Living on next to nought - is that the key?

Good Morning :hello:

Well no wonder this year is whizzing, if days/weekends just pass in a blur!

starnac - I heartily concur!

NoOneAround - yes, I am old enough to remember the tv program to which you refer :rotfl:

Satchmo - that is just pants service eh? I mean, it's not as though b00ts don't know that some of their client base will have complex medical needs, which require complex medication requirements - and as for not ringing the doctors......... Thank goodness that you and your mother have been able to find pleasure in making her room environment lovely. Well done satchmo :T

supersaver - we're with you on the sticking with frugality :T

So, what's been occurring? Mmm, well, Friday night was pizza night as normal;



The base was made with Leanne's fast pizza dough recipe again. Mostly because I had forgotten to make her good pizza recipe dough on Thursday night However, it matters not, it was still a good pizza, and I'm sure that the addition of plain flour, alongside the bread flour makes it easier to roll out.

I had wanted to make mushroom pizza - it's been a while since we had one. But I though that I was going to have to rely on the last of the YS'd mushrooms that I had in the freezer - not so good as a) cooked down, there wouldn't be many and b) frozen, they never loose their water fully and can end up soggy - ok in stew, not so good on a pizza. Anyhow, the shopping gods were looking down on me, as when I went into M&$ to get the soba noodles - which are a whole 19p cheaper than mrT, did I mention that? :rotfl: - I saw 1 lonely punnet of mushrooms that had been YS'd to 60p. Not the best saving, but still cheaper than mrAl or MrL for the same product/quantity. So I was a happy bunny :j

Still, I got the cheese on Friday from mrL - £4.99 for 1kg - I see that it is in their Weekend offer next week for £4.59 a kg Still, we were out of cheese and I wouldn't have been able to make the pizza without it.

The wedges are from a 49p bag of maris piper potatoes from HB.

As usual, the pizza made 8 slices, so plenty for Friday night, Saturday lunch and a couple of snap slices frozen

Whilst I had the oven on, I also whipped up a (half quantity) 'Peach Coffee Cake' from Leanne's book Good and Cheap. I had made this in August, with some YS'd plums that I picked up in mrM, but I got a tin of peaches slices in HB that were in grape juice and were 35p for a 400g tin, so I thought I'd try them. I drained the juice off, used my hands to part the slices into bite-sized pieces and incorporated them into the mix. They worked really well, and it's a lovely, tasty cake. I think it is actually quite economical too, and you get 6 good size slices from it. If memory serves, the recipe is on pg 156. Pic here;



Yesterday was lost in a haze of trying to get the house back into something like a living space. I'm trying to do it methodically, and decluttering as I go, which is good practice, but slows things down....... we've not even started on the furniture yet (although nothing to declutter there - we've only a few sticks as it is :rotfl:)

We did also do some shopping for the 'bulky' groceries. DP helped me with that. Thankfully, we went later in the afternoon, so I think that we missed the hoards. Unfortunately, I got overcharged in mrM, and even though I'd been adding as I went along, I had put some 'extras' in my trolley, so I thought maybe I had missed something out. But one look at the receipt showed I had been charged £3 for 12 lemons, instead of 50p for 2....... So of course, you can only get your money back by queuing up at 'Customer Services'....... is there any supermercado where that is not the biggest oxymoron of all time, and where you do not waste hours of your life waiting? To be fair, when I was served, the assistant was pleasant, efficient and didn't quibble over the refund. But neither do they rush to serve people waiting in the queue and other shop staff barge in front of you to demand keys or 'signing in books' or other such paraphernalia......

We also went to mrL to pick up a box of 12 S/S UHT milk cartons. They have their offer on again, 12 for £7, which makes it about the cheapest out of all the retailers. We've given our FB donation for October, but this will be our Nov/Dec donation. It will allow us to give some other things off their list too. There is plenty of 'date' left on the cartons, so I'm not giving 'rubbish' to them. Besides, the receptionist mentioned that they went through their milk supply pretty quickly, so it'll not hang around I'm sure. I may even take our next 2 donations in one fell swoop - there's bound to be a 'drive' in December, so the staff will be rushed off their feet with supermercado donations.

Dinner last night was the first of our 'Saturday Night is Strictly Curry Murray' curries........ First cab off the rank was inspired by Mr Singh's in Elderslie st, Glasgow. And it is a curry that I had never heard of before....... But every Glaswegian will know I made a vegetarian version of 'Chicken Chasni' :rotfl: So I made, 'Chickpea Chasni'

'Chasni' is most probably a version of curry that you would not find in South East Asia, just as you would not find chicken tikka masala............

However, in keeping with my theme, I loved that it has originated in Scotland, and I wanted to try it; it enabled me to do a play on words, chicken/chickpea and if all else failed, I knew DP would like it, as it was a sweet and sour curry, with the emphasis on sweet

Picture here;



If you would like the Chicken Chasni recipe, you can find it HERE the only changes I made - was obviously to sub chickpeas for chicken, I added in some chopped red pepper (mrL 27p ea.) and I used a little extra tomato sauce (leftover pizza topping) in the mix. And instead of a little cream at the end, I added in some natural yoghurt. I agree with all the comments I have read about this curry - you need the cream/dairy in it. It is too sweet without it. If you try the curry mid making, you'll think 'what have I done?'. But wait until the end, and it's a reasonable curry.

You can also see in the pic, I had a bash at making a 'sort of' naan to accompany the dish. That there is a 'Neep Naan' :rotfl: I grated a piece of Swedish turnip (the orange one), cooked it lightly with a little onion and mixed it with a 'secret' blend of herbs and spices.... :rotfl:and incorporated it into my normal 'piadina' dough, and tried valiantly to shape it into a naan shape Although I probably put too much swede, to dough ratio, I have to say, it was lovely Swede/turnip officianados will know that they taste lush, but this really worked. It wasn't as sweet as a peshwari naan, but along those lines iyswim. I'd definitely make it again

If you're wondering why the glass of wine? Well you know that this meal is inspired by Judy Murray and her appearance in SCD. I figured that Judes isn't a pintalager typa gal, so I thought I would have a go at trying to learn about matching wine with curry. So that is a glass of Riesling wine (mrT £4.79) which is supposed to be able to cope with sweet/sour tastes. Well, on it's own, it's quite sweet - but I have to say, it worked really well with the curry. I've had Riesling with a coconut curry before, and it was good, but this worked really well. The wine transformed, it tasted (nice) appley.

Would I make the curry again? Well, if I had some mango chutney (I'd got a good brand jar on offer for £1 in mrA yonks ago for some other recipe I'd not got round to making) and could drop on some '57 varieties' ketchup cheaply (had to go all the way to Iceland to get the current bottle..... ) then I'd give it a go. It's problem is that it is a little too sweet for my taste buds, but DP did enjoy it. I do love that it is a curry of Scotland, and it was a good one to kick off the month I think

Right, DP has surfaced - I think he is going down with the lurgy Hopefuljoy/Lilt/superdave have endured, so he is currently not a happy bunny As naturally it is 'manflu' :rotfl:

I'd better go and pat and stroke him and make soothing noises..... such a loss to the NHS am I....... not :rotfl:


Thanks for popping in, reading and commenting. Mucho appreciated.

See y'all later.

Greying

in_need_of_direction wrote: »

Gosh, you sound as productive as ever. I've three weeks to catch up on and have been saving this as I'm working away mon to wed so will have time to see what everyone has been up to.

Hey hun :wave: Now I know that you have been busy too - you haven't stopped since the plane landed! Don't wear yourself out!

Lovely to *see* you, as always

Greying