The £2 House Keeping Challenge - Top Up Shop

 

 

Yesterday I called into to Sain*burys for a couple of watering cans and I spotted these Meringues on offer for just £1 a pack and knowing that I had bought the Strawberries at the end of last week and that there was a tub of cream in the fridge my mind instantly thought Eton Mess, well actually it said "Oooooh Eton Mess".... Lol.

 

So I splurged and I also got some more peppers for a choppy salad and some more tomatoes (Oh how I wish my plants were further along, they would save me soooooo much money!!  So yesterday I spent £5 on food, five pounds on four things, that feels so extravagant in my now frugal shopping mindset.  Roll on the home grown stuff is all I can say!

 

Now the £2 House Keeping tin is starting to look very forlorn, I daren't stack the coins anymore it looks so sparse if I do. Each time I update the stand alone page it brings it back how little cash we have for the rest of the year and I wonder how long we will be able to keep going with this Challenge.  Hopefully for a while if the home grown salad stuff kicks in soon because that seems to be where I am spending the bulk of the money at the moment.  We don't use much milk, about two to three pints a week at most and I have two more two pint bottles in the freezer.  Virtually all our bread is homemade using the flour and yeast I bulk bought at the end of last year.  There's lots of jam and spreads in the larder so we could exist on bread and jam if necessary but I don't think we will will come to that (so don't panic Mum).  The good thing about nipping into Sain*burys was that I got my Nectar points total on my receipt and I have about £23 available.  So I am going to see how much I have in vouchers, coupons and points and see if we would be able to live purely on these for the month of June and even in July and then we will be over half way through the year.

 

 My new running total for the £2 House Keeping Challenge is -

 

 (£480/£91)

 

What can I say ....... only as so many other Bloggers say - EEK!!

 

 

 

 

Being extremely frugally minded I rummaged in the freezer to see what we could have for a quick tea (I was cutting Lovely Hubby's hair last night so it needed to be something easy) and pulled out these.  Two small sized Value pizzas (£1.55 for 4) , a tub of Mediterranean Veg  (approx 40p) and a tub of grated Cheshire Cheese (about 50p worth left) ...

 

 

 

... and we had pizzas for tea, costed out at around 84p each.

 

 

Followed by Eton Mess , using a quarter of one of the packs of meringue at 25p, half of the Strawberries at £1 and half the little tub of cream at 28p, with a sprinkle of crushed Flake on top (25p each from AF).   I've worked out this dessert cost us 89p each, not bad at all compared to restaurant prices and there's the same again for after tea tonight - yummy.

 

So total cost of our filling and delicious two course quick tea is £1.73 each.  Sets my mind at rest a bit that we can do this Challenge and still eat well for a quite a while yet.

 

I haven't been taking any photos of the cupboards or freezers yet as there is little difference in them to my eye and because as we eat things I have been consolidating all the foods from other places into the two main food cupboards, the big larder one and the wall cupboard.  Soon all our food will be in these two cupboards and then I will start taking weekly photos as they go from full to empty.

 

Because eating our way through these is the only way we will make this money last as long as we possibly can.

 

Sue xx

Making the Most of ......

Making the most of everything means that nothing can be allowed to go to waste.  So when we got back late on Sunday evening after a long day of property viewing and I found a very sorry for itself pot of parsley on the kitchen windowsill, (oops I had forgotten to give it enough water to ride out a day in full sunlight) I gave it a good drink.  When 24 hours later this hadn't done the trick for all the plant, although the middle section had perked up a bit, I decided to give it a 'crop'.

 

 

So yesterday all the good bits were snipped off and open frozen, then decanted into a tub in the freezer, the rest was snipped into a bowl for the chickens and then the pot of stalks was given a good watering and left in the sunshine for an hour or so.  Now it's back on the kitchen windowsill and already this morning there is signs of life in the form of tiny leaves reappearing.

 

So a second crop of Parsley coming up :-)

 

 

This was the main fridge last week ...

 

...and this is it now.

 

Still lots of fresh things left thank goodness, but lots more space.

 

Worktop before ...

 

... worktop after.

 

I simply combined the sliced Pineapple with crushed meringues and topped with some cream and a sprinkling of the flake pieces from the jar, this made us both desserts for two nights over the Bank holiday weekend.  All gone now and room for all my electrical gadgets to sit handily ready for use without entirely clogging up the worktop.

 

 

Small fridge before ...

 

 

 

... and small fridge after.

 

It's like playing spot the difference!!

 

I'm only showing the areas that show the most obvious difference each week at the moment,  you would barely notice the difference in the chest freezer or cupboards and I guess it will be like this for a week or so.

 

Off to the greenhouse now to get some more seeds in trays, I have to have fresh stuff growing all through the season with as few gaps as possible if we are to see this £2 House Keeping Challenge through.

 

Sue xx

Filling the Freezer!!

 

In this process of using up the foods we have, before buying anymore you'd expect the freezer to be emptying, but during this first week of my challenge it's proving quite the opposite.

 

I decided to concentrate on using up food from the fridge and the worktops this week, to get food that that would go off either used or stored in a better way before it could, and to get food that is lying around the place looking messy gone and the surfaces clear.

 

 

Carrots from the fridge were washed, chopped and open frozen before being tipped into boxes.

 



 

Likewise two oranges that were in a gift hamper were washed and sliced and then open frozen in half slices.

 

 

Deliciously juicy, but we just don't eat oranges very often ...

 

 

... but in a long cool drink they are gorgeous. 

 

These two slices didn't fit in the box when I came to box them up, so I used them straight away :-)

 

 

A joint of beef that was in the fridge, has been cooked, half of it was used for one evening meal for Lovely Hubby and more slices from that half were taken cold with salad to work the next day, all the trimmings were given to the dogs for their tea that night.

  

 

After chilling the other half overnight in the fridge to make for easier for slicing, it was thinly sliced and about two thirds of it put into tubs with gravy. 

 

 

Once frozen the bags were tied up and both popped into one tub and clearly labelled, they too are now in the freezer, the basis for two more meals.  The other third of the thinly sliced meat was again taken with salad for lunch for LH 

 

So one small joint of beef has made the basis for five meals for LH and one extremely tasty tea for the dogs.

 

So now added to the freezer are -

 

Two boxes sliced carrots

 

One box of sliced oranges

 

One tub of sliced Roast beef in gravy.

 

 

No wonder it's looking so full even after a good sort out and stocktake.  I have now written down everything that is in there (almost getting frostbite in the process) and I'm going to do another inventory so I can see how long this should last us and make the best possible use of what we have.

 

I'm trying my best NOT to spend ANY money on food this week AT ALL.

 

Pictures of the rapidly emptying fridge will be put up tomorrow.

 

Sue xx

 

Photographing the Food

 

Well I went all round the house, mostly in the kitchen thank goodness, just a box of crisps found lurking (as crisps do) in the spare room, photographing all the food we have in stock and it is now all logged for posterity on the 'From Full to Empty - 2013' page at the top of the Blog (or use this LINK) to get you whizzed straight there.

 

 

The only things that slipped through the net were two bananas, languishing, turning that yucky shade of mottled brown that makes me NOT want to eat them (they go too sweet for me when they're like this), so I wondered what I could do with them.  In the past I've chopped them up and used them in THIS, but I didn't have quite all the ingredients and anyway we're trying to be healthy!!  SO I remembered reading about making 'Choc Ices' from bananas and thought I'd give it a go.

 

 

Simply chop bananas in half, dip into melted chocolate (dark in my case that's all I had) and then pop into the freezer.  It worked, like a dream.  It makes the most wonderful 'choc ice' you could wish for and strangely enough the bananas don't taste that much like bananas they taste like icecream!!

 

Try not to be tempted to dip whole bananas into your chocolate, half is just enough as a nice pud or treat, they are very rich tasting.

 

Of course I didn't use up all of the chocolate, so I quickly put my thinking cap on before it set hard again and decided to chuck in some Brazil nuts to make chocolate covered Brazil Nuts, that worked too and yet there was still the bowl covered in delightfully melted chocolate.

 

 

 

 

So remembering back to the boys being little and the Rice Crispie cakes we used to make whenever we could I tipped a few spoonful of my posh Dorset Cereal in, et voila, the poshest rice crispie cakes in the world - with a Cherry on Top!!

 

I'm wasting NOTHING during this challenge.  So the fact that I managed to make FOUR desserts and a dishful of nibbles out of  two bananas that were past their best and a few storecupboard things is brilliant :-)

 

Today I want to re-organise the big chest freezer (and maybe the small one as well) and try to do an inventory so I can see just how much meat, veg etc we have in stock.  If I do I will put revised pictures after repacking on the stand alone page to keep it bang up to date.  Wish me luck, it's a frozen minefield in there!

 

Sue xx

The Year of Less - Less Food - From Full to Empty - May

 

 

The Year of Less - Less Food               Haha....who am I kidding!!

 

At the end of yesterdays post I put the words .... I have a confession to make and I shall have to stand up and admit it, well I have to ..... there's evidence I have the pictures :-)

 

This is not one of the pictures, this is my shopping from Monday after I had completed my budget for April on the £2 House Keeping Challenge page, don't worry I went back and confessed all, and worked out the new figures, it makes for a depressing read ...... or does it.

 

It would seem I've issued myself with a REAL challenge!

 

My confession is that although the budget has been tight, somehow with using the housekeeping budget, the coupons and recommendation fees etc I have once again built up the supplies in the freezer to epic proportions (well epic to me).

 

 

 

The £2 House Keeping tin at the start of April ......

 

 

 

... and then again this morning.

 

Ooops!!

 

 

I now have £106 to last me the rest of the year.

That is a weekly budget of £3.21.

 

So I decided as soon as I got home that I better get cracking and make the very best of everything I had just bought.  It all has to last me as long as possible.

 

 

 

I had done pretty well with my shop, it came to £35.81 which was a bit shocking as I went out for 10 bottles of Sparkling Water which would have set me back £1.70, but hey ho, it's done now.  (I did get the bottles by the way although they are not in that top picture, I always drop them straight into the utility room on my way in there's a lot of weight in a bag containing that many bottles of water).

 

As soon as I had unpacked and photographed the shopping (this is getting very habit forming) I set to to divide the bargains into freezable portions.  I had managed to get quite a few yellow stickered items including free range chicken pieces, salmon, cream, mini quiches and two packs of ten good quality sausages reduced from £4.50 a pack to just £2.50 (Lovely Hubbys favourites) so it was a good shop, just one I was not expecting to make.

 

Preparation

 

The sausages were all snipped apart and put onto trays for open freezing (I also kept the trays they came on, brilliant little trays for open freezing small amounts in the future and totally free). 

 

The chicken portions, thighs, breasts and legs, were all individually wrapped. 

 

The bread was opened and the slices loosened so they can be removed one slice at a time for toast etc, and then refastened. 

 

The bagels (reduced to £1 on offer) were all sliced in half so that we can take out exactly the number of slices we want at a time and pop them straight into the toaster on it's frozen bread setting, so much better than trying to slice through a frozen bagel and potentially losing a finger!!

 

 

 

It was when I came to put it all in the freezer that I realised just HOW MUCH FOOD WE HAD!

 

I was shocked, I suppose I should also be pleased with myself in that I have managed to build up these supplies whilst shopping on such a tight budget, but still!!

 

It's the actually going to the supermarket that tempts me into spending more than I should, so I need to stop going.  I read a brilliant quote yesterday on a Blog that I have just read from start right up to date over the last couple of days, read it for yourself it's called One Pound Per Day.   If you click on the 'Table of Contents' heading you can go right back to the beginning of his challenge, it makes for inspiring reading.  He's currently doing the  Live Below the Line challenge, which is how I found him, his original challenge was done last year for himself.  Anyway his quote was ...

 

‘The main product that supermarkets sell you is not food. It’s convenience.’

 

This is so true. 

 

Shopping for ready made items whether it be whole ready meals, bread, yogurt or even sausages is food bought in convenient form, just ready for us to cook, and it made me think even more of all the foods I have in stock and that I was still buying, even though it was much more occasionally.  Why for instance had I bought bread, I have enough flour and yeast in stock to make enough loaves for the entire year.  Yes it is my favourite bread and is sliced, but surely I can experiment and add seeds and things to my loaves and fish out my electric slicer and slice up a loaf to pop in the freezer in just the same way and for much less money.

 

And that was it, my inspiration for the next few months.  If I am able to I want to pull this paltry weekly average of just £3.21 up by NOT buying any foods for as long as possible.  I have even cancelled the milk from the milk man, we have some in the freezer that will last us for about two weeks or so and then it will come out of my normal shopping money, it's so much cheaper at the supermarket, unfortunately.

 

The New Rules of the Challenge

 

To use up as much food from our stock as possible before buying anything else.

 

Not to shop (even visit the shops) unless absolutely necessary.

 

Everything is to come out of the budget except pet foods.

 

Photograph the freezers and cupboards regularly and post photos on specific Blog page.

(I'm not sure whether this should be weekly or monthly what do you think?)

 

Make another stocktake list of all the foods in the freezers and keep it updated this time.

 

To menu plan where possible.

 

To look to myself for inspiration.

 

*** *** ***

 

 

I did start to photograph the foods in stock yesterday ......

 

..... and confused poor Suky completely. A Pug looks confused/worried/puzzled etc so easily!

 

You can almost read her mind "What is Mum up to now!!"

 

I will finish off today photographing every bit of food in the house and then the Challenge starts in earnest.  Just how much of that £106 will I have left by the end of this month?

 

Sue xx