The Final Shopping of the Month ... and the End of April Figures

 

Over the weekend I did the final shopping trip of April, how has this month come to an end so quickly, it's whizzed by!!

As you can see I spent a total of £15.65.

Only the tissues were a really needed purchase ... it's hay-fever season and I've used up the couple of boxes that I had at home pretty quickly over the last couple of weeks.  When I saw these on special offer at just £2.50 for a twin pack if you had a Nectar card, instead of the usual £4, I decided to stock up.  In fact if they are still on offer this week I may even get a few more.

The lemon curd and bake at home baguettes were an impulse buy as I had done that terrible thing of going shopping on an empty stomach.  But the spread was a good purchase as it was still on offer at just £3.35 instead of it's usual £4, so I thought I may as well get another even though I only bought one quite recently.

Seemingly this one was bought on the 12th of the month.  

This is one of the reasons I am monitoring what I buy this year, so I can figure out how often I purchase things, what they cost and how quickly I use them up.  It's proving to be a real eye opener.

This month has been a month of very varied purchases and thankfully quite a low spend, because I am still mostly eating what I have in my cupboard and freezer, and what I have spent has been mostly on fresh things to supplement these.  There was of course another £20 worth of food bought from Booths with my voucher, two freebies also from Booths for having their loyalty card, and Alan bought me some things from the Farm Shop when we went out on my birthday.

My total spend for April was £80.09.

So I have added the change from my £100 to my little pot, and I now have £62.08 carried forward for use as and when I need it ... think of how many tissues that would buy.  😄

I'm doing something completely different this week which means I won't be spending a single penny of my May budget for the first week of the month.  I promise I'll tell you all about it eventually.  

Sue xx

News Ways of Cooking

When my Remoska broke at the end of last year, literally two weeks after Alan's bit the dust, I had to decide whether to buy another one for myself, or whether to invest in an alternative way of cooking that would save me a similar amount of money.  

Alan asked me to order a new Remoska for him from Lakeland and while I was putting his order in I had a look at their range of air fryers.  When I saw the price of THIS one I was very impressed, at exactly a hundred pounds cheaper than a replacement Remoska would have been, I thought it was time I brought myself bang up to date with one of the latest kitchen accessories.

Although it takes up quite a bit more space on my only bit of worktop I managed to find a way to make things work for me.  The electric kettle now sits at the back of the hob, on the ring and section that I never use and the air fryer takes up the space that the kettle and Remoska used to occupy when they were both out on the worktop, although the Remoska was usually put away into the cupboard between uses.

 I still happily manage to cook in exactly the same way as I did before, with a pan on the front section of the hob and occasionally, as with this meal, with a steamer on top.  With the other part of the meal being cooked in one of the drawers of the air fryer.  

I have to say that after a few months using it, I am very impressed with my new purchase.  The only negative I've found is the noise it makes.  But that's mostly because I am usually sat directly opposite from it on my computer, and after all it is just a very small fan oven ... but with less soundproofing than a full size fan oven has.  

I think in the three months or so that I have been using it I have only turned the oven on a couple of times, each time making sure I filled it to capacity, so I am more than happy to put up with a whirring fan behind me if my bank account is staying a bit healthier.

So I am happy to say that my change of small cooking appliance has been a happy one.  😀

And now it's time to relax into the weekend, I hope you all have a good one.

Sue xx

Getting Up To Date ... and More Freebies

 

It's been a busy week and I haven't had time to upload this photo of the shopping I picked up while I was shopping at Aldi with Alan on Sunday.  

So this amount spent went onto last weeks food spend meaning that in total for last week I spent just £10.23.  Phew, at last a week in April when I am under my self-imposed budget.

I wanted to pick up a few things for Mum, (the crossed out things) some bread for myself and a little mix of things for the Foodbank baskets.  Our Aldi now only sends the contents of their two huge baskets to the Foodbank across the road from it from the foods donated on a Sunday.  So Sunday is the day I will shop there if I need to, as I do want to support this very local one as I have met some of the people that actually use it.

Then yesterday morning I had to call to the charity shop to drop off some things before we headed to Mum's in Manchester, and I nipped into Booths on my way back to the car to pick up this weeks freebie.  I didn't even know that ready flavoured overnight oats were available to buy.  This should be interesting.  The choices were Strawberry or Chocolate flavours.  Now as much as I love chocolate I don't think I would fancy it first thing in the morning.

The ingredients.

And the nutritional information.

Fascinating.

But I think regular oats with a couple of strawberries on top would actually suit me better.  I'll let you now how these are once I've made them up.  But it's been normal hot porridge for me the last couple of days as it's been really chilly here, and something hot in my tummy first thing has been just what I've needed.

And talking of freebies ... we went to watch Swan Lake on the live link to the Royal Opera House last night, and due to technical difficulties we all had to move from one cinema screen to another and ended up missing the first three or four minutes of the ballet and then there were a few volume issues.  It didn't spoil it too much and we had a really nice evening.

But as an apology on our way out everyone was given a voucher for a free drink and cake on our next visit to the venue.  We have a whole year to use it in, so there's no rush.  It feels like everyone is offering me free cake and coffees just recently, as we are heading off to Dobbie's tomorrow to enjoy a wander round the garden centre and to partake of my birthday freebies from them ... another two cakes or scones and a drink each.

I'm really not complaining!!  😁

Sue xx

When Life Sends You Lemons ...

 

I made Compost Heap Jelly with the last of my lemon trimmings and apple cores, peelings etc, but this weekend when I was slicing up that lovely new lemon ready for freezing for my morning drinks I decided to do something else with the ends.

The base of my kettle was looking a little bit scaly ... we are lucky here with our lovely Lancashire water, it takes a long time for scale to appear in various household gadgets, unlike when we lived down south when the first boil of a kettle made the scale appear as if by magic ... so I had read a tip that lemon juice would help remove it. 

 It doesn't, well it might have made a little bit of a difference but not to the same effect that a simple slug of vinegar does.  So I redid it with vinegar ... and lamented my wasted lemon ends. 😔🍋

So ... when life sends you lemons, don't attempt to descale your kettle with them, anything else but not that.

Sue xx

It's Been a Good Week Up To Now.

 

It's the third week of April and this is my fourth little shop.  I'm determined to keep the costs down for the rest of the month so I will only be buying what I absolutely have to.

However, I was down to my last couple of little twin packs of Biscoff biscuits in my jar, so when I saw these with 50p off for Nectar card holders I thought I would buy a new packet.  These last me for ages as I only eat them when we are out and about and Alan buys himself a cake or something to have with his pot of tea.  He does of course offer to buy me a snack, but recently there has rarely been a dairy-free option that I could have, so a pack of these in my bag means I at least have something to dunk in my coffee ... and Alan doesn't feel too guilty. 😀

The receipt.

In other news this week, in a bid to make the most of what I already have in the lodge, I turned a bag of lemon and apple trimmings, peelings and cores, along with two wrinkly apples into three jars of Compost Heap Jelly.  I already had a little jar of jam sugar and some other various sugars in the cupboard so it cost me nothing to make.

(For more information on how to make this see THIS post.)

And I made a slight inroads into the rice mountain with a couple of meals of dahl and brown rice. 😁 

 There is more dahl here than this photo suggests, as I had reheated it in the large dish in the microwave and it had spread itself out in a thin layer.  So, I just tipped the rice on top and stirred it all together when I started eating.

Fresh shopping, bargain biscuits, free jam and tasty dahl ... it's been a good week up to now.

I've just edited this post to include the shopping from the Farm Shop we went to after my birthday lunch at Barton Grange yesterday.   Alan paid as he bought things too.  So free food for me ... including the extra mayo and napkins from lunch.

Sue xx