Simple September Kicks Off

Simple September kicked off nice and early this morning with me heading up the road to do one last Car Boot Sale, selling off all those little bits and pieces found around the house since the last time we did one, yes you're right I did say that was supposed to be 'the final one', but I had got into a sorting frenzy and carried on :-)

 

Something I decided to take from the store cupboard and sell at the last minute was some homemade jams and marmalades.  We simply haven't been eating anywhere near the number of jars I had made last year and supplies were remaining static.  Rather than move with them all I decided to liquidate my assets and put the money to good use funding my shopping for Simple September.

 

I chose 20 jars and made a few of them little mop caps out of a couple of tea towel halves that were in the drawer, so they looked a little more rustic and appealing.  My little ploy worked and the jars of jam and a large basket of packs of our own free range eggs were the first things to fly off the stall this morning.

 



 

The egg money of course goes through our company and is used to buy all food, bedding and sundries needed for the chickens but the £20 for the jars of jam was all mine.  So the budget for Simple September is £20 cash and just over £23 in Nectar points.  I hope this will be enough to see us through the month, all we should need to buy is milk, fresh fruit and some veggies (most of them will be homegrown) for our juices.  Everything else hopefully will be coming from the freezers and the store cupboard.

 

We'll see how well we do.

 

 

I'm keeping myself accountable as I find this is the best way to make me think about what I buy.

 

The back of the receipt shows the remaining Nectar points available for use, this number should go up during the month as we have a lot of travelling to do and the majority of our points come from fuel purchases.

 

I got home with a completely empty boot, just the paste table and my empty baskets on the back seat of the car (and the shopping of course), and what should I find when I came into the kitchen ....

 

... a great big bowl of freshly picked blackberries!!

 

Lovely Hubby had been up the drive with the dogs and had a good picking session, he says there are about as many again but not quite ripe enough for picking yet.  Am I tempted to turn them into more Jam .....

 

.... noooooo,  I think these and any more we get will be mixed with some of the lovely Bramley Apples on our tree and turned into some crumbles for our desserts over the month.  You can't beat a good homemade, homegrown pudding on these cooler evenings, with cream on a warm day or custard on a cooler one, they are full of flavour and healthy(ish)  too.

 

Frozen just as they are and the apple slices too these blackberries can be turned into a crumble at the drop of a hat especially now that I have a great big tub of our 25p a pack Oaty Crumble Mix stashed in the freezer too. 

(It's still available from Approved Foods if you want some for yourself, click on the link at the top of the sidebar.)

 

So Simple September has got off to a really good start, what are you up to this September?

 

Sue xx