The Simple Bare Necessities feat. Gratitude & Recipes

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening :hello:

Toothpaste has gone up in price And it may be my imagination, or it may just be the things I was purchasing today, but has anyone else started to notice that W1lk1n$ons has started to get quite dear - particularly on some branded items? Saved £1 buying toothbrushes from h0me bargins, compared to what W's wanted for them...... Mind, HB beat B0dycAr3 on the price of shampoo (like for like) so it isn't just W's I suppose, and yet B0dycAr3 are much cheaper than HB for the soap that we use, so swings and roundabouts, swings and roundabouts........

Well, EH that particular brand of coconut milk would definitely fit your criteria for admission to EH Manor and no mistake. Thick crust of cream, that had to be stabbed through to get to the clear liquid. 50p definitely well spent And there was leftover to be frozen for future curries :j

Tea this evening was Tanzanian black-eye pea soup with coconut, a delicious recipe that is sorta soup/stew. I like making up the spice mix too. I always make extra and pop it in a jar to use in other dishes that require a bit of 'pep'.

I served it with garlic bread, because I had some languishing in the freezer and....... do I need more reason? Garlic bread!!!!!



Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

frugal tips

purposeful shopping trips - (despite being weighed down like a pack pony :rotfl:)

3 (count 'em!!) daytime baby kips - got tons done, and BG was safe :j

Ta for popping in, reading, joining in and for advising on frugal freezer bag purchases. Appreciated.

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

I am sat here, trying to corral a bouncy, inquisitive BG with one arm, muttering; blue box, raspberry, blue box, raspberry and typing with my free hand.

Nice. :rotfl:

How so very unlike the life of our own royal family......... :rotfl:

I'm hoping to get out, round and about today to see how far it is - plus to purchase some FREEZER BAGS! They are today, on my list, so fingers crossed The weather doesn't look particularly conducive to perambulation, but we'll see once it gets lighter.

I was thinking last night that my round up of January spends didn't include a food bank donation. This is quite simply because I didn't make one We did donate quite alot of stuff (good stuff, some of it new) to charity, but they were different (children's) charities. I had been donating half a dozen milk cartons to the food bank each week. I don't think this is sustainable going forward However, I do think that my budget should allow for some flexibility and to allow some form of donation to the FB, as I believe it important. I believe myself to be quite a savvy shopper, quite frugal, so I should be able to carve donations out of what I have available to me. I shall be trying much harder to make this happen in February, in some shape, form and quantity or other, and against the tide of rising milk prices.

Tea this evening will be buddha bowl. I'm taking inspiration from something that I saw in instagram, incorporating beetroot (S6 - last week) and 'feta' (mine's mrAL greek style salad cheese), for the grain, I will use some brown rice or quinoa - both of which are in the store cupboard. I don't have access to sunflower sprouts (I bet greenbee will implore me to start sprouting ), nor sherry wine vinegar that was in the original recipe, so I shall probably be improvising there - with brussel sprouts and malt vinegar........:rotfl::rotfl: [just joshing!!! Have you seen how expensive sprouts are!!!!]

Right, must go, as BG is now requiring 2 hands and octopus arms to corral them on my knee Off to play

Greying X

greenbee

Sunflower sprouts aren't particularly nice... but if you want to start sprouting I can send you some spares of more edible ones I also have sherry vinegar if you want to nip down and decant some.

EssexHebridean

:rotfl::rotfl: at the price of sprouts!

Just looked at Lil's PotW & Al's S6 offers - the Al's offers are screaming veggie stir-fry to me, which is handy as that's on our meal plan for next week. Hopefully in between bed deliveries etc tomorrow I'll be able to walk down there.

I've heard that HM The Queen is a big fan of the food bags in the blue box with the raspberries on it... :cool::D

Greying_Pilgrim

Just as hex said they were, freezer bags, in a blue box, with raspberries on the front . Sitting on the shelf in h0m3 bargins, just waiting for me to purchase them 79p well spent. And even if you put the whole cost of the bags against the 2 blocks of cheese I grated, that is still 1.5kg of cheese for £4.80. As it was, I only used 10 bags of the 45, so I prefer to say 1.5kg for £4.18 The cheese is now grated, bagged and popped in the freezer

EssexHebridean wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl: at the price of sprouts!

You may laugh - I actually did buy some Brussels sprouts - and they weren't no ordinary sprouts, oh no siree, they were Scottish sprouts and they were YS'd down to 65p, for 500g :eek: in mrW. 'Proper' price would have been £1.10 - for a pound o' sprouts! I only got them because they were the cheapest 'green' available in any of the shops that I had access to today.

EssexHebridean wrote: »

I've heard that HM The Queen is a big fan of the food bags in the blue box with the raspberries on it... :cool::D

Yes, and apparently she has a tuppawear collection, the envy of the western world i think she would approve of frugal cheese snaffling

greenbee - that's good to know about the sunflower sprouts. I genuinely have not got room in my current kitchen for sprouting jars When we win the cash lottery, I'm gonnahave such a fab time designing my kitchen - s0d the rest of the house And yes, it will have a sofa in it, and a nice big table anda lovely view over the garden

Right, I best set too with tea.

Ta for popping in and being kind & helpful. Appreciated

Greying X

EssexHebridean

I could fit a sofa into my kitchen. Nothing else mind, and no chance of accessing it to sit on, but it would probably go, so long as it was only a small one... :rotfl::D

gallygirl

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

The cheese is now grated, bagged and popped in the freezer

Hope you remembered a time-release thingy that only dispenses one bag at a time .

Cheery_Daff

Our kitchen is big enough for a sofa but our problem is it has doors in 3 corners so adding something like a sofa means you have to walk round it to get anywhere, making a long and circuitous route :rotfl:

(I say 'doors' but actually mean doorWAYS - we currently have NO internal doors in our house, not even on the bathroom! :eek: )

Excellent cheese-bagging :j :k

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening :hello:

EH -we're in the same boat. If we didn't take the sink and cooker out, any sofa - no bigger than a wee 2 seater - would need to be perched on top of them, and you wouldn't be able to close/open the kitchen door

gallygirl - duly transferred from the fridge, where it has been stingily dispensing bits of cheese one shaving at a time to *certain* sandwich makers...... :rotfl: But very much needed, as that Cornish Cove is rather *nom*, don't think I've had it before - not that I can recall, anyway.

Cheery - that is TMI about your bathroom! I ain't visiting you Even though I'm still planning on visiting your neck of t'woods one day to bag some smoked tofu - it's rarer than hen's teeth in these here parts.....

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed making tea. Got lost in it all, safe in the knowledge that DH, having come home early, was [STRIKE]playing with[/STRIKE] in charge of BG (:rotfl:)

I boiled up some beluga lentils (only about 50g I think), boiled up some brown rice and combined them. I also added in some crushed hemp, sesame, chia, sunflower and pumpkin seeds and added them in, reserving a little to 'sprinkle'. I chopped up a pack of beetroot (MrAL S6 - last week), added in some caraway seed and balsamic, stirred and let it sit. I shredded up about half the bag of sprouts, steamed them quickly in the residual water, added in lemon zest and juice and let them steam a while longer. For the sauce, I blitzed up an avocado half (which was one of the frozen ones that I microwaved to de-frost) same garlic powder, lime zest and juice, salt, and a bit of water. It was heavily influenced by an 'Oh she glows' recipe, but I can't find it on the net - maybe it was just in the book? I put it all together, using the reserved seeds as a sprinkle along with some chopped almonds. I crumbled up a little bit of feta - only one third of a pack between the 2 of us was plenty. I then drizzled pomegranate molasses over the top. Picture;



It was really nice and *different*. Not really the weather for salads as such, but a refreshing change. I can't really call it a buddha bowl, I suppose salad bowl is more accurate, as I did buy the feta and the sprouts purposely for this meal. But there is feta left (probably get stuck on the pizza tomorrow night) and sprouts too much to DH's delight _pale_ Although he does prefer them cooked how I do it, rather than boiled for a fortnight........ :rotfl: All the other ingredients were in the house though, and I purposely chose to use seeds that have been languishing in the cupboard for a little too long. Overlooked whilst I was pregnant I think.

The original idea came from a dish mentioned on the instagram account of Jody Vassallo - new pal of JaymeeO, former cook at River Cottage Oz and seemingly all round nice gal If you are into yoga, love pictures of australia - particularly Byron Bay, SE Asia, and seemingly much of the globe..... and enjoy good food - while away some time on this IG account. Although I think that there are less pictures than when I went through it in January, as I couldn't find the link I was looking for this morning.

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

a little bit of down time to do something that I love

helpful MSE'rs who join in to solve my cheesey freezy dilemmas and pull my leg in equal measure...........

that we got out and about, and came back safe, warm, dry and not as 'windswept and interesting' as feared.......... :rotfl:

Ta for popping in, telling me about your domestic arrangements, making me laugh and helping me out. Appreciated. More than you know

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

i hope you are all well and the weather did no damage to you & yours. We've awoken to a lovely morning thus far.

I will have to double check the freezer, but I think I will need a tin of tomatoes, as I think I am out of pizza topping tomato sauce. The pizza will most likely be double cheese , as mentioned in my last post, with wilja wedges.

I am also going to use the rest of the sprouts in a curry :j on Saturday night. I have got a nice recipe from Green Kitchen Stories, but I noticed it has aubergine in it, and if the media are to be believed (?) they are now commanding the price of gold nuggets........... (I jest, but honestly, no wonder folk 'panic'), so I will either substitute, or I will have a gander at the plethora of other recipes that come up when you goggle 'sprout curry'. Perhaps try something new

I owe DH some money for getting some supplies last night, but that is from a different budget. Mustn't forget though.

Right, time to vamoose I think. Baby Greying has found my camera, and whilst it is worth nothing financially, it does still work (ish) and they are finding out what noise it makes by trying to bash it on the desk....... :eek:

TTFN

Greying X