50p a day til christmas, healthily?!-Weezl's next challenge (part 2)

In_Search_Of_Me

let me know if you want any recipes shaz...bute park is indeed perfect picnic venue as long as no rain!!

got-it-spend-it

Went and got the 49p goodies at Aldi this evening- planning on making a ratatouille tomorrow as I have my first courgette from the garden too. Just need to pick up an aubergine. Not sure how frugal it will be in the end, but will have a tot up of costings and let you all know. I guess it will come down to how many portions it makes but it is yummy!

Herewegoagain

Not having a good night here guys, mr and mrs still awake:eek: so catching up on your thread in between seeing to them, thank god I have a break this month:T
I can't manage such cheap meals as you guys on here, but am willing to grab any ideas I can

OH went fishing last night and if he caught anything you can be sure I will con him out of some for up here:cool:

Still picking berries in garden but not many this year so freezing them each day, when I see how many I get, I will decide what to do with them:D

HWGA xx

Confuzzled

well i'm having an exciting frugal day so far

compost bin finally arrived a huge hulking thing for just a tenner thanks to a link posted on here somewhere :T

and i got my big version with full colour photos of foods for free paid for with vouchers earned from doing surveys!!!

it's a little unpleasant outside today so tomorrow will probably be the first chance we get for any foraging or compost starting

oh and i've done a little experimenting and realised unless i don't use my computer at all and barely use the tv there is simply no way we'll achieve 3 units of electricity a day. as it is we're averaging 8.6/day which is about 1 quid a day, i'm fairly happy with that considering how important our computers are to us for work/education. however i do think we can do better than that so i'm going to try and get us down to 8 units per day within 1 week and down to 7 per day within 3 weeks, anything lower than that is a bonus but i just simply cannot see how we can get much lower as even after 2 days of barely using the computers and not much tell we were still using more than 5 units per day and since i'm already too poor to go out and do the cinema, swimming pool, fetes, no car, haven't topped up my mobile in 6 months, don't smoke, only drink when other people offer etc i am going to have SOME form of entertainment darnit :rotfl:

i can't do anything about the appliances here, the landlord is a real cheapskate. i am however trying to find another place to rent and really hoping for one with a fireplace so we can make our own recycled carboard/paper 'logs' and use deadfall wood to help take the edge off during the winter...

anyway just some ramblings on my frugal day, hope everyone else is doing well in that regard too

lightisfading

Confuzzled wrote: »

i can't do anything about the appliances here, the landlord is a real cheapskate. i am however trying to find another place to rent and really hoping for one with a fireplace so we can make our own recycled carboard/paper 'logs' and use deadfall wood to help take the edge off

That's the one thing that doesn't get thought about when looking at saving energy, isn't it? We have an incredibly cheapskate landlord too - on top of being on expensive electricity and gas meters (OH's fault, fair enough) we're in a poorly insulated, single glazed house that is falling to bits - costs a FORTUNE to heat to even low levels (in winter about £30 a week on gas, which is 2 hours morning and night, and it's still cold all the time! - end up using low-power elec heaters which add to the bills ... can't win!)

Confuzzled

well we've had a fun morning out. had to go to the docs this morning so we took our recycling along the way and on that path we noticed something that i think is hawthorn (took a 'sample' for further investigation later)

docs appt went ok i got lucky and got a decent young doc (not too bad to look at either ) so that was good, i hate getting the old sour faced ones that have already made up their minds about you before they even know you. also got some meds for my wee one, poor thing is plagued with warts all of the sudden, not nice :eek:

went to the park nearby in hopes of finding some foraging stuff but only came across nettles, we'll go back another time with scissors and gloves to collect the tops for our first attempt at nettle soup

we headed up to the hardware store to get some duct tapes as a secondary attack to the warts but they only had a huge roll for 4.50 so i thanked him and told him i'd just try the docs medicine first as i only need a small roll, when he realised why i wanted it he said wait a moment, gently rolled some up from me that he had at his desk and said 'here this should do you just fine, just don't crush it so the tacky sides touch and you'll be fine unrolling it again to use' so YAY free duct tape for the warts :rotfl::rotfl:

then on to aldi's where were were thrilled to see grapes, nectarines, cherry tomatoes (vine ripened!) and pepper 3 packs all for only 49p each! we bought 4 things of grapes, 2 peppers, 2 nectarines and a cherry tomato and we'll be eating well this week ( i might even get some fresh fruit before the wee one can eat it all!) on the way home we walked through a park/football pitch that has a lot of big trees and bushes planted along the edges and sure enough my hunch was right.

the park is FULL of rosehips, a few different types of berries i think i recognise (brought home 'samples' of each to identify) elderflowers, rowans, and what looks like wild cherry! i'm chuffed as the place is hoaching with fruit that will be ready this autumn, i'd better start saving up jars now or even buying them from our local charity shop (they sell them for 20p each) and of course stocking up on sugar!

also on the way home i found another tree that looks promising for berries, again i brought home a 'sample' for identification. i do have my foods for free book now but being a little wary of first time foraging on some of these items i want to double check against google images too just to be sure. none of them are ready to eat just yet anyway so i figure if i can fairly positively identifiy them now with flowers then when the berries are on and i think yep thats elderberries i can be confident as it will be twice id'ed if that makes sense

i'm looking forward to a trip to the beach later this week when the weather clears up a bit i thought i'd give the seaweed a gamble and see if i can find any mussles (we're on open sea so algae blooms aren't a real problem here) i might also take us down where i know there are tons of razor fish shells and see if we can dig up any of the wee beasties!

so all and all a lovely start to the day...

btw do we have any other foragers here?

nopot2pin

Confuzzled wrote: »

btw do we have any other foragers here?

Sounds like you have had a good day :j

I do forage a little. I find it really relaxing
Have only managed brambles and elderberries so far.
I would love to get into looking for mussels...
I remember going whelk picking when I was little with my mum.
She also used to look for clabbydoos... I am not sure if that is mussels or clams, or what it is.

Confuzzled

nopot2pin wrote: »

Sounds like you have had a good day :j

I do forage a little. I find it really relaxing
Have only managed brambles and elderberries so far.
I would love to get into looking for mussels...
I remember going whelk picking when I was little with my mum.
She also used to look for clabbydoos... I am not sure if that is mussels or clams, or what it is.

i did a google search and the urban dictionary said it's the horse mussel (it also says its a term for erm well what mussels look a bit like )

i did some googling and now i think we could manage to get some razor fish here, i've eaten them before and they are lovely. we have two beaches here and the one farthest from us always has tons of razor fish shells on the beach so i'll wait for a low tide and take us down there to do some hunting, we might get lucky and find some clams too!

i briefly did some winkle picking years ago but i got paid for those i never actually ate them. i'd be curious if anyone has any good winkle/whelk picking and eating tips/recipes as those are usually easy enough to find. also, can one eat limpets? there are always tons of those around here...

besides my daughter finding it a lot of fun to forage i also want her to be able to fend for herself should things all go horribly pear shaped with oil and all. we've seen what has happened the few times they've had oil tankers striking, can you imagine how scarce food will be when the oil runs out? probably won't happen in my lifetime but it may in hers. regardless it's good to know what's living all around us and nice to have some different tastes and learn to live more seasonally. foraging is also very ecologically friendly, you can't get more local then your back garden or neighbourhood park! forget low food miles we're talking NO food miles :T

Sian_the_Green

Confuzzled wrote: »

i'd better start saving up jars now or even buying them from our local charity shop (they sell them for 20p each) and of course stocking up on sugar!

Hey confuzzled, sounds like a very productive day!
If you aren't fussy about what was in the jars have you thought about the really cheap morrisons curry sauce jars? It was about 8p last time I bought it and if you compare with other branded sauces the ingredients are remarkably similar... So, for less than the price of a jar from the charity shop you could have 2 jars of curry sauce

Pooky

I noticed a load of rosehips this morning - will be going out for them tomorrow, they do seem very early this year though....either that or last years were really late!

We made rosehip wine last year and it was to die for - will be making as much as we can this year as it didn't last long.....well it's rude not to make sure all the bottles were as nice as the one before

We love a good forage....mainly elderflower/berries, haws, hips, blackberries, apples (we found a lovely tree last year that gave us 5 of the large ikea bags full of apples, down a quite country lane).

I've tried cleaning up the jars from the curry sauce and although the jars are fine, I cannot get the smell out of the lids.....I've soaked them in soda crystals, they've been through the dishwasher a few times but still a bit curry...don't want it to taint my jam......anyone have any other ideas I could try to get them clean?