Live on £4,000 for a year - 2009, Part 3

thriftylass

You got me all inspired with the foraging and jam making, unfortunately there isn't much around here unless I have a car. I saw a few bramble bushes and similar in town, but there all near roads or the railway. But on Wednesday my friend will take me to go blueberry picking :j. So I'll try to make some into jam and BF requested some blueberry muffins. Also have a massive bag of rhubarb in the freezer that will partially go into a cake for Friday's cake sale and the rest I try to make into jam. Can't wait...

lyndasharp

SF, sorry to hear about your problems at work. I hope next week is a better one!

H2B is feeling a bit better, which is useful as I seem to have flu now, and so he can look after me instead. It would have been rotten if we were both ill at the same time, we hven't trained the cat to make cups of tea yet.

I am supervising the printer at the moment, which is an easy enough job and doesn't involve any effort from me apart from restocking it with card. Printing off the wedding invites, hooray! Very exciting. Also very frugal - card and envelopes have cost just under £6, so even after we've paid for stamps we'll be well under our budgeted £50.

Hopefully we'll be able to take the visiting kids out foraging next weekend and make some jam...

whitewing

lynda,

Not that I'll be getting married again, lol, but if I were, and were as under budget as you are on the invitations, I would be tempted to enclose a 'reply postcard' with the invitations. This would have your name/address on one side maybe, and a box to tick if they're coming and another box for if they aren't. I think this wuld make it more likely to get replies in a timely fashion.

My friend just made us a beautiful wedding album for our anniversary. (It was meant for us after we got back from honeymoon, but she suffers from the same lack-of-finishing-stuff-off as me!) As I haven't completed the official one yet -tut, tut- it's great. It is a true work of art.

Blairweech

Thriftylass - I make Blueberry friands as I always find muffins dry and stodgy. Bit of a faff with the egg whites, but then you could make creme brulee with the yolks!

Lynda - Yay for HM wedding invites, especially so cheaply

SM - I can imagine your chooks trying to eat a piece of potato, and that is pretty funny!

Have made a chilli in the slowcooker, added lentils to bulk it out a bit and will probably have made 5 or 6 portions. I discovered the trick the lentils is that they have to be boiled for a while to break them down and make them mushy.

Now going to make some flapjacks with Mr T value muesli (which is horrible, I imagine the box it came in would have tasted nicer), plus a marmalade cake. And hopefully some broccolli and stilton soup, and maybe some pate

Went to Lidl this morning and bought my first holiday-related purchase - Italian leather sandals @ £4.99, and they are really comfortable. Much better than horrible plastic flip flops! Yes, I did buy shoes before a passport :rolleyes:

Hope you are all well

Frugaldom

Hi guys,

Lynda, I agree with Whitewing - I printed reply cards with DD's invites and it has been a great help with booking the meals and helping with the seating plan. I just printed 4 to an A4 of card then cut them out and inserted them with the invites. Very frugal and with a pretty little (free) wedding graphic in corner.

Whitewing - I did remember your anniversary on the 8th, honest, I just can't remember if I remembered to post a message to congratulate you, apologies if I forgot and have a belated anniversay wish (or a second one, if I remembered first time ).

Good luck to all of you who are pursuing the foraging and preserving routes. I am thoroughly enjoying it, even more so now that I can share some of my otherwise strange passtimes with a like-minded neighbour who is also brave enough to sample my homebrew and trade in home produce whilst we sit around the kitchen table gabbing over a cuppa. :T:j:rotfl:

This morning, I got the following out of my weekend's bramble picking


It's bramble jelly, so it works out slightly more expensive to make than the jam owing to the fact that you get less from your berries. It cost me approx 94p to make the above, including electricity for cooking & sterilising the jars. :j Frugal food rules! :j

sophiesmum_2

Blairweech - that lot sounds delicious, the stilton and broccoli soup is my favourite:D
Boiling the crab apples and rowan berries here for jelly but have to say it does not smell nice at all, hope it tastes better than it smells or will not be repeating this recipe, looks very pretty in the pan though lol

Frugal neighbour has been busy with the blackberry jelly already

Edited to give results of the taste test - Luckily it tastes much nicer than it smelled earlier so another frugal foraging recipe to add to collection. More rowan berries will be picked in the future Total cost for 5 jars 53p

lyndasharp

Thanks everyone, already decided to do reply cards, though not double sided ones. It's a nice idea, but my printer isn't going to cope with that as well! Still printing... though I did stop for lunch and to give H2B a haircut.

Only 12 invites and 44 reply cards to go!

Skint_Lynne

Hi everyone,

I've had quite a lazy day today, not much done except trying out my bolognaise concoction with lentils, oats and grated carrot thrown in. It is like the magic porridge pot, it has really expanded, but I'm not sure about it yet. It has quite a runny consistency, maybe I have overdone it with the liquid. I had it in the slow at first, but I later put it into my big pan as the lentils did not disappear completely. I found out on another thread that it's useful to soak the lentils first before putting them in the slow, so I will remember that for another time.

I'll soon get the verdict tomorrow when it is used for dinner and the tasting panel get to try it.:o

I also made chicken noodle soup: half a pack of dry noodles (lidl), some chopped up chicken (leftovers), one onion finely chopped and some chicken stock, (today, I used chicken oxo cubes). Put the noodles in the pan along with the onion and chicken. Pour the chicken stock over and boil. Job done and it tastes great. Shaz, that one is free on SW extra easy plan.

I've not been good today on the plan, all I have done is eat, and all the wrong things. I'll be back on it tomorrow as it is back to work day.:D

Hope you are all well, good job with the jam making SM and Nyk, you've got enough of the stuff to last forever now, it looks very tempting, you can save me a wee bit to put on a sandwich for the next time I come down.

Speak later. xx

Kittikins

The jam looks yumtastic! Last night we picked 2lb blackberries and today I followed a 'new' recipe (from MSE of course ) to make vodka with it, which didn't require the berries to stay in with the booze, so I've made a 'jam' using the pulped fruit and sugar, just one jar, but here's hoping it'll taste divine...if not, it'll be mixed in to a crumble in the winter.

Forgot to pick any cooking apples from a very local tree this afternoon but managed to scrump one eater as we walked past to have a picnic

sophiesmum_2

That will be pretty potent jam kittikins:D

Just to round off the productive weekend here I have just eaten one of frugal neighbour's macaroons and it was lovely, OH will be very lucky if he gets the other one saved for him:rolleyes: I will let him have the jar of frugaldom lemon curd;)
Back to work tomorrow.. pah!!! would much rather be making jam and seeing to chickies;)
Enjoy the rest of the evening everyone.