A Much, Much Cheaper Option.

 

I went way past my dinnertime yesterday and only really thought about food in the late afternoon, so I fancied something small and tasty to tide me over to my tea.  I opened the freezer for a rummage and  spied a box with one vegan battered sausage in it. 

Now I bought these a while ago when I was making us a home cooked 'chippy tea'.  Our usual chippy order is 'one medium fish and chip meal, one medium fish portion, a battered sausage and a pot of curry sauce'.  From this Alan has the fish portion, the sausage, the curry sauce and half the chips, I have the rest of the chips and the fish.  It suits us both and makes it affordable as an occasional treat.

When I replicate it I buy these battered sausages as Alan really likes them, I also used to have some of the instant curry sauce granules from Aldi, but I think that I threw them out when I was having a bit of a UPF blitz and there was only a bit left in the tub. 

 Oops, I had forgotten about doing the homemade chippy teas. 😐

One sausage cut in half on a little bun with two sachets of tomato ketchup from my freebie stash and I had the perfect little late afternoon snack ... and do you know what I absolutely loved it.  

Now I might just have to buy another pack and a tub of the curry sauce granules to appease Alan next time he says 'Should I go to the chippy?'.  It's a much, much cheaper option.

For those not in the know I am originally from Manchester in the north of England, and there dinner is at lunchtime and tea is our evening meal.  Having also lived down in the south it used to get queried a bit as there it was lunch and then dinner.  But ask yourself this ... if you live in the UK what were your school DINNER ladies called.  

I rest my case.  😄

Sue xx

Riverford, Freebies ... and St George

 

We got our Riverford box last week, this one is going to be our last for the foreseeable future as we want to trial using our local farm shop for organic farm fresh vegetables and fruit that are grown right on our doorstep.  But we owe a massive thank you to Riverford for opening our eyes to the real delight of organic eating, something we had never really dabbled in before with anything but the eggs that I buy.

Alan had the choice for the final box and he chose the Small Fruit Box which we then divided between us.  Now as you know I'm not really a 'fruity' person, but it's been quite nice to have some lovely sweet oranges, and I even ate two of the pears which were so juicy.  I'm weird in that I don't usually like fresh pears but can eat them canned ... or bottled in brandy ... until the cows come home. 

I couldn't bring myself to eat any of the kiwi fruits, luckily Alan loves them so he got the lot.  Apart from hating the texture of the skins, I have been warned in the past not to eat them as anyone with a avocado allergy can also become sensitive to kiwis.  How true this is I really don't know, but I tried to make myself like avocados with disastrous results so it seems wise not to push things for something I'm not that keen on anyway.

Everything that we have had from Riverford has been just that much nicer than the fruit and veg that we had previously been buying from Sainsbury's or Aldi.  So now our experiment is to find out whether this is because of the organic side of it or the more seasonal aspect of it, in my opinion I think it's most likely to be a bit of both.

The little old wall cupboard was eventually picked up, weirdly we both had trouble with dates and times due to hospital parking.  Why do hospitals have such undersized carparks that leave you circling and circling to find a place for such a long time, while you either go in for your appointment or try to visit someone?  

But anyway, eventually we managed to swap the cupboard for the twenty pounds and we were both very happy.  😃

As this little cupboard used to hold my 'freebie stash' it meant that it was time to do something about the sheer amount that I have amassed over the last six months.  We used to use things up much more quickly on our little holidays and weekends away, but we've not managed to have any of them recently so supplies had built up a bit.

You can tell that I wasn't really concentrating on what I was doing ... I was convinced that this sugar tin had white sugar in it, and just poured in the two white sugar sachets without looking properly.  

Oh well, sugar is sugar is sugar.  😁

Everything is now sorted and ready for use at home.  The tomato ketchup sachets had already been put into a tub of their own, but now the salt is in 'Pepper' the name of the salt cellar ... after the cat that I had when I originally bought the cruet, he looked just like this ... sadly the salt one got broken many years ago, so now we just have Pepper holding the salt, and the pepper from the sachets is in the little jam jar as it was two different kinds of pepper and not just the white pepper that I have in my pepper pot.

Did you manage to keep up with that confusing waffle?

I used the two random sachets of mayonnaise on my lunch, slightly too much maybe, but very tasty.

It was a satisfying little job to get done, and now everything is either on the shelf ready for using or tucked away in the main food cupboard, and I have a very nice space on my wall where the old cupboard used to be. 😁

Happy St George's Day if you are here in the England, a day that often slips under the radar. 

Sue xx

Our First Riverford Fruit and Veg Box

 

Our first Riverford Fruit and Vegetable box along with the additional Salad Bag that I ordered, arrived as promised last Wednesday.  

Sadly, being poorly I couldn't chat with the delivery guy and find out his name etc in case I was still in any way contagious,  I hope to remedy this next week when he brings our second one.  We may decide to change to a different box next time, once we have gotten around to browsing the website again. 

 You can chop and change your orders as often as you want and add things to any delivery right up until the day before delivery, and I think it will be good while I still have the value of my prize vouchers to use up, to shop around the website a bit.

It all looked amazingly colourful and in brilliant condition.

I almost felt guilty that I couldn't get stuck in straight away with cooking and tasting everything, but I was not eating any food at all even by the Wednesday delivery day. 

The contents of our Small Seasonal Organic Fruit and Veg Box.  £17.95

As I've written below for the salad bag, I did a trial order of organic produce from Sainsbury's to see if we were getting any value by ordering from Riverford.  I was able to almost get the same items in the same weights for just over £11, including a couple of 'Nectar price' offers.

This was the contents of the Salad Bag.

It was all beautifully fresh, and that cucumber was the first thing that I did eat when I was back on food.  It was as tasty as a homegrown one ... which in a way I guess, it is going to be.  At first we both thought that the price tag of £11.50 for this amount of salad was a bit steep, but then I sat and did a trial organic order of the same things from Sainsbury's and the cost even with Nectar discounts came to over £7.  

So when you consider the ethics of Riverford, the supply chain, home delivery etc we both decided that that the small additional amount for both items was totally fine.

I felt almost guilty that I couldn't set to and make good use of everything straight away, but the mere sight of food was making me feel worse, so my half of the delivery was very quickly stashed into the vegetable and fruit drawers of the fridge out of sight.  Alan was made of sterner stuff and he made himself a big pot of soup to start with, and then a lovely looking pot of vegetable curry.

Here is a link to the Riverford website - Riverford Organics UK

And here is my referral code if you would like to place an order - Share the Happeaness.  

Using my code means that I get a referral fee ... and you get £15 off your second order with Riverford.

Now I'm just looking forward to seeing this van pull up outside our house again next week, and being able to enjoy the contents of whichever box we decide to choose much more quickly.

Sue xx

Sausage Roll ... and Slaw

 

Remember THIS post when I held my hands up to, and showed you the evidence of, me accidentally cremating a poor lonely sausage roll?

  Well I thought I would keep my wits about me this time and cook the other one yesterday.

Review ... they taste exactly the same as they used to when they were slightly smaller and there were four in a box.  The thing is I think my taste buds have changed a bit and I am no longer a fan.  

On my plate in the photo is a side of a simple cabbage slaw which is simply, 1/4 of a cabbage shredded, a couple of slices of white onion and a dollop of mayonnaise, all stirred together and enjoyed with ... perhaps even more than ... the sausage roll. 

Perhaps I have been seduced by the Greggs vegan sausage roll, which currently due to all the travelling seems to be at the very least a weekly event.  These are ten times tastier than the Aldi cook at home offerings.

I doubt I will be buying the Aldi version on a regular basis anymore.  

Sue xx

What Is a Good Jar, Food in the Bin ... and Big, Big News

 

What is a good jar ... well in my opinion it is one that releases it's label without a fight or a second thought. 😃

It's also nice and big, with a lovely wide opening and if it has a 'pop-up' button, just in case I want to use it for jam in the future, this is the absolute cherry on the jar lottery.  

I do love a good jar.  🫙

I bought a box of the now 2 in a pack Jumbo Sausage Rolls from Aldi last month and I had promised that I would do a food review of them when I got around to cooking them.

I put them on to bake in the Remoska, which for the record, is the way that I always cook sausage rolls, got on with writing a blog post, reading my way around blogland etc etc and only when I got up to go to let Ginger out did I feel the heat of the Remoska and realise that I hadn't set the timer.  Just one of the downsides to having absolutely no sense of smell ... there are perks too, but not as many!

I don't know how long I had left them cooking for, but obviously just enough time for a half-cremation.

In a bid to not waste too much I scalped the sausage roll of all it's burnt bits, and had the smallest lunch ever.  Luckily I still have the other one in the freezer, so I will try to do the asked for food review on another day.  A day in which I put it to cook, set the timer and keep my wits about me.

I didn't put the burnt bits out for the birds as I wasn't sure if birds can actually eat charcoal, so on this very rare occasion I actually put some food in the bin.  😐

In other news, much bigger news in fact, we've done something pretty amazing this week, scary yes but also amazing.  Alan won't be wondering what to do with all this spare time in his retirement for the next eighteen months anyway, and I've been coppering up as I cannot afford to dip into any more of my savings in the run up to me eventually getting my state pension next May.

Happily my little money box had a grand total of £13.40, enough to go towards this weeks shopping.

I can't go into too much detail yet, but we bidded for and won a property at auction this week.  Homes Under the Hammer eat your heart out, we think we have our future-proof forever home ... well the shell of it anyway.  🏠

Sue xx

Butter Chicken Cooking Sauce ... Used at Last!!

I have had a sachet of Butter Chicken Cooking Sauce in my store cupboard for such a long time, so this week I decided that it was time to make use of it, and in the process use a couple of tins from the cupboard too.  So I added a tin of carrots (they were only 18 months out of date 😄) and a tin of chickpeas. 

It looked a bit sad with no flashes of green, so I added a big handful of mixed vegetables from the freezer, I should have added a couple of spinach pellets too but I didn't think of that until I was eating it much later.

Once it was all cooked together I decided to whizz it up with my stick blender into a nice thick curry sauce.  I do like smooth sauces and smooth soups, I'm not one for lots of things floating in a sauce, although Alan is.

It made five perfect sized portions for me.  I wasn't in the mood for rice by the time I had made the sauce and washed all the pots, so I had it with a lovely fresh roll ... with perhaps a bit too much spread, but it was delicious.

I put two of the remaining portions into the fridge and the other two into the freezer, so that I didn't need to rush to eat them.

I still didn't fancy rice the next day, so I decided to make some Curry Pasties with one of the pots of curry from the fridge.  I chopped all the potatoes into quarters and stirred them into the curry sauce, diluting it slightly as it had thickened up.  The ready rolled pastry was from the freezer, and originally from Mum's bungalow when we shared out her frozen foods between us and my brother.

Tip of the Day 1 - Roll your ready rolled pasty out a little bit thinner, it always cooks and tastes so much better.

Tip of the Day 2 -  Roll it out between the paper it came on and a liner from a cereal packet, that way you don't have to add any additional flour, which would make it tougher.

Tip of the Day 3 - Cook your pastry products on the same paper that the pastry came wrapped in.  It saves you using baking parchment or having a messy tray to wash.

I managed to make four pasties, one of them split open so I ate it straight away, before I had even taken a photo, I should have remembered the photo though it actually looked quite nice with all the filling visible.  I then gave two of the pasties to Alan for his tea and ate the other one myself ... two meals half an hour apart ... why not!!

I had the tiniest portion that just wouldn't it into the pasties so I saved it ...

... and had it on a piece of buttered toast for my lunch the next day.

It was surprisingly tasty this way.

The other portion of curry sauce was eaten nice and simply with a portion of Basmati rice and peas, and was very filling.  Sadly, there is no photo of this either ... gosh I've been a bad blogger this week ... but I'm sure you can imagine it.  😄

One pouch of Butter Chicken Sauce, which I rate really highly in terms of flavour, ingredients and price ... and lots of lovely meals made from it.  Also, in finding that link above I have just discovered that it is currently on offer in Sainsbury's, so I think I will have to stock up on a few of them if I can.

Sue xx

Spending Money, Saving Money

 

Booths - 24th - £23.64

After my trip to the hairdressers first thing on Wednesday morning, I called to Booths for a little mooch around the shelves.  I don't tend to be able to do that when Alan is shopping too, it's straight in and straight out and grab what I need if I'm quick enough.

But as you all know 'mooching' costs money, and although I only actually needed bread and milk I came out with quite a colourful little haul.  The chips and potato croquettes* were on a 'buy two get one free' offer, so I just had too!!

*  It turned out the croquettes had milk in them, so Alan got a free gift.

26th - Barton Grange Farm Shop - £15.96  😧

Then yesterday we went to Barton Grange Garden Centre for lunch, it's just five minutes up the road from us, so it's another regular place that we visit.  After a stroll through the shop admiring the Christmas displays which are just appearing in all their glory ... it's a favourite destination for coach loads of people in the run up to the festive season, and throughout Summer of course ... we had a light lunch and then finished off in the farm shop as Alan wanted some milk.

He bought my Veggie Curry Pasty and Red Onion Marmalade for me, and I paid for my own Fruity Meercats ... they are quickly turning into a bit of an addiction so I can't let Alan keep paying for them!!

In the café, Alan had a salad and a cake, while I just chose a sandwich, so he talked me into a 'pudding',  I chose an Oat Biscuit, unfortunately as I suspected I would be, I was much too full after the sandwich so the biscuit came home and provided my supper.

A quick food review.

These chips are absolutely delicious!!

And while they may seem to be expensive at £2.60 a pack, I worked out that after sharing a pack with Alan this week, with a breaded fish portion each and a large serving of peas, it was a quarter of the price that we paid for our tea at the chip shop the week before, and it was much, much tastier.

However, half a pack was slightly too much for me, so I split the other pack into three portions and froze them for future use.

Now they are double wrapped and nestled in the freezer.

Sue xx

The Most Shopping I've Bought in a While

Time to catch up on a couple of shopping trips done on Tuesday, which actually feels like a lifetime away already.  Alan had to ask me what day it was yesterday on our way to visit Mum, and I'll be honest it took me a minute!!

Anyway on Tuesday we went to Aldi as Alan needed quite a few bits of shopping and I thought with such an empty fridge it would be a good idea to get a few bits myself.  But looking at the photo there's not a lot for the fridge there is there?

I did get another pack of the salmon fillets, as I was tempted by all the other options you gave me on the last salmon post.  

We nearly always shop individually in Aldi as Alan likes to take time to browse the meat aisles and I like to look at other less gory areas in more detail, and of course it means that we can both buy two boxes of paracetamol for my little stash.  

Over the course of a shopping trip we bump into each other many times, he is a very random shopper whereas I mostly go up and down the aisles.  He caught me photographing my trolley contents and grinned, but he's used to being married to a blogger ... well he should be after over eighteen years of me blogging.  😄

When I got home I laid out the shopping for another photo before putting it away ... and he came in and caught me again!

Not in the trolley at the time of the photo were these purchases, which I picked up right near the till.  The flatbreads are to use as little pizza bases, they are just the right size for an individual pizza for me.

I don't tend to drink 'squashes' or any sort of flavoured water, so two of these last me almost a year.  I am just coming to the end of my last one at home.  I use them on a Saturday morning when I have to drink two full glasses of water with my osteoporosis tablet before consuming anything else.  Adding just a touch of flavour makes it much more bearable over the course of half an hour, but I still clock watch for when I can get to a nice cup of coffee.  

The shopping in Aldi came to a grand total of £27.58.

Then we went over to Booths where I spent £15.15.

The quickest food review in the world - those Garlic and Herb Bites are NOT nice!!  I ate two and Alan finished off the rest ... he's like a human dustbin.  😆

Alan wanted some specific things that he couldn't get from Aldi so we shared a trolley this time and I picked up a few bits that were on offer too.  We temporarily abandoned our trolley at the foot of the stairs, and went and treated ourselves to a coffee.  

The cost of a simple black Americano in Booths had gone up to £3.35, a rise of 15p overnight... I was shocked, and nearly all the other items on menu have gone up by a similar amount.  If it was up to just me I wouldn't go out for coffees, or meals anywhere near as often as we do.  But Alan likes it and as he also pays and asks me to join him I will keep him company, but always at the back of my mind are price comparisons.  

For instance you can get 200g of instant coffee in Aldi for £2.09 ... I knew, I had just seen it.

Sue xx

 

Free Electricity ... and Food Review

We're with Octopus Energy for our electricity and gas, and for the last few weekends there has been an hour of free electricity.  Alan has made it his mission to use as much energy in that hour as possible and I've been joining in, maybe with not quite so much gusto, but joining in nevertheless.

Over the weekend just gone we had one free hour on Saturday, so I did all the usual, charging my laptop, camera, phone, vacuum cleaner etc,  putting one load of washing in the machine, alongside making twice as many cups of coffee as usual and boiling a kettle of water to wash the pots instead of firing up the boiler for hot water ... looking at that little lot perhaps I have been as obsessive as Alan.

Anyway late on Saturday night Alan got another email telling him that there was to be a further two free hours on Sunday.  What else could we possibly do to take advantage of it?

Well I decided that for my lunch I would cook the Rainbow Vegetable Parcel which requires one hour and twenty minutes of cooking time in the oven, and I had been putting off using just for that reason.

We also decided to quickly prepare all the apples off our little tree in the garden.  Now they are lightly stewed and in six 'takeaway' containers, three of them in each of our freezers.

I also decided to descale my kettle.

Usually I use vinegar or lemon to do this but I had neither, so I 'borrowed' a sachet of descaler off Alan.  He has the most well stocked, chemical fuelled array of household products under his kitchen sink.  I literally have a couple of well used favourite products.

With free electric for the full two hours it meant that I could boil and re-boil the kettle numerous times to get it nice and sparkly clean and not have to worry about the cost.  Then I boiled it a few more times afterwards to make sure to get all the nasty chemicals away, pouring the boiling water down each of my plugholes one by one, my preferred way of keeping the drains clear.

So ... what did the Rainbow Vegetable Parcel taste like?

It was dire!!

I think you can see quite clearly from this photo how compressed the layers of 'vegetables' are in it.  I put the word vegetables in quotation marks here because they were pretty unidentifiable as vegetables flavour-wise in my opinion.  They were supposed to be spinach, butternut squash and red cabbage ... well what can I say, they were the right colour at least.  😕

I had cooked them alongside the last of my leftover boiled potatoes from last week ... thank goodness I did, at least I got something for my lunch.

It looked promising on the plate.  

The one saving grace was the pastry it was lovely.  In future, for a much quicker version I will wrap my own leftovers in pastry, perhaps in layers or maybe just simply mixed together and have a homemade version, as the idea is one that I do like.

Oh well, at least I now have a nice big space in the freezer, one that I will be filling this week with some cooked homegrown rhubarb.

Sue xx

Katsu 'No-Chicken' Fillets

 

I don't know how long these had been in the freezer. 

 I scrolled and scrolled back over shopping photos on here and didn't manage to find them before I started getting side-tracked looking at other things ... dangerous time wasting strategy!!  😄

Anyway it must have been a long time, to be honest I didn't hold out much hope for them being super tasty as I have been slowly going off most of the Aldi range of Plant Menu offerings.

So, it was time to give them a go then.

For a start each fillet was a lot bigger than I expected, and the sauce happily came in two sachets so I didn't have to eat them both at once.  One fillet with it's sauce, and a portion of rice and peas made for a very satisfying meal.  There's not that much flavour to the fillet, but the crispiness of it and the lovely flavourful sauce work very well together.

I am very impressed, and I will be buying these again.  As long as they don't  disappear the way the Plant Menu sausage rolls seem to have!!

Sue xx

Comparing the Baps/Buns/Barm Cakes/Bread Rolls

 

Only continue reading if you are prepared for lots of bready comparisons ... you have been warned.  😄  

I mentioned on yesterdays post that I had bought two packs of four buns.  In Booths where I bought the first pack they are usually £1.40, but currently on offer at £1.25, and then ten minutes later what should I spot but very similar looking buns in Aldi for just 69p.

I just had to get them to do a comparison 

Aldi - Baked in Britain.

Booths - 'Craft Baked in the UK'.

Does posher talk cost more, or is it just craftier?

Aldi - Vegan and Freezable.

Booths - Tick, tick ... and also a source of protein and fibre, as is virtually all bread.

Aldi - The usual long list of ingredients present in bread, which of course makes most of our shop bought breads UPF.  

At home I would just use flour, yeast, salt, water and oil ... maybe all this is a sign that I should!!

Booths - A seemingly longer list of additives, until I realised that they have broken down the ingredients of the flour as well.  Virtually all the additives in our breads are now mandatory, with folic acid being brought into the group last year.

So the lists are actually very similar.

Aldi - Four buns weigh in at 245g or 8.6 ounces

Booths - Four buns weigh in at 287g or 10.1ounces.

Making each bun approximately 10g or 1/3 of an ounce heavier.  😄

The most important part of the comparison ... in my opinion ... the taste test, so I had one of the Aldi buns for my breakfast yesterday.

My opinion - very nice but not much substance.  Very passable.

I had one Booths bun from my last pack which was still lovely and fresh, the additives obviously work!!

So I decided to have that for my lunch with three Linda McCartney Lincolnshire style sausages ... I was hungry, I usually only have two.  This leaves me with a leftover sausage and a whole other blog post!!

The bread roll was definitely much denser in texture and somehow more satisfying.  Although strangely the flavour of the bread was 'lighter' than the Aldi version and let the filling flavour shine through more.

So the all important question after all that waffling and pondering which will I buy in the future?

Of the two I think the Booths, and sadly the most expensive ones are my choice.  

Although I wish they would bring back the Stotties from the Welsh bakery, which they seem to have sold for a few months and then stopped and are now producing these ones under their own label instead, and they have them on the shelves in the same place that the Stotties used to live.

And very confusingly the back of the Booths 'Bread Baps' wrapper states that they should be called Barm Cakes ... they are after all made in Lancashire according to the pack.

Well I found that interesting, sorry if you didn't.

Now I need to make some of my own buns and taste test them. 😁 

Sue xx