Living on next to nought - is that the key?

Shovel_Lad

Munchin wrote: »

Hi Greying

Thank you:). Can't believe I've made it. Away to lurk again:D.

And a huge Well Done from me too :T:T:T

Greying_Pilgrim

Good evening (again) :hello:

Right, I am going to post the recipe that I have been following to make plain yoghurt. I realise that there are infinite ways to make yoghurt, plus you can use different milks, slow cookers, organic/non-organic starters etc etc.

However, I will just put up the method that works for me, it isn't the only method, and I'm not claiming it as such. And, as you know, I'm still active in this yoghurt adventurizing, so now that I have a recipe that I am comfortable with, yes, I too will try s/s or skimmed milk, UHT, soya milk, coconut milk etc etc and possibly report my failures and successes here

I also used Liberte yoghurt (0% greek style) as my starter. As far as I am aware, Mr S is the only s'market that stocks it and frankly, if you look up the price for a 500g tub, you will demand my MSE 'stalwart' badge back off me and show me the door. However, I purchase mine when they have it in stock at H*ron fo0ds......for 40p a 500g tub.......:money:However, I am now at the end of my starter, so if there are no tubs in stock, I'll have a go at using some of the made yoghurt as my starter.

Ingredients

500ml Milk (I use ald* whole milk - the blue labelled container)
15g (dry weight) Skimmed milk powder (= 2 x 15ml tablespoon)
2 x 15ml tablespoons of 'live' starter yoghurt

Utensils

A saucepan to heat milk (pref non-stick)
A food grade thermometer
A thermos flask, with a capacity of 0.5l minimum, but pref 0.7 or 1.0l. Also, the wider the neck, the easier to clean out.
A small bowl
A whisk

Method

Remove your 'starter' yoghurt from the fridge and allow it to come to 'room' temperature whilst you get on with other tasks. (if you have frozen your starter, it must be fully de-frosted and brought up to room temp)

Fill the thermos flask with water from a recently boiled kettle and close the lid. Set aside.

In a small bowl place your milk powder. Add in a small amount of your milk, whisking together to form a smooth liquid - no lumps or gritty bits. Set to one-side.

Put your remaining milk into your saucepan and put it on your stove on a moderate heat. Take your bowl of reconstituted milk powder and pour it into the saucepan stirring briefly to combine. Set the empty bowl to one side.

Heat the milk gently and steadily to a temperature of 85 degrees centigrade. The milk will begin to form bubbles on the surface and a slight skin may begin to form. Once the milk has reached 85 degrees centigrade, turn off the heat source and set the pan aside in a safe place (it and the contents are hot, and will burn/scald - take care).

Allow the milk to cool down to 46 degrees centigrade. This will take approximately 30 minutes, but is of course dependent on the temperature of your kitchen the weather etc. so check reasonably frequently - especially as you get nearer to the required temperature.

Working carefully but quickly at this point, take a little of the milk from the saucepan and put it into your mixing bowl. Add in the 'starter' yoghurt and gently mix the two together to fully combine - then pour this back into the saucepan - there is no need to stir.

Carefully empty the water out of your thermos flask and pour in the milk and yoghurt starter mixture from the saucepan into the warm flask. Seal the flask.

Set the thermos to one side in a safe place for 8 - 12 hours.

Open the flask carefully. The yoghurt may well appear to of set 'solid'. Carefully tip the flask over a container - a large bowl is ideal, you can always decant it into something prettier later - and allow it to flow from the flask. It may require the use of a spoon to encourage it out, in which case, it should exit the flask with a satisfying 'plop'.

The yoghurt may be stirred at this point if you prefer a very smooth yoghurt, and it will go thinner if you stir it. I prefer to leave it in its lumpy form. Put in a covered container and refridgerate for a couple of hours (it may well thicken up some more if you do this).

Enjoy. You have just made 500ml of natural yoghurt.


I hope these instructions make sense. If they don't then please query it with me.

Greying

teambathmat

Hiya, I am neither a veggie, money-saver or a yoghurt maker but just wanted you to know that I am hooked on reading your posts!!, your outlook on life is fantastic and so positive, it makes me smile when i read your diary. good luck with the key fund xx

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening (again) :hello:

Right, this is definitely my last offering tonight, DP is getting anxious as to what is keeping me glued to the keyboard :rotfl:

Today has been just great. Despite the sketchy beginning. Thankfully DP heard the mystery tapping in the early hours too, so at least I've not had to suffer 'rolls eyes smilie' to add insult to injury. No idea what it was, can't even begin to pinpoint a cause. All very strange.

I called in at Mr M today as I was in the neighbourhood and wanted to get the TV guide. I couldn't believe that the same soap opera actress was on the front cover of the mag - this is the 3rd week running! So, as they had a bigger selection of mags, I perused and........ found the one that Beanie was alluding to the other week. It had different soap opera actors on the cover :rotfl: so I bought it - it was 14p cheaper at 38p :money: and yet has exactly the same info as the 52p one Thank you Beanie

So, totalspend today - 38p.

Dinner this evening was sweetcorn chowder with melted cheese soda farls (um, cheese on toast - but using HM soda farls). The recipe is from the C0vent Gard*n S0up Co cookbook. As it was a main course, I substituted a tin of butter beans for some of the potatoes in the recipe. This upped the protein content of the dish, without compromising the 'creaminess' of the soup. Whilst cream is in the actual original recipe, I never add it, preferring to let the potatoes/beans contribute that element of creaminess.
We also stirred in some HM harissa paste, but we also spread some on the melted cheese, which was really good.

I'll have to buzz off in a minute, as I've got to cook some pasta for the snap boxes tomorrow - and remember to get the pizza slices out of the freezer

Oh, I forgot to mention, my second batch of coriander seeds are just starting to germinate. You don't think I could actually get a continuous supply of fresh coriander in between now and the first frosts do you??

The 3 things for which I am grateful for today are;

Clouds - such interesting shapes and textures. And they inspire conversations around the dining table that start; 'its a pac-man - can you see it?' 'Nope, I can see a horses head, can you.' 'Nope....oh yeh.....'

seeing people achieve their goals - so good.

recipes - there's never only one version, but it's the sharing that hones the differences, and creates a conversation.

If you are a lurker, a 'popper' in, a contributor or a reader - Thank you. I appreciate you.

See y'all later.

Greying

beanielou

Said TV mag was only 20p but then sadly went up to 38p.
There is inflation for you :eek:

7_week_wonder

First: Huge Congratulations Munchin - enjoy that debt free feeling :beer:

And now a shameless plug: I know Greyling follows A Girl called Jack, and I'm guess some others of you do to. Well there are a couple of great/thought provoking posts on there tonight: I'm certainly going to give this a go.

More tomorrow, as right now OH has just arrived home having not slept for over 40 hours!!! (Don't ask - entirely self inflicted)

Have a good evening all.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

teambathmat - Welcome! What an incredibly kind comment. Thank you for taking the time to pop in. There's no 'criteria' to join in on this thread, but I am thrilled that you're finding it interesting as we go along.

Beanielou - that is a steep hike heh? But at a saving of over 75% of what I was paying for a listings mag, I'm pleased enough

7_week_wonder wrote: »

First: Huge Congratulations Munchin - enjoy that debt free feeling :beer:

And now a shameless plug: I know Greyling follows A Girl called Jack, and I'm guess some others of you do to. Well there are a couple of great/thought provoking posts on there tonight: I'm certainly going to give this a go.

More tomorrow, as right now OH has just arrived home having not slept for over 40 hours!!! (Don't ask - entirely self inflicted)

Have a good evening all.

7 Week Wonder - Im turning grey with [STRIKE]age [/STRIKE] 'wisdom' :whistle: not into a fish! :rotfl::rotfl: I couldn't afford the surgery for the 'trout pout' like all these celebs if I wanted it anyway :rotfl::rotfl:

No, seriously (just pulling your leg 7WW) - that is kind of you to put up the link - I missed to check Jack's blog last night, so will catch up. Thank you again

Hopefully today will be a NSD. There isn't anything that we need, and as it is the last day of the month, there is the incentive to keep money in the pots in order to be able to transfer it into the key fund. However, if there is a something we urgently need, then of course, the money is there to buy it - no sack cloth and ashes about this, remember

So, hopefully tonight I will be able to post how much I have left in my pots to transfer over to the 'Key' fund. Now, there'll be no 'big reveal' build up, or tedious pauses like on TV 'reality' shows. After all, I only had £160 budget to work with. So there is no way I'll be revealing I've saved £1,000 out of a £160 budget :rotfl: Mind you, I greatly appreciate that there are some savvy MSE'rs on DFW and MFW that have the ability to do that - and I salute them :T If the amount stays as it is currently, it will be modest, but pleasing (to me).

Dinner tonight will be a recipe from the '2 gre3dy Italians - eat italy' cookbook. There wasn't much in there for veggies, but I borrowed it out of the library and just copied out 1 or 2 of the recipes. I could write out the ltalian name, but basically if you think bean stew and polenta, then you're on the right lines. Must remember to get the beans out of the freezer to de-frost.

Right, I'm off to follow 7 Week Wonder's link.

Have a good day, one and all.

See y'all later.

Greying

Piquant_2

Thanks for the yogurt recipe. I don't have a thermometer, so I'll try it with the 'guess' formula

There's no reason why you can't have continuous coriander if that's what you want! I have continuous purple basil on the go, looks so pretty and tastes the same as the green and as an added bonus my cat doesn't eat the purple but stuffs himself full of the green....

Greying_Pilgrim

Good evening:hello:

Well, the pots have been emptied and the cash counted - took all of ....ooh, 3 seconds and I'm very pleased to say that £14.14 (and that so satisfies the alliterative/pattern nerd in me) has been put in the 'key' fund tonight.

It's 14p because of the saving on the TV guide I made yesterday, (just in case you wondered....). I was going to say that it didn't quite represent 10% of my budget, saved, but it has just dawned on me that £3 of the money already residing in the 'key' fund came from savings made from the household budget too. Therefore, since the 11th July (think that's the date I started the diary) I have been able to save £17.14 of my available budget - or 10.5%.

OK, not a huge amount, and I think on that basis, it will take me 4 years to save up to the total I set!! :rotfl: However, as I stated, £750 is the worst case scenario. That was if the bills came in, the employment ceased, something else brown hit the swirly whirly thing, etc etc. So therefore, I am quite pleased, because I have taken an already tight budget and been able to wring something further from it. I haven't noticed a diminishing of 'fun' - DP still makes me laugh everytime .............. Oh, erm, sorry *ahem* - not past 9pm watershed yet. :rotfl: And we've not gone without anything - that I've noticed anyway.

I've already done a lot - seed sowing, yoghurt making, downshifting a brand on something i'd never thought about...... So there will be more - plus I believe that there is better. I'm sure I uttered the phrase 'why haven't I done this sooner', when; I reported that the seedlings were beginning to germinate; when the first batch of yoghurt came out of the flask with a satisfying 'plop'; when I really thought about what I needed from a TV listing guide.....

I'm going to continue with this 'key' fund, because I need to get creative with our food and to expand my repertoire and to be able to pull together 'something' from (apparently) nothing. Again, as I said at the start, I thought I was rather good at this already. So how come I've still been able to make savings then - luck? accountancy errors? because I stopped being complacent; and focussed instead? I'm not sure. But I do know that I have LOVED (sorry for the shout) the focus that this diary and this challenge has given me and I want to continue.

And I do so very much hope you will continue along with me.

Now, onto other matters of the day. Jack Monroe has really got folk talking about Food Banks and their stock/donation levels - which is a good thing. I have checked with our local FB and they require a different list of 'urgent' items to the ones on Jack's list. As they are responding to their client group and know that group best, I acquiesce to their better knowledge. I know Frugal Queen has also put up the Trussell Trust list on her blog, but our FB isn't associated with TT. I'm therefore giving some thought as to how to donate something meaningful to our FB. I'm hatching a plan and I'll report back if it comes off.

Today has been a NSD :j

We did indeed have Polenta e fagioli borlotti al forno for dinner, but since there was not one borlotti bean in it and it went nowhere near an oven - I feel a bit of a fraud really :rotfl: I made the stew and polenta on the stovetop separately and then just put them on the plate together. The beans were out of the freezer and actually it was black-eyed peas that came to hand first, so they went in the stew. Anyway, DP declared it delish and there is plenty left over for snap boxes tomorrow. In the original recipe, it uses Fontina cheese - a really good melting cheese. I was going to use some salad cheese (fake feta) - not a really good melting cheese, but what I had. However, I forgot to chop it up before I started to stir the polenta and didn't want to wait once I had dished up (the polenta starts to set, which is ok, but it's nicer to eat 'wet') so I didn't bother. It didn't affect the dish - it was still full of flavour. Plus the feta can be kept for another dish :money:

Despite leaden skies the coriander seedlings have really come on today. I think the new parsley seeds might well fail this time - they look to be possibly going mouldy rather than germinating. But I'll leave them a while longer yet - the other batch surprised me.

The 3 things that I am grateful for today;

'lost' items - in looking for a 'lost cheque' today, I 'found' a supermarket voucher, which may be able to help someone less fortunate than myself. And if DP hadn't lost those keys............

Social Media - when it's for good. It's brilliant...............

'little acorns' - doesn't matter whether those little acorns are tentative ideas, small-scale savings, individual actions or the opening sentence of that book that's waiting to be written - watching them grow into mighty oaks is where I want to be at...........

Thank you ever so much for dropping by, reading and commenting. I do, greatly, appreciate it.

See y'all later

Greying

Upsidedown_Bear

£17.14 isn't a huge amount but it is 10.5% of your budget (in 20 days) which is huge :T

I think you are right about having the challenge and this diary being the key to being able to find new ways of saving and new ideas.
Some things are so obvious you wonder why you haven't done them before but we all need support and information from others and that is where MSE is so invaluable.

I have some little acorns for you.
May they grow into mighty oaks