Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@MissRikkiC - I use 200g wholemeal bread flour, 200g white bread flour, 2 tsp salt, 200g sourdough starter & about 250g water, depending on wetness of the starter.
F

MissRikkiC

That’s quite different to mine in that you use less flour overall more starter and less water. Do you prove overnight and then fridge it as well? Thanks in advance 

foxgloves

@MissRikkiC - No, I go for as little faff as possible & there's rarely sufficient fridge space to fit in my proving basket. I make up the dough early in my mixer, cover the bowl & leave it to develop for about 4 hours. Then I tip it out & do the stretching/folding, put it in the proving basket, prove it for 1 to 3 hours (usually somewhere in between depending on temperature). Then it goes onto a pre-buttered heated baking tray & into the oven. I pre-heat at Gas 7 & bake at Gas 6. I only make basic loaves though intend to experiment a bit more this year. They do vary a little because the starter jar is a natural thing, but we are happy with how they turn out. Tasty bread & makes fab toast.
F

MissRikkiC

Thanks for that! I might try your recipe this weekend and see how it fairs to mine!  Currently dunking mine into soup, it’s lovely. Just not risen enough is all. 

starnac

That Pav Bhaji recipe sounds delicious. Thank you for sharing and thank you for context @MissRikkiC

I will have to try this one

foxgloves

@starnac - Yes, do try it, we thought it was lovely & a very cheap meal. As @MissRikkiC said, it's the perfect 'use-it-up' meal. In my case it dealt with some potatoes which were starting to sprout & a yellow pepper which was just thinking about starting to go soft. For those who mostly cook from scratch, the spices are store cupboard basics & the other veg, such as onions & garlic are things we'd have in all the time anyway. Also fresh ginger root, as I like a couple of slices in a mug of hot water every morning on rising. It would be a very easy meal to scale up for freezing, so I may do that next time, although I did freeze the spare 2 portions plus a couple of the rolls I baked, so that's another 'free' meal anyway. I would also make it if I was cooking for a curry night kind of meal which involved hungry teenage nephews. I'd put a bowl of it on the table with spoons & a plate of the butter-fried halved rolls & let them take the edge of their enormous appetites while I was getting everything else ready to bring to table.
F

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams!
Yes, we have sun in the murky East Midlands today! Not a single rain shower, though Mr F assures me they are coming later on & overnight. Another morning of kitchen witchery. Finished the last of my audiobook & started another one - I do like cooking while being entertained by a good story. Anyway, onto today's small money saving wins:
*Garden pickings: Basil (AND I offloaded a bag of courgettes onto one of Mr F's colleagues who asked if she could buy some from us as hadn't grown any this year. We said they would MOST DEFINITELY be free!)
*Made courgette chutney. I don't usually make chutney from courgettes as the last recipe I tried years ago was very so-so, but I found a River Cottage one online & decided to try it as we had all the ingredients & it looks & already tastes very promising. I will almost certainly make another batch of this, as it will be a good addition to Christmas hampers/gift bags for a couple of family members. It was a more 'cheffy' recipe than the more usual bung-it-all-in-&-boil chutney recipes. Anyway, it took care of 1kg of courgettes.
*Watered greenhouse veg.
*Transferred meal plan to the food planner in my diary (a nice double-page spread for each month) & wrote grocery shopping list.
*Baked a batch of scones. This was Mr F's suggestion, because get this........"It would be nice to have scones & home made jam for the 'Sewing Bee' final tonight"........which he doesn't actually watch!! Hmmm. Though I can't take any kind of moral high ground here, as I opened a jar of last Autumn's blackberry & apple jam & promptly tested a warm one fresh from the oven!
*Prepped some of our produce for making pasta bake tonight.....it's lovely at this time of year when more home grown items find their way into our meals (& also off the shopping list for a while). Tonight I will be using our basil, shallots, garlic, tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions & naturally a courgette plus a tin of salmon that's been in the pantry since our pre-Brexit/Lockdown zombie-apocalypse stock-up.
*Started getting a bag of library returns together.
*Did a couple of surveys & have the tab open for any others. July's PA earnings now up to £42-70. My goal is to get it as close as possible to £49, as this is what I used from my Personal Spends on certificates from the GRO for completing my current genealogy project. 
NOT money saving - Mr F announced last night (after we'd gone to bed....who says romance is dead in our house?) that the car needs new tyres. I asked how much he thought this would be & he said £160. I haven't done any car maintenance-type jobs for several years since I took VR & we decided to go down to 1 car, so I said, "Oh, do we need 2 tyres?" He said, "No, we will almost certainly require 4 & that £160 is per tyre". Well I couldn't believe it. I said that over £600 for tyres plus the next service would wipe out our Car Maintenance Pot. He wasn't looking at la-di-dah fancypants brands either. Anyway, he's pinged me today to say he's found some cheaper (but still good) ones at the place where they fit tyres more quickly than anyone else & there is a 15% discount offer, so that will knock a wodge off. Honestly, is there anything that hasn't shot up n price over the last 2 or 3 years? Tbf, he does a lot of mileage for work & when the A1 is closed or static on 'our' stretch, which it often is due to accidents, incidents, etc, he does have to do his commute via some rathe countryfied by-ways. As somebody who has been 'reformed' for a long time now, but has still been a spender/non-budgeter for more years than a frugalista, I am of course grateful that we actually HAVE a car maintenance savings pot. The old Mr F would have whacked it all straight on a CC. The old me would have done the same, then moaned vociferously about how unfair it was that this kept happening & meant I never had any money. Thank goodness those days are well & truly behind us & we are prepared for what really are perfectly predictable car expenses.
Well, no more jobs for me today except knocking that pasta bake together later & tossing some salad into a bowl, so I intend to spend a couple of hours editing photos into my family history project.
In non-spendy solidarity (except for bloody tyres!)
F x

Sun_Addict

Well done on the PA earnings. I’ve done quite well this month too although not quite as much as you. Enjoy your scones and the Sewing Bee final. 

DawnW

We had to spend a similar amount on a set of new tyres last year. Very necessary, but what a boring thing to have to spend so much money on!

ladyholly

I feel your pain regarding the tyres as ours goes in for rustproofing next week. We had to do the tyres a while ago and I was shocked at the cost.