Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Makingabobor2

Thanks both, for your replies. I will make notes & get organised. X

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - You're welcome! The 'house dough' at Foxgloves Manor is 300g wholemeal & 200g white bread flours. Like @Baileys_Babe, our house is on the cooler side & the white flour proportion does make for a reliable prove & less 'solid' loaf.This amount of dough will also make a batch of 9 nice bread rolls. I use 2 tsp sugar, 1.5 tsp salt, 2 tsp yeast & 2 tbsp oil. I know it's possible to buy various dough improvers, but I have never found the need to buy them. Just give it a go & then you can experiment with amounts of everything until you find proportions you are happy with. For the water content, I just run a jug of warm & add as much as needed to get a good consistency. 
F x

foxgloves

Hello Sunday Savers......I expect like us, many of you are Snowy Savers today,
Change of plan this morning. Peeped out of bedroom curtains at 5.20 am expecting to see a dusting of snow to find that we had, had a lot more than that - a good 6cms or so. Decided to postpone our festive food shopping trip to neighbouring city outskirts to next weekend. I'm not saying it wouldn't have been possible to drive there, of course it would, but there are always more prangs, bumps, queues & general idiots in bad winter weather, so we decided it'd be more sensible to go another time. Crunched down to the shed to fetch the litter tray in as Soot, who has never experienced snow before, took one look & said no bloody way was he going out in that!! What a kind meowmy I am. Any small budget positives likely today?
*Well, let's start with it now being a no-spend day. Yes, the festive food shop is budgeted for, but no other temptations in my way if I haven't gone out.
*The garden birds looked both very chilly & hungry so I refilled the seed feeder & table with supplies & made them go a bit further by adding a surprisingly large amount of crumbs emptied out of the toaster! Our robin was onto those instantly.
*Made dough for a batch of bread rolls. Shall need to go & shape those imminently.
*Mr F's cooking night & he is using one of the butcher bargainaceous offer items we bought last month for the freezer when they were 10 trays of our choice of meat/chicken for £20. This has lasted us a long time & we hope he will repeat the offer.
*Did a survey & entered a competition.
*Discussed & compared energy costs with my sis-in-law - am sure she's paying too much so we have been chatting on WhatsApp about why that might be.
I have also been pondering my next knitting project. I'd like to knit myself a cardi & have found a pattern I like in a yarn I can afford which is available in lots of different colourways. (For the knitters out there, it is a King Cole pattern no. 3481 knitted in King Cole 'Riot' DK yarn - I like lots of the colourways, but am thinking that 'Caribbean' is beautifully hippyfied & would go very nicely with black dresses, tunic tops, etc) This is definitely a 'want' more than a need, so I would buy it from my Personal Spends. I might also knit another poncho jumper. I knitted one in a random-dyed yarn in autumn shades/purples a few years ago & have had loads of wear out of it. I could do with a warm black layer to go over colourful/patterned stuff, so am thinking that knitting another one, but in plain black would be useful. That is more of a 'need' so I think I would be dipping into the Clothes Pot for the cost of that. 
OK, must get those bread rolls shaped now, then my inner caffienometer is telling me it is time to fire up the coffee machine again.
Take care out in the snow & ice, m'dears,
F x

Baileys_Babe

The planned cardigan looks like it will be a very versatile garment and the yarn you are planning to use will be wonderful with a plain outfit.

Sun_Addict

It isn’t cheap to knit a garment but you have the satisfaction of creating something yourself plus it’s a hobby you enjoy. I used to knit in my 20s when the kids were young just so I had something creative to do for myself once they were packed away in bed. I wasn’t the best knitter though and used to sew up the holes made by my dropped stitches rather than pick them up 😆

marionmgcars

Oh oh, just gone down the woolie rabbit hole.  The wool looks an amazing colour to do that cardigan in 👍

Moorviews

The yarn looks gorgeous and I rather liked quite a lot of those colour ways. I find black very difficult to knit with as I struggle to see my stitches properly and it seems to do my eyes in. Your planned makes sound very versatile which is important if you have put all that time and effort in. 

I am very envious of the snow, as we have rain and mud again. A little flurry during the week only settled briefly. 

Like others we make all our own bread and use the yeast in the orange packet, which we store in the fridge. Our household gets through a loaf in one to two days. We generally use the breadmaker but also make rolls and other loaves. We found that DF yeast didn’t give great results with the Allindaughters flour but that might just be us. I buy a sack of Weddings white bread flour online and store it in a large beer making plastic bin. Wholemeal flour is bought from the supermarket to ensure freshness. We wouldn’t wish to go back to bought bread and we make our own pizzas too. I would really like to get a sourdough starter going again as that is my absolute favourite and so easy. I made lots of pancakes with the discard as I don’t like throwing it away if I can help it. 

QueenJess

Moorviews said:

Like others we make all our own bread and use the yeast in the orange packet, which we store in the fridge. Our household gets through a loaf in one to two days. We generally use the breadmaker but also make rolls and other loaves. We found that DF yeast didn’t give great results with the Allindaughters flour but that might just be us. I buy a sack of Weddings white bread flour online and store it in a large beer making plastic bin. Wholemeal flour is bought from the supermarket to ensure freshness. We wouldn’t wish to go back to bought bread and we make our own pizzas too. I would really like to get a sourdough starter going again as that is my absolute favourite and so easy. I made lots of pancakes with the discard as I don’t like throwing it away if I can help it. 

I hate waste as well, but dislike the extra work the discard creates.  When I get some time, I want to try the Bake with Jack method as he does it without any discard at all.  Here's the link in case anyone is interested: https://www.bakewithjack.co.uk/blog-1/2018/6/14/making-your-own-sourdough-starter

joedenise

QueenJess said:

Moorviews said:

Like others we make all our own bread and use the yeast in the orange packet, which we store in the fridge. Our household gets through a loaf in one to two days. We generally use the breadmaker but also make rolls and other loaves. We found that DF yeast didn’t give great results with the Allindaughters flour but that might just be us. I buy a sack of Weddings white bread flour online and store it in a large beer making plastic bin. Wholemeal flour is bought from the supermarket to ensure freshness. We wouldn’t wish to go back to bought bread and we make our own pizzas too. I would really like to get a sourdough starter going again as that is my absolute favourite and so easy. I made lots of pancakes with the discard as I don’t like throwing it away if I can help it. 

I hate waste as well, but dislike the extra work the discard creates.  When I get some time, I want to try the Bake with Jack method as he does it without any discard at all.  Here's the link in case anyone is interested: https://www.bakewithjack.co.uk/blog-1/2018/6/14/making-your-own-sourdough-starter

My DH used the Bake with Jack method when he was doing sourdough but not made any for a while.  It keeps for a while in the fridge if you need to stop using it perhaps for a short break away.  I know he's been thinking about starting again after his last starter "died" but not a good time at the moment as due to go on holiday soon.

foxgloves

Hello Monday Money Savers,
Thanks for knitting comments - Yes, it is a nice versatile pattern & I do like that colourway, though haven't entirely decided yet, as there are quite a few colourways that I like in that yarn. When weighing up the cost of making a handknitted garment, I try to compare with what it would cost me to buy a very similar garment in the clothes shops I usually frequent. I am confident that I can make this for less than that & will have the added pleasure of it also providing me with a craft/leisure activity.
Interesting reading everyone's comments about bread/sourdough, etc. I make a sourdough loaf most weeks. Sometimes I use the pour-off for making crackers, sometimes I don't, but I keep less starter in my jar than I used to, so proportionately seem to discard less than when I first started out baking sourdoughs. I have kept my original starter alive since July 2017. I have recently been reading online about diluting the pour-off & using it to add useful microbes to garden soil. Some people compost it. I haven't tried that, but am going to research garden uses more thoroughly & aim to conduct some experiments in Spring.
Anyway, onto today's small budget-helping activities:
*Almost all the snow had been washed away overnight, so we decided to head up to the outskirts of our nearest city centre with the festive food list & the £50 e-card I earned back in the summer when I took part in a food diary exercise for the local university. We will be getting our fresh stuff from the local market & indie shops, so we went for the pantry items plus standard grocery items which we would buy during December anyway. Once we'd scanned the e-card & used £10 of nectar points, we only had £34-15 to pay for what was really quite a lot of shopping. And what was Mr F's highlight of the morning? Was it that the roads were clear of snow (apart from the dirty grey ice boulders lingering in the gutters)? No. Was it that he treated himself to a 'Pigs under blankets' breakfast roll & nice hot cappuccino in the cafe? No it was not! It was getting to the beer aisle & finding that they had the big sized bottles of Brewd*g Punk IPA in stock & they were HALF PRICE at £1.50 each. Needless to say some of these have been added to his Christmas beer stash in the pantry.
*Baked a little crusty sourdough loaf. It could have done with a little more proving. I'd forgotten Mr F wanted the oven for his WW one-pot goulash recipe. Shall be baking bread again on Weds for sure.
*Spotted a bag of unloved carrots looking regretfully at me from the basket in the pantry. Now prepped, blanched & frozen.
*Did my regular Monday budget updates.
*Received another very hush hush product to test. And it is something I would actually have needed to buy before Christmas, so very useful to get a free one!
*Did 3 surveys - all fairly small payers, but the fact that I'm on over £9 of earnings this month despite it only being 4th Dec, shows that they do all add up.
*Managed to get this week's laundry into a single load. Yes, it was rammed in to within an inch of its life, but I wasn't in the mood for messing around. 
TV quiz night tonight - usual competitiveness with Mr F over who knows the most answers on UC, so let's hope it is not an episode heavy on flags, US states & presidents, sport, physics & maths. Mr F is much stronger than me on the last two, but that's not difficult!
Time for a chapter or two of my book now, I think.
Love F x