Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

PennysIntoPounds

😂 at Mr F faux-coughing 'CAKE'

Well done on all that, what a nice productive but homely Sunday 🍻

PennysIntoPounds

Welcome to the boards @Sausageroll14

Honeysucklelou2

Blackberry cake??!! Adding fresh blackberries into a basic sponge mix? Sounds an excellent use of blackberries. We have been making smoothies for breakfast with our foraging finds…amazing colour!!

Suffolk_lass

A quick question, if I may regarding your blackberry vinegar - do you hot process the blackberries in the vinegar (boiling them together like a chutney) or do you cold process them (steeping them in the vinegar for 10-14 days) - so many methods

moginstein

I'd also appreciate more info on the blackberry vinegar. Sounds delicious.

foxgloves

@Honeysucklelou2 - Sort of, yes. Original recipe was from a frugal cook book I borrowed from the library many years ago. The cake mixture goes in a 20 cm cake tin, then you drop 500g of fresh fruit over the top & bake it. It's versatile because it's really intended to be a dessert, so you can eat it warm & add custard or cream if you like, but once cold, it's a nice moist cake, still good for dessert but also perfect with a coffee. I think the original recipe was for stone fruits or rhubarb but I always end up tailoring recipes to what we have/grow so have made it once with plums, but also with rhubarb, blackberries, apples & pears. I give the more sour fruits like rhubarb & blackberries a sprinkle of sugar before adding them but that's mostly because Mr F can't cope with sour things…..it does mean I miss the entertainment of his face turning inside out though!

@moginstein & @Suffolk_lass - Blackberry vinegar is really easy to make & much more multi-purpose than you'd perhaps think. It is nice drizzled on salad as a dressing but I mostly use it to add body to stews, casseroles, gravy, etc. I also like a dessertspoonful sipped slowly to soothe a sore throat. I use the method given for raspberry vinegar in HFW's River Cottage preserving book. It's the cold extraction method. Blackberries are steeped in cold vinegar for 4 to 5 days before being strained overnight in a jellybag. Extract is then measured, correct ratio of sugar added, put in a pan & simmered for a few mins before cooling & bottling. I like the cold-infusing method because it translates as 'bung it in a large bowl & walk away for a few days'.

Hope this is helpful anyway.

foxgloves

Hello Monday Readers,

Here we are at the start of a new week & I don't know where the time has gone today! I didn't give myself a long list because I knew I needed to spend a goodly amount of time at my desk catching up on ignored admin & doing some slightly delayed financials. Anyway, budget-friendliness as follows:

*A thorough sort-out of all the laundry I did yesterday yielded just 4 items for ironing which I consider a result for both electricity use & my tedium threshold.

*Did a number of budget updates which needed clearing so as to produce accurate figures before getting started on…….

*….my Mid-Month Budget Check-In. I usually do this a couple of days earlier but didn't want to spend the weekend doing desk stuff so postponed it. No nasty surprises on general Aug budget figures but……

…..we are definitely set to overspend our August grocery budget so I pinged Mr F to lower his expectations re any meal planning ideas he may have been pondering kicking in when we plan the coming week's food tomorrow. He pinged back to say he thinks buying a large chicken would be a good way forward as we know we can get a lot of meals from a large one, then we can eat from the freezer for the other days. I think that's a good idea - our garden is producing fresh produce & I wouldn't want anyone to think I am pleading poverty, not at all, I just like to begin each new month's budget with a clean slate rather than covering overspends from the previous month. Tbf, we have partly gone over budget by taking advantage of excellent offers on things like large bottles of olive oil & we have also stocked up on preserving ingredients, which also go towards making things for gifts. I am only about 25 points away from cashing out a supermarket voucher on Ips*s so I might get that in my hot little mitt before shopping day too. Oh look, everything has gone into italics for no reason.

*Had a think about where to put the surplus £450 I transferred from our Car Fund to our current account in case of any hidden expenses rearing their heads on car exchange day. There was also a bit of confusion about dash cam, which we'd ordered but the new dealership couldn't supply, so whole dull saga aside, I was left with £450 which needed to be put somewhere more sensible. Did not return it to the Car Fund as we hopefully won't be calling on that again for a very long time, so sent it to the Car Maintenance Pot instead. It will more than cover the cost of fitting dash cams so the rest can stay in there towards the first new pair of tyres or service.

*Cleared some now defunct emails, did a few surveys, & wrote a new library wishlist.

*Very easy nosebag tonight as just need to heat up leftover beef carbonnade from Saturday & we can have a slice of yesterday's blackberry cake for dessert.

*Still to do - Garden pickings, which are going to be tomatoes & a big aubergine by the look of things when I popped down to pinch a few grapes earlier….(actually, can one nick one's own grapes? I think not)

Just occurred to me re the grocery budget heading for an overspend. I wonder if a factor in this is also that we didn't do an August master meal plan as we were doing those previously this year & often coming out with an underspend. I thought it would be too prescriptive to do a month of meals at harvest time because I like to be able to react to whatever needs picking & using from our garden, but it's interesting the first overspend for quite a while has occurred while meal planning on a weekly basis.

Wishing everyone a pleasant & productive week.

F x

rtandon27

Somehow bung it in is the method that I too enjoy! Crumbles feature heavily in our house!

I have turned a litre of gifted vodka into a lifetime supply of vanilla extract by bunging two vanilla pods into the bottle! Now I'm debating what to do with the gifted raspberry vodka?!

foxgloves

Good thinking on the vanilla extract, @rtandon27. Do you not enjoy raspberry vodka? I love crumble - it's probably my overall favourite dessert. I also like it cold, especially if the crumble turns into concrete, for some reason!

F

Suffolk_lass

I am the same re cold crumble. I think it's because it's like fruity shortbread!