Frugal Living Challenge 2011 - part 1

redglass_2

wrote:

I'd really appreciate it if you could share your recipe

With pleasure, only there wasn't really a recipe! Usually for soups and stews I just make it up as I go (I live alone so nobody has to know if I make a mess of things).

I softened an onion in a small amount of cheapo cooking oil
Then I added some Marigold stock,
+ a dried green pepper that I grew last summer (ground up in mortar and pestle - knew I'd find a use for that mortar one day)
+ the secret ingredient - a couple of tinned anchovies, rinsed and snipped into pieces before being thrown into the pot.
Then I added:
plenty of butter beans (bought as dry beans for a few pence from Approved Foods and cooked last night, the rest of them will make butter bean hummus),
+ mixed herbs - mediterranean types like rosemary and thyme
+ economy chopped tomatoes. I gave it a long slow simmer and it made a thick soothing satisfying broth.

You could add small pasta shapes and/or grated cheese if you wanted but it's quite filling as it is. Also, I didn't need to add any salt because of the anchovies but you might like more salt in your food.
Why anchovies? Well, I had an open tin needing to be finished off, plus I knew a recipe for chick pea soup in which anchovies were put in to give a richer flavour, 'like cooking in beef stock' said the recipe. I thought I'd try a couple in with the butter beans and see if they had the same effect. The recipe turns out to be right, they disappear from the cooked dish and there is no fishiness, but they do add a bit more depth to the flavour.

Marru

Happy New Year everyone!!

My budget for one adult and one 6 year old is £4000.- However this doesn't include: rent, council tax, study costs, car costs, school clubs and other school costs, loan payments nor pension payments.

Yes it would be tempting to sneak things from my challenge budget into the excluded budgets but every time any of those budgets gets exceeded it means that it comes out from how much I can put towards my debt. So that is my intiative not to smuggle things over there.

Kerfuffle

redglass wrote: »

With pleasure, only there wasn't really a recipe! Usually for soups and stews I just make it up as I go (I live alone so nobody has to know if I make a mess of things).

I softened an onion in a small amount of cheapo cooking oil
Then I added some Marigold stock,
+ a dried green pepper that I grew last summer (ground up in mortar and pestle - knew I'd find a use for that mortar one day)
+ the secret ingredient - a couple of tinned anchovies, rinsed and snipped into pieces before being thrown into the pot.
Then I added:
plenty of butter beans (bought as dry beans for a few pence from Approved Foods and cooked last night, the rest of them will make butter bean hummus),
+ mixed herbs - mediterranean types like rosemary and thyme
+ economy chopped tomatoes. I gave it a long slow simmer and it made a thick soothing satisfying broth.

You could add small pasta shapes and/or grated cheese if you wanted but it's quite filling as it is. Also, I didn't need to add any salt because of the anchovies but you might like more salt in your food.
Why anchovies? Well, I had an open tin needing to be finished off, plus I knew a recipe for chick pea soup in which anchovies were put in to give a richer flavour, 'like cooking in beef stock' said the recipe. I thought I'd try a couple in with the butter beans and see if they had the same effect. The recipe turns out to be right, they disappear from the cooked dish and there is no fishiness, but they do add a bit more depth to the flavour.

Thanks for this

I've never actually bought anchovies before so I'm not sure of the costs so it's something I'll look out for in the future. I tried to buy some one time from a farmers market to use in a Jamie Oliver recipe but when I got them home it turned out to a tuna.:rotfl: Which wasn't very funny really as it turned out to be an expensive tin of tuna :eek:

Toodles

CRANKY40

redglass wrote: »

Cranky40, I'm intrigued: why does milk get its own entry in your budget?

I have a milkman, and the child drinks so much we probably need our own cow. The milkman is good as having milk delivered stops me "just popping in" to asda several times a week (haven't been near since 17th December) and spending £20 a go on things that aren't essential.

CRANKY40

JustKeepSwimming wrote: »

Snap - apart from the selling on Ebay as I just can't get into it & I doubt anyone would want to buy any of my old clothes anyway .

I still have a lot of "stuff" in the house that belonged to my late husband, but doesn't have any sentimental value. Dvds, old cameras, books etc. If it has any cash value I would rather sell it then bin it.

miss_empty_piggy

I'd like to join please. Haven't done budget just yet (still shattered from last night!) but will get organised in the next few days. Really thinking that I should give these soap nuts a try, are they really worth the money? x

diddly74

We have a milkman too. Price is actually less what the supermarkets charge and I am supporting a local person.

I pay £1.40 per 4 pinter against £1.52 in the supermarket and thru all this bad weather he hasn't let me down once.

redglass_2

Kerfuffle wrote: »

Thanks for this

I've never actually bought anchovies before so I'm not sure of the costs so it's something I'll look out for in the future. I tried to buy some one time from a farmers market to use in a Jamie Oliver recipe but when I got them home it turned out to a tuna.:rotfl: Which wasn't very funny really as it turned out to be an expensive tin of tuna :eek:

Toodles

I wouldn't go to that market stall again!!!!!!! :rotfl:

There's a very good 70s recipe called Janssens Temptation which is mostly potatoes and onions with a slosh of cream and...some anchovies, which is why I bought the things in the first place. Worth googling for.

fingersxed

Hi Cheryl

Please count me in. I'm becoming hooked on this site. Hopefully some gd things will rub off/sink in and i will become much better off. Not actually setting a budget as never done this before but when i wrote out monthly expenses I did go rather HOT N SHAKY!!!!!

Good Luck everybody and Happy New Year

Erme

redglass wrote: »

Ceridwen My mum used to use hot solution of washing soda. Leave a few minutes for it to get working then scrub/wipe.

Jess I'm with TalkTalk (I was originally with Tiscali). It's OK most of the time though the speed is never up to what it's supposed to be. However, I don't watch much online so if i used a more varied range of online services I might not be so satisfied. The email spam filter is excellent but if anything goes wrong customer service can be infuriating - overseas call centres where everyone is polite BUT occasional language problems have really got in the way, in my experience, and I've also had frazzled employees give me inappropriate advice, ie insisting that my email should be hooked up to Outlook Express instead of Outlook (the one I was actually using), I assume because that was what their manual said! I have broadband and unlimited calls 24/7 including some calls to European countries and this costs me about £35 per month, which is significantly more than the package is advertised as costing. Lots of calls are free on my package but if you call mobiles from your landline (which I sometimes have to, mobile signals are rubbish round here) it soon mounts up. There are better value packages, but for me it's important to be able to phone free during the day and not wait for evenings/weekends, so I stick with TalkTalk.

Feeling smug because I have a super-frugal bean soup on the simmer downstairs.

Does it have to be washing soda for this or can it be bicarb? Cos am hoping to get yearly (almost) supply of Bicarb and possibly cornflour and vinegar for week this next week (despite the need to be frugal following the dent on the OD but it's so nice to have a clean carpet this eve ) and maybe some other stuff from the chinese supermarket which is part supermarket part cash and carry. (does the basic stuff like bicarb in 3kg sacks .Not far from me either - sorted )

Anything else folk would recommend me stocking up on? Don't really want to get in in the sacks unless you reckon I can use it.....olive oil I can't really go frugal on...unless I get plain sunflower but don't use a lot of it.. Same with Marg (get it from Mr A - big tub and use it in ALL baking regardless of recipe saying no salt butter or whatever)...Already have a sack of rice from last year and got lentils the other week for sos meals

E
PS.. Been using the homemade deo for a week now almost....it's really good and I have no more probs with hormonal achy sore pits ..yay