let there be cake

quintwins

I was just about to say elec/gas wise your slowcooker will be alot cheaper to make stock. you can make bread in yoru slowcooker i think (ok this is banana bread but even still) http://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/2012/01/slow-cooker-oatmeal-banana-bread.html my slowcooker costs 3p an hr so i even use it to reheat things, like today we'll be having beef casarole we didn't have yesterday and i'll be throwing the casarole in around 4 on high rather than putting the oven on.

I love my slowcooker, the casarole was made in it yesterday, my sons just finished some yogurt also made in it (also on that site and youtube) works out at £1.60 for just over 4 litres i give the kids huge portions in mugs so it does about 10 portions not bad for 16p, however the yogurt i make tomorrow will only cost £1.10 as i will be using lo yogurt i froze the last time so even cheaper at 11p a portion. i will be doing a spag bol in it aswell this week so it gets put to alot of use.


As for meat i guess in toad in the hole, or sausage casarole with veg you could get away with that however i only buy sausages reduced now as theres always loads and generally have 8 for 5 of us. i used 2 small packets of beef shin yesterday for the casarole which wasn't alot of meat but plenty for us, i use one packet in stew, and for mince i get 2 800g packets and split in 5 so 320g for all 5 of us, however all my mince dishes are bulked out, sheperds pie/mince and taties will have lots of mixed frozen value veg, spag bol will have grated carrots and peppers, and chilli will have the same as spag bol plus some beans.

Hope you have a nice day i'm off to make poached egg on toast.

oh and i do all my baking with value marge, i'm not keen on lard and we have expensive taste in butter( we are will to conpromise on mist things however for us we'd rather do without butter and just use flora than get rid of our fav brand) so it's kept for toast when we have it .

oh and i pick value bread up reduced all the time and i'm more than happy with it for toast ect, altho i do find it moulds very quickly thats not a problem if it's frozen, love value pittas aswell perfect size for me and the kids

greenbee

Lost a post

Cooking with gas I cheaper than with electricity (except the slow cooker). If you are going to simmer stuff for a long time, bring to the boil and then simmer in the oven (much like with an aga) as it is more efficient. And try to batch cook, filling the oven every time you use it (so if you have it on for a meal a batch of biscuits/jam tarts/cakes etc is a good idea) to minimise cost.

I boil chicken in the SC as it isn't as dry as roasting. Also timing isn't so vital, and you get a couple of pints of stock straight away. The veg used in it can be used as a first batch of soup (add soup mix or pearl barley and lentils to make it more filling) or reused for boiling the bones if you are doing this straight after. I usually have a few extra bones or wings in the freezer to add to it and make it a bit richer, and I leave it for about 8 hours.

Horse carrots are good for sous and casseroles too...

As you already have lots of meat and the boys aren't that keen on it, maybe you should do your outline meal plan before buying anymore. You might be better off investing in cake-making stuff or dairy... I buy butter when on offer and freeze it...

TiredIAm

Quintwins SS bought the lard by accident, it was meant to be stork. I only use it for pastry which we don't often have, and I used to buy trex for that. I think for general baking I will buy a huge tub of soft margerine. The Asda one works out at 14.5p/100g.

Greenbee I thought you would know the answer on the gas. I have tried chicken in the slow cooker but for me all the flavour went into the stock leaving very bland chicken. I have a range type oven with gas hob, and electric fan ovens - one large, one small. I will experiment with the electric measure thingymajig, I have a feeling the small one is less energy efficient than the large, and most of my trays are too wide. The small one has four shelves against the the two in the main oven.

Black clouds so rather than go for the planned walk we nipped into the local town and went round H&B, Lidl and then to the park so the boys ran off the worst of their energy.

H&B had red lentils at 69p/500g against c£1 in the supermarket. Also got honey and foil so a £3.07 spend. £7.89 in Lidl on 5kg onions, 1kg carrots, tomatos, cucumber, milk, spread and 600g dry roasted peanuts. £10.96 to add to my running total.

Dinner tonight will be pasta, with tomato sauce and bacon bits. We still have carrot cake and chocolate cake so no pressure on that front.

greenbee

Fan ovens are always going to use more energy, but the trade off should be that they cook better. Try to plan what you are cooking to make the most of the available space, and remember that if you are using one oven, then heating the other will take less energy as the whole thing is warm (so both ovens working at once is better that using one for a longer period). Also plan what you can cook as they heat up and remember to switch them off before the cooking time ends and use the residual heat. Meringues are good for that

When you're getting to this level of detail you really are looking at saving pennies. But once you have it planned and organised at least you will know you are in control and hopefully will have the time and energy to focus on making up the shortfall. Could DH do some ebaying etc, with a target of bringing in the amount you are short each month either through eBay, selling his artworks, getting odd bits of work, bartering for stuff you would normally have to pay for, or getting a new job...

Chicken in the SC only really works if it is a very big chicken that you have to squash into the SC. And you need bay leaves, carrot, onion, leek, parsley stalks, celery and peppercorns in with it too. Like many things in the SC, too much water causes problems.

Unexpected sunshine here, so have been for a walk, let the bung out on two boats (and out the bungs back in!) to empty the water, pumped out another one, taken down bunting and flags from two boats, been out in the kayak briefly, and put the plastic dinghy away on top of the bigger one... I don't usually use the little plastic dinghy and it was a challenge to work out how to manoeuvre it! I'm not sure I want to try again though...

TiredIAm

Far too logical with the oven for me greenbee! I do the residual heat stuff, and I fill every shelf, but I generally use only the main oven. I really do need to master this whole planning idea.

Dinner was pasta (yuck) and tomato sauce (yuck) with some bacon bits. I liked the parmesan and tolerated the rest in the interests of not being a hypocrite. Boys had pasta and cheese.

Quintwins you mentioned RTC stuff. I just don't go at the right times for the reductions. I hate shopping so I tend to whip round in the 15 minutes before work first thing if the motorway is clear. It then sits in the car for five hours. The village co-op has the odd decent meat RTC (hence the half, half price lamb shoulders in the freezer) but not much else other than me buying milk and emergency F&V. Maybe once a month we go into local town on a saturday morning to do H&B/Lidl (in 10 mins whilst ideally DH waits outside with the boys). Meat comes from the butchers. About 30 minutes from us is a butchers next door to an abbatoir (j20 M1 Helenjelly), superb meat with some major bulk bargains that justify the fuel. This is why I have 9 bags of stewing steak in the freezer. Can't go on a Saturday as they have a monster queue so we go when I am off.

DH is looking at selling the metal men, it is the right time of the year I suppose but I want them for my garden!

greenbee

If they sell, get him to make some more metal men!

Look out for, and ask for scrap metal on freegle and free cycle - I you explain that it's for art projects you may get it as people want to avoid stuff going to people who are selling to scrap merchants. I would have saved my gate/door scraper/BBQ but you're too far from me!

Remind me to send you a copy of 'leave it to cook' if you don't have one. It's a slow cooking book with dreadful 1970s recipes, but what it does well is show how to work out what to cook with what. The idea is to cook an entire week's food in one session, making the most of the time you have and the time the oven is on.

I'm glad you tolerated the pasta. Hopefully if the boys see you not being fussy, they'll gradually start to realise that you should all be able to eat the same thing and it should make life much simpler if you only have to cook one meal each time!

helen_jelly

TiredIAm - I'm going to PM you about the butchers

Helen

TiredIAm

Thanks Greenbee I have a rather splendidly bad 70s slow cooker book that was my mothers.

I have just remembered that we used to have grated cheese and carrot toasted sandwiches, must try those again. And savoury pancakes - with cheese sauce and bits of stuff in. My mum brought us up on a rather tight budget in the days when healthy was considered weird, I sometimes think the way I am is a reaction to my upbringing .

Memory_Girl

One of the things I saved up my Amazon vouchers for was a halogen oven - looks like a UFO in my kitchen, but I figure if I am only heating a space the size of a pressure cooker instead of a whole oven then I was saving money.

I make bread most days - so its perfect for a 2lb loaf tin.

MG

TiredIAm

Thanks MG - I had been looking at those and thought you had one. Which one do you have? I have some amazon vouchers that I was vaguely saving for coffee. In any case (given our £160 a month gas/electric bill - not from estimates, DH and his power tools I think!) then it may be worth spending to save,

ETA I was looking at this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Andrew-James-Premium-Replaceable-WARRANTY/dp/B002LYQF7A/ref=zg_bs_391784011_24

I also want a pressure cooker. I haven't had the storage space, worktops, or enough sockets for years so didn't buy much beyond the Kenwood.

Is the best way to guarantee an immediate start on an interim role to place an order with AF for delivery next week? A bit like cooking an omelette when a delivery is due.....