Day 19 of Extremely Frugal February - Sweet Chili Stir Fry

Day 19 of 28 - Surveying the Month's Work and Spends to Date

Still no more major 'out of the ordinary' spends, but there has been a few hours of extra work lately, so I had to take advantage of that for the extra income. It's been a good excuse not to go out anywhere; I even turned down the opportunity of a trip to the nearest Co-op recently!

Chicken, onion and peppers

Back to chicken this evening for dinner - diced and stir fried with sliced and diced onions and peppers. Remember the rule - always slice, dice or grate to make things go further. If I can get the kitchen organised soon then I'll look at stocking up on the chicken fillets while I can still get a bulk order at £4.85/kilo from Muscle Food*. (The offer of 4 free chicken fillets still stands if you use this link.)

5p per sachet sweet chilli sauce

Did anyone stock up on the sachets of sweet chilli sauce from Approved Food? At 5p per sachet, I have found them a fabulous addition to many dishes and I'm even thinking of trying adding a sachet to some melted chocolate as a tasty topping for homemade ice cream. I'll let you know how that goes as soon as I can source some cheap chocolate. (Anyone nearby going to a supermarket soon?)

Add a pinch of mixed herbs to rice

Rice can be a little bland, but at 40p per kilo (I bought 10kg), a 50g serving costs only 2p per person and affords you the luxury of adding all sorts of herbs or spices, plus it's a great way of bulking out meals and an enjoyable alternative to potatoes or pasta.

Homemade summer fruits ice cream

The last batch of homemade ice cream got polished off tonight, but there's still blackcurrant cheesecake remaining in the fridge to get eaten tomorrow. Do you think it matters that two of our five-a-day involved fruit being served on cake and mixed through ice cream? I really must get back out and do some walking or cycling soon! The free outdoor gym awaits!

Living room is progressing well without any further money spends. My next project for that is getting some artwork onto the walls and getting back to making the rag rug. I've already set out the plans for our March money challenge in the www.frugalforums.co.uk so there should be something in there to interest anyone with an interest in making something. I'm overrun with ideas and suggestions and really do need to dig my way through them all and get started doing them instead of just reading about them.

Hopefully, by continuing to live within my strict £4,000 per year budget, we'll can afford to get most of the remaining renovation work done during 2014 and get into our ecoarts studio this summer to produce some saleable pieces. Having now reclaimed the living room, this will also allow the multi-purpose room to return to normal and provide much needed space for the crafting projects, as well as space for all the visitors I have invited! :)

Finally, I'm happy to say that the regular get-togethers with friends and neighbours have finally resumed. But we don't do knit and natter here, its stitching and bitching all the way, along with bartering and the sharing of libations, home produce and surplus to requirement 'clutter'. It's like a chatathon coupled with a swapathon.

Now I am off to try and make an old sheepskin rug look like a spring lamb so I can add it to the ambience of the 'new' living room. It's had a jolly good beating outdoors this afternoon and it will probably take me the rest of the week to make it look worthy of being on display.

NYK, Frugaldom

In Response to a Question About my Previous Post

My Way of Thinking About the Price of Rice

Nowadays, the west is consuming more and more of the stuff, what with all our 'healthy' eating, takeaways, penchant for foreign foods and, lest we forget, shelf-life of dried products that can be stored for lengthy periods of time in a bid to beat inflation and save us all some money.

Then we still have the pet trade, which has been (still is) diversifying at an alarming rate, choosing to include rice in many more pet food products under assorted headings, such as 'hypo-allergenic' or 'as recommended by the veterinary profession'.

Add to that the apparent increase in medical conditions such as gluten intolerance etc, etc, etc...

Rice, when we look at the overall picture and allow for things like exchange rate fluctuations, is one of the things that has been increasing in price over the past 4 years.

Increased demand might be what's pushing up the price, but all the other factors involved in the growing, harvesting, shipping, packaging and general production costs add up to a fair whack.

This time in 2007, the metric tonne price on the commodities market was sitting at around £165, but then it suddenly soared to over £500 within about 6 months of that. Since then, despite various fluctuations, it hasn't, to my knowledge, reduced price in the supermarkets.

It's now steadily climbing back up, which means the profit margins will be squeezed: shareholders don't like losing out on dividends, so the only thing left for the big supermarkets (dictators of grocery prices, in my opinion) to do will be to increase the retail prices accordingly.

At the moment, I think the import price of rice is around £390 per tonne, but it is still climbing.

If things get tough in the grocery shopping stakes, we can do many more things with rice and homegrown veg than we can with peanut butter.

NYK Media
www.scottishmultimedia.co.uk

Peanut Butter Price Wars?

Nuts to all, I'll Take the Rice!

Being a fan of frugal living, fast news, price checking and social media, I easily spotted a 'tweet' that said,

"If you love peanut butter, stock up now before peanut prices soar. It’ll drive you nuts if you don’t!"

I was compelled to respond, as their attached link led to an article stating The Wall Street Journal had reported a potential 40% price rise in peanut butter. It was like screaming in blind panic, BUY, BUY, BUY... BUY PEANUT BUTTER NOW!

Nobody can deny that, at this time, Wall Street may well be filled with nuts, but this, to me, is getting ridiculous. The above piece of sensationalised, so-called 'news' is very old hat and I'm not afraid to back up my strong words of condemnation of such scaremongering, be it nuts, bolts or milk prices.

In 1990, I happened to be working in the livestock industry. (Surprise, not!) We traded in bulk feeds - straights, mixes and, you got it, GROUNDNUTS!

As many may know, groundnuts are what most people call 'peanuts'. They grow under ground, hence their name, and they are not, for all we are led to believe, a tasty snack naturally devoured by our native badgers, squirrels, wild birds, cage birds nor, for that matter, parrots. But I digress.

At the start of 1990, 'peanuts' were costing around 86p per kilo, but by the end of that year they were about £1.75 per kilo, pushing retail prices within the pet trade to over £2 per kilo (£1 per lb, I think we charged.) We were buying and shipping by the tonne, so the price fluctuations were felt, I can assure you of that.

By January 1991, the price had slipped by around 25% then, after a brief spike, prices really began crashing. However, the all time high retail prices remained unchanged!

By mid 1992, peanuts were less than 70p per kilo ($778/tonne on the International commodities market), but price fluctuations were as regular as clockwork, bouncing around all over the place, sometimes dropping below 60p per kilo, other times, like January 2008, spiking to highs of £1.70

Now explain to me... why should we be showing any real concern in stockpiling peanut butter simply because the current price of groundnuts is trading within 2p of the prices we were trading in 1990?

Get a grip! The manufacturers and retailers do not fluctuate their prices to reflect current market trends - they simply bump up the prices when their own profit margins are being adversely affected. Compared to other commodities, the groundnut prices have looked relatively stable and I'd be more likely to stack my cupboards full of rice than peanut butter.

In fact, I already have! Rice, in all its forms, is the way to go in the land of Frugaldom.

NB: My prices are approximate, based on UK metric tonnes between wholesalers and retailers within the pet trade. We also need to remember that the US$ to GB£ exchange rate has fluctuated immensely, which also reflects in the current prices, as does transportation. Let's face it, anything travelling here from South America is going to be increasing in price, we just need to look at the escalation in prices of tinned corned beef from places such as Brazil and Argentina to see how this all pans out for the consumer.

The old saying that things cost 'peanuts' is no more!

NYK Media
www.scottishmultimedia.co.uk