Bufgers Diary (Slow start, explosive finish?!)

alfiesmum

Absolutely brilliant. If there's one place I could try to save more it's food shopping. Gonna pinch a few of your ideas there I think! Nice one!

Bufger

alfiesmum wrote: »

Absolutely brilliant. If there's one place I could try to save more it's food shopping. Gonna pinch a few of your ideas there I think! Nice one!

One tip is to certainly spend more preparing for it, i got in loads of dried herbs and spices for the year to make similar meals completely different. I also cook alot myself, in the weeks i do recipes that take half an hour, at the weekend i'll do things that take longer - that way i dont get fed up with all that cooking straight after work! Last night was burritos, took 20 minutes in total. Another quick meal is gammon, egg and wedges - gammon and eggs take 4 minutes, wedges take about 15-20!

Do you enjoy cooking, do you experinment with recipes? i'll happily share a few with you, all the stuff i do is considered simple cooking (none of the processes are technical at all).

setmefree2

and Good luck.

alfiesmum

ooooh! I'm liking the sound of that!! Yes please! New recipes to try that won't break the bank (or the cooker, or the cook). My height of cooking skills produces Be-ro cookies. They're not bad actually, which makes up for everything else I cook tasting like airplane mashed potato...(and that's not my comparison, that's my familys)! hahah

Bufger

alfiesmum wrote: »

ooooh! I'm liking the sound of that!! Yes please! New recipes to try that won't break the bank (or the cooker, or the cook). My height of cooking skills produces Be-ro cookies. They're not bad actually, which makes up for everything else I cook tasting like airplane mashed potato...(and that's not my comparison, that's my familys)! hahah

No probs, rushing out now and wont be back until sunday/monday but i'll put down a couple of recipes you can batch cook from memory. Your family should like the mexican stuff, it can be as mild/spicy as you want to make it and its dead easy to do!

b.ugger it, i'll write a quick one here for burritos, also very similar for enchillada

1 pack of beef mince, i get a double pack to make twice as much up.
4 peppers
4 small to medium onions or 3 large onions.
2 level tablespoon paprika
2 level tbsp curry powder (mild). - or instead of these 2 you can buy the actual powder flavourings for enchillada or burritos.
1 packet of tortilla wraps (can freeze these to keep for as long as you want).
1 packet of salsa sauce or dip
cheese (as much as you think to go on top?)

Deseed and chop the peppers. Chop the onions. Brown the mince in a large frying pan or wok over the hob, just as soon as its lost its raw colour add the onions and peppers. cook on medium heat for 5 minutes. Put the paprika and curry powder together and mix it up, then add 100ml of water - now pour this into the mince/veg and stir for 2 minutes.

Whilst doing this grate the amount of cheese you think you will need to cover/sprinkle on to 10 burritos.

Take the mix off the heat, open the packet of tortillas and put some of the mix in the middle of the first one. now roll the tortilla and place on a baking tray. Do this for all of the tortillas, you should have alot of the mix left over so you can put this into a plastic box and freeze it for another meal (only needing to buy the tortillas and use some more cheese and dip again).

Put some salsa sauce on each wrap, now sprinkle cheese on top of this. Put in a preheated oven on the max setting until the cheese has melted and the tortilla edges have just started to brown, this should be 5-10 mins.

Serve with salad/potatoe wedges or chips. You could even serve with some nachos for an authentic side dish!

For enchillada do exactly the same thing except add a bit of cheese into the mince/pepper/onion mix as you're going along and when you're wrapping the mix up place them side by side into a cooking dish, cover all of these wraps with more of the mix ontop and the cover the top in cheese, then bake in the oven for 20-30 mins.

delmar39

Bufger wrote: »

Yep its all in there, i'll break it down for you as i dont have my SoA on this computer:

Water 36.73
BT 34.50
Gas 55
Elec 27
shopping 50
Home Ins 25.37
Council Tax 462.15/3 (quarterly bill)
Tv licence 36.89/3 (quarterly bill)

I havent broken down my car tax or insurance into this as i pay them in a lump sum out of my savings each time.

You get charged for paying your TV licence quarterly (£5 each year I think) so switch to monthly and save yourself some money, not a lot, but it's still a saving!

delmar39

Bufger wrote: »

Yep its all in there, i'll break it down for you as i dont have my SoA on this computer:

Water 36.73
BT 34.50
Gas 55
Elec 27
shopping 50
Home Ins 25.37
Council Tax 462.15/3 (quarterly bill)
Tv licence 36.89/3 (quarterly bill)

I havent broken down my car tax or insurance into this as i pay them in a lump sum out of my savings each time.

I think you could do a lot better on BT (phone/broadband) and home insurance. You shouldn't pay more than £20 all in for phone and broadband and prob around £12 per month for home insurance (building and contents inc.).

Bufger

delmar39 wrote: »

I think you could do a lot better on BT (phone/broadband) and home insurance. You shouldn't pay more than £20 all in for phone and broadband and prob around £12 per month for home insurance (building and contents inc.).

i could do better on the broadband but thats probably the only one im willing to pay that bit more on as i get a BT homehub and an excellent connection, ive previously been with other ISP's and havent had very good connections/routers and its limited me quite alot.

As for the building and contents insurance, i used a comparison website and found the quote i went with, do you think its higher because of my age or something? it was the best quote we could get. If you have any other info as to how i could find a cheaper quote (like going direct with XXX etc) please let me know!

Thanks for the advice

Bufger

delmar39 wrote: »

You get charged for paying your TV licence quarterly (£5 each year I think) so switch to monthly and save yourself some money, not a lot, but it's still a saving!

Thanks for that! i had no idea, must be in the small print somewhere.

I would prefer monthly anyway, it gives me a constant stream of outgoing so its easier to see.

Thanks again

delmar39

Bufger wrote: »

i could do better on the broadband but thats probably the only one im willing to pay that bit more on as i get a BT homehub and an excellent connection, ive previously been with other ISP's and havent had very good connections/routers and its limited me quite alot.

As for the building and contents insurance, i used a comparison website and found the quote i went with, do you think its higher because of my age or something? it was the best quote we could get. If you have any other info as to how i could find a cheaper quote (like going direct with XXX etc) please let me know!

Thanks for the advice

Hmmm, we went through price comparison sites and got it for less than this. Not sure why it's so high, but if you've done it through these sites then it must be in line with your property etc. I guess you pay more by paying monthly, but some providers don't charge extra for paying by direct debit these days, so look out for these.