What frugal find came your way today?

balmaiden

My poor old Mum has paper thin skin and can cause herself harm by just drying herself with a towel. So for her 84th birthday, the other day, my brother and sister in law gave her a lovely gift from the body shop, Body scrub and body butter!!! Anyhows it was passed on to me today and I am very grateful. It was in a lovely gift box( complete with shower scrunchie ) lined with straw, the straw is now under one of my strawberry plants.

ginnyknit

Was given a free garden table yesterday which was going to be sent to the tip. Just what I needed now I seem to live in the garden, the old table has been ruined with paint and is scratched to bits.

Claire_Bear

A tomato plant from someone at work It's now sat on our nice sunny kitchen windowsill and I'm excited about watching it grow!

mrsmuggy

yesterday i was given 2 more mirrors,1 plaster and gold and the other plastic and gold,so i'll be doing some more painting soon:rotfl:

bellaquidsin

Yesterday my kind neighbour gave me a selection of glazed planters for the garden in various sizes. One of them is now home to the cucumber she also gave me.

In the smaller ones I will sow salad seeds and leave them on a capillary mat so that (hopefully) we will have salad leaves waiting for us when we return from our August holiday.

Bella.

misfire

I got 2 x bernadette strachan (sp?) books in the charity shop mint condition 75p - I have been looking for some more of her books after reading her little white lies book which I loved... couldn't believe finding two at the same time!!!

Also got a beautiful M&S autograph top for 2.75p - it is black and stretch keyhole front (discreet) and beautiful chinese style flower embroidery - in MINT condition. This was in a charity shop that I used to avoid, cluttered, nasty, smelly - new manager, new rails and WOW!!! also got 2 lovely tops on the sale rail £1 each - a white shirt and red H&M Jumper.

A good day!

Herbaholic

The_Thrilla wrote: »

During the big recession of the 1980s, when I was unemployed, my (now late) wife and I came across a little book called A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes by Charles Elm! Francatelli, former Chief Cook and Maitre d' to Queen Victoria. I believe it was published in 1851. I suppose today such a book might be regarded by some as patronising ("Right, you ignorant people, I'll show you how to cook a meal properly...") But the book and its author were of their time.

Hi Thrilla, I was given this book as a present by a friend a few years ago and had never really bothered with it, last weekend we did some sorting and took a load of stuff to the charity shop, for some reason I decided not to take Francatelli's book and put it back on the shelf. Just had a quick browse and there are some weird things in there like giblet pie, going to try the rice pudding recipe this weekend and look properly at the book. Not sure if it counts as a frugal find or not, but thank you for getting me to actually look at it.

Herby x

Ginger_Snap

While in a local market town today rummaging through the 7 charity shops there, we found two almost new tops for DS for £2.50 and 75p and then a Horrid Henry DVD for £1.50. DS was really chuffed! In Poundland picked up the A-Z of Harry Potter which will be a lovely surprise prezzie for some friends we are seeing on Saturday who are HP mad!

janb5

Mir! wrote: »

Blimey...I found 2p on the ground at the carboot and was thrilled with that!

Was given 2 basil plants for the windowsill at the week-end..... no doubt I will manage to kill em off in no time

Was also given a newer model of my trusty MR breadmaker so gave the old one away on Freecycle :j

Just to let you know that if your basil`wilts` then just put a piece into water and it will root and start over again!

The_Thrilla

Herbaholic wrote: »

Hi Thrilla, I was given this book as a present by a friend a few years ago and had never really bothered with it, last weekend we did some sorting and took a load of stuff to the charity shop, for some reason I decided not to take Francatelli's book and put it back on the shelf. Just had a quick browse and there are some weird things in there like giblet pie, going to try the rice pudding recipe this weekend and look properly at the book. Not sure if it counts as a frugal find or not, but thank you for getting me to actually look at it.

Herby x

Hi Herbaholic
Francatelli has made it onto Wikipedia. He is down as an Anglo-Italian, but from reading his book I would say he has no Italian background, and probably came by his surname via Corsica. There is everything there to suggest his background was French. For instance, he says, that the staple in France is the haricot bean, which, he says, should be introduced into Britain. And now we eat beans on toast! The porridge is a bit strange. I know it is eaten with salt in Scotland, but this is the first time I had come across porridge with onions!

But what was fascinating to me (and also interesting for my late wife, who was trained as a housekeeper, allthough she followed a different career) was this principle of nothing is ever wasted. This is what I am honing at the moment in my own cuisine. In the past, a sizeable percentage of the food that I bought finished up in the bin.

FRUGAL FIND
This morning, among the junk mail, came £35 in Farmfoods vouchers. Mind you, you have to spend £350 in there b4 the 31st July. My freezer is not very big, but I might be able to use at least a couple of the 10% vouchers b4 then.