Gloomy Cupboards ... and Moneywise

 

I tried to take a couple of photos of the inside of the food cupboard yesterday, but it was so gloomy that this one was actually the best of a bad bunch. 

 It shows in a small way that I have been pretty successful in eating my way through the mass of out of date tins of food that I had in there.  In another week or so I will spend a few hours sorting out the food from the bottom cupboard and moving most of it up to where I can see it properly.  Reacquainting myself with the food that I have had for quite a while, but that was moved down to the lower cupboard so that I could keep my eyes, and my mind, on what needed using up first.

Virtually everything in my cupboards now has the date that it is supposed to expire written in black marker pen, which will save me a lot of time looking for dates and putting my reading glasses on and off.

Moneywise, I think I mentioned the other day that I would talk about my little cash stashes that are going to be a bit of a back up for my miniscule £10 a week (plus an extra £10 a month large purchase) shopping budget.  

I think most of you know all about my little change box.  It's not got a huge amount in it, just odds and sods of small change, and in fact since the other day when I shopped for a bottle of San Pellegrino water at the services and had to borrow 19p off Alan as I had already reached this weeks £10 limit, it has gone down ... by 19p.

To the right of it is my little drawer of FB Marketplace sales money.  Somehow, just selling my French bedside table and some little odds and sods before Christmas I managed to accumulate £73.  I was pleasantly surprised when I counted it up.  It's a handy amount to have for an emergency back up.

On top of that is the £50 a month for the next three months, January's cash was photographed as you can see below and is now in my purse.

All neatly organised.

Sue xx

Shopping for My Daily Bread

 

I didn't really need to shop at all this week.  

True I was a bit low on bread or so I thought, I knew there were buns in the freezer.  I had totally forgotten that there was also a loaf purchased just before Christmas, so when I went to put the new one into the freezer ready for use as and when needed, one slice at a time, I found the older one. 

 I somehow managed to squeeze the new one in too ... the freezer is very full.  😐

I have a budget for the first half of this year of £10 a week for shopping, including food and toiletries etc. and a spare £10 each month to make a large purchase if needed, so a total of £50 a month as it were, with any change leftover at the end of the month being carried forwards.

I do also have an emergency 'pot', but I'll post about that another day. 💰

And while I didn't really need to shop for any food this week, I thought I would get myself some flour while we were in Booths for Alan's now seemingly regular Saturday morning bacon butty.  I have been itching to get back to making my own bread, possibly because I seem to have been watching lots of people making their own on various social media platforms.  I also watched a YouTube video about all the additives in so many of the breads we eat, including the seemingly healthy baked in-store loaves.

I think I have been influenced!!  😄

But there's something very satisfying about bread made with just flour, yeast, oil, water and salt isn't there.  So I now have all that I need to get back to my bread making roots.  

Anyway, even if I am going to be making some bread of my own, I did want a sliced loaf in the freezer for any toast emergencies that may arise.  So now I have two.  😁

 I was determined not to waste anything of the loaf currently in use.  I had eaten the last two slices for breakfast before we went to  Booths, so when we got back I crumbled up the two crusts of the loaf by hand and popped them into a tub for the freezer.  They will come in handy for coating something or adding to homemade burgers.

Alan purposefully said yes to a tomato ketchup to go with his bacon bun, even though he knew he wasn't going to use it.  I quizzed him about that and we had a really interesting conversation about the prices of café food and the things that are built into the prices that you pay.  We both agreed that anything that is usually offered i.e. sauces with buns or hot food, and sugars with coffees etc are most definitely included in the price you pay, and we should continue to say 'yes please' when asked.  But if they are not offered, we will not ask for things that we know we won't be using in the café at the time.

Doing this will continue to help me out over the course of this years extra frugality, but also salve my conscience twinges about taking too much.

Sue xx

My Food is Dated ...

 

My food is dated ... that is the food that I bought over the weekend has now had it's Best Before dates written in marker pen on the front.  Now I can actually see the dates on it without having to resort to reading glasses and turning the light on, on these dark late Autumn evenings.

Not that much of this food is going to be eaten for a while!

It's all been added to the bottom part of the food cupboard, ready for bringing out when virtually everything in the top part has been used up.

I spent random moments over the course of a weekend earlier this year, sorting through all my foods and adding the dates to the packs, and only left the things that were either out of date or that needed using up during 2025 in the top cupboard, everything with a longer date went into the bottom part of the cupboard.

Over the course of the last few months I have put some newly bought things into the bottom part, and taken some things out as I needed them, but always I have been mindful of the dates.  I decided over the weekend that I will concentrate on eating up the foods in the top part of the cupboard this month, ready to move things from the bottom up to the top in the New Year, or maybe before if I make lots of space.

Christmas has now arrived at Greggs ... and the new festive cups are lovely cheerful.

We stopped at the services on the way back from visiting Mum yesterday, for our usual strange Sunday lunch.  This time I got a free vegan sausage roll off the Greggs app and we treated ourselves to a doughnut each for pudding.  Don't worry Alan didn't go without, he was over at Subway buying himself a ham and chicken salad roll while I was taking this photo.

Last night I was so lazy, and because these lovely chips were in the fridge I simply had a couple of chip butties for my tea.  In a bid to stop that happening again, I set to this morning dividing the remaining chips into little bags to pop into the freezer.

I now have seven portions for the freezer, safely bagged and stashed, and a few of the little odds and sods which I will have alongside a 'beef' burger on a bun for my tea tonight.

I am wasting nothing.

Even the trays that the chips came in are being repurposed,  I am going to use them as trays for open freezing other foods on.  Better to reuse than simply recycle, for as long as they last.

Sue xx

 

My Back to Basics plan is going quite well.  

True I have spent a bit more than I meant to already this month, and on things that I really didn't need.  But just having the plan on the back of my mind is making me do so much better.

It's oh so easy to let things slide isn't it, you start by not always writing shopping lists or menu plans, and maybe eating slightly too much because you have cooked too much, and then not saving the leftovers for the start of another meal.  So I have been thinking a bit more about things this week, and using my purposeful leftovers.  The remaining two portions of baked beans after this breakfast the other day were incorporated into lunches.

The top photo simply adding two hash browns from the freezer to the plate.

Then a nice baked potato with the final pot of beans and a sprinkle of cheese.

While I have been a bit remiss about making out shopping lists, well I only needed two items so I decided not to write them down, even if I did come away with a couple more ... I have been good about following the menu plan.  

As you can see from this photo taken at the end of last week, I ate all bar two days meals directly off the menu plan.

So they were added straight to the top of the next menu plan.

The burger was delicious, with added onion, homegrown tomatoes and cheese.

And the 'Wrap Pizza' was delicious and very satisfying.  It made good use of a small tub of pasta sauce and half of a small tub of Mediterranean vegetables from the freezer

I switched around the fish fillets and new potatoes instead of the pie, that was destined for last night as it was just far too hot for pie and gravy, but apart from that I have been just as good at following my plan this past week.  

Will I make the soup tomorrow ... perhaps not for the same reason, but the beauty of a menu plan is that it gives you ideas when you just cannot think straight at the end of a long and perhaps busy day.  It doesn't have to be written in stone and rigidly adhered to, and sometimes it can simply be beans on toast again.  😁

Sue xx

First Job - Count the Cash

 

I was going to go through the freezer drawers and make an inventory of what I had in there, but then I decided to count the cash that I've got available to me first.

These are the three places that I usually have some money.  My bag, I don't have a purse I use the card and zipper section of my handbag instead, the little drawer in the middle is where I have been putting the cash that I have made from my recent Facebook Marketplace sales, and finally my little change box.  This is where I dump any loose change when it gets too heavy to carry around in my bag and I have been using bits and bobs from it just recently to keep the contents at a manageable level.

I was pleasantly surprised at the contents.  I have almost a hundred pounds ... £97.09 in fact.  😀

That's quite a useful amount to have.  I am putting no time limit on how long this has to last me, just as long as possible.  If I only spend cash, I won't be paying for my shopping with my credit card and then next months bill will be a lot lower, well that's the plan!!

In a bid to put off doing the freezer inventory for even longer, I decided to use up some of the Mediterranean Vegetables that I roasted a few days ago and make a large pot of pasta bake.

I used the last two thirds of that jar of pasta sauce, the same amount of water was used to rinse out the jar to get every last bit of tomatoey goodness out and then I kept adding handfuls of pasta until it looked about right.

You do need to have more liquid than you think you will need when you are cooking the pasta in the sauce, as it absorbs quite a lot, and this is what makes this sort of pasta bake even more delicious.

I got it just about perfect.

This pan made me one evening meal and two delicious lunches.

The leftover Med Veg was put into two little tubs and popped into the freezer.

Now I have to do the freezer inventory before I put anything else in there, not that there's much space left!!

Sue xx

Easy Peelers ... and Right Back to Basics

As you can see I make good use of jars in my store-cupboard, all sorts and all sizes.  

Lots have been collected over the years especially the Mason jars, Kilner jars and any that are usually purchased new.  Some were bought when they were on special offer, some bought from car boot sales and a few gifted.  

But even having lots of jars already ...

... I can never resist an 'easy peeler'.

The ones where a little soak in the sink means that the label peels off smoothly with no sticky residue to get off.  Now that I have so many jars in my arsenal I rarely have that sticky label fight and I'm more than happy to send a jar off for recycling ... unless of course the jar is really special, then I still can't resist.

They are just so useful, and jam jars especially are strong enough for reuse time and time again whether in the freezer for soups and sauces or to actually be used once again for jam.  With the courgettes still coming through I might be tempted to make some chutney and make good use of some of my empty jars.

But as you can see from the top photograph I definitely do not need any Green Tomato Chutney making this year.  😀

While I am supposed to be being really good this year, especially since April when the pay packets stopped rolling in each month, replaced instead by my miniscule private pension of £77.45.  I have in fact let things slip slightly each and every month.  

The money that my son owed me has now all been paid back, so no more £100 a month extra to supplement the pension, gosh even the interest from my savings account has gone down and I was drawing that each month into my current account as well, but the tax man had to be paid.  Greedy man!!

I've just checked what I owe on my credit card which is usually paid on or around the 10th of each month and oops ... I owe just over £300.  This will of course be paid in full just as it always is, but doing this will send my current account into an all-time low of just £78.80 after my direct debit for my life insurance has gone out.

It really is time for me to stop messing around and get right back to basics.

The first step is to count all the cash I have in my bag, my little Facebook Marketplace sales pot and my spare change box and see what money I'm playing with ... because cash is going to be king from now on.

I had just finished typing all of the above and Alan came over.  Did I want to go for a *coffee with him as he was going to Booths for a bacon butty, of course I said yes.  When he asked if I wanted any shopping on our way out I said just bread really.  I picked up the buns as they were on offer £1.25 if you had a Booths card instead of the usual £1.40.  He was going to pay for them for me but I stopped him, I had enough bits of change to pay for them myself and I wanted to start immediately.  

Product Code Product Name Qty Total 522045 4 BOOTHS SOFT BROWN BAPS UNIT  Cardholder Discount 1 £1.40  -£0.15

Then I obviously came back home to finish this post ... and now the Challenge is on.

 Sue  xx

I did of course accept the kindly offered cup of coffee.  😁