Living on next to nought - is that the key?

dreaming

Thank you for your answers - I actually have a lot of those spices in my cupboards (now nicely rearranged). I bought the sumac because I remember you mentioning it and it was easy for me to remember as I like the tree. Most of Christmas food is now bought - just mainly cheese (mmm!) and fresh stuff to get. I thought that after Christmas I would enjoy something a bit different to experiment with and recover from the insanity. Most of them look like store cupboard ingredients as well so should fit in with the "no shopping unless absolutely necessary for fresh" rule I impose on myself for January. Thanks again for sharing.

EssexHebridean

Greying - however have I not thought to ask you this before - but have you ever used Fox's Spices? They don't have a website but do mail order - they have a page on FB giving their details and you can access that even if you're not a FB'er. We always go to the Good Food Show with a list of requirements from them - this year that included yellow mustard seeds, saffron (ended up with 3 of their little pots of it - I THINK it's about £2.75 a pot normally) Sweet smoked paprika and Coconut Milk powder. Got several other bits which took our fancy too just as we were browsing. Their prices are good and their quality and freshness excellent, in our experience.

Allspice is wonderful - you can buy it ready ground and it seems to keep its freshness quite well - my Mum adds it to almost everything, it seems! One tip with using whole spices - toast them gently in a dry frying pan first, then tip into a pestle and mortar and grind - the smell they give off is just incredible. Another tip - if purchasing a pestle & mortar get one that's good and heavy - granite is good - JaymeeO used to do a good one - I think it's his we've got. Well, I say "his" - it's actually ours, but you know what I mean! :rotfl:

Dreaming - Cheese....Mmmmm indeed!

Stripes - Loving your bird identification comments - it was the reinforced head that made me giggle though - they really must have, mustn't they! :rotfl:

Stew looked tasty indeed - ours was also lovely - and will be nicer tonight on it's second evening! Decided against doing Dumplings either night though - those leftover yorkies were fab last night, and tonight there will be bread. (From the Turkish Supermarket - shhhhh!)

Pippilongstocking

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

Greying thinks about asking Pippi where the yellow patch is located for bird identification purposes..... then thinks better of it :whistle::rotfl::rotfl:

Greying

on its head

I love them all bright and ariel white.

Thank you for the heads up re the luxury store ingredients here great idea will try some celery seeds with some sea salt cracking idea thank you again.

I'm still afraid to open the truffle but in the new year I'll be brave and make sure I've got some eggs in - thank you very much.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening :hello:

dreaming - that is cracking that you have most of the ingredients - we'll need updates in January of all your soup adventures

EH - yes, Fox's are good aren't they? I remember going on one of their stalls years ago - 'twas HUGE! I was able to source spices cheaper than them up until this year.... the Asian supermarket that I used (not at all local, but it was treated as a day out to go and stock up) has changed hands, and with it the shop has undergone a great deal of refurbishment and glamourisation..... and they are now re-couping their investment. Fresh ginger used to be 79p a kilo, last time I went there in the summer, it was 10p a kilo dearer than mrW! I know world prices of commodities have risen, but still..... I reckon I'm gonna hire me a caravan and head along to 'brizzletown', kidnap brizzle's DH and make him take me to their local Asian supermarket :rotfl:

Yes, my mortar and pestle is one of the JaymeeO type ones - albeit a little smaller and I got it for a fiver from Woolworths - shows how long I've had it As long as all humans and passing animals were safe, it is one thing that I would rescue from a fire or flood - or that I would take if I found it necessary to become 'young, free, and single' again 'tis useful if you need a weight to get the water out of tofu

You can tease me with your Turkish supermarket all you like missy - I can point my hired caravan at your neck 'o the woods and turn up on your doorstep too y'know :D:rotfl:

Pippi - I look forward to hearing about your truffle adventures -

So today.

Well, it didn't turn out to be a NSD as I had hoped. I popped into mrT's in passing to see if they stock something that mesoopermarket has listed. I knew I needed mushrooms for Mushroom Dopiaza that is on the meal-planner for Saturday night. Anyway, I dropped on some YS'd - 340g for 46p - they were only the closed cup ones, nowt fancy, but were cheaper than a EDV carton of nearly the same weight (350g) and I have to say, were in 'ok' condition - they came with absolutely no compost and I threw none away - not something you can say very often if you buy a carton of the value mushrooms (from any of the soopermarkets) these days. They have been transformed into curry and popped in the freezer - bonus that the flavours will develop by Saturday too As I had broken my NSD, I decided to get one or two other bits - including the milk, so that I can perhaps redeem myself and get another couple of NSD in over the weekend

I found no *roadkill*

Dinner this evening was Butter Bean and Thyme soup from Lindsey Bareham's book 'Hungry' (written for her son as he went off to Uni). I can't find a listing of the recipe anywhere on the net, and I'm afraid that the several recipes for the soup on the internet are too dissimilar from Lindsey's so I don't see the point of highlighting them. I think the curry powder and the Dijon mustard are the key. I got hold of her book from the library (surprise ), if you can get hold of it, the soup is definitely worth trying. Plus if you have a H0me B*rgins nearby, they do 3 tins of butter beans for £1.

Anyway, picture, for what it is worth, here;



And I didn't realise until it was too late that I had no wholemeal flour to make farls (I much prefer it to plain, more taste and texture to the farl) so I ended up getting a portion of cooked rice out of the freezer, thoroughly defrosting it and putting that in the bottom of the dish and then pouring the soup over it - it worked well, but is not as per recipe Under 50p a head for generous portions of soup that tasted good and filled us up

I am starting to worry that we are not half way through the month, but a lot of the staples are running low. I suspect it is because I have truncated the expenditure on 'C'mas food (such as it is, we really don't have that many 'extras') into December's money, because of all that has gone on this year. Perhaps next year's challenge ought to be to save for any celebrations in December as a separate pot and have that to spend without trying to buy bananas, flour, yeast or sea salt on top...... We certainly won't go hungry, it's just that we may need to compromise a little more than perhaps we should. Never mind. t'ain't the end of the world

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

for the couple who generously let me 'queue hop' in front of them in the soopermarket - thank you

that all the 'C'mas cards and correspondence has now been completed and despatched from Greying Towers - it's in the lap of the gods and hands of the RM now, here's hoping it all gets where it needs to go

for simple substitutions - especially when they work even better than you anticipated :D

Thank you so very much for popping by, reading and commenting. I appreciate it so much.

See y'all later.

Greying

Pippilongstocking

Good old RM :-) I'm sure they'll do ya proud.

I had to look up truncated so I learnt a new word today - thanks! I think as we wander doon this road that we learn so much like adapting ourselves to suit the end goal.

Well done on the reduced musshies minus compost :-)

I'm ferreting about the cupboards for the stashes of 'sachets' (sugar/coffee/hot choc/sauces) innocently gained from any such establishments for our holibub. It all helps!

I love rice in soup, if we have any spare we love some, it's just lovely well improvised.

Have a lovely weekend!

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

Ay up Pippi :wave: You are still around this weekend eh?

Ug, I feel like a slug. More broken sleep. Moithering about how we're gonna do this thing

Aiming for a NSD. Unless the bargains are excellent, I'm keeping my purse shut - and I'll try to avoid going in any shops in the first place.

Dinner this evening is black olive pizza and HM wedges. Looking forward to it already - although might be asleep with face gently smushed into it by 6pm. Sigh.

At least last night's yoghurt worked, so I can be grateful for that :j

Right, best get up and at 'em. Have a great day all.

Thanks for popping by, reading and joining in - you know I appreciate it greatly.

See y'all later.

Greying

EssexHebridean

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

Ug, I feel like a slug. More broken sleep.

I read that as you feeling like a broken slug.....thought "EH?" went back and re-read and it made FAR more sense!

As for EDV -type 'shrooms - the trick is to pick through until you find the ones that feel solid-est. If they have even a tiny bit of squish in them when bought, they last no more than a day or two in any sort of decent nick - bought solid though, I have had nearly a week out of a punnet before. We buy them because they're usually British - if they're not British, we buy them not!

You realise that you are singlehandedly responsible for me adding "A decent Lebanese/Middle eastern cookbook" to my christmas list?! And for getting me time-wasting to a ridiculous degree on the Dirty Kitchen Secrets blog/website, too!

Stripes - we do that with sachet-gathering too - FAR easier than flapping about with little pots of this & that for camping trips.

I'm afraid food tonight is a chinese - bought, not home made. MrEH is out doing christmas gallivanting type stuff (and a bit of networking - hopefully procuring himself a more palatable job, but we'll see) and I intend to glue myself to the sofa getting up only to make more tea. I'm planning something middle-eastern-ey with lamb, chickpeas flaked almonds, rice, saffron (sorreeeeee!) Coriander, cumin and similar delights for Sunday lunch. Could turn into anything yet as the ingredients list keeps evolving. :cool:

Verbatim

OOOh add a few dried apricots and prunes and you have a tagine. One of my faves.

rtandon27

EssexHebridean wrote: »

You realise that you are singlehandedly responsible for me adding "A decent Lebanese/Middle eastern cookbook" to my christmas list?!

Have a look at the Ottolenghi ones - he's had a couple of new ones out last year - his stuff is very very yum! Some of it quite loborious but well worth the effort. We (I use that term loosely) made chicken schwarma from a recipe he'd put in the W@itrose weekly paper & it's a real keeper - we did learn that sumac can be really really sour when it's very fresh! but pickled red onions have become a favorite on the side of all kinds of meals!

(:wave: to GP & all - loving all your talk about spices - it's been a bit of a week so have been an avid reader but too tired to write anything of sense xo)

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

Sorry I didn't make it on here last night - I didn't schlump face first into me pizza, but managed to sit on the sofa, watch a taped episode of 'Vera' (thank goodness you can whizz through the adverts - makes it about half as long!) and then went to Bedfordshire. Still had broken sleep, but no silly 'totally unconnected to anything dreams' and I managed to drop back into sleep relatively easily, so for that I am grateful as I feel less slug like this morning! Ay, EH - 'broke' slug, but not 'broken' :D

I'm sorry if it appeared that I was having a pity party yesterday - I did end up giving myself a stern talking too, and then got active. I surrepticiously (spelt wrong on purpose - cos it'll never go through the 'filter' ) scribbled things down all day, and I've managed to come up with a sheet of all the rooms in the house, and what must/may and might need doing to them. I've also drawn up a 'how I think it might need doing' list of priorities. This is a 'straw horse' document, open to revision, but it gives me the basis to start talking to DP about how we go about all this/afford it. I'm used to drawing up 'straw horses', and am [STRIKE]old [/STRIKE] wise enough to not get distressed if folk pull my work to pieces, whereas DP needs to 'see' stuff to give consideration to it - and then he usually inputs some cracking ideas, so I am feeling a little less phased by it all. In addition, I have contacted someone that we know that has a great deal of experience in construction matters and also has intimate working knowledge of old, decrepit houses - hopefully they can give us some overall direction too. So all in all, perhaps as I have a) taken some action and b) formulated the 'beginnings' of a plan, I am feeling a little less daunted

OK EH - rtandon beat me to it, but who are you going for with the cook book? Yotam & Sami? Claudia? Annissa? Arto? Bethany? - we need to know - after all, we may not of borrowed 'that one' from the library and need to get it on our request list pronto I have a couple of Yotam's recipes - I agree that he is convoluted, and I really can't warm to him as a person, but I do love his cookery programmes and loved the recent 'islands' one. Unfortunately DP missed to tape the greek one, but the other three were just wonderful for the produce, scenery and his cooking was interesting..... And I agree with rtandon - of the recipes of his I use, the food turns out very well.

Verbatim - thank you for popping in. Loving the tagine talk

ratandon - sorry to hear that you have 'had one of those weeks' - will you get any respite over the weekend to restore your batteries?

But you see, that is what I find so interesting about cuisine. Everyone sights Thai and Asian cuisine as being all about the sweet, sour, hot, salty (and 'umami'), but actually, it is apparent in a lot more dishes of the globe. After all, we are talking about sumac and fruit in dishes such as tagines - and chilli may well be in there too. Salt is mixed in with yoghurt in the drink Ayran .... etc etc. I think it is all fascinating. I did try a pinch of sumac 'neat' when I opened the pot. Dried, it is not super sour, but there is a slight piquancy there - and again, mixed in with the cooling yoghurt and mint, it adds another dimension to the dish

Anyway, to money matters......

I can claim a NSD for yesterday - must update siggie. I did actually spend money, but as it wasn't mine..... DP gave me the money for the 'double week' times for radio listings magazine, as he doesn't want to miss all the cr*p progs that are set to be shown over the festive period :rotfl:

Dinner last night was indeed black olive pizza and HM wedges. Whilst I had the oven on, I also made some bread baps and some orange and spice buns. i'm pleased with how the buns turned out. I used orange marmalade instead of orange zest - and mindful of what patchwork cat said about 'lemon curd that actually contains some lemon' I did buy the marmalade from HB that had 50% fruit in it (better ratio than a leading 'brand' I have to point out ). I altered the proportions of the sugar and marg in the recipe accordingly, and whilst they are not 'quite' as flavoursome as if I'd used orange zest, they really are quite tasty and 'seasonally appropriate'. And of course, they were inexpensive to make - I got 12 buns out of the mix

I like making our own pizza - i'd hate to think how much it would cost in the shops. Picture for you here;



And yes, it was a 'two slice' night We have a slice each for lunch today and 2 slices have been put in the freezer for another day.

Dinner this evening is Mushroom Dopiaza, lentil dhal and rice. I'll make the dhal just now, so that the flavours can meld. Must remember to take the dopiaza out of the freezer too.

Right, well, I had better get on - time's racing

Thanks so much for popping in and listening to me witter on about food and cooking on a budget - I greatly appreciate it especially when y'all join in too :D

See y'all later.

Greying