Is frugal the new normal?

[Deleted User]

Today I have frugally made both a crumble and an apple cake made with windfall apples, the crumble also has raspberries from the allotment in it. I went to the Co Op for some eggs for the cake and found a pack of wholemeal rolls reduced to 39p, a pack of crumpets reduced to 49p, some chillis reduced to 29p and 500g of minced steak reduced to £2,29p which is now in the freezer and will give us a couple of meals this week. Supper this evening will be some veal and potato pie which I made yesterday using YS veal mince and YS puff pastry both from the freezer and will be frugally served with home grown mashed potato and homegrown cabbage. Does that make me someone who manages her money well or a cheapskate who doesn't like parting with it?

thriftwizard

No, Fuddle, it's the one on the hill. And it must have been 14 years ago - older 4 kids were then 9-13 - and there's been a complete change of regime up there since, following a bad Ofsted report. But it was one of the factors that really shook my faith in our education system.

ETA: MrsLW in my book that makes you an excellent manager!

[Deleted User]

Mrs Lw we are definitely sisters under the skin.Today i threw a whole lot of past its best veg into my slow cooker with some chilli sauce and lazy garlic and curry powder and left it to cook,when I get home tonight it will be done and I'll have at least four meals of veggie curry to go into my freezer for wet and windy days when I want something warming for dinner with either rice or as a topping for a jacket potato.The veg was getting to the 'wrinkly' stage where its age will be cunningly disguised in the curry and far better than binning it

I have a bit of left over plain yoghurt which will be mixed up with some diced grapes for pudding tonight to use it up.For dinner I have yesterdays left over cooked veg and a YS chicken quarter from my freezer which cost me if I remember about 45p so tonights meal will not cost a great deal and I will have my OAP veggies made into a curry to go in portions into the freezer :):)
I love streetching stuff out if I can,not being mean just a sensible use of the resources at hand, plus I just hate wasting food :):)I would rather it went into me than a landfill

ivyleaf

JackieO - We used to have big brown bins for garden waste + food waste. We now have a "paid-for" garden waste collection scheme - or will have, when the new bins eventually arrive :cool: , and a separate food waste container. I find it concentrates the mind wonderfully! I'm challenging myself to see how little I can put in it each week

We're having braised steak tonight (YS of course), and in with it I put the last 2 shallots, the worst of the carrots from the fridge and some bendy celery. I haven't got it perfect yet, but I'm getting there.

[Deleted User]

I love making meals from 'leftovers' be that previously cooked meat that I can metamorphose into a sauce or the last half of a carrot laying wrinkled in the fridge draw. I'm often surprised at how acceptable the resulting meal turns out too! Wonder if it's both being Rainham Gals?

Islandmaid

Hi all,

I try and run my kitchen like a business.

If I buy £50 worth of 'stock' I want to make the most of it with minimal waste.

I do a stocktake each week and plan to use what fresh bits I have.

This week I had 500g of assorted mushrooms, some ratty spring onions, 2 long red peppers and some wrinkly tomatoes, a few onions, a large spud, some poorly carrots, half a swede and a parsnip.

The tomatoes and peppers and an onion went into a chilli that I made in Friday, DS had a portion with a jacket potato before he went to work, the rest of the chilli was Saturday nights meal with brown rice and Nachos.

The mushrooms and spring onions made mushroom soup for my work lunches.

The carrots, swede, parsnips and onion chucked in the slow cooker for a beef stew tonight.

I spend about £80 pm on meat at the beginning of the month, which is portioned up and frozen, mince, sausages, chicken thighs, stewing steak, a whole chicken and a pork shoulder which was cut in 2 - I also have some sliced beef and a few steaks left in the freezer from a YS bargain a couple of months ago.

Any leftover money from my food shopping budget, I sweep into a mad money savings pot, which goes towards life's little extravagance's - last month bought us a swish new PVR so we can record TV, and replaced Sky which we ditched at the beginning of the year.

Frugal for me is just managing what you've got, some of the richest people I have met though my life spend what they have very carefully - one acquaintance told me 'I'm not tight, I,m careful - I worked hard for each penny, and I expect it to work hard for me'.

I,ve been pottless, I,ve been comfortable - I,ve always saved as much as I could and when the pot looks good, I 'invest' that money either in the mortgage, the kids or the home

To sum up - doesn't,t matter how much or little you have - OS is the way to go.

HOWMUCH

I've made Damson jam, I got 10 jars for a cost of 78p which was for 2kg of sugar. I got a kilo of rope grown mussels from MrT's yesterday afternoon YS down to £1.01 so boiled them and into a jar they went for today's lunch with two slices of brown bread and butter, I will have the other half of the jar tomorrow for lunch. I love them but only buy when I get them YS.
MrsLW to us you're a good manager of what you have like most of us on this thread. But to a lot of people we are cheap skates I've learned to live with it. I work with a lady who would to be retiring on Friday with me, she's 61 and I'm 60 but she's never learned the art of being a cheap skate so will be working until she's 66. So who's managed their money the frugal way. I've no debts unlike her and will finish work nowing I can manage until I get my state pension in just under 6 years. I've had what I wanted when I've wanted just waited to get a good deal on the items.

HOWMUCH

Forgot to say I've been and collected a Multi Cooker this evening which I bought for a fiver it's brand new and still in the box. It was off the local Facebook selling page. New it costs £45.99 I've checked online.

Lynplatinum

Evening All

Anyone worked out the answer yet
I 'll tell you all tomorrow

thriftwizard sorry - what does PTB mean please? Also what a dreadful and short sighted thing your children's school did!! not all teachers have much 'real world' experience, sadly, and they get taken in by unscrupulous business folk all the time - like the ones that publish children's poetry but the books coast a fortune and the company knows that doting parents and grannies et al will buy them!! Like the 'tutoring' companies - who get schools to allow them to present to parents or have leaflets in the school whos 'tutors' take 30 of them at a time, working from very old fashioned work books, whereby only one tutor in the building is CRBed properly (claims to supervise - the others) its legal!!! I have got several schools to stop this one once I pointed this out to them!!! Madness!! and definitely not 'tuition adapted to your child's individual needs' (Quote from one of their brochures!!):mad:

Anyway back to OS - rant over! Apologies folks!
Mrs LW - it means that you are being eco friendly; wise with your money; and able to save for those things that matter to you :cool:

GQ and Jackie O - I also hate waste from an eco warrior point of view!! Trouble is a bit too much of it has gone down me and I could do with minimising about 3 stone of it!!! :rotfl: :A

Doing my own decorating and cooking from scratch so: - Frugalin on folks!!

moneyistooshorttomention

Yep...reporting in that homegrown food is starting to make a difference already to my food bill. In the last week I've had homegrown salad veg./green veggies/tomatoes/edible flowers. Have also used some nuts I've been given and gratefully accepted some fruit from neighbours (some now stewed and I'll be drying some of the rest in my dehydrator).

Down side was having to resign from some voluntary work I was doing that also helped my food bill (it had been made uncomfortable by the fact I don't speak a 2nd language:cool:). However, voluntary work has the advantage of being able to resign if things aren't "right" - and I did:). However, I've got something else mentally lined-up to fill the bill - where I don't think that sort of question should arise and I can make some food savings through that instead.

One way and another - I should eventually be able to make quite substantial savings in my food bill.

My free buspass is getting well-used too. It gives me the option of finding more suitable "medical" personnel for myself than those available locally (if somewhat of a lengthy bus ride to get the sort I'm used to) and I'm using it for exploring my new area. Today's project has a moneysaving angle - I'm going to walk the approx. 2 mile route to find my way through from a nearby village (that only has buses about every 3 hours:eek:) to a different village nearby that at least has buses approximately hourly. That will give me a fallback position if I get stuck in the first village - rather than calling my tame local taxi firm to come and "rescue me". Brains now racking as to where its possible to shelter from weather whilst waiting for a bus there - in view of fact that only facility I've found there so far is a pub (and, whilst it fills me in on the local grapevine - it costs a drink whilst I'm there and that's not moneysaving:rotfl:).