Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2016

savingpennies

HI everyone.
The garden and outside are finally tidied ready for the winter. Lot so pruning done and pots emptied. I found some apples still on one of our trees so that was apple crumble for two days. I also picked lots of little green tomatoes from the greenhouse before I uprooted all the tomato plants. Some are already ripening and for the rest I might hunt out a green tomato chutney recipe.
OH cleaned the flags at the back of the garage. We use this path a lot to access the garage where we have a chest freezer and a tumble drier and I was worried as they had become really green and slimy and a bit of a danger.
Soup yesterday was broccoli/cauliflower cheese made from Sunday's leftovers. It was delicious and sadly there is none left as everybody else thought so too!
I'm trying to use up stuff in the fridge at the moment and have plans to make a vegetable pasta bake tonight and maybe a vegetable lasagne as well.
Hope everyone is having good day and the weather is not too bad where you are.

pinkypig

Hi everyone. Well done on finishing your garden SP that's a great job done. I'm about a 1/4 of the way through so I must crack on but every weekend has been so wet and cold recently. I might just have to 'man up' and get out there regardless:o
Make do - lunch was soup from the freezer with a salad wrap using up the salad left over from last night. I put in a squirt of mayo and it was really tasty.
Minimise; not a lot really as I used some freezer food but then put some leftovers in plus a load of YS bargains so it's fuller than ever!
Mend; used some silver paint for metal out of the garage (is that minimising?) to paint a lovely freestanding metal wine rack that I got at a charity warehouse on Sat for £4. It's really good quality and a gorgeous shape but it had gone a bit rusty in places. It looks great now and ready to fill up with the recent Asda offer wine I got ready for Christmas
PP x

[Deleted User]

Good Morning all, with my woes about my central heating system going on this week its a case of extreme minimising of cash for the next couple of months.No unnecessary spends at all if I can help it. So battening down the hatches and tightening my belt a bit more :):) bills have to be paid, good job I have a bit of rainy day cash put away as it looks like wet weather ahead :)Still I will survive it as I always do some how and my food stocks are pretty good and I am really only going to use my freezer stuff if I can and my food spend will be very minimal to fresh fruit and veg and if I can utilise anything it will be streetched to its utmost :):)
I have a £226 bill to fork out this morning for a new pump followed in a couple of weeks by an even bigger bill for power flushing my central heating system Eye watering amounts (especially the second bill) but it must be done
It will be extreme minimising and making do all the way :0
Right time to get the kettle on to drown my sorros with a hot cup of tea

Cheers chums

JackieO xx

misstara

Thanks iamsalt I shall continue to try and plane them down, see how I get on.

JackieO :eek: to the bill.

Washing machine was fitted in the new flat this morning so I'm right pleased . Just walking back to current flat, it's a beautiful day. I have the day off work so plan to minimise the ironing pile and hopefully meet a friend for coffee later.

jojorose

Our house is on the market as of today. The third bedroom (serious junk and art studio) had to be decorated.

In the bargain bin at the store i found a single and a double matching duvet for £14 in total. Went home, stripped the curtain webbing off the existing curtains, dropped the old curtains inside the duvet covers, stitched the webbing back on and got the whole wall done. Looks really good and im feeling extremely pleased with myself.

Bought another set of curtains from a charity shop £6 and recovered the divan base too. That did take ages but again a major upgrade for very little outlay.

Lynplatinum

Evening all

I cannot believe it is a over a week since I have been on here!! Have been very busy on a positive way!

Minimise: a 3ft high pile of folders is completely shredded/put into the recycling/refiled (only a small bit!) :j

Make do: (Grumble alert!) The house I have moved into has a top end kitchen which the neighbours told me was designed and fitted by John Lewis! Since it was all so top end why oh why oh why would you have a Zanussi freezer which you have to manually defrost rather than one which defrosts itself!!! GRRR!! Anyhooo - as pretty as it looks this means that I am having to run my stocks down and 'eat up the freezer' So have been eating HM ready meals; HM soup (including when my friend came over yesterday); and sweetcorn by making sweetcorn fritters. Have also been trying to make do and cut down on electric consumption.

Mend: My finances a bit by taking advantage of an offer from CC1 of 0% until April 2017 to balance transfer from other CC2. this means that the cards will be down to zero by then - they have been loaded with my October stay at Travel Lodge and the last remains of moving costs. This neatly solves the problem!! Hehehe

Gave away to my friend one of my tiny oil filled radiators to my friend cos this house is smaller and I no longer need it! She has a conservatory which she wants to just keep the damp out of so putting this on a timer will allow her to have it on low during her economy 7 time.

Talking of which I am investigating taking out my economy 7 which is in this house - it does not provide heat when I need it. More of this when quotes etc have been done.

What else have I been up to?? Well trying to go walkies to try to loose weight everyday but yesterday took my dear friend out to thank her for all her help when I moved and her looking after me sooooo well when I broke my leg in in 2014. It cost £134 but it was very worth it - cocktails/expensive bottle of wine/award winning chef meal/desert wine/taxi home. Very extravagant but we have always said we would like to do this and she so deserves the treat (as we are both foodies!!) However diet for my waistline and for my purse starts again today!!

Iamsalt - thanks for the desert tips - he didnt come over as his car broke down but I will keep those excellent ideas in mind! Also v sorry to hear about OH scare!!:eek:

Jackie O will do second post in a mo with soda bread recipe in it so that folks can find it easily! nightmare re your boiler and heating :eek: Many sympathies me old chum - doesnt seem fair when you work so hard to be frugal!! Re your electric bills, if I may ask - was that per month for the period or for the period wholesale (which would be truly amazing) ? As an OAP can you not get something off standing charge for very low users of fuel??? Or do they not do that anymore - anyway it might be worth looking into???

Anyway mates sorry re the long post - am off to find Soda Bread recipe for you all, especially Jackie O
Frugaling onward!!

Lynplatinum

Hiya All
As promised:

This is loosely based on Hugh FW's recipe. So many thanks to him for his work and inspirational recipies!!

1 LB (500g) of plain flour (half white and half wholemeal)
2 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda
1 teaspoon of sea salt
12 tablespoons of plain low fat yogurt
4 tablespoons of milk
(optional large handful of fresh herbs such as oregano thyme chives - finely chopped)

Method

1) sieve all dry ingredients into a large bowl (add herbs if using)
2) make a well in the centre and add the dry ingredients and stir together slowly (your fingers are best for this!). it makes a very soft dough.
3) tip out onto a surface and knead for a minute. and form into a ball shape.
4) flour a baking sheet and place the ball of dough onto it. Make a cross in the top with a serrated knife.
5) bake at 200C GM6 for 40- 45 mins in the middle of the oven. (5 mins less if it is a fan oven)
6) it is done when the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. If you want a crunch crust cool on a wire rack. If you want a soft crust then wrap in a clean tea towel to cool.

NB It dries quicker than a conventional loaf but makes fab toast.
NB you can also flavour this with a diced desert apple, a small handful of fresh sage (finely chopped) and then grate cheese on the top!

Enjoy folks (goes well with BOF (bottom of Fridge) soup.

nursemaggie

Lyn We had Gas central heating before we moved into this flat. We now have storage heaters.

We discussed today my son and I that

1. it is too hot during the night and coldest when you need it most.

2. To fit in with the heating we should rise at 3am and go to bed at 4pm.
We agreed that is about as skewiff of RL as possible.

3. We are paying nearly twice as much for electricity as we used to for gas and elecricity at the house we lived in before. It also had a dining room and the bathroom had a radiator. The bathroom here has no heating. I often find I get so cold in the bathroom by the time I warm up again I need to go again.

4. We have a hot water tank about three times the size of an average one. We don't have a bath, we have an electric shower and the bathroom and kitchen floors are so small half a bucket of water is enough to clean the two.

We only use a bowl of water to wash up once a day and a little for handwashing. I still have to put a kettle full of water in the washing up because it does not get hot enough.

If we owned the flat we would put in gas central heating. It would be worth it even though we would also have to pay for gas piping in. We would have a combi boiler and try for a grant.

If you don't have piped gas locally oil will still probably be cheaper. I presume you have quite a small cottage so one suggestion I would look at is buying a reconditioned Aga or Rayburn and running three or 4 radiators off that. They will run on Gas, oil, coal and electricity. When we had an Aga we still had a warm 8 bedroom house after we had bathed all the residents and cooked the dinner. I ran a home for the elderly. I ran the heating 24/7.

The flat is cold by 3pm and we are freezing by 5pm

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the recipe Lynplatinum, looks good, does it freeze Ok as I would probably make some and freeze it as there is only me at home.

My late Dad used to make soda scones on my Grannies old cast iron 'girdle' on top of the stove or kitchen range when I was a little girl . It was a round flat scone that divided into four and he would make three rounds of them. I seem to remember he would use milk that was 'on the turn' to make the soda scone rounds

He always made them on Saturday night and they were delicious and the last of them were eaten toasted on Monday morning for breakfast. I guess the yogurt replaces the 'turned milk'

I will give it a try and see how I get on, I am not much of a bread eater now and haven't bought any for about 2 years because the taste is just not there anymore, and bread today is tasteless pap full of preservatives. but I do love soda bread (in reasonable quantities of course ) with some butter and strawberry jam ,what a nice treat for a change :):)

silvasava

Nursemaggie - have all the flats where you are got storage heaters? Is it worth you all getting together and notifying your landlord/authority about the high charges and inefficiency? Would they be willing to let you change your heating system if they qualify for a grant?
I cannot bear being cold so I worry about the expense for you - would it be possible to switch the whole system off and use other means?