Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Hi Debtbusters,
Thanks for a lovely welcome! Well, I'm still feeling very re-focussed & up & at it today, so decided to investigate the pantry. It's kind of an old one (1930s house) under the stairs, so I needed my little plastic step for short people & a torch. As I was also wearing 3 layers of clothing, including huge hand knitted jumper (because our house is cold & I'm a tightwad with the heating), I must have looked like I was auditioning for a lesser Scandi-crime mini-series! 'Death among the tinned tomatoes' maybe, or 'Some of my beans are missing'........
Joking apart, there was a small mystery - a tin of okra - 18 months past its 'best before' date. A double-mystery in fact, because firstly, 'use by' dates don't get past me, & second (weirder) I don't buy okra, ever. And if I did need some for a recipe (which I never have), I'd buy fresh, not tinned. I've no aversion to eating out of date food within reason, as long as it looks & smells ok. Opened it & prodded the contents with cat's serving spoon, found the inside of the tin had degraded quite a lot, with some not very appetizing black spots, so decided to bin it. Grrrr......I can't bear wasting food. Still no clue as to where it came from though. A free delivery from a little pantry gnome!
Other findings - a barely touched packet of the tiny pasta shapes which get added to soups. I've put those where I can see them & will make sure I make a big pan of chunky tomatoey soup at some point soon. Oh, & a bag of cornmeal which I bought for making a tamale pie. We really enjoyed eating that & I intended to make another one, but I forgot about it & so that's another thing which can be brought out & used up. Most of the big stashes in there were home made preserves. I do a lot of home made chutney, marmalade, pickles, jams, sauces, that kind of thing. Found an elderly jar of piccalilli which needs eating as it was made a year before the other stuff. Also found a big stash of pickled courgettes which I made last summer when we had a glut of them in our veggie garden. They're yum, but were right at the back of our cave-like pantry & I think we'd both forgotten about them. They are fab with things like pulled pork, so as soon as I jumped off my stool, I grabbed a pencil & started next week's meal plans (I have a monthly page for this in my bullet diary) with slow cooker spicy pulled pork for Saturday night, as I can get several nice meals from that & it freezes well. We like it in cobs with pickled courgettes, chunky home made coleslaw, etc. I'd got 'Make loaf' on my job list this morning, so thought I may as well double the ingredients & make some cobs for the freezer too, so I'll already have some ready for that pulled pork.
Felt motivated after pantry investigations, so decided to add to the arctic feel of today by extending forensic levels of analysis to the freezer. Made a new freezer list & found enough useful stuff in there (17 meals plus ingredients which would help make others) to get my meal plans finished. That pork shoulder is the only significant meal item we'll need to buy when we do our grocery shopping this weekend, as everything else will easily come from stores with the addition of a bit of fresh stuff. Also discovered what appeared to be the national collection of frozen rhubarb, so have stewed a big bag of that today, & it will help stretch our fresh fruit supplies, which are getting a bit low.
I always do meal plans & have written them everywhere.....in front of the TV, in bed, in coffee shops (often on their free napkins), in the car (only while as a passenger, I hasten to add!), in our tent.......but the best ones for money saving are always the ones which are written in the kitchen, allowing that little bit more time to assess what meals are potentially already in our own stores - it's that old thing of Shop from home first', I suppose. We've been doing really well at sticking to our grocery budget in recent months & I want to continue this, though of course we are all noticing the rise in food prices. I set our March budget yesterday, with all the different pots of money that entails. I've allowed £200 grocery budget for March. That is for food (there's me, a big hungry husband & large greedy cat), household cleaning stuff & basic toiletries. That's do-able The motivator at the moment is that if we go over budget, that reduces funds which could be added to our Loan Pay Down Fund, & that goes for all budget pots, of course, not just groceries. The sooner I can build this next instalment of £1000, the better.
It's been a snowmongous day here - stay warm all.
F x

Hi redofromstart,
Yes, the company is called DD Fish & they are up in Grimsby. I don't know if they deliver UK-wide though. We live a fair way from Grimsby but we're on that side of the country.

I wonder why you don't get on with meal planning? Do you think it's that thing where we can find our minds go blank when confronted with an empty sheet of paper? I usually start with Sunday dinner, as I know if I write 'Roast chicken' against Sunday, I will have enough leftovers for another 2 days, so that would fill in Monday 'Fajhitas' & maybe Tuesday 'Chicken & mushroom supreme'. We'd have fish from our bulk order on one day, so that only leaves 3 days & I would shop from the freezer for those, or make a big inexpensive veggie recipe. I aim to use my slow cooker at least once a week too, as it's so useful for cheap, warming meals.
The only time I find it more difficult is if I've left it till the last minute & have to rush.

Hi One-step-at-a-time,
You're right, home made pizzas cost very little & you can do all sorts of lovely tasty toppings. One of my current favourites is a bit of onion & red pepper & tomato as usual, a sliced jalapeno (loads of chillies in the freezer atm, as I like growing them), then a layer of chopped leftover cooked chicken which has been dusted with fajhita spice. Cheese on top as usual & it's quite a good 'fakeaway' for anyone who likes Mexican-style flavours. Agree about chilli too. I'm happy to eat that 2 nights in a row.....with rice one night, then with home made jacket wedges the next night. Could eat some now!!