From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

redo - I've gone down a rabbit hole - I'm now on weezl's mortgage clearing thread! At least it keeps me out of mischief 😉👍

I think, on the balance of comments, I needn't bother buying jackfruit again.  If you folks cannae make it taste glorious, or anything better than 'passable', then there's no point.  Had there been a 'secret' to transform it, well then I'm all ears.  Whilst we do eat veggie burgers and sausages, we don't eat them because we want to 'fake' a meat meal, so the only attribute that I can see jackfruit has is to mimmick pulled pork and that isn't an important food factor for us, so I'll not bother buying it again.  Should I ever get it 'free' I will do a slow-cooker dish.

I've set a load of activity wear to wash and that's ready to go on the line.  Thankfully it is light and quite drying, as I'm not sure it'll do much today.  At the mo there isn't even a breeze.  If all else fails, I'll have to set up the de-humidifier in front of the airer and dry it that way.  But line-dry-try first.  (see what i did there? 🤣).

Soup for tea tonight - Fasolada I think from R0se Ell10ts 'Bean' cookery book.  

Even though I knew that February is 29 days long this year, I seem to have missed a day off my meal planning total, so need to come up with summat made of house dust and spiders webs for Thursday's meals 🙄

Still looking forward to challenging myself for March's food budget, even with Easter at the end of it, and one week of the hols in the month too 🙄

Can't think of anything else MSE related, so will push off.  Thanks for being here - appreciated!

Greying X

Watty1

Oh I love that cookery book!   The butter bean and tomato soup is a favourite of mine

Greying_Pilgrim

Hey Watty - I don't use the book overly much, but there are several 'goto' recipes that I do return to time and again.  I got given the book by someone who had been given it to car boot, but thought I might make better use of it.  My copy is showing it's age - I think it's a 1980's print-run, and for sure some of the recipes and commentary is dated, but the recipes I repeat time and again work, so it earns it's space on my counter-top, where other "chefs" have failed...... 😉

Well, as it is perishing cold here today, I have decided to make a pudding to go with soup for tea tonight.  Wish me luck as I am trying out summat I have not done before - making a steam pudding in the slow cooker.  I have tried making them in the PC, without much luck as the centre never cooks, so........  I have used a recipe off the internet, and I picked it because it only used one egg (all I have left), but the sponge "batter" is far wetter than anything I have ever made, so we shall see.........  As I am on a rampant nostalgia trip (I blame redo 😉) I have gone for pineapple, glace cherry and mixed spice flavour sponge pudding.  Or is it because I am trying to conjure up warm, tropical scenes in my head? 🤔

I forgot to mention earlier that LG had a "budgetting" lesson in school yesterday as part of PHSE.  They have different teachers to their class teacher sometimes, and this particular teacher they had yesterday is a curriculum lead for a certain subject - which whilst they are (in my opinion) an absolutely useless teacher, makes sense that they take the children for this subject.  But to have them 'sub in' for PHSE - and for budgetting 🙄let's just say they have no concept of the word in their own life - let alone telling minors how to go on.  They waste half the lesson time regaling the kids with tales of "purchases they/their family have made".  Anyhoo, when LG had finished telling me what budgetting actually was (😮), I asked what exercises they had done on budgetting.  Ho hum.  Thank heavens the kids weren't spending 'real' money, and there seems to have been no follow up with "so you came in below budget, but did you purchase all that you needed"........ ho hum.  LG has yet to realise that they are doing a much better job scratting round trying to count pennies for their future camping trip than they have learnt in school yesterday 🙄  I do think that LG's school have difficulty in giving the kids experience in anything unless it's packaged in a neat box and can be pulled off the shelf by "anyone" to present to the kids 🙄

Right, away to put the soup together so that the flavours mingle by teatime.

Greying X

EssexHebridean

For those who are currently on a Weezl-based nostalgia kick... https://cheapfamilyrecipes.co.uk/

redofromstart

Thanks EH, lovely to see it is up and running again.  

It has gone very chilly here too. Hope the steamed pudding works GP, my mum used to make frugal things like jam roly poly in the pressure cooker (suet based I think) which my siblings used to inhale. Last time I looked the suet was more than butter. Trex made better Lardy cake than lard did, which reminded me of weezl explaining to people about frying nettles in lard.  Oh the rabbit holes strike again..

my green lentils are sprouting nicely. Cold weather so slow to get up to size but I'll be inflicting them on mr redo later in the week I think.

redofromstart

Also water rates, we are 7 t company and metered.   £52 x 12, but 4 adults, and heavy use (long showers for DS, I have a nightly Bath with a book habit, plus lots of water used in the garden and cement mixer etc). I do remember when we had rated water it was10 payments rather than 12, with Feb and March off like the council tax, from year 2. 

rtandon27

We are unmetered due to the manner in which our Victorian terrace was constructed.  Our rates per month for the last three years have worked out to 24.59, 21.53 & 23.87 - somehow we paid less per month both this year and last than we did our first part-year!  We do actually have to pay in six month lots in advance, but as it works out to under 25 pounds per month for my one luxury of a long shower everyday, I think this is very reasonable!

Across the pond I was very spoiled in my youth as electricity was hydro-electric & water so cheap as to be negligible!  Moving to the UK 18 years ago shocked me with our extraordinarily high cost of living!  I'd not realized how lucky we were to have an abundance of natural resources!

themadvix

When we moved here there wasn't a water meter fitted and they wanted to charge us for the year in one go - £400! I nearly had a fit - we had no spare money having just bought our first home. Fortunately they did allow us to go onto a DD (at £40/month) and we had a meter fitted. Even with a pond to fill/top-up occasionally, our bill is £18/month now. I often wonder how much water you'd have to use to get through the unmetered costs - we're not particularly stingy with use, although there are only two of us.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening MFW'rs

EH thank you for linking to the site for us.  Appreciated.

Thank you for everyone adding into the water debate.  I'm glad it's not just me that thinks that nigh on £60 a month is ridiculous.  The trouble is with the rental house was that the boiler was far away from all the sources of water - so the shower and the kitchen taps, where we used the most hot water.  So you had to draw goodness knows how much water off before it even began to get warm.  Here, we specifically had the boiler located centrally, to negate that issue, and even when it's summer time, we don't have extensive grounds that will require a golf-course sized sprinkler system, and we're a right smelly bunch, never having baths......... but opting for relatively quick showers instead.  So our monthly bill could - realistically - be something like half what it is at present.  

So the Fasolada soup went down well - LG specifically asked for 2 (soup) ladles to begin with, polished that off and asked for seconds 😁  Pudding was left until we came back in from club.  I had cooked it on low for 4 hrs - the recipe specified high for 2 hrs.  Then I switched the SC onto 'warm' just before we left the house.  So it had an extra 90 mins or so on warm.  When I decanted it, it was certainly cooked through, although i would say it was slightly more on the moist side, rather than springy, boingey sponge, and all the cherries had sunk to the bottom 🤣but that might have been due to operator error, as I wasn't following the recipe for the 'flavourings'.  It tasted fine - I served it with icecream for those that wanted and a splodge of yoghurt for me.  LG dug in enthusiastically and polished off the icecream, and then decided that they were too full for the rest of the sponge......... 🙄  They have said that they will eat it tomorrow.  I won't hold my breath.  DH liked it and said it tasted nice and he would certainly have it again, which is just as well, as there is a portion left......  Not that it's an everyday make, but the weather was just right for puddy tonight, and so I'm glad I had a go - definitely worth keeping the recipe, as I should imagine it costs out pretty frugally, and certainly the wins for me were that it didn't fill the kitchen with steam as it cooked, and cook it did - which I've struggled to achieve using the PC method.

I need to add 39p spend to my February grocery spend as whilst LG was at club tonight, I popped into MrAl, as I knew that they had swedes on the S6 for 39p, but wasn't sure when the selection was due to change - does the S6 still last for a fortnight?  Anyway, my spidey senses were right, as it is changeover day this Thursday.  I now have a (frankly) mahooooosive swede to try out some more frugal recipes with 😁

LG has handed in their next instalment to go on the camping trip, so I need to reset the counter to nought and we can fire up and get all inspired for March's saving.  We need to accumulate another £15.  Importantly, LG is still highly motivated 👍 We've got this 😁👍

I manged to get the washing out and in during a period of bright, dry and breezy weather today.  In the few hours it was out, everything dried well, and although I've put it on the airer, and it's benefitting from a warm through, it is dry enough to be put away 👍

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

Supportive virtual chums on t'internet
trying and (mostly) succeeding with new to me recipes and techniques
getting washing clean and dry.

Ta for popping by, finding links to useful resources and for joining in the conversation.  Appreciated.  Always.

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Doh!  😖

Just in case it wasn't clear - I used a splodge of the balance of the CHB to top up LG's 'C4C' total for February.  All the other items that are paid for out of CHB have been budgeted for, until the next CHB 4 week period, and there is a small balance left over - which will doubtless get swallowed up with clothes shopping at a future date.  I'm hopeful that in March 'C4C' will revert to picking up bits of money from hither and yon, to give LG the feeling of working and saving towards something meaningful.

Also, I didn't link to the recipe (base) that I used in order to make the steamed sponge pudding in the SC.  Sorry for the oversight, just in case anyone is interested, you can find it HERE.

And just in case you didn't know it already - I remain incredibly grateful to everyone, for the continued love, support and help that you freely extend to me and my family.  THANK YOU x

Greying X