Frugal Living Challenge 2011 - part 2

ceridwen

Aril wrote: »

Welcome all new comers.
I'm glad you haven't been put off Lady Lesley- we're a pretty tenacious bunch here with lots of mad frugalling ideas to share and try. I very much liked the sound of your nettle pasta and thought that it might go well with some hm nettle and wildgarlic pesto:D [using sunflower seeds rather than pinenuts to bring the price down even more!!]
Aril

....and me...thats precisely my thoughts on this.

BTW - good luck with things working out well for you re jobs ((()))

Frugaldom

Still frugaling away here, but being in between two houses at the moment means it's costing us £25 per week on extra fuel getting between the two. Can't wait to get moved in so all this extra driving can stop.

Have managed to get quite a few seeds planted, we've moved all the fruit trees & bushes and the rhubarb in the new garden is plentiful; need to pick that and get it stewed and frozen.

Had to pay £1.15 for a bag of sugar in local shop yesterday. :eek: Must make the effort to stock up as soon as I see it at a decent price.

Trying to use up as much as possible from stores, fridge and freezer before moving, so might try that nettle pasta. I've made the spinach pasta before and it was ok, we've plenty of eggs (getting about 20 eggs a day by the time I count duck, hen & quail) so no excuses for not using them up.

Hope all is going well for everyone.

Lady_Lesley

Most supermarkets now have an ethnic aisle. Ive noticed in Asda or Tesco (cant remember which ) they sell a small sack of sugar and it works out far cheaper. Its great for wine making but even just home use its far cheaper. Is it my imagination but are the Polish ranges cheaper than the bags with English writing ?

23rdspiral

hello everyone, wow, i've gone and done nothing but DIY all wknd and come back to pages and pages; leavings, comings, new challengers, breakdown woes, decomposed alcholic oranges used as cleaner (!?). sorry for not replying to all personally, i just dont have the time. our rental fell through, Again, so i'm now packing and in a huge mess and have a viewing in 30 min. but this is hte first chance at the puter in 4 days so i felt catching up and keeping on track was more important! oh well. *hugs* to everyone who needs/wants.

as for me we've done lots on the new house now hte professionasl have left = lots of floor boards and skirting fitted, kitchen and bathroom deepcleaned, and some furniture moved. oh, and 2 bbqs had
my puter is still up the spout and consequently so is my SoW and due to the extra costs right now, i guess my bank balance is too! i have however just had the biggest pay packet of my life - normal wages + overtime + a weeks holiday paid back!! so hopefully all is even. i'm keeping all reciepts so i can enter them in. THANK YOU all for this challenge as i'm sure it's helping keep me on track.

dizzy_lizzie

Hi minnie. Reading about your computer I thought what happened to us may help. We bought two new sofas, costing over £1000 a few years ago now from a very well know sofa company and within two weeks one of them had started to split along the back. Anyway they came out twice to repair (by stapling!) same thing happened again and on the 3rd time charged us for the repair. Then it happened again, same place. So I read up on the 1984 Sales of Goods Act, went to our local Trading Standards Office, who were excellent, and they advised us to write a letter recorded delivery, stating exactly what had happened, with dates of repairs etc. and that I wanted a refund as the sofa hadn't complied to the Sales Of Goods Act etc, to the company, with a date on as to when I expected a reply and that if I didn't receive a reply by then I would start a small claims court proceeding. Lo and behold I got a reply offering me either complete new sofas (only one was damaged but the other was going slightly by now) to the amount we had paid or a refund less £300 for the amount of time we'd had them...very annoying this as we'd only had them so long due to all the repairs etc. Definately didn't want to have a replacement from them and the Trading Standards Office said to accept the refund less the deduction as the judge in the small claims court would probably say that was fair anyway. We got the refund cheque within a week.
Might be worth popping in to see Trading Standards and see what they think. Hope you get it sorted soon. I honestly thought we would be stuck with our sofas but we got it sorted. Certainly worth having a try.

23rdspiral sounds like the house is coming on...very quickly. :T Yay to the big wage. And you're right this thread definately helps doesn't it

Luv Dizzy x
♥

ceridwen

My nettle pasta didnt work out. I thought "guess I'd better chop up the nettles" - as I presumed that was necessary.

Went on to mix everything up - and it was nowt like dough - so thought "Maybe I need to add a bit of water". Did so - and obviously added way too much. Squeezed out as much surplus water as I could and it still didnt look like fresh pasta to boil in saucepan.

Ended up putting it in silicone flan thingie I have and scattering flakes of butter and bit of grated cheese over so as not to waste it and baked it in the oven - 20 mins or so at 200C. Got it out..sliced and spread it with butter. Have just had slice of it - and 'twas okay...but it didnae work out as pasta. Now wondering where I went wrong...

Was there due to be some water listed in ingredients - but because it wasnt - then I didnt know how much to add? Was it normally made with white flour - but I was using my usual wholemeal bread flour...so it all came out different?

errrm.....:cool:

Lady_Lesley

there was no water in the recipe for pasta just a little oil and the eggs

LolaLemon

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

Lola - saw a Metro today while I was on the park & ride over to Dunfermline and there was a piece saying Hannah's doing really well - so glad to hear that. I know the funerals for Donna & Noah were today which must've been really difficult/traumatic for everyone so a big hug from me and I hope you're OK.

Thank you for thinking about me xx

The funeral was yesterday, i broke down in the chapel, outside the chapel and at the graveside, but at my other friends grave , went back to the wake and had a double long vodka.

The service was fantastic. It was funny - donna met norrie when she was 14 and in college training to be a car mechanic, norrie was older and at college studying interior design :rotfl:. they had her name on the service thing as a double barrelled name. Donna Coyle MacLeod. the were married in all ways but 'legally'
I spoke to Norrie alot. he isnt thinking, just following the motions. Hannah is getting better every day! (i just recieved a txt from Norrie, thats Hannah been moved into the wards now!!!)

The press where outside the chapel. The police where there to stop them approching anyone. Also to give Donna n Noah a police escort up to the cemetery. they where in a horse n carridge. it was soo beautiful but soo sad too.

I thought today would be worse, i was right. its now final and sunk in my head. But i went up to the cemetary and had a proper 'breakdown' crying for about 2 hours over the pointlessness of it all, the things they should have done but are never going to do again, like Noah playing football whilst wearing Hannahs 'pretend' high heels, or Donna and her endless mugs of tea! After all that crying i went home and slept, and have felt ok since.

Again thank you for all the kind words, thoughts and prayers, everyone of them has been very appreciated. xxx

---

One of the last conversations i had with donna, 3 days before the accident, she was getting at me for not going on dates, even though i 'liked' the guy, he had all but asked me out, so the Saturday night after the accident, whilst at work, i invited myself to the house party afterwards (that he has invited me to a few times before) and we have spent the next 9 days seeing each other at some point. Timing is really rubbish, as he was only here for 6 weeks and then going back home to florida (although he comes from a village not to far from me) but he has been talking bout coming back to stay for good. he left on tuesday whilst i was at the funeral. he comes back in October for a week, then off to greece to be a best man and he says he will know then if he is home or not, as he is waiting to hear about a job he has been trying to get for ages.
im a little unsure about my feelings, as i think i may just be using him to distract me from my emotions about Donna an Noah, but on the other hand, i did fancy the pants off him before that all happened.

He's taken my home number (!!! my friends dont even have that, as i never answer it!) my email addres and has said he will keep in touch. im not holding my breath, but i am rather hopeful that he will.

---

Sorry i havnt caught up with the 5 pages of posts! ive seen things about chicken pox (hope its cleared up ok -- oats wrapped in a muslin/towel and put under running bath water and then use as a sponge is good) allotments - good luck with them. and a lot more i wanted to comment on but have forgotten!

Oh last thing from me - i pick up our kitten (named malley cat) next week AND in 2 weeks time, im getting 2 'newly' hatched chicks! soo exciting..


Hope everyones good and well xx

redglass_2

Frugaldom wrote: »

Hope all is going well for everyone.

Hello, saw you recently on the selfsufficientish site!

Lady_Lesley wrote: »

Most supermarkets now have an ethnic aisle. Ive noticed in Asda or Tesco (cant remember which ) they sell a small sack of sugar and it works out far cheaper. Its great for wine making but even just home use its far cheaper. Is it my imagination but are the Polish ranges cheaper than the bags with English writing ?

We don't have much Polish stuff round here but when we do have it, yes, I think it's cheaper. A year ago I bought Polish gherkins and a few other things (just guessing what they were from the labels!) and they were cheaper than their English equivalents. Haven't seen any sacks of sugar though.

dizzy_lizzie wrote: »

So I read up on the 1984 Sales of Goods Act

Whoops, think I got the date of the Act wrong in my post, but you get the gist! Throw the Mighty Book of the Law at them.

True Confessions
I'm skulking in shame because I haven't entered half my expenses on the SoW (I have kept all the receipts and they are lying by the PC accusing me). Then I went to the Big Blue and Yellow Swedish Furniture Store today (they are doing my kitchen and I needed to check something) and ran amok in the marketplace section. To be fair, I didn't buy anything that I wasn't already conscious of wanting/needing before I entered the store, but still...oh my, that place is so seductive when our local store, which shall be nameless, offers amazingly old-fashioned and not especially nice furniture at amazingly high prices. I can't cope with IK*A's pretendy rooms, I drift along fantasising about the romantic boudoir with the lace four-poster and then I have to settle for 8 wooden coat hangers instead. :rotfl: This could develop into a serious delusional state in which I try to take up residence in the store, if not for the fact that I have to drive along 3 motorways to get there.

Edited to add: Lola, I posted this before reading your last. It sounds as if the funeral was very moving and enabled you to have a good old grieve, and I'm glad it has given you some relief. Maybe the new friendship will work out, maybe it won't, there's only one way to find out. It's often the case that an unexpected death can encourage us to live more intensely. I can't go into details here, but a close friend's sudden death over ten years ago spurred me to do something that has changed my entire life for the better. (((hugs)))

Frugaldom

Lady_Lesley wrote: »

Most supermarkets now have an ethnic aisle. Ive noticed in Asda or Tesco (cant remember which ) they sell a small sack of sugar and it works out far cheaper...

If we had a big supermarket within reach, I'd opt for whatever is cheapest. Unfortunately, no big supermarkets near us.

23rdspiral wrote: »

hello everyone, wow, i've gone and done nothing but DIY all wknd ... our rental fell through, Again, so i'm now packing and in a huge mess and have a viewing in 30 min. ...

Good luck with the rental, the renovations and the decorating, we're nowhere near getting stuff into our house yet, it's just at the 'almost gutted' stage.

ceridwen wrote: »

My nettle pasta didnt work out...

Sounds like too much egg, I'd have ust kept bunging in the flour until it looked right. Nettle flan sounds OK, too, though.

Redglass, I try to keep the self-sufficient (ish) site up to date, so stop in and say hello next time you're passing.

Hope everyone is doing OK and soaking up all the sun rays we've been having, looks like today is another sunny one, so let's hope it stays for this holiday weekend.