Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - I think it can be easy to overthink these things. I'm sure Mr Chef of Cheffy-Cheffy Land might disagree with me & simmer his stock for 48 hours over a candle before straining it through the tights of an elf, but let's be honest, it's a simple home-made broth made from simmering bones, a bit of veg & a few other botanicals. I find 8 hours is fine. it isn't going to be rubbish after 6 hours & it won't be boiled to b*ggery after 10 hours, it's just finding a practical method that works for you. 
F x

foxgloves

Well, I managed to get most of the stuff on my virtual list done. I do still intend to cast on that 2nd sock for Mr F's present before he gets home.- I have got rather side-tracked by surveys & a luscious yarn website this afternoon. Did I succumb to the yarn? That would be a 'yes', but I have plenty of Personal Spends left as didn't spend anything like as much as I thought I might while we were away last week. I also ordered an item for the presents stash so that will make better use of the delivery charge.
I did manage to get a double batch of gigantes plaki into the crock-pot (just!) so that will be some more meals stashed in the freezer later when I divide it up. I have marched up & down the garden to up my steps to my minimum dealbreaker amount & picked some blackberries & basil while I was there. Also spotted a few decent courgettes so will pick those tomorrow when I want to do roast veg couscous. I also found a surprise £1 coin in the my denim jacket pocket. 
Decent day on the whole. Am looking forward to GBBO tonight, but will not be doing my usual & baking a treat to enjoy while watching it, as I think I already mentioned, we are both cutting down on such things for the next few weeks. I might succumb for the finale.
Right, away to administer afternoon cat treats - 5 each - which Soot naturally thinks is very miserly.
Cheers,
F x

Makingabobor2

foxgloves said:

@Makingabobor2 - I think it can be easy to overthink these things. I'm sure Mr Chef of Cheffy-Cheffy Land might disagree with me & simmer his stock for 48 hours over a candle before straining it through the tights of an elf, but let's be honest, it's a simple home-made broth made from simmering bones, a bit of veg & a few other botanicals. I find 8 hours is fine. it isn't going to be rubbish after 6 hours & it won't be boiled to b*ggery after 10 hours, it's just finding a practical method that works for you. 
F x

Love the thought of straining it through the tights of an elf..  lol

Baileys_Babe

When we make stock in the slow cooker on low we usually put it on overnight and it isn't unusual for it to be on for 14+ hours, but only because those are the timings that work for us.

foxgloves

Evening Money Savers,
Well, the rain is beating on the windows & I'm glad I got my session of marching up & down the garden to get my steps up done before the black clouds rolled in from the other side of the river
This morning has been Tomatogeddon. Honestly, I was so covered in seeds & assorted tomatoey debris, I had to change my pinny....& then promptly slarmed the clean one in mango! Ah well, at least there has been some productive kitchen witchery:
*Today's batch cook (600g tomatoes) was slow cooker smoky black bean chilli. 4 portions now cooling for freezer.
*Prepped tomatoes (500g) for tomorrow's batch cook.
*Roasted a selection of homegrown veg & basil (inc 8 cherry tomatoes!) to make veggie couscous to accompany tonight's meal.
*Did another batch of tomato bottling (3kg). 
*Did a bit of general tomato triage by moving some that had ripened from my trays of green ones into the fridge for general use.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast (bloody hell, missed a trick there....I could have got some sliced tomato into that sarnie....ah well, I cba to unpack it now).
*Wrote next week's meal plan.
*Today's garden pickings: carrots, 2 courgettes, basil & coriander, lettuce & a few snips of rocket.
I did have some leisure time too, which didn't involve tomatoes ....well, apart from pausing the programme I was watching to go & turn the gas ring off when the bottling process had finished.
I got on with a good few rounds of sock knitting & I've also been listening to an audiobook in the kitchen while I was armpit deep in tomatoes.
I felt so tomatoey....not to mention sticky from the flying lumps of mango that I decided I deserved a nice hot bath & hairwash.
The CH came on for the first time this morning so the temperature must have fallen below18.5° overnight. Was surprised to find warm radiators at 6.15! Ash was delighted & promptly draped his front paws over for a warm.
Sending virtual tomatoes,
F x

Makingabobor2

Can just visulise you covered in tomatoes. 
Chilli sounds nice

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - I'm still finding bits of stray tomato today. Put my black jersey dress back on first thing as managed to get the mango off successfully & there was actually a little piece of tomato INSIDE the neckline!
Thankfully I'm doing house cleaning today. Just stopped for breakfast while the vacuum is re-charging. 
F 

EssexHebridean

While I am hoping that next year we may have substantially more tomatoes than we have had this, I don't think I could cope with quite the quantity you have ended up with! Well done on making use pof them though - and on reminding me that smokey black bean chilli is a gorgeous diner - I may need to find time for a batch cook of my own over the weekend (although finding freezer space to stash the results may be more challenging!)

foxgloves

@EssexHebridean - Yeah, I completely agree that our tomatoes have gone way OTT this year. In recent years, I have lost some tomato plants at the first potting on stage - rarely to actual death, but they have just failed to thrive & put on absolutely no growth at all. For the last 3 years, I ended up composting the no-hopers, keeping the growers & boosting my stocks by buying a few plants in from the garden centre. So this year, I was expecting the same. However, the tomato plant babies liked the compost I potted them into, grew well & I then had too many. I gave about a dozen to my sister who shared them with a friend & had a trayful ready to give to my friend but she was also inundated & our next door neighbours are also veg growers so I decided to keep them, thinking that as several of them were from a gifted pack of a cherry variety, they wouldn't produce the sheer poundage of the bigger types. Wrong! All 3 varieties - an indoor plum, the large cherry & normal sized outdoor ones have produced very well & there have been days where I've gone out & picked 2 - 3 kg. I had 21 plants in total, instead of the usual 15 -18. I shall grower fewer next year as although we are grateful for such a good harvest, it is a lot of work processing them all. I have done 3 batches of bottling, chutney & am getting as many healthy tasty meals into the freezer as it will hold. We certainly won't need to buy tinned tomatoes for a very long time. Now the cooler weather has arrived, we will be eating more soup for lunches & we both really like both the tomato and the lentil & tomato recipes from the old Crank's book, so I can certainly make some more of those. My next cook-up will be blackberries so I can get them out of the freezer to make more space for tomatoey stuff. I shall soon look like a tomato!
F

foxgloves

Hello Frugal Diary Friends,
Busy productive day & am now looking forward to catching up with Mr F when he gets home & some much needed sofa time. Budget-helping activities as follows:
*Cleaned entire house using minimal products & washable cloths. Despite vacuuming, general cleaning, scrubbing, tidying, changing household linens, major piano dusting, bin emptying & what seemed like a plethora of scurries around, I was amazed to find that I had only achieved about 2.5k steps from all this action. Absolute rubbish!
*Today's slow cooker tomatoey batch-cook was chickpea curry. I subbed the spinach with cavolo nero as we have plenty of that in the garden, so that was today's garden picking. 4 portions of curry now cooling for the freezer.
*Baked bread.
*Made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast.
*Transferred next week's meal plan to my diary planner.
*Wrote grocery shopping list.
*Rounded up a bag of library returns for early next week.
*Number-crunched recent energy bill from the Cephalopods. £390 in credit, which is heartening, but it's a lot less than this time last year, as our payments were reduced. Had a look at this on their online monthly payment checker & was interested to see that they are recommending a £4 a month increase. I rounded this up to £5 & have implemented it to start in November, so we'll see how that goes. The bill itself was as expected - very much within the usual parameters for a month where the heating has not been needed. 
*Two household items shopped from home for a bit of a new look. 
*Did 2 surveys.
*Knitted a few more rounds during my lunch break.
*Did a couple of minor bits of budget admin - just to get everything smack-on before my Big Budget Day tomorrow.
*Practically a zero effort meal tonight as I asked Mr F what he fancied eating with the leftover gigantes plakis I made the other day & he said 'Toast'. I've been baking nice malted grain bread, so I am happy to have the same.
The heating came on again at 6am, so I am thinking that this is it, we've started those colder, more costly months. We have left the thermostat to come on between 6am & 10pm at 18.5 degrees as that seemed to suit us last year, so we couldn't see that it needed changing. 
Right, time to get a few more steps in.
Enjoy your evenings, all.
F x