Saturday 1/11/08 What small dfw things have you done today???

cornishinfens

Cornball wrote: »

I bought a breadmaker. I'm hoping in the long term the investment will save money.

Not having a go at you...

But why oh why do people buy these??

Bread is sooooo simple to make and if your already doing something with the oven you can double up and bake bread at the same time (if oven is big enough) or just make 4 loaves and freeze what you don't need


This wholemeal loaf is so quick and easy to make and makes 3 loaves - bulk it up with seeds and some fine oats add a little more liquid and you can get 4 loaves (this is what i do as it is better with oats and seeds Mmmmmm!

3Lb (1.5kg) wholemeal flour
1 tablespoon of reduced sodium salt
1 tablespoon easy blend yeast (dried yeast sachet @ 15 ml)
2 pints of warm water
1 tablespoon of muscavado sugar or if you prefer molasis sugar

Method.
Get up, decide to make bread. Showe change come downstairs have a tea, coffee or breakfast. Watch some TV, have another drink.

1. Grease 3, 21 x 12 x 6 cm loaf tins (thats 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 2 1/2 inch loaf tins to us oldies) place tins i a warm area. now sift the wholemeal flour and salt into a bowl - replace the wholemeal that didn't sift through.

2. add yeast granules to 1/4 pint of warm water after 3 mins add the sugar then leave for 10 mins

3. Have yet another drink! and set the oven to 200 dec C, 400 F or gas mark 6. (now you have your oven on consider turning the heating off if its on!)

4. make a well in the middle of the flour and salt mix add the yeast mix then add the remaining warm water and mix well for a few minutes. Use your hands its theraputic think of someone you dont like while doing this

5. Divide the sticky dough (like thick porridge) between the 3 loaf tins, cover with some lightly covered cling film and leave on tiop of the oven or other warm area for 10 mins for the magic to work, the dough should rise by around 1/3rd

6. Once the loaves have risen whap them in the oven for 40 mins or untill they look a nice golden brown and sound hollow when tapped.

Once you have tried this recipie experiment with it! i use seeds and oats to make it more healthy, i've got it down to 4 loaves - but this is playing it by 'feel' on the day.
i use molasis sugar as it gives the bread a richer flavour.



Go waan, give it a go

Cornball

Thanks for that, I will have to give it a go sometime. Considering boiling water is a bit of a challenge for me, baby steps.

locutus2003

I'm so proud of myself this week, I have to put this somewhere - and I think here is as good as any other.

Difficult week because DS was on half term and so I had the week off work (DH is a stay-at-home Dad so I like to give him the support when DS is off). We have really just discovered we spend a fortune - not on real stuff but frittering it - and it's always worse when I'm not at work - so I was determined this week would be better.

So, I put an advert on Freecyle to ask for a Breadmaker (yes, I know you can make it easily by hand, but I figure it's even easier if you just throw it all into a machine and press go). When we didn't hear anything, DH was keen to go and buy one. I forbade it - on the grounds we might not use it much in the end - then, lo and behold, on Thursday someone offered us theirs. No instructions but with the great help of the OS board we made bread - and haven't stopped. That saved us I reckon £80 as we would have ended up buying a Panasonic I'm sure. So, already £80 up this week.

We also went to IKEA to look for some furniture for our new conservatory we've just had built. We needed it for the study and I found a nice table I liked for the dining room (£130ish) and the desk would be £100. However, decided that actually the cheap IKEA table we have in the dining room is more suitable with a 4yo and 1yo (saving £130) and that we could make do with the table we used to have in the old house instead of a desk (saving £100). Also, decided not to buy the printer cabinet and use another table (no wonder we don't have any money - all we seem to buy are tables:rotfl: ) which saved another £100. Total saving this week so far £410.

Went to Staples and saw a printer that is normally £300 down to £100. Really good one too .. DH felt we should buy it. However, I said we didn't need it (we have a perfectly good printer) ... so we didn't. Also, was going to buy a new notebook (paper) for work ... but I already have 3 at home that I've not used, just don't like so much - so I'm going to use those first. Total saving now up to £520.

Because of the amount we spend on cups of coffee and lunches out, I really stopped us this week - and bought ingredients and made cakes, biscuits and flapjacks with DS. If I hadn't done this, I reckon we'd have spent £10 per day on coffees out (instead of the £20 we spent in total all week) and would have gone out for lunch at least once and probably twice (£40) instead of having fish and chips (£10). So I think in this area I saved a further £70.

Therefore, by thinking more carefully and using the old 'do I really need that' I think I've saved us £590 this week - OK, let's round it up to £600.

Wow! I'm so amazed - what is really surprising is that each time I thought 'perhaps not' it was always something that I thought was quite little at the time (and would therefore have thought, 'oh it's only £x' ) - to think that this all would've added up to £600. Lesson taught and learned I feel.

Sorry for such a long post, but I had to celebrate somewhere!!

Piquant_2

That's pretty impressive locutus! well done :T

I put some of the time I had off sick last week to studying the matched betting and today placed my first bet...... I'm now 8.33 up:j Plus I've got 30.00 tracking in Quidco for signing up to the bookies. I'm still very cautious about this, but very pleased with the result. Have placed another one for in the week :eek:

sophiesmum_2

Well done locutus sounds like you are really strting to think dfw:T

cornball - I love my breadmaker, I make at least one loaf a day in it, chuck in the ingredients before I go to bed , set the timer and wake up to a freshly baked loaf

Andan - glad you are having good time with the relatives:D


Hangover has now gone, think I walked it off round town this afternoon. Did the last bits of my xmas shopping. Used the last 5 of my pigsback boots vouchers to buy some 3 for 2 stuff and also got an extra £10.oo worth of boots points added as I spent £50:T but actually spent nothing as used vouchers. So bought 2 x £20 gifts and got £20 gift free and bought 2 x £5 gifts and got £5 gift free then got £10 points back too:D
DD gave me cash to top up her phone so also got points for that while I was there.:D
Quiet night in tonight with OH - watching x factor and doing not much;)
Enjoy the rest of the evening everyone.

No fay today???

sans_2

Evening all,
My dfw things for today;

• Filled up a small bottle with water before I went out

• Used coupons off my shopping in Asda
• Asda – spent £1.72 on 8 x 57g bags of Percol decaf coffee, 2 x boxes coffee pods, 1 x 3pk of Princes corn beef, 1 x Asda tin foil, 1 x Asda cling film, 1 x bag of dessicated? Coconut
• Cut out coupon and put in my purse
• used old free comfort sachet sample for 2 lots of washing (30 and 40 deg) and hung outdoors/ indoors to dry
• Got 1 question to answer from a potential Ebay buyer.
• TK Maxx – got an item of underwear reduced to £6
• Didn’t have to pay for a bag as I always try to carry a couple
• DS went swimming with DH, free as DH has a gold membership and DH is only 4
• Next clearance – got a really nice table runner for DH Christmas hamper £3
• Boots – spent points on a couple of items
• Didn’t take advantage of DH offer to give me £1 to get a cup of tea
• Ripped out address from junk mail (which I use to stick on the back of items I post for Ebay etc)
• Saved some paper from the study’s paper bin (have plenty of paper but IO hate waste and prefer to re-use before I recycle if possible
• Boots - Got a free perfume sample
• Lunch – I never had any as I was too busy walking about the shops whilst DH and DS were swimming so I guess it can be classed as a DFW thing (had an early dinner though)
• Need to package up Ebay item sold
• Need to send an email enquiry to Quidco as £75 was not tracked when buying our life insurance, I have taken screenshots so hope I get the money back!
• Had a look in River Island sales section and put back down a top I picked up and was going to try on
• Have put in packet of Tesco cheesy nachos in my car to get a refund tomorrow as they were plain (must have been a fault during the making process) – so I don’t forget
• Put in some reusable bags into cars glove compartment incase we do a random shop whilst out and about

That’s all I can think of.

Miss_Bez

I've used some vouchers in todays Xmas shopping and saved about £5 in total, listed 3 books on Greenmetropolis, am cooking stuffed marrow with a free marrow from my Dad's garden. Not much but it all helps!

Mrs_Sparkle

Hmmm, not TOO bad a day. I'm about to do my clicks, and I took all the plastic recycling from work to Tesco, earning me 39 Clubcard points- yay!

I also spent £129 in Tesco but that was a massive monthly stock up- 3 packs of nappies, 6 bottles of wine etc. If anyone's interested they had bags of pearl barley on special offer for 33p and lots of large jars of pasta sauces for 79p... I stocked up- yes I know it'd be cheaper making my own but they are fab for can't be bothered evenings.

I don't have a breadmaker either, I quite like stuffing it in the loaf tin- the manual method doesn't bother me.

Cornball

Cornball wrote: »

I bought a breadmaker. I'm hoping in the long term the investment will save money.

Did two loaves today. First was utter tat. Got my ounces and grams all mixed up. Waste of money.

Had another go after reading some conversion charts and it turned out fantastic (and delicious )! Going to try pizza dough tomorrow and I'll set the timer for Monday am so I can have fresh bread for work sandwiches.

MyLastFiver

Took a circular saw back to B&Q. I've had it months, used it heavily and completely knackered it. I took it in, no box, covered in sawdust. "I bought this saw 3 months ago now it doesn't work". "Have you got your receipt?" "No". "Then we can't give you a refund". "OK. So can I have a new saw?" [she goes and talks to the supervisor]. "OK. Go and get one off the shelf."

:-)