What OS tip didn't work for you?

jellymid

I wasted a lot of time and ingredients on the 'Artisan bread in 5 minutes'. I bought the book,too, and I know I ought to try again, I really, really wanted it to work.

debtdesperado

I love this thread! My disappointments are:

1. stardrops... was expecting AMAZING results due to so many people raving about it, and yeah, it cleans ok enough... but I didn't think it was any better than washing up liquid, and certainly not as good as things like Flash for floors or real hardcore cleaning jobs.

2. vinegar. Ended up spending so much on this (I live in a very hard water area) to get results that it is actually cheaper (and quicker) to just buy the turbo strong descalers. Also have convinced myself that vinegar turns things yellow, but I could be imagining this...

3. whoopsies... this just results in me eating microwave dinners and instant meals like pizza as they seem to be the only things that are reduced (never fruit and veg... I suspect this stays on the shelf until it goes mouldy and then is just chucked?). Plus I think unless you are very experienced, you can't meal plan with whoopsies, and one or two whoopsie bargains then seems to throw the whole thing out, resulting in me chucking out food at the end of the week.

4. natural cleaning solutions - don't seem to be strong enough to remove proper stains (either that or I am just too used to whites so clean they flouresce:rotfl:!!). So I have the ecoballs, and alternate them with a lovely bit of ariel or whatever every so often to get a 'proper' clean . I figure it eeks out the powder which is still OS in a way...

5. freezer meals... urghhh.... watery, separated double cooked mush. Disgusting! (I am probably doing something wrong, but if anyone has any tips to avoid this, please let me know!:o)

JulieGeorgiana

valk_scot wrote: »

Thing is you can end up using so many other ingredients to stretch the chicken that you would probably be cheaper buying another chicken tbh. Chicken is not a particularly expensive meat as long as you're not going for top grade organic free range. A bog standard medium chicken is only about £3-£4, a single pepper is 50p-60p. It's obviously healthy to use a good amount of vegetables and pulses in your cooking but it's not necessarily cheaper every time. And if you're not enjoying what you're cooking, why bother? I'd rather have beans on toast or with a baked potato than chickenless chicken soup!

Frozen peppers are £1 for 750g @ Farmfoods!

But for us this works, it saves us £20 - £30 a month on meat (not just chicken, but stretching meat and other MSE tricks) and we buy £4 a month more veg! we choose to do this because we want to eat less meat. We eat vegetarian meals 2 nights a week and fish once a week.

I also only buy my meat from a farm shop. I like it not to shrink and taste like what it's supposed to be. I could never do this before with a supermarket chicken.

It's out diet choice, and we want more veg and less meat. We get 2 - 5 a day just in our evening meals every day.

I shared not because I expect people to want to do it, or to be critisised for my choice. I shared to help others who might want to stretch a chicken a little further, and by no means expect it to work for everyone.

I may not like Chickenless soup that much... which is actually a broth... It's an old fasioned recipe! But my son LOVES it, so I indulge! Just like he eats stew when he doesn't like that much.

I used to use the stock and make a stew with a chicken leg and thigh and got 7 meals, this was my son's request for the broth.

I just thought by sharing it would help others see how your can make a chicken go further. I mean chicken pizza isn't a hardship! Neither are any of the other menu options really!

Apart from the Nutty Curry the extra ingredients for all the meals are staples found in the house, so this menu saves us a fortune! But again this isn't why we do it, it's a diet choice to cut the amount of meat.

lostinrates

Stardrops...I think they clean really well ...its just the smell. Its not THAT dissimilar to the smell of death that people with cats that hunt might be familiar with...that smell while a mouse under floorboards decomposes..... I use Stardrops still...an MSE truth is that the bottle goes a long way....

Laundry gloop. I so wanted this to work. I buy own brand non-bio washing powder but get through a bit of it. Laundry gloop didn't work that well so its been back to the old non-bio.

lurkey*is*here

ahhhh good old laundry gloop the only reason I stopped using it was because my washing didnt smell nice when I was ironing it:embarasse
I showed a friend how to make it and she uses it for everything bar her laundry:rotfl:

Eenymeeny

Can I just say that I don't think thread is intended as criticism of anyone, just our own views and experiences? Please don't take offence as OS is such a lovely friendly forum. I understand the 'chicken-less' soup. When I was young I would only eat the 'juice' of home-made vegetable soup. 'No lump soup' as I called it. Mother probably thought that it was better than me not eating veg at all...:) (this was before liquidisers and anyway she wouldn't have pandered to me alone, majority ruled in our house!)

Justamum

lurkey*is*here wrote: »

ahhhh good old laundry gloop the only reason I stopped using it was because my washing didnt smell nice when I was ironing it:embarasse
I showed a friend how to make it and she uses it for everything bar her laundry:rotfl:

I tried the laundry gloop and have to say I wasn't all that impressed either. It took ages to use it all up though as I'd made a huge bucketful :rotfl:

lurkey*is*here

Justamum wrote: »

I tried the laundry gloop and have to say I wasn't all that impressed either. It took ages to use it all up though as I'd made a huge bucketful :rotfl:

I gave all 10 litres of mine away
I used it for quite a few months but when we stayed at my mums the smell of Bold made me not use it anymore when I came back:rotfl:

[Deleted User]

I put my lamb shanks into my SC yesterday at around 9.00 on low along with an assortment of veggies carrots,green beans ,onions,garlic, celery,about a pint and a half of stock and a good dollop of red wine and left it all day until we had dinner last night at about 6.30 and it was delicious.There is enough left over for a light supper for me tonight as my friend treated me to lunch out today.I just threw all the left over veg back into the slow cooker and left to get cold then transferred all of it to a saucepan and covered it and put into the fridge for tonights meal for me.I have two Sc's and wouldn't be without mine .