I've been thinking a lot about food recently, I seem to have food on the brain. Thinking of ways to use up what we have, to make the most of every last little thing from the fridge and freezers and just generally planning and re-planning what we eat and when.
Well I've had an epiphany or rather WE have.
We are now eating mostly fresh foods, it's obvious from the shopping picture above and the fact that every time I go shopping my fridge fills up and nothing is added to the cupboards. In fact nothing needs to be added to them as they do not seem to be going down at all.
Last weeks shopping came to a total of £22.17 after discounts, now knocked off the £2 House Keeping Challenge figure (see stand alone page at the top). This was all fresh foods apart from the bottled water and the treat of our favourite Garlic Breads on offer at 3 for the price of 2. Now stashed safely in the freezer ready for garlic bread emergencies.
I have my larder cupboard packed to busting with packets of foods that it is going to take us an absolute age to get through, so after a brilliant idea from Lovely Hubby while we were selling at the car boot sale on Sunday morning .....
...... brought about because one of our really good sellers (they flew off the table) were Chocolate Muffins made with this mix, we had decided that there was no way we would be able to eat our way through this 12.5kg bag (bought in error I thought it was 2.5kg!!) so I made up a batch of 36 to sell on our table. They were really popular, mostly with folks that had dashed out of the house without breakfast. I sold 35 at 20p each making us a total of £7, yes I hear you saying "you made 36 where is the other one"..... yep you guessed ...LH had it with his coffee half way through the morning (I tried to charge him but he would have none of it :-)
His brilliant idea was to sort through the surplus to our requirement supplies and sell them off at the next car boot, using the money we make to supplement the £2 House Keeping Challenge money.
I must say I agree with him, it has been sitting heavy on my heart and mind that in this 'Year of Less' we have so much in the larder and cupboards. Do we need it ....... I really think not. We are tending to eat less and less, and to eat fresher, none processed foods, so it makes sense to jettison what we will not be eating and let someone else grab themselves a bargain.
Later today I am going to empty the shelves and put back only the things we really love and that will be eaten in the next two or three months and those things that go with the fresh foods that we buy on such a regular basis. It makes sense to have a good larder of basics but not as much as we seem to have built up to recently.
For us fresh is the way forward and until I have my own crops growing away I will need to buy them and doing this will make us a little money to supplement the housekeeping money and keep this Challenge going a bit longer.
I feel quite excited about 'busting the stash' with such a good reason for doing it.
How much do you store in your cupboards at any one time?
Sue xx
I have quite a lot - I have overflow cupboards in the attic room which hold my stockpile. I only stockpile things that I use regularly though - tinned tomatoes, bread flour, chickpeas, dried herbs, pulses and grains etc. Fortunately I've never been tempted by the couscous mountain offers on AF as I know that I would never use it, and a bargain is only a bargain if it's something that you know you will use - particularly on a budget as tight as mine!
ReplyDeleteHi Sue, that hubby of yours is brilliant! He's a keeper :)
ReplyDeleteI do have stocks in my walk in pantry but only of items we use regularly (milk, cereal etc) and only buy them when they are on a good special
Judy xx
What a brilliant idea, you may as well get rid now as have everything staring at you everytime you open the cupboard door and having a twang of conscience. I have a samll stockpile of things we use regularly but dont have the storage space for any more....thank goodness! We have a fridge/freezer in what would be our main pantry, it suits us better as we eat more fresh and frozen than tinned or dried. Although if AF have the sponge mix and scone mix again I will be buying lol
ReplyDeleteKaren x
Yes, it's so lovely to eat fresh food. Mountains of fruit & veg, yum! As Scarlet says it's only a bargain if you know you will use it, so a small stockpile of the standby essentials is great. Good idea to make & sell the cakes, good luck with down sizing the stockpile - hope it make a pile for you. Sorry, couldn't resist a poor joke there! x
ReplyDeleteCupboards seem to be over-flowing at the moment, always seem to be discovering something I've forgotten.
ReplyDeleteSame with freezers they're both full, God only knows what's lurking at the back.
Keep meaning to have a stock-take, but it's one of those jobs that never seems to get done.
I'm just going to have to control my bargain shopping for a while.
Great idea, I did wonder when you bought the scone/cake mixes from AF whether you would be able to resist the lure of the end results - I know I would not be able to!! I would love some of their bargains, but we have been trying to eat more fresh and unprocessed foods for the last 6 months or so and have both lost weight, me more than hubby (which probably shows I was eating more rubbish than him) and actually now find it easier to resist the 'bad' foods. If you have time before the car boot sales, I think you will make more money by making up the 'cakey' mixes - I think 20p is too cheap for your cakes, the cheapest things in our local bakery are 40p each. Look forward to seeing what you are selling and finding out how much you make at your next car boot. Glad you have got your blogging mojo back and hope you are feeling better in yourself now. X
ReplyDeleteBrilliant re-direction of the sponge mix there! Hang on to that man, he's a keeper!!
ReplyDeleteblessings xx
I have heard of this idea before and it makes quite a lot for people.
ReplyDeleteAnd your muffins are so cheap, nothing else is at Car Boot sales-over £1 at least so there is a big market for it!
Looking forward to hearing how you get on next time.
Sft x
I would keep the mayonnaise although I am not sure you are referring to that.
ReplyDeleteI have 2+ months of food always in my house. we don't have 2 permanent jobs bringing in wages. as one of us contracts I have to make sure that we have enough to keep us going if no contract is found. I have slowly built it up. I don't have to worry about it all now. that is one thing covered. I wish it wasn't like that but it is.
I stockpile very little in fact. Space is at a a premium here and money is tight. I think I've mentioned before, I don't bulk buy stuff when it's on special offer because I've found, over the years, that there's always *something* on offer. If it's not my usual loo roll, it's some sort of loo roll ;-)
ReplyDeleteBack in the day my cupboards bulged with maybe one or two years supply of the things I regularly used, but I gradually came to see it as a bad investment - I was giving the supermarkets my money looong before I needed to use their products. AND I was having to pay for the upkeep of a house big enough to stash it in :-)
I know it's not a fashionable view, but it works for us ;-)
If we had space I know we'd store more because I do the shopping and I'm a hoarder (big time hoarder). But we only really keep a maximum of three tins of what we use regularly (like beens, tomatoes, rice pudding) and a tin or two of everything else. I did say to my wife that we should store enough food for emergencies but she pointed out we've normally got somthing growing or walking about that we can eat so it's not a huge issue.
ReplyDeleteWhat a clever win/win solution!
ReplyDeleteI've only recently began to stock up on basics that I know we'll use, but our food cupboard and store cupboard came in very handy over those couple of weeks we were all under the weather recently. This does mean our supplies are very low at the moment (but to me that proves the point that it worked for us & we wanted to use the extra supplies we had in), so I'm planning to build our stockpile over the coming months.
What a lovely surprise. Yes it's so nice to exchange gifts with blogging buddies.
ReplyDeleteI've done a book swap before.
I've been sent presents.
And today I got a beautiful card, the generous donor won't take the money for it and has told me to put it in my sealed pot. How sweet is that!
I have a little something I like that I will be sending her back. I hope she likes it.
Sft x
Not much I'm afraid due to space contraints but there's a few items I make sure I never run out of such as rice, pasta, tinned tomatoes and beans, bread flour etc. It also helps that every week I write a meal plan and buy accordingly.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a plan :)
ReplyDeleteI don't have that much stuff in our cupboards as try to just buy what we need these days x