYK, Frugaldom

Day 24 of Extremely Frugal February - Beef Pie and Leftovers Pudding

Day 24 of 28, a Bit More Bullying for the Beef.

On day 11, I cooked a little piece of roast beef and began counting out the meals it could provide. At 600g in weight, there should be sufficient for 6 meals but, at £1 per 100g for the beef and a budget of £1 per day per person for ALL meals, I need to stretch it further.

The original post is here if you missed it and we have had two meals each (4 servings) from the beef, so far.

Tonight I made a large pie that will provide two of us with three meals each (6 servings), so that will be 10 meals from the £6 piece of beef. I had saved the gravy juices from the meat after slow cooking it, so that had been frozen for later use, too - I simply defrost it when needed and thicken it with some cheap, instant gravy granules.



Homemade roast beef and onion pie just out the oven

Pastry is great stuff, isn't it? I use 50g margarine, 50g lard and 200g plain flour with a pinch of salt and some water to bind it. then roll it out in plain flour.

Making pastry

I always use the cheapest available ingredients, so I am currently baking with tinned, pasteurised margarine bought at 3 tins for £1. I am by no means a good cook, but I'm led to believe that keeping everything chilled is the secret to good pastry; I try my best and am not scared to scrub up and get stuck into mixing by hand.

Greasing the plate with the lard wrapper

Right, what have we got so far? A plate, some flour, lard and margarine and one small egg from the garden hens, so I am able to glaze the pastry - this always enhances the finished look and makes it appear much less like leftovers wrapped in a pie case.

Rolling out the chilled pastry

The 200g of plain flour is sufficient to make a large family pie, big enough to serve 6. I use the same recipe for all my short crust pies, whether they are sweet or savoury. Apologies for this next photo, I forgot to switch on the flash. My beef and onion pie filling wasn't really emitting a golden glow.

Glowing like savoury gold - roast beef with onions in gravy

I freeze most things in margarine tubs, so the above is the rolled pastry with half a tub of beef plus gravy - I used a dinner plate for baking it. Paint around the edges with beaten egg so you get a food seal between bottom and top of the pie pastry. You can use milk if you have no egg or just seal it with water if all else fails, then press the edges together with a fork. Make a little hole in the centre to let out any excess steam.

Use up the pastry trimmings to decorate your pie

It was either Fonzie, Bernice or Mrs Splashy who laid us a tiny egg this week - they are our Pekin bantam hens - so I beat this up and glazed the pie top. Now I have pastry offcuts and the remains of a tiny egg leftover from pie making. Excellent! Enough to make pudding!

Making pudding from the leftovers

The leftover pastry was enough to roll out and line two small flan dishes, so I put a scoop of homemade blackcurrant jam into each. The egg... I creamed a little sugar and margarine, added some self-raising flour and beat in the little bit egg with some water and used this frugal sponge-like mix to cover the jam in the pastry cases.



Leftovers being turned into fruit sponge in pastry

The little fruit flans with sponge got cooked in the mini oven while we were eating dinner. Ordinarily, these flan dishes make individual servings but one was enough between two of us when served with some instant custard. We do like or food here in Frugaldom and I find that an average of £1 per person per day for all food is quite sufficient, although this does take some practice while building up basic stores of ingredients and dried goods.

 

Fruit sponge flans made from pie-making leftovers

Having savoured the flavour of the pie at dinnertime, I now have two thirds of a meat pie and one small fruit sponge flan for future meals. The steak pie was served with potatoes and mixed vegetables and I'm guessing that we'll be having similar for the next couple of days, as I can't refreeze the pie. But let's face it, in the Frugaldom household, beef for three days on the trot is sheer bliss and then that leaves only Thursday and Friday to see me through to March ... and another new month of challenges! Yeah!

NYK, Frugaldom