Put away your purse & become debt-averse

still_hopeful

Coming out of the shadows to comment on the butternut squash macaroni cheese. As a vegan this is something we have quite often. Foxgloves, I think I have cooked the Waitrose one and enjoyed it, although I can't remember if I had to veganise it a bit.

The recipe I return to lots is by Aine Carlin (she calls it macaro-no-cheese!), where you roast the squash then blitz it with a tin of coconut milk, some mustard, some balsamic vinegar and a couple of other bits. It makes a lovely rich, velvety sauce just right for a cold winter evening.

I think I may have talked myself into making that this weekend!

maddiemay

Another one emerging from the shadows, I am re-reading Simply Nigella and see that she has a version of this too, using feta and cheddar with fresh Sage - my Sage plant has succumbed to all the wet, when my local garden centre can do coffee and cake again I will try and locate a new plant.

still_hopeful

Actually I think it was a different Waitrose one I'm remembering, it had squash and macaroni and used both a white sauce and a tomato sauce.

It was in their 'quick meals' recipe bit where you were supposed to buy their jars of sauces, but of course I made my own and it wasn't at all onerous!

foxgloves

Maddiemay - Nice to hear from you. Yes, sage can be grumpy in wet weather. Mine has died down for the winter now, but I did manage to cut a decent bunch for hanging & drying, so am using that until next year when it should reappear. I had to buy a new plant this year as my existing ones looked so feeble.
F

foxgloves

Still_hopeful - Oh yes, I know the section you mean, with all the recipes requiring bought jars of this, that & the other, in some cases, I'm sure doubling the cost in the process. I know that the company obviously want to sell their products - it's a free paper after all - & the idea is that using some instant stuff will make the recipe quicker for people who are time-poor. I do often think that this is peddled a bit strongly by all sorts of food suppliers because it IS possible to cook quite a lot of meals from scratch quickly. It's a little bit like that other myth that really does wind me up, that healthy foods are always expensive. Some of the healthiest stuff is really inexpensive - it might not be ingredients that a lot of people want to eat & it probably doesn't make a lot of profit for businesses, but there are plenty of healthy & affordable foods available.
F

foxgloves

Hello Snowy Friends.......or perhaps you are not snowy because you are in a different part of the country which has not seen any festive white stuff today? We were expecting a cold wet day. The weather forecast has predicted rain all day, with 'wintery content' at times, but snow started during breakfast & kept falling well into the afternoon. It looked too wet to lay, but by morning coffee, the garden was white. It's mostly melted, but the car still has a snowy top.
Anyway, no worries, as I had no need to venture forth, except to put out some more mealworms & sunflower kernels for my feathery visitors. I spent the first half of the morning measuring the blackberry & apple extract which had been dripping through the jellybag all night, & making the jelly. It filled 8 jars & the resident cranberry sauce refusenik tested it & pronounced that it will be just right with turkey.......but also (he said hopefully) on freshly baked, just-out-of-the-oven buttered scones. 
Made a valiant start on my weekly Friday house cleaning, as in I changed the bed linen & towels, etc, cleaned the bathroom, had a good tidy, but then I discovered that the vacuum isn't sucking properly, so that brought my efforts to a standstill. We reckon it probably needs dismantling & cleaning out, as it has been hammered for months with all the dust & gunk from all the workmen. So I decided to swap the rest of my cleaning for getting a few Christmas decorations out......hey, what a fab swap that was! I've hung my lovely metal pagan star (it has greenery & berries rambling across it) on the chimney breast, with the festive bunting I made a few years ago draped across the top & out across the book cases on either side. I've also put a nice selection of things - tea light holders, etc, out on the mantlepiece beam & twined a set of fairy lights around them & hung a lovely handstitched set of decorations I received last year in a Secret Santa on the kitchen dresser where I have fairy lights all year round. It does all look pretty & MUCH better than cleaning! 
I am going to research artificial trees tonight. I much prefer a real one, but our potted one is now too big to bring indoors & won't fit in the only space available, which is up on our front bow window sill. Our other potted one, which I grew from seed, is still really tiny, so not an option either. I thought to buy a cut one, but I would be very limited in terms of size. Too tall or too wide & it won't fit the space. So I am going to see if there are any artificial ones around that I like. Boooo to spending money, but having a Christmas tree is defo a deal breaker for me. I absolutely love getting all the decorations out - many of them made by my Mum over the years, as she was a fine needlewoman & crafter.
But I am only going to research trees - not allow myself to be tempted by any other sparkling lovelies!
Take care everyone,
F x

foxgloves

Hello Frugalistas,
A pleasant day. The last remnants of yesterday's snow had gone by first thing this morning. Went into town nice & early to get our fresh fruit & veg from the local market & posted our Christmas cards. Pottered around this morning, putting things away, annotating receipts so as to make my Monday morning budget update nice & straightforward. Mr F took the Dys*n to bits to find out why it had lost all its suction. Well, it soon wasn't a mystery. It had picked up 2 little twigs which had jammed in a curved bit of pipe from the 'foot' to the main tubing. They had formed a cross which has started to form a blockage with hoovering up my long hair. Then, the final straw.....Mr F shaved his head this week, vacuumed up all the hair & that had completely failed to get beyond the already blocked tube. The offending bird's nest was poked out with a cheap knitting needle which I've always found a bit too bendy for knitting. Perhaps it has now found its true vocation. Anyway, the upshot of this tale is that I was starting to worry about needing to buy a new vacuum - it has been sounding so awful - but it is now sorted out & I will be testing it soon with a blitz round the rooms I couldn't do yesterday.
Not a low spend day, however, as I made an executive decision to buy a new dehumidifyer, Our old one was truly ancient & held together with brown packing tape & string! It still worked, but nothing like its original efficacy. I bought it in about 1996, to try & sort out a damp area in my old house. It never did manage that because it was rising damp, but it has been really useful in our current house to keep condensation levels down. Since I got rid of it, I've been using a very small el cheapo one & although it does suck water out of the air, I feel that a small vole could achieve about as much with a straw & a tiny bucket. When I was talking to our builders about damp, he said that when they are called into people's homes to look at 'damp problems', it is almost always condensation, not 'damp' at all. In winter, when it is too cold/wet for laundry to dry outside, I always use our heated airer in the conservatory & recently, I've really noticed how bad it makes the condensation is in there. We have been working hard on improving our home, decorating, etc, & still lots more to do & I'm damned if I'm going to have black mould blobs re-appearing on the lobby ceiling, etc, after it's all been newly painted. So a new de-humidifyer has been duly ordered & I will charge it to my home improvements budget. Hopefully collecting it tomorrow. This will also be a good purchase for marital harmony, as I have been moaning a lot about condensation this week & each time I mention it, Mr F launches into an explanation of what causes it. By the third or fourth time, I really could have clumped him one around the earhole! He, in turn, was taken aback by my eventual reaction that I didn't give two sh*ts what causes it, I don't want it running down the windows & seeping into the walls every time I do the s*dding washing!!
Well, we are planning to watch a ghost story tonight, then 'Valhalla murders', then maybe a bit of comedy - we've been enjoying a re-watch of 'Early doors'. The candle arch is on in the window, the fairy lights are on over the fireplace, all I need to do now is light a candle & a few tealights. 
Hoover blockage & condensation - I know how to pull the riveting topics out of the bag, don't I?!
Be cosy,
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

I'm glad you solved the problem of the non-working hoover and the money you saved went on the dehumidifier.

It sounds very festive in your living room. I'm sitting with the berry lights glowing around the picture rail, the tree lights twinking and we have the Ntflx birchwood fire animation playing on the telly which is the next best thing to a real fire (I swear looking at it makes me feel warmer  🤣). Have a relaxing evening.

foxgloves

Yes, you are right there, HHoD, because a new vacuum always seems to cost more than we hope it will. 
Yes thanks, it was a relaxing evening. Candlelight is very restful, isn't it & a perfect backdrop for watching a ghost story. I also finished knitting a blanket square plus cast on & knitted another one.
F x

Tescodealqueen

Glad you tracked down the problem.We have the same brand and after our building work discovered that the plaster dust had really blocked the filters so if it is underperforming when you test it maybe a good bang of the filters might be in order. That dust gets everywhere