It isn`t tough for us. We are OS and we COPE

Winged_one

I need to start following this thread as well as the GC. I ended up going into the red in my current account for, I think, the first time EVER!! We did a building project before Christmas, and I lost track of my spends. Luckily it was only for 2 days, and not by much, but I need to use my credit card this month to stay on track, and for again the first time ever, pay it off in 2 months rather than the whole on due date. I should be fine again by mid-Feb, and DH is due a payout that he will then refund a lot of the building costs to me, jsut taking longer than we thought.

I have paid my allotment fees again though, and will be using it more intensively this year. I am already putting away things for Christmas (mostly recipes at the moment, to use in the summer and coming up to Christmas, and a few sewing patterns and ideas), but I am considering trying to use up some of my fabric and wool stach to take a stall at a few craft fairs later in the year too. Homemade presents went down very well this year, so I will be repeating that again.

I am just hoping though, that the weather prediction I saw recently for this year is not true. A cold, wet spring followed by a wet (possibly with a lot of flooding-type rain events) summer. Maybe I should look into growing rice rather than pumpkins>!!

countingthepennies

mardatha wrote: »

Did I see a post from Kittie somewhere saying what was going up in price ? Could somebody point me to it please

Hi mardatha, Maybe you mean my previous post? That was a depressing list of food cost increases! Dont know how to do a link but think it was post 38 or 39 in this thread.

Charis

I noticed on Rhonda's blog that the price of tomatoes has rocketed due to the floods in Brisbane, so I thought I'd check to see how much they are over here. It's impossible to tell on Mr T's website. There are lots of different prepacked varieties, some of which are priced between £1.99 and - would you believe - £8.00 a kilo. However a fair few are priced 'per pack' and the price given is for each packet, no weight given. How can we compare? A cherry tomato is a lot smaller than a beef tomato and it's not possible to gauge the size of an item from a tiny picture on a web site. Surely unless you buy individual items they should be sold by weight, or the weight should be on the listing somewhere?

FatVonD

soupdragon10 wrote: »

I have the same problem, because we have money in the bank my DH cannot see that this is money for us to live on when I am made redundant in March. He is very much live for today, which is OK to a point, but then you starve tomorrow, metaphorically speaking.

I know the feeling, I laughed my socks off when, within days of finding out I was being made redundant, my husband had added a Gretcsh White Falcon (a £2,000 guitar to the uninitiated!) to our watch list on eBay :rotfl:

Luckily I'm the one holding the purse strings

I made toad in the hole last night which I've always made from scratch anyway and is my husband's favourite meal so he doesn't know we're headed for an OS way of life yet!

I have remembered that I used to cook French onion soup many years ago when I was vegetarian as it's the only soup I really like (probably largely due to the bread and cheese on top!) I seem to recall it was just stock, brown sugar and onions but I must look out a recipe.

FatVonD

countingthepennies wrote: »

I work in a Catering department and this week we got an email warning us of the continued rise in food prices. Basically because of extreme weather conditions across the world, such as flooding, and the bitter cold winter here we can expect to pay more for pretty much everything. Rice, wheat based products, meat (presumably because the cost of animal feed has risen), tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa, orange juice (because of a combination of a lack of rain and a disease of the fruit trees), butter, potatoes and vegetable oil are all creeping up in price. :eek:
This emphasises to me the importance of a store cupboard. I know I am preaching to the converted here but definately we should be storing dry goods such as rice, pasta, noodles, tea, coffee etc and I am adding olive oil and long life juice to my stores.

It also makes me think that in this country we have become far too dependant on exporting in so much of our food, and I think that we may as a nation have to change our eating habits so that we grow more of our own food, eat local produce and use seasonal produce, rather than relying so much on other countries to feed us?

Thanks for this. I suppose, since for the next year or so I will be living off my redundancy anyway (worst case scenario, we will be hopefully adding to it once the new business is up and running and if it's slow I will do the odd bit of freelance work too) there's nothing to stop me stocking up big time as soon as I get the cheque. I can't think that anything is going to be going down in price!

laineyc_2

Hello, everyone. I have not been on the forum for a while. I did well in cutting down our grocery bill last year and I am a much more efficient shopper. We waste very little food now. My next project is our back garden. It is all lawn because the boys have always used for ball games. Now they are older and go to the park to play, I am gong to plant veg and some flowers. I have a lot of digging to do when the ground is a bit drier. (sporting a zumba injury at the moment so I can't do much anyway)

I am planning my garden at the moment. I am looking forward to it. I know it will be a steep learning curve.

I have also stopped smoking which is like getting a huge monthly pay rise.

lambanana

FatVonD there is an onion soup recipe on the Cheap Family Recipes website http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/ if that's any help?

Thank you for the ideas on using up small bits of wool. I knit some of my smaller scraps of sock wool into hats for the innocent smoothie campaign but I would like to find projects for larger but not large enough to make anything much quantities. Hot water bottle covers, mug cosies and other things that would make good gifts is an excellent idea. I really must learn how to do stranded colourwork as that's a way of making leftovers go further, the only colour patterns I currently knit are stripes.

I made my own version of the corned beef sandwich filler they sell in Mr A's last night. My husband is a fan but it's very expensive. I couldn't remember the exact ingredients in theirs but I made one using a tin of corned beef, an onion, some mayonaise, tomato ketchup and a bit of mustard all thrown in my food processor and blended to a rough paste. It's tasty and from that I got enough for two days of sandwiches for each of us (my husband is a big eater and has two sandwiches so four slices of bread each lunch time, I have one sandwich so you could get at least 6 sandwiches from this mix, probably more as I spread it quite thickly) I'm pleased with my concoction and it gives us another sandwich option as DH usually has cheese and pickle and the amount of cheese we get through is just stupid. Also he was getting fed up with cheese anyway.

Does anyone else have cheap sandwich filler ideas?

Charis

Penelope_Penguin wrote: »

The latest "tougher" thread is now in The Arms, and appears to be thriving :j Please restrict posts in the thread to Old Style topics, and feel free to chat as much as you would like in The Arms

To clarify, Old Style is broadly topics that were taught in Domestic Science lessons (cooking, cleaning and crafts).

Thank you all for your understanding :A

I'm not trying to rock the boat but maybe we could have a list of the things we should stick to on here. Then perhaps we wouldn't wander quite so far off topic. You've specified Domestic Science subjects but posters on the previous 'it's tough' thread were asked not to post recipes on there as there are other recipe threads. From my memories of Domestic Science that leaves cleaning a pair of leather shoes and a hairbrush, and how to starch a tray cloth

Can we even mention gardening or seed saving, and does 'crafts' include mending clothing or should that be on a needlework thread? Everything seems to belong on another thread but if a newbie comes along they will never find what they don't know they need to look for. The 'it's tough' thread is a sort of Aladdin's cave of frugal hints of the most unexpected kinds.

I venture to suggest that unusual ways to save on the normal household bills, whatever they are, is very relevant to the thread title. Alternative uses for things, especially things we would otherwise have thrown away is useful, as is encouragement, and suggestions of ways, to 'think outside the box' and not copy all the currently fashionable (and expensive) ways of doing things (I'm thinking here of things like lavish Christmases and OTT birthday parties for the littlies). These are things many of us have been doing for a while now, some of us for decades, but there is always something new to learn

The thing I value most about this thread is the social aspect, the feeling that we are all in this together and want to help one another.

tiptoes

I like to consider myself to be OS but unfortunately my good work is underminded by OH, DS and DD. I try to cook as much as possible from scratch and eek it out to make enough for at least two meals but OH appears to eat enough for a family of four all by myself and DD and DS will use stuff that I have put aside for meals for snacks for themselves and their friends.
Also I got sick of the DD and DS leaving everything on standby or switched on, so Ive started fining them 10p from their pocket money everytime I find something left on, which appears to be working.

mardatha

Funnily enough I just got a book from Amazon today and its titled "Blitz!" ...they are digging veg gardens too - at least our war is only against the supermarkets and food prices. Tesco hasn't yet resorted to bombing the non-compliant customers
I desperately wanted to take Latin at school but my bl**dy mother made me take Domestic Science. Maybe that's why I've been married for 45 years and still hate cooking with a passion. All I can remember is the starching a traycloth as well. Still dono what a bloody traycloth is :rotfl: