2018 £50 February Challenge

purpleivy · 5 February 2018 at 9:18PM

ooops!........

lynnejk · 6 February 2018 at 12:11AM

PipneyJane wrote: »

.........I actually hate our current slow cooker - it is big (10L) and cheap (£20-ish on Amazon) but the lid doesn't seal, so everything dries out...... I even put a layer of foil under the lid, in the blind hope it would prevent too much steam leaving. Not a hope. I didn't put in half as much liquid as it needed whereas, in my old slow cooker, those quantities would have been fine, if not a little runny....

Personally, I'd save up and buy a new, better quality one asap. After all, they save a lot of money in the long run.

In the meantime, maybe if you use some thicker, turkey foil or thick greaseproof paper. Cut quite a bit bigger and tuck over the top and down the sides, sealing it as tight as possible, then put on the lid. (Bit like cooking en papilotte).

HTH
Lx

PipneyJane · 11 February 2018 at 7:02PM

Evening All

Apologies for the radio silence, but life got in the way of me posting during the week. I had two job interviews after work - Wednesday and Thursday - which culminated in a job offer on Friday. Soon, I will stop being a contractor and actually belong somewhere again. Yay!!!

Yes, it!!!8217;s the slow cooker I hate. LynneJK, I have tried tenting it with foil and have had mixed results. A replacement may be what I will buy with the money saved from this challenge.

The pressure cooker is OK but I will trade it in at some point for a more old-fashioned one, with the weights on top. (Mine is controlled by a nob and has developed !!!8220;issues!!!8221; where the pressure relief valve sticks. The latter can!!!8217;t be replaced.). Lidl have 6L ones on sale this week for £39.99, if you are interested. I would not buy one any smaller.

I have 3 spends to declare for this week:-

DH went to the farm shop, bought a dozen eggs, carrots, potatoes, broccoli and purple sprouting broccoli (he knows I love the latter), spending £8.70 in the process. Most of the eggs were used in the Austrian Potato Pudding he made, from an ancient Sainsbug recipe book called !!!8220;Potato!!!8221;. It also used up some black pudding from the freezer [LIST=2]Yesterday, we dropped into Tosco at lunchtime, buying yoghurts (32), YS cheddar (£1.46) and a YS packet of 6 mini pork pies (£1.20), for a total of £4.66. (The pork pies turned into our lunch-on-the-run.).[/LIST]
[LIST=3]Today, we collected the Sunday paper and a packet of Value eggs, spending £1.25 in the process. (We subscribe to the paper, so get a weekly voucher to !!!8220;pay!!!8221; for it. It doesn!!!8217;t count in the GC challenge.)[/LIST]

Anyway, the above brings our total spend for February to £22.34/£50 leaving a balance of £27.66 for the rest of the month.

(Still can!!!8217;t figure out how to get the numbers to change on the bullet points.)

Besides fresh veg, we!!!8217;ve mainly been eating out of the freezer and the pantry. Dinner on Wednesday was Cuban Black Bean Stew. Thursday was the aforementioned Austrian Potato Pudding, while Friday we had a stir fry, using a 250g bag of Christmas turkey from the freezer. Yesterday was salmon, again from the freezer. Lunches were leftovers during the week, yesterday!!!8217;s pork pies and today we had cheese toasties. (We made the bread ourselves.)

Plans for meals for this week are a little disjointed because we!!!8217;re going to see Bill Bailey perform tomorrow night, so will need to eat out. Tonight, I!!!8217;m cooking a mung bean curry which will use up the open, plain yoghurt. Tuesday is Pancake Night. Wednesday is St Valentine!!!8217;s Day, so we will do our annual !!!8220;order a curry and accompany it with sparkling red wine!!!8221; night. I haven!!!8217;t thought any further ahead.

I made Jam Crumblies earlier for our mid-week snacks. (The recipe is here ). For once, I used the microwave as a microwave, instead of using its oven feature and baking them at 180C for 20-25 minutes. The Jam Crumblies used up an ancient tub of !!!8220;I can!!!8217;t believe it!!!8217;s not butter!!!8221; which has been lurking in my fridge for well over a year. (Someone who stayed bought it. I rarely butter bread.)

Lunches will be leftovers, accompanied by small pots of yoghurt. I buy the 450ml tubs of full-cream Yeo Valley, which are always on 2-for-£2 in MrT, and decant each tub into 4 small Lock-n-Lock boxes. (Full-cream because it has a higher oestrogen content - helps with infertility - and Yeo Valley because it tastes better and they don!!!8217;t dye their strawberry/raspberry flavours with beetroot to make them pinker.)

Have a good week.

Pip

PipneyJane · 17 February 2018 at 4:38PM

Well, things got changed around a bit, meal-wise. Sunday night, we ended up having Mexican Refried Beans, Monday we ate out as planned, Tuesday we made pancakes from scratch, Wednesday was a takeaway, Thursday a nut loaf with roasties and broccoli and Friday became Mung Bean Curry Night.

I think one of the main skills needed to stick to the challenge is the ability to look in the fridge, recognise what is there that needs to be used up and figure out something to make with it. For instance, the nut loaf was made with almonds that had been lurking in the fridge since the summer, plus carrots that were bought last week. Apart from the fresh veg, virtuallly everything has come out of the store cupboard or the freezer.

We have had three small spends: £1.10 for milk on Wednesday (I have frozen half of it), £2.87 for peppers and mushrooms yesterday and £3.20 for bratwurst today at Lidl. That brings our total spend so far to £29.51/£50.

There is £20.49 left in the kitty and tomorrow we will do our big spend. Wish me luck!

- Pip

JingsMyBucket · 18 February 2018 at 10:49AM

You keep your almonds in the fridge? Is that to prevent them going rancid? Do you keep all your nuts in there or just the almonds?

Good luck shopping today. Just 10 more days left in the month!

[Deleted User] · 20 February 2018 at 11:06AM

PipneyJane wrote: »

I think one of the main skills needed to stick to the challenge is the ability to look in the fridge, recognise what is there that needs to be used up and figure out something to make with it

Yes, I totally agree with this. Yesterday, I grabbed some cabbage, courgettes, onions, peppers, all lurkers, fried in dairy free spread, added some meat free chorizo from the freezer and came up with a surprisingly lovely dish, all because they needed using up. Well done to you. Enjoying reading your posts.

PipneyJane · 21 February 2018 at 2:37PM

Apologies, All. I haven't updated my figures yet for Sunday's shop. I know we spent £2.80 at the farm shop (potatoes, carrots and spring onion), and less than £10 in MrT's - much to my shock and amazement -but I haven't updated my totals yet. Oh and DH spent some money yesterday on butter and honey. I have seen the receipt but don't remember how much.

Speaking of DH, I am currently trying to dissuade him from buying a chicken to roast for dinner tomorrow night. (His best mate is coming to stay the night before we all head up to Scotland.) There are other things we could have for dinner, but he really fancies roast chicken. If he buys the chicken, I reckon we'll be overspent by (maybe) £5.

(To be honest, DH goes along with my "money madness" but he isn't always 100% on board.)

JingsMyBucket wrote: »

You keep your almonds in the fridge? Is that to prevent them going rancid? Do you keep all your nuts in there or just the almonds?

Good luck shopping today. Just 10 more days left in the month!

Our kitchen is rather warm - it is south facing - so I store nuts in the fridge to prevent rancidity. If they make it into the breakfast cereal mix, then they will be stored in the cupboard but they will only be there for a month or so before being eaten. (NB: The only episode of Casualty* that I remember watching was one involving someone being poisoned by rancid almonds. I usually ignore best before dates, but not on almonds.)

- Pip

* Casualty normally annoys me beyond belief. I was a nurse and I have worked in A&E. I find Casualty to be considerably far less realistic than ER (which is accurate in procedure even though the caseload is more like several months-worth than one day's). St Elsewhere is the only TV hospital that is/was close to real life and the only one you could actually work in and had a large following amongst the nurses and medics at the hospital where I trained.

PipneyJane · 22 February 2018 at 7:38PM

Finally, I had a chance to work out the numbers. We‘ve spent £19.40 this week, split between £9.60 at MrT’s on Sunday, £2.80 at the Farm Shop, a further £1.30 at Lidl (frozen mixed veg and plain yoghurt at 45p for a 500ml tub) and then, on Wednesday, DH spent £5.70 at MrT’s on some honey, butter and a donutty treat for himself. However, I did persuade him to have salmon tonight instead of buying a chicken to roast, so I won’t complain about the donuts.

Also, I made a slight error in earlier calculations: the bratwurst from Lidl on Saturday was £1.68 a pack, not the £1.60 I remembered, so that spend came to £3.36.

Anyway, with the above factored in, we’ve spent £49.07/£50.00 leaving 93p in the kitty, which should last us the month. Only 6 days to go and we’re away for four of them (going to Scotland for a family party)).

- Pip

ma-ri-ella · 27 February 2018 at 10:05PM

Hopefully the rest of your challenge has went well. Had a pretty frugal month myself grocery wise anyway... its the other stuff i need to work on

PipneyJane · 1 March 2018 at 7:25PM

ma-ri-ella wrote: »

Hopefully the rest of your challenge has went well.

We didn’t succeed, Ma-ri-ella . We were fine until Monday night, when £2.84 of steak bridies put us over by £1.94. That was dinner after driving back from Scotland. (Remember, I wasn’t going to count them because they were to go straight to the freezer when we got back. However, since we ate them, I thought they should be included.) Then DH went to MrT’s yesterday and spent a further £8.35 on yoghurt and YS items.

Our final spend was £60.26. Still a very frugal February but not a £50 one.

ma-ri-ella wrote: »

Had a pretty frugal month myself grocery wise anyway... its the other stuff i need to work on

At least you’re aware of the other issues. Hopefully the challenges you’ve set yourself will give you the headspace for other things.

- Pip

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2018 £50 February Challenge

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