Live on £4000 for a year - Part 3

Frugaldom

Nobody's about, so I'll just keep updating

The past few days practicing for my mini challenge have been real eye-openers as far as the 5-a-day thing goes. It's made me realise that I rely too much on potatoes and wish I had planted parsnips and turnips now. Today, however, I have managed to get the full 5 portions into the meals.

banana
beans
Carrots, parsnips & potatoes served with mince (with onions & carrots) and doughballs
bread & butter pudding with extra sultanas

When making the mince, I weighed out 120g each of chopped carrots, chopped onions and chopped parsnips. I put all the onions and half the carrots in the mince and added the rest of the carrots and the parsnips to the potaoes, which were served mashed. I add mixed herbs to the dough when making doughballs, so I guess that might count for something too.

The bread & butter pudding was made using 3 layers of buttered homemade wholemeal bread, 3 eggs, milk, a little sugar and 6 servings of sultanas, so it should be fairly nutritious. One serving = one sixth = 1 portion of fruit. We'll have the other half tomorrow, as part of the new frugal 5-a-day regime.

For anyone wondering about the added costs of electricity when cooking from scratch and baking, yesterday's 4 loaves of bread and 2 trays of cookies clocked up an extra 2 units of electricity. Unfortunately, I can't work out how much a unit costs!

Brighton_belle

DdraigGoch wrote: »

Re the cabbage, firstly cut out a quarter of it and then take out the thick stalk and put on one side. Shred the remaining cabbage very finely and dump into v cold water, ignore for a while! Just before you want to eat it, melt about a tablespoon [for a family of 4, a teaspoon for just you] of butter in the bottom of a saucepan which has a well sealing lid, drain the cabbage well and then bung it in, put the lid on tightly and just let it simmer very gently for about 5 minutes, shaking now & then to ensure nothing sticks on the bottom or "fries" in the butter. Result? The tastiest vegetable you can get in under 10 minutes, in my book.

this was really yummy. It tasted light and fresh and was aldente. A definite sucess: used half the cabbage for the 2 of us. I will definitely start buying cabbage now. I recently bought a super little gadget with my nectar points at argos that chops and shreds and grates. Best money I 'never' spent and that made the difference for me I think in doing this recipe - got the cabbage really well shredded.
Thanks for the thing about the website Nyk- I couldn't alter it for ages as something went wront with my internet. Hope all is ok with it now.
Any idea nyk if the no knead bread recipe could be used for rolls? Re feeling you rely on potatoes too much, I can really recommend mashing carrots, suede & celeriac together instead - a great alternative and a direct substitute and get in a lot more veg.

sophiesmum_2

Nyk, butternut squash is also good for mash and for roasting etc,apparently they grow well here and yield several big squashes per plant, they also store well:D I'm going to grow some in lotty next year using my free collected seeds, tons of seeds in each squash;)

Sounds like you are getting to grips with the 5 a day thing:D

Todays F&V score -

• breakfast -tomatoes,mushrooms,poached egg, OJ (3 portions)
• Lunch - HM yoghurt with tinned pineapple (1 portion)
• Tea - Roast gammon,new potatoes, carrot/swede, broad beans,green beans,(3 portions)
• HM rice pudding with sultanas (1 portion)
• TOTAL 8 PORTIONS

Postponed the pavlova to next Sunday.;)

System

allo allo frunchkins!

my undergraduate dissertation just won 3rd prize in a competition! yay

i get £30 worth of books :T

i don't know what to get through cos its academic books but there aren't any that are on the reading list for my new course....

would it be really bad to ebay them? :rotfl:

sophiesmum_2

Jumble-Bee wrote: »

allo allo frunchkins!

my undergraduate dissertation just won 3rd prize in a competition! yay

i get £30 worth of books :T

i don't know what to get through cos its academic books but there aren't any that are on the reading list for my new course....

would it be really bad to ebay them? :rotfl:

Ask them could you have a book token perhaps? If not get something and sell it on amazon or e bay. I find amazon better for books.

Pirategirl

Well hello everyone! I've not been on for a while, hectic here.

Janey - my thoughts are with you, am sending you strength and love.

I have just read about 20 pages, I know others are/have been having a hard time also. I hope everyone is ok, and things are getting better.

As for me..i'm really quite stressed. My mum is moving at the weekend after 2 years of very nasty and stressful legal stuff, which I wont go into as you never know who may be reading this. All I shall say is what goes around comes around, so those who have made my mum's life unbearable will get back what they dish out, in the end. Grrrr.

Apart from that...i'm very poor..(surprise!!). Getting a lodger next month, not on full rent, but anything is better than nothing as I am struggling at the moment. Things keep happening which I have no control over, and the only way to resolve these things is to spend money.

I also think that I may be doing this challenge wrong......i'm not counting ANY bills at all...just realised that maybe I should be?! If so, i'm WAY overspending.

I think I may be bambling? I will see when I post this, and it takes up 3 pages!!

Think I better shut up! Big big hugs to EVERYONE. x

Marru

Hi Pirate Girl!!

Nice to hear from you! So sorry to hear that such a lot not necessary pleasant has been going on. If you need a shoulder at any time you are very welcome to pm me.

Marru

sophiesmum_2

Evening frunchkins,
just been putting my batch cooked split pea/ham/leek soup into cartons for the freezer. OH takes these to work on nights and i have one when he is working. Anyway my 6.5 litre slowcooker was full to the brim and has made 16 individual portions for freezing.
After feeding the oldies I also ended up with 600g of cooked carrot and swede and 550g of cooked broad beans, 6 large cooked new potatoes and 4 portions of HM rice pudding. The rice pud can go into the freezer in cartons too.
The potatoes will be sliced and added to a tin of sweetcorn and a tin of tuna,some HG chives,HG cucumber and a bit of mayo, and we can have it for lunch tomorrow.
The other veggies will be split into half for freezing and half for tea tomorrow
575g split between 2 people = over 3.5 portions each (DD will be out) will probably add some fish from freezer and that will be tea sorted:D No wonder my stockpile is not going down much with all this freegan food.:rotfl:

Marru

Oh bother!

After all this time that I have had my rats they have left my wires alone but tonight they decided that enough is enough and bit through my fax cable and my broadband cable. The fax cable is beyond repair but I managed to make a temporary repair to the broadband one. I should have a spare somewhere but need to buy new fax cable at some stage. I also need new headphones as first my DD broke them and then the rats continued from where she left. I use them to speak to my mum over the internet as it is free so money well spent. Will remember to file them in the drawer from now on when not in use.

I saw my doctor on Friday and she wanted to see how much I weigh. Now tonight I decided to calculate my body weigh index or what ever it is called and it is 28 at the moment. I am determined to bring it down to 25 and also at the same time to drop a dress size from 14 to 12. This would mean that if I can drop half a kilo per week I should be in 17 weeks time in my ideal weight, which is 16th of November.

I shall also take the "crucial measurements" tomorrow (if I can find my tape measure) and then follow my progress weekly. So I need to start cutting down the chocolate portions and find "healthier" biscuits as I don't think going cold turkey is an option.

My reward will be to take all those lovely MnS vouchers I have and hopefully will get more (Curly owes me!!) to go and spend on clothes.

As it happens I am really hungry. Off to have a glass of diluted juice and then head to bed.

Night night,

Marru

whitewing

Hello everybody.

Janey, so glad you are still lurking. Am still thinking of you a lot and sending love and hugs your way.

H2B's granny died last night (comfortably in her sleep which is a blessing). H2B's sister has the unenviable task of telling grandpa today. He is in a nursing home recovering from a leg amputation.

I think H2B feels very bad that his sister is having to handle it all on her own in her own country. I imagine MIL will want to go back over (MIL's MIL, rather than her own mother). I know I am being selfish but I am panicking a little over the money side of things. I know neither MIL or SIL can afford the funeral. MIL can't even afford flights back. So I think we (I) am going to come under pressure to ignore the rent this month.

Which will probably coincide with my job finishing (ongoing battle).

Trouble is, all our wedding money has been allocated, so we can't use that.

So, deep breath, I am not going to worry. We'll just see what today brings...

You are all a massive support to me. Keep on posting, folks, you would not believe how comforting I find it to read these snippets of your daily lives (especially the cooking, dinner parties, family times etc). It keeps me going xxx