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Put away your purse & become debt-averse
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And today's post, dear Readers, as promised, is all about my rubber chicken. I live the high life, don't I? Actually, I was going to tell you about the complaint we had from a neighbour yesterday afternoon, but it was about something so utterly bizarre that I've decided it would make me instantly identifiable were they ever to pop onto this thread....not likely, I'm sure, but you never know!
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, stretchy chicken - here goes....
OK, so mr f roasted that XL chicken on which, as I've already told you, I deigned to spaff that extra £1. So this is what it stretched to:
Roast chicken dinner (Sat)
Cold chicken salad with home made jacket wedges (Sun)
Chicken stir-fry with plenty of veg & a bought pouch of satay sauce plus noodles (tonight)
Some chicken dijonnaise sandwiches for tomorrow's packed lunch
170g meat diced & made up to 200g with some leftover leek & made into Hugh FW's chicken rissoles from his 'Leftovers' book (that big one with the bright yellow cover). Original recipe is for turkey or pork but I did it exactly the same apart from the leek. Breadcrumbs from the freezer as on the rare occasion any stale bread gets past mr f, I zizz them up for crumb-requiring recipes) Anyway, that amount made 4 rissoles, & it was nice being able to go down to our herb bed to gather the parsley & thyme. They've gone in the freezer & will make a meal with a poached egg & jacket wedges.
The rest of the meat went into a freezer box with the leftover gravy & rest of the leftover leeks & will be used joyously by mr f to construct one of his Epic Man Stews. He has a few more pots of saved leftovers in the freezer for this purpose & he will get at least 3 portions out of it - I shan't be eating it, as he puts swede & sprouts in, but it all goes to make him a big hearty pan full.
And all the remaining gribbly bits? They are currently simmering away in the slow cooker for stock, along with the carrot & onion peelings from tonight's veg, the parsley stalks I didn't put in the rissoles & the leaves from a small amount of bendy celery lurking at the bottom of the fridge.
That leaves only the chicken skin, which I don't put in the stock pot as it makes it too oily. I chopped that & put it out on the lawn for our magpies. Unfortunately, the ever-hungry cat who lives next-door- but-one found it first & hoovered it, but the thought was there.
And that m'dears, concludes today's Rubber Chicken Activity. I could have stretched it further had we not fancied chicken & chips yesterday, as that option uses quite a lot of meat. I could have used half of that for fajhitas or quesadillas, & the other half on a home made pizza or in a pasta bake or chilli. I'm pleased with what I've got out of a £5 spend though.
Hope you're all getting off to a good start to the week. If not, take a deep breath, sleep on it & start the week again tomorrow - that's what I try to do.
Really wish I could tell you what my neighbour was complaining about, as it's both weird & a bit funny & I'd love to know what you think,but I think I shall keep my counsel in case he has lots of time on his hands for surfing the net, including these forums. It can sometimes turn out to be a small world, can't it?
F xx2025's challenges: 1) To fill our 10 Savings Pots to their healthiest level ever
2) To read 100 books (36/100) 3) The Shrinking of Foxgloves 6.8kg/30kg
"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards" (Soren Kirkegaard 1813-55)0 -
Aw, thanks Positive Balance. It is a nice garden, but it's a lot of work, esp as we aim to grow a fair bit of food. Our house is mid-1930s, when gardens were often quite big. Ours is only 30 feet wide, but is 130 feet long, so lots of room for growing things. I now grow as frugally as possible, but I have been terrible in the Spendy Years with frittering loads of money on my very regular garden centre visits. I rely much more now on using my knowledge to sow things & split things, etc, rather than automatically buy stuff, & I find I can save loads by recycling all sorts of plastic trays for seed sowing, yoghurt pots for modules, spread tubs cut up for seed labels, etc. It also makes me feel slightly better about all the plastic, which is a huge problem, isn't it? Felt so sorry this morning reading the news story about the whale who has been found dead from a truly shocking amount of plastic ingestion.
You'll get round to sowing your seeds - March & April a good time, only a few things like chillies, etc, really need doing earlier.
F2025's challenges: 1) To fill our 10 Savings Pots to their healthiest level ever
2) To read 100 books (36/100) 3) The Shrinking of Foxgloves 6.8kg/30kg
"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards" (Soren Kirkegaard 1813-55)1 -
My problem with a chicken is that I'm rubbish at carving it so I always feel like I waste a lot of meat by not being able to get it off the carcass efficiently.
Your recipes
All sound so delicious.Outstanding mortgage: £23,181 (December 19)
MFW 2020 Challenge Member #10 0/£23180 -
Bet the cat would like a share of your rubber chickenNot giving up
Working hard to pay off my debt
Time to take back control
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6290156/crazy-cat-lady-chapter-5-trying-to-recover-from-the-pandemic/p1?new=10 -
wishingthemortgaheaway wrote: »My problem with a chicken is that I'm rubbish at carving it so I always feel like I waste a lot of meat by not being able to get it off the carcass efficiently.
Your recipes
All sound so delicious.
If you pull the chicken apart while it's still warm, the meat comes away from the bones easilyLBM 11/06/2010: DFD 30/04/2013Total repaid: £10,490.310 -
Yes, I agree. I do try (sometimes badly!) to carve slices from a chicken if it's a roast dinner, but for anything else, I just cut it all off anyhow & then slice or chunk it up depending on what I'm making. There's no need to be neat.2025's challenges: 1) To fill our 10 Savings Pots to their healthiest level ever
2) To read 100 books (36/100) 3) The Shrinking of Foxgloves 6.8kg/30kg
"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards" (Soren Kirkegaard 1813-55)0 -
Pleased to report that I've finished my 2019 Stash Knitting Challenge project #5 today. No new yarn purchased this year whatsoever. Projects so far:
#1 - Big pair of stripy hiking socks for mr f.
#2 - Pair of socks for B-in-law either birthday or Christmas.
#3 - Cotton dishcloth
#4 - 4 x assorted blanket squares (flower, textured, stripy)
#5 - Pair of socks for Mr f's B-in-law for Christmas.
All these are already completed.
#6 will be another few blanket squares while I think about what to knit for Project #7. I have some nice DK variegated yarn which would make a nice little shrug over a black dress but I already have a big jumper in that yarn, so I'm still thinking whether I want 2 garments in the same yarn & if not, whether I could use it to knit another present. Whatever I decide, one thing I'm defo enjoying is seeing my substantial yarn stash being knitted up into useful & in the case of gifts, money saving items.
I've got some bright pink & some lime green here...... time to cast on a flowery blanket square!
Cheers all,
F x2025's challenges: 1) To fill our 10 Savings Pots to their healthiest level ever
2) To read 100 books (36/100) 3) The Shrinking of Foxgloves 6.8kg/30kg
"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards" (Soren Kirkegaard 1813-55)0 -
Morning m'ducks,
Well, meal plans for next week are done & in my diary & I'm halfway through writing tomorrow's grocery shopping list, the last one from March's budget, as I work on payday to payday, rather than right to the calendar end of the month. As I've mentioned before, I have a good scout round the fridge & pantry first to avoid buying items out of habit, which we don't need. I could hardly get IN the fridge this morning.......I mentioned mr f's 'leftovers' stews in an earlier post - well, we said tonight would be a 'Jacket potato & use-it-up night' & he's clearly taken the 'use-it-up' bit on board big time.
When I first met the lovely mr f, he'd been a vegetarian for over 10 years. After 3 years together, he started staring longingly at my free range organic roast chickens, after 4 years, we were on a city-break & one night, when we were eating in a pub, he asked if he could try a bit of my chilli. He forked up the teensiest little morsel of meat imagineable, ate it & spent the next 5 mins wondering if he might now be ill because he hadn't eaten meat for so long. By the end of that month,he was eating fish again, & by the end of the year, he had fallen off the vegetarian wagon in truly spectacular style! I've always been an omnivore but have also eaten lots of meat-free meals by choice. As soon as he discovered the lure of the butchers, I found I was eating more meat then at any other time in my entire life! Once the LBM struck & I had applied the concept of budgeting to our food shopping, it became a proper challenge to get him past the butcher's shop window - he'd see all the steaks sitting there, big roasting joints, award-winning sausages, etc, & he'd just get the red mist! He's much better controlled now in terms of meat consumption, largely because we need to budget since my redundancy & our agreed change of attitude.
So......like many people, we often roast a joint or a chicken at the weekend, then use the leftovers to create further meals. I freeze all remaining bits & pieces of meat, stock made in the slow cooker, leftover gravy & any surplus veg, etc, & thus the first 'Epic Man Stew' was born. He'll add any fresh veg that's hanging around too, & cook up an enormous pan full which will do him that night plus extra portions for work lunches on lates shift days, etc, & it does seem to assuage this meat buying temptation.
He must have gone through our freezer like a big hairy locust last night as there are SIX containers in the fridge awaiting 'Epic Man Stew Construction Time' tonight. I shall also be adding the last of a bag of frozen peas I'm sick of seeing. He'll come in, put some sounds on & be as happy as a pig in the proverbial cooking all that lot up........while I've got my feet up in the other room already eating my own 'use-it-up' contribution.......some lovely king prawn & sweetcorn mayonnaise & salad on a jacket potato.
Mr f frequently says he probably wouldn't have fallen off the veggie wagon if he hadn't met me. I am also, by the way, responsible for all the caffiene he consumes, as he didn't touch coffee before we got together......& nor did he like almond croissants. Hmmmm, ROFL.........all his other bad habits were almost certainly in place before we met! Me? I'm just looking forward to a nice clear fridge later tonight!
Enjoy your Fridays all,
F xx2025's challenges: 1) To fill our 10 Savings Pots to their healthiest level ever
2) To read 100 books (36/100) 3) The Shrinking of Foxgloves 6.8kg/30kg
"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards" (Soren Kirkegaard 1813-55)0 -
A nice walk out at a fairly local attraction today. We did treat ourselves to coffees & cakeypoos in the cafe but as always, this was funded using our Personal Spends, so zero hit to the final days of my March budget. We took a picnic with us to avoid any temptation to revisit the cafe. Did I survive the gift shop unscathed? I didn't, but I bought just two items from the sale shelf.... a box of 20 lovely cards, blank inside which will do for birthdays, letters, thank-yous, etc, for just £3, & a little gift for the presents box which was half price.
I do have a little dilemma with my 2019 Yarn Stash Busting Challenge though. No, I haven't snuck off to the wool shop, but I have pledged at the beginning of the year that I wouldn't buy ANY new yarn this year, but would instead knit as many useful items as possible from my ample stash. So far, so good. I've even got two Christmas gifts knitted & into the presents box, & have a third one, for my best friend, planned.
I've found a pattern for a lovely throw, which I want to knit for my sister, for her birthday, but I have nothing suitable in my stash, so I'd have to buy the yarn to make it. I can't decide whether this breaks the terms of my pledge because I did say I'd buy no new yarn at all this year, OR if it doesn't count because I am technically buying a present for somebody, it's just that I will be knitting it up into a Thing Of Loveliness instead of gifting it in its raw state. It seems to me that I'd really only be dodging my challenge if I bought the yarn, knitted it up & kept the item myself, which would necessitate buying another present for my sis. Or, if I was in the yarn shop buying it but other yarny purchases for myself just sort of happened.
Hmmm. Will try to decide before I actually do find myself anywhere near a yarn shop (next weekend, probably). I do think this throw would make a lovely present though.
Oh well, that's today's ramblings. Enjoy your weekends, all.
F x2025's challenges: 1) To fill our 10 Savings Pots to their healthiest level ever
2) To read 100 books (36/100) 3) The Shrinking of Foxgloves 6.8kg/30kg
"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards" (Soren Kirkegaard 1813-55)0 -
I'd say if you are buying the yarn to knit a gift then that is OK and shouldn't be part of your "no buying new yarn" pledge.
Denise1
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