I'm back! Trying to spend less on food!

mumtoomany

Thanks, @joedenise. Will do that on Tuesday, hugs, mumtoomany.xx

purpleivy

mumtoomany said:

Went to get the tyres fitted, they only had two of the three we'd ordered and paid for! Other two will be fitted Friday as we are in town again for the dentist.

Aldi, i spent £5.32. Onions,which have gone back down to 55p, they were 60p Christmas week. I'll buy a sack from the greengrocers when they reopen. Salad cream, I've been waiting for this to be back in for weeks. Toilet roll and kitchen roll, the later seems to have shot up in price too. Then went to Iceland for the milk, £2.97 for two bottles, after over sixty's discount. Then called into Morrisons. OH likes lemon chicken. It's his birthday this week, so i promised him i'd make it for us this week. They had sold out! But they had a lot of reductions. I got 2 packs of ice creams for 75p each; 9 packs of 6 breakfast pattys for 50p per pack, (these will either be eaten as burgers, or meat balls, or sausage plait, or made into scotch eggs); 9 packs of sausages 8 at £2.06, 1 at £1.50; and ten packs of cake decorations 13-25p. OH also put in a bloomer loaf and a pint of milk to drink, Greggs had no coffee. Then onto Tesco to get the lemon sauce, they had it, also three bags reduced carrots, a reduced lettuce and 2 gammon joints at half price.

I was trying to empty the freezer in the barn. All that lot above has filled it back up! Some good bargains though.

Tonight we are having lemon chicken and rice. Lunch was sandwiches made with bloomer loaf. I've got some leftover lasagne out for tomorrow night.

Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xxx

Just came back to Oldstyle forum after a time away. I see onions were 'down to 55p' in January. Our Aldi had them 90p/kg this week!

London_1

Good Morning chums ,well the start of a new month and hopefully maybe get a bit more sun than last month . DGS Ben came yesterday and removed the cats muck from his plot at the bottom of the garden.I swear since he dug it over all  the cats in the neighbourhood think its a super loo just for them.
My regular gardener said to cover the compost with ordinary earth and keep it damp it may put them off until the spuds start to grow through. Its weird, as a bit further up the garden where the old Butler sink is he has planted 16 onion sets and not one cat has bothered .But he spread a bit of sieved earth over it to be on the safe side and watered them as well. Does anyone know if orange peel actually puts cats off at all ?

I'm still eating from my stores at the moment, so no shopping for me at the moment. DGS Ben brought me in a box of diced watermelon yesterday bless him.That's in the fridge for a snack later today.

I've started my second unicorn blanket.I made a pink one for my eldest grandsons first baby due in NYC on 4th July. Eldest DD will take it over with her and my son-in-law when they go in August to see their first little granddaughter.

My other two great-granddaughters Erin and Ida saw me making it, and said could I make one each for them.So two are on order. They are quite a big job as its 340 rows of 175 stitches per row and each row is different from the previous one so I can only usually manage around 10 rows a day before my arm starts to ache along with my eyes .
I worked it out its around 67K stitches per blanket and it usually takes around a couple of months to make.So their two blankets will be part of their Christmas presents I think .

For May Day the weather isn't brilliant , not too cold, but very grey and overcast.

Breakfast was some porridge, Lunch will be a big ham salad as I have some ham I dug out of the freezer from when I cooked a gammon a few weeks ago I will probably have a light meal at tea time and I have some chipolata sausages I dug from the freezer so will probably have a couple ,with some scrambled egg.

Cooking wise very little to do, but I will be dicing up the last of the red onions in my veg box to freeze and I'll put the salad spuds in water in the fridge for cooking at some point this week. 

Definitely staying as far from the shops as I can, as eating down what I have in stock seems eminently more sensible than buying in more. I still have some of the IoW tomatoes left in the fridge so several salads will be on the menu this week, good job I like them.

 I found a jar of red peppers in the cupboard yesterday so they will be utilised this week as well. So good luck chums with May's savings I go away on holiday at the end of next month for two weeks so using up what I have as much as I can.

Anything left in the fridge when I go I normally give to my neighbour to use up.She's a lovely lass with two little girls and sometimes struggles as she is on her own.

Right onwards and upwards chums, the  kettles calling me for a cuppa

JackieO xx

Katiehound

Orange peel and cats?

yes, it does work (after a fashion) but very time consuming!

A friend had a beautifully planted garden with perfect sieved soil = giant cat litter tray.
She discovered if you dried any citrus peel- radiator/ oven- then blitzed it to a powder it kept the felines at bay for about 3 days. Then you had to sprinkle more......

The one thing that really worked was the hose connected to a circuit. If the cats broke the light circuit they would get a soaking!

dp1

Jackie O 
I used to use orange peel but found after a while it would stop keeping them off. I've just planted potatoes at nursery and I've put several half full water bottles lying on the soil and one of those big colourful windmills you can get at Poundland...so far it seems to be doing the trick x

purpleivy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79913506#Comment_79913506

Quite often decent tasting as it's the ends of all the bacon, not just the rubbish! Quite often nice and chunky, so makes good cubes to put in things. I went to the Spar at our petrol station the other day with this in mind, when I got there, there were some chicken thighs half price. I thought I wouldn't be greedy and just got two, but regretted that decision when I opened them up and realised they were boneless!

London_1

Yay the first tiny little shoot of DGS Bens onions set has poked up this morning.I have taken a photo and will send it to him.He will be so chuffed as he's never grown anything in his life before. 

JackieO xx 

Soontobeoap

I put some spring onion roots into water on a windowsimm at the weekend and they are sprouting already! Also planted 4 potatoes that had started to root in the fridge. 

mumtoomany

Hello all, lovely to see so many still chatting on here, while I'm busy. 

Why shopping on Tuesday. Got much of what I'll need for May. Including ten damaged tins. Five huge ones, around 1200gms. Two were pizza topping, but i also use these as pasta sauce. One baked beans. One plum and one chopped tomatoes. These are all 75p each. Five standard tins, pineapple in juices, pears in juice and three tins of red salmon. All 35p each. Got to love a bargain. The bags of chicken nuggets, 20p per kilo bag, that I bought a few weeks ago, turned out to be tiny, fish shaped, fish cakes. The problem with buying without labels. Taste ok though, for 20p. I also got two x one kilo bags of frozen chicken tinga. Looks like spicy pulled chicken. Lots of fruit and veg in boxes at the vegetable shop. 

The last few days, in between checking sheep and lambs, once been weeding and planting. Discovered why half of the carrots I sowed were a darker shade of green. They are not carrots, but dill. It's popping up all over the polytunnel! Now need to sort that.

Right of to eat, chicken and mushroom pie, then check sheep again. 

Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xxx

mumtoomany

Wow, I've been missing from here longer than I thought. Life gets in the way, this time of year. Lambs are now all born and thriving. Seeds mostly planted, seedling mostly planted out, half eaten by slugs!

We are now in the time of year here when more mouths need feeding. Had great niece, aged eight, to stay for the weekend a couple of weeks ago. Now have great niece and great nephew, aged three and two, staying for three weeks. Son and nephew coming next weekend. DD1's friends and their children coming on Saturday for a week. Sister 1 and her OH coming from Australia in July. Sister 2 coming in August. DD3 coming for a few weeks at some point. Going to be a bit chaotic! 

DD1 and her family are building a house next door. DD has said they will now start cooking all their meals, rather than me cook for us all, to get used to it ready for moving. She doesn't want it to come as a shock to them! From now on they will give me £25 per month, to cover toilet rolls, flour, sugar, etc. I will also still feed the DGC when they are both at work, around once a week or less. 

This means that the total for the year will fall from £2640 to £1860. My spends for the year to date are, £966.47. This leaves £893.53 for the rest of the year, for two of us, and visitors, and bits that DD1's family will still use/need.

Both freezers are stuffed to capacity. All the cupboards are full. The polytunnel is producing. Should be easy!!! I think. Watch this space! Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xxx