Live on £4000 for a year - Part 3

Janey51

Hi everyone.
I am still around but usually in the very early hours of the morning when sleep won't come.
My Mum was admitted to the hospital as an emergency on Thursday so things are a bit difficult.
I am not having to try to be frugal at all as I eat very little at the moment. Seem to be spending most of my time cleaning...with Stardrops of course. And I am doing a lot of baking but I have no idea who for as I can't eat it and my freezer is full to bursting.
I have been passing a lot of things I can't eat (like pasta and couscous) onto my nephew's family as my nephew lost his job and they have 3 young children. Nephew is very interested in cooking so I have passed a lot of my DH's recipe books and equipment onto him. He is going to come to my house in a few weeks and make a meal for 8 of us. His first dinner party! He is very nervous but I have said I will do the dessert and set the table.
DH and I used to have wonderful dinner parties. DH would search car boots and charity shops for little magical touches to add to place settings. When the room was lit by candlelight it was like a fairy grotto.
He had just finished re-vamping the room before he died and it will be a fitting tribute. Its a big house and needs people, parties and laughter.

My biggest expense at the moment is diesel as I have to go and see Mum every day and still have to keep getting things signed by the solicitor. Its only a 12 mile round trip but it mounts up.
I am still not sure what my income is going to be yet so (in true frugalling fashion) I am working on the worst case scenario.
Money seems so unimportant at the moment. I would give every penny I have to have my DH back.

sophiesmum_2

Hi janey :heartpuls
So sorry to hear that your mum is in hospital, you really are going through it at the moment. I hope she is soon on the mend.
It is lovely that you are able to think about your nephew and his family at a time when you are so low yourself, and I am sure that they are very grateful for the help you are giving them and that nephew will treasure the things that were Toms for years to come. Tom's dinner parties sound wonderful and must be lovely memories for you to look back on as magical times spent with friends and family enjoying life. I'm sure that Tom's presence will be much missed when nephew cooks dinner for you all, but it will be a lovely testimony to him to have a dinner party.
Take care Janey, we are here if you need us:A

lingojingo

Marru wrote: »

So I have now every time I take The Dog for a walk been foraging dandelion leaves for him and that seems to be the favourite food ever and goes down like a storm. And it is free. How about that - a frugal piggy. Marru

Shame you don't live near me, I have an endless supply in my garden, can't get rid of them whatever I try! You could have them for free, in fact I might even pay you to take them:rotfl:

Hi Janey - glad you're still posting. As Sophiesmum said, treasure your wonderful memories of Tom, and be glad his nephew seems to have inherited some of his marvelous traits. Big hugs for you ((((((((((((())))))))))))

sophiesmum_2

Good morning frunchkins:D
Enjoyed a bit of a lie in this morning, but have lots of things planned for the rest of the day.

• Make a loaf in breadmaker
• Bake a huge gammon joint for oldies tea
• Save stock from gammon joint and use to make split pea and ham soup later for freezer- will also use up 5 freebie leeks in this and an onion feeling sorry for itself in fridge, will work out F&V portions later;)
• Pick rhubarb and my little apples and make rhubarb and apple jam for stockpile, also have blackcurrants ready so will freeze them to add to desserts/smoothies etc.
• Brekkie in a minute will be grilled tomatoes, mushrooms and a poached egg with a slice of HM seeded bread:D and a glass of OJ, (3 F&V portions out the way:D )
• Need to buy more eggs but want to have a no spend day so will hang on til tomorrow as I have direct debits due out then too so will have to be a spend day:rolleyes:
• later i am going to browse my wish lists and things I want to achieve lists and cross off anything that is now achieved, and probably add more things to lists too. It is nice o look back on what progress you have made in areas:D

Think that's about it for now, will update later, have a good day everyone.

Marru

nykmedia wrote: »

I can still seeeeeeeee yooooooooooou. :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Busted! I went to the MB treads and from there to watch more music videos. I have this one U2 track playing in my head on repeat now.

LJ: I have a great idea for your dandelions: You need to take two rescue piggies of your own!! They are so easy to keep and are looooovely.

Hughs to you Janey and it is lovely that you have members of your family there with you. If we were closer I would come with DD to enjoy all the baking. She is more of a savoury girl (except for fruit and berries) and I like the sweet things.

Talking about DD, the shoes that I got her has these flashing lights on the sides when she walks and now she has put them on just to see the lights. And they were only £11. Where we used to live you wouldn't get even baby slippers for that price.

Sophiesmum - the brekkie sounded just delish. We had egg and cheese on toast which is at the moment DDs favourite weekend breakfast (weekdays she gets porridge). I hope you had really nice chill out evening last night.

Nothing special today except more walking The Dog and more picking up dandelions (oh - reminds me to go Wikipedia and check the dock leaves)

What is a frugal way of cleaning laptop monitor? Could I use baby wipes or would I damage the screen?

Need to go now as I have "Baby Tiger" sitting on my lap. Bails I need to warn you she really misses you and has lined up a lot of things she wants to play with you or show you when you are back. You are now called her sister.

Great day everyone,

Marru

Brighton_belle

sophiesmum - I have put blackberry picking into my diary now for aug/sept. I always loved that as a kid and I adore all fruit so something else to look forward to.
Marru - my apologies to babytiger, but I got to play with bails at my place yesterday afternoon and did have a lovely time . Have sent BT a wave and hello by seagull, so look out for it. We got very excited about yogurt making .
Many thanks sophiesmum,marru,nyk,draig: I am now [strike]drowning [/strike] doing backstroke in a delicious vat of cabbage ideas. This is such a great forum. Going to try dreigs simple cabbage/butter in pan first tonight with half of it (because budget won't stretch to mince before end of the month). Might colcannon other half (had never heard of that so googled it. Seems similar to nyk delicious sounding cutlets idea). But have written down all the ideas.Thanks also re stardrops advice.

We're using up 4 x HM beef burgers from freezer tonight, with pre HM topping in freezer I usually use for cottage pie: mashed celeriac,swede & carrot. So tasty and I prefer it to mashed pots both in flavour & that we generally follow the SlimmngWorld plan so often don't mix pasta or pots with a meat meal. Has helped us shift the weight.
Nyk - with the no knead bread - do you think it would work if I made rolls instead?
Got a great low fat, watching your weight ,carrot cake recipe, adapted from A more pricy SW one:
50g bran
5oz grated carrot
2 beaten eggs
2 level tbsp mince meat
1 tbsp runny honey
1tsp of cinnimon,mixed spice,nutmeg
Couple of lge spoons of HM yog for moisture (as I cut recipe down from 3 eggs to 2)
MIx ingredients.
Put into a lined 2lb loaf tin (only about 1.5inches thick and it doesn't rise.
Bake covered in foil for 15-20 mins (I keep & reuse the foil every time)and then uncoverd for 15 mins 175 c fan oven. 180 non fan.
Cut into 8 slices. A tasty sweet treat, a bit bread puddingy. Freezes well so I make 2 at a time.

Marru

It seems that there are several type of dock leaves so I am a bit confused here. I found this picture is this what you would mean?

Frugaldom

Hello to all and a special hello with hugs to Janey. I hope your mum gets well soon.

Marru - yes, that's dock leaves, except we northerners call them docken leaves. I have never tried eating them but I did find a recipe for us, not the guinea pigs

Dock Turnovers
Collect Medium Dock leaves – 2 per person
Soak in boiled water for 5 mins
Dry in tea towel carefully
Paint oil on both sides
Take approx 3 spoons of pre cooked rice
Add chopped feta – garlic optional
Add seasoning to taste
Wrap ingredients securely inside leaf – gently fry in oil.

I think the above sounds alright and would certainly try making them. It sounds similar to using vine leaves or cabbage leaves and they are supposed to be very nutritious. We used to use them as instant pain relief for nettle stings.

Today's adventure went very well. We arrived at Threave country estate and had a lovely walk through the visitor centre and around the gardens in the sunshine. The greenhouses were made quite spectacular by what was growing in them - bananas! And the walled gardens were every self-sufficient wannabe's dream come true! They had every kind of berry you could think of and the pear trees grow like vines up the walls, laden! I did notice that my leeks were a bit ahead of theirs, so perhaps I planted mine a bit early. (Last week at Culzean Castle, their greenhouses had grapes, peaches and lemons, so it just goes to show what can be grown in Scotland, given the right conditions.) After that, we headed off to the ruined castle, which is accessible only by ringing the bell for the boatman to come and collect visitors. Many photographs were taken but we didn't go over in the boat as our NTS membership cards didn't cover the fares. :rotfl: They did cover entry to the gardens and the house, so we'll visit the house next time. Just one thing that I do keep noticing about these parts and forgetting to mention... my mum loves artichokes but can seldom get them in her local supermarket. Here, they grow wild! :rotfl: We spotted some growing along the grass verge of a local bus park a couple of weeks ago and there were loads of them on today's garden expedition. They are a definite must for my future project if they are that easy to grow, that's for sure! I just need a garden that I can guarantee will be mine for at least a couple of years.

Tesco visit was very productive! I spent £15.75 on general groceries and a further £9.38 on stockpile items, mainly fresh orange juice. Del Monte was on half price, so worked out cheaper than Mr T's value variety! I picked up 12 litres in total. Supercook / Dr Oetker's cake decorations were still on special, so got another 8 tubs (12p)! Bay leaves (17p) and brand name curry powder (41p) were reduced to clear, so added them to stockpile, along with 5 orange jellies (8p), 10 packs custard mix (8p), tinned mandarins (11p), tinned pineapple (26p) sage & onion stuffing (17p) and dried fruit (41p) for baking. Not a bad haul for under £10!

For my £15.75 grocery bill I got the following:

27 bananas
6 cartons fresh orange
2l bleach
5 reduced wholemeal loaves (now in freezer)
Large cauliflower
Large white cabbage
15 eggs
Large pack minced beef (does us 6 meals)
7 apples
3 peppers
12 yogurts

The bananas were an absolute steal! The normal price was 83p for 9 (Co-op here charges £1.49 for 7) and I got 3 packs, but 2 of the packs were reduced to 49p :T :j

I also spent 98p of the household 'everything else' budget on a new measuring jug.

After all the excitement of a frugal trip out and a shopping trip to Mr T, I can safely say that I should not need to buy any food, at all, for at least a fortnight and I have enough to keep us all on our 5-a-day for next week's experiment.

Now I just need to sort out my Tesco points that I converted to deals. The first of them expires next week and I can't use them for my Ireland trip. I'll need to send them all back or else find something else I can do with them.

I have updated my signature to reflect all of today's spends - added the stockpile buys to my grocery total, my groceries to my monthly total and the overall total includes rhe mew measuring jug.

Hope you are all having a good weekend and making the most of the sunshine if you have it where you are. :cool:

Just checked and my Woolies order tracked and logged £1.32 cashback. That's not bad over an above the free delivery, extra 10% off and the extra few pence I'll get back from paying on a cashback cc. That's the kind of gift shopping I like!

Brighton_belle

Just edited my carrotcake recipe - wrote cumin and should be nutmeg:o .

I've been introduced to a cheap mail order wholesale herbs & spices company. Even with postage they work out loads cheaper than buying at the supermarket (though I am sure you all probably know of somewhere even better!). E,g sain own cumin, is £4.04 for 226g compared to 1.95 & cinnimon is 6.75 compared to £1.90 for 170g:
google Fox's Spices' based in warwickshire
They also have stalls at lots of big events, like the south of england show, which saves postage if you are going anyway.

Frugaldom

Hi BB, perhaps you have the wrong web url, all I got was a page of links connected to Google adsense. Maybe best delete that one as it's against MSE forum rules to list it here I think. Will search for Foxes and see if I can find their own site, though