Quick, cheap and easy baking

Hello Dear Reader,

My family will descend on me for Sunday 'tea' tomorrow. Any Brit will know this is an elaborate meal not unlike a buffet! Sandwiches, quiche and of course, some cake. The best cups and saucers, the biggest tea pot and lots and lots of nattering. I'd rather just stay in bed at the moment, but a girl's go to do, what a girl's got to do! I started by making apricot slices. Take 8oz of apricots, a few table spoons of boiling water and blitz in the biff bash bosh! Leave to cool.

Make the base and topping by melting, 6oz marg in a pan and stir in 6oz flour, 6oz oats, 6 oz sugar, stir together. Press half onto the base of a tin. Spoon apricot mixture over the top, then sprinkle on the other half of the oatey mix and press down firmly with the back of a spoon. Bake at 190 degrees for 30 minutes and then check, put back in for longer if needed. Mark into squares and leave to cool in the tin.

Here's the finished result. They are a bit big so I'll cut them in half for tomorrow's tea. I then made a coffee and walnut cake. I found the recipe, which is Mary Berry's on the BBC food website. It's often the basis or source of some of my recipes.

I used a Victoria sponge recipe of 8oz SR flour, 8oz of sugar, 8oz of marg and 4 large eggs and 2oz of crushed walnuts. I put them in a high sided jug and use the end of my rolling pin to crush them into pieces. I used my hand mixer and beat the lot together, along with a large teaspoon of instant coffee mixed with a tablespoon of boiling water. I baked them, along with the apricot slices for 30 minutes. I then left them to cool, whilst I made the butter cream filling and topping. I used 5oz of marg (I used Utterly Butterly as it was 80p for 500g in Lidl) and 8oz of icing sugar and a spoon of the coffee mixture and again, beat it together with my hand mixer. A hint, I always do this in a high sided jug to save myself from choking on the icing sugar.

Here's a shot of the finished result, it will look wonderful as a centre piece to a tea table!

Ready for my close up? I use cake tin liners. I buy them from Trago Mills, in packs of 100 for £3.50. A pack lasts me for years. You can see the specks of walnut inside the cake.

Bird's eye view? If I'm making this for us, then I don't use as much butter cream, but only fill the middle and dust the top with icing sugar. This is for guests. It would cost a lot if I ordered this from the bakers but a few pennies as I made it myself.

What do you make for special Sunday 'tea'? A lot less formal than lunch and it doesn't matter if people are late.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxx

Tastes better than it looks

 Hello Dear Reader,

I'm back to feeling awful and unable to eat again! Soup is very curative and I needed the nutrients. I chopped: leeks, carrots, celery, used frozen spinach and haricot beans. I simmered it all in chicken stock (from cubes) and then blitzed it with the blender stick. I'll have some today, more tomorrow. I was really tasty and just what I needed.

What do you cook when you don't feel up to food?

Love Froogs xx

Can you live off a state pension?

Hello Dear Reader,

Scroffles wondered how much I would budget for running a house and if someone could live on a state pension. I've used my current household running costs, but adapted them as if I were retired now. I'm hoping to downsize, have a smaller or no mortgage and then save at the rate that I'm paying the mortgage for my retirement. If I had the sense that I have now, I would have saved for my retirement from the day I started work.

So, for Scroffles - here's some idea of what I would need if I were retired. I haven't factored any money as disposable, haven't factored any holidays or hobbies as I assume I'll carry on amusing myself and having the little day out here and there.

Food and sundry supermarket costs- £2600 = £50 a week
Gas and Electric - £1344
Water - £480
Home Insurance - £150
Car Insurance - £250
Boiler Ins - £65
Council Tax - £1800!!! We wouldn't be able to get council tax benefit as we'd have savings!
TV Licence - £200? I think!
Car maintenance, new tyres, servicing, mot check, parts - £500 (a small budget - into the savings pot)
Diesel for car - a tank full a month? £780
Clothes and shoes £250 (for two)
Household maintenance (£500 - also into the saving pot)
Broadband £180
Home phone - £300
Pay as you go - £50 - for two.
Glasses every two years - we replace ours on alternate years £100 per year

£9549 per year - with a pension of around £10,000 for two people!

Paying what we pay now, if we were retired now? Er! No! I am hoping to have a bit more than a frugal life when I'm retired! I'm sure now you've looked at this with me, you can see why I save everything I can for the future. We can have the money now or later, we can't have both. Even if you can only save a few pounds a month, it's important to put money away for the future.

Over to you. Are you careful? Do you save?

Love Froogs

Good old fashioned frugal favourites

 Hello Dear Reader,

I was asked yesterday, if I budget for household 'things'. In truth, I budget for everything. We have four free, non charging bank accounts between us. We have a list of direct debits that go out monthly: mortgage, water, gas, electricity, unions, TV licence, broadband and phone. We save to pay some bills annually: car tax, car insurance, life insurance, boiler insurance and car break down cover - we set aside money for those every month and direct debit a set amount each into a savings account for this. We then set aside money for savings, we use 25% of our income for this, unless SHTF - we don't touch it!!! If something breaks down, we get it repaired or DB repairs it. Our 'household items' such as curtains and bedding are homemade. Furniture is second hand and will never need replacing in our life time. We saved for major renovations as the doors were rotten and not secure and the kitchen was in need of a make over, even then we didn't replace but revamped with new worktops and new tiles. Our son fitted them, the doors and windows with no charge for his services. When our Dyson broke down we freecycled for parts and got one with a burnt out motor and put the motor from ours into it.

Other, household items? Clothes? I buy some new once every other year and spend around £100. I buy a new pair of shoes a year which costs around £25. Towels and bedding come from car boot sales and charity shops. Quilts are homemade.

I have short, medium and long term saving plans and I also over pay my mortgage. I aim to pay off another 10% of the balance this year and hopefully sell up and downsize, with the intention of going to a micro mortgage or mortgage free home, as and when the economy allows. Until then, I throw every spare penny at the mortgage. Debt, is debt, is debt and I'm pissing away money every month on interest and the sooner I pay it off, the sooner I will have money to actually live on.

I hope that answered the question, feel free to ask what you like. If I feel like it, I'll answer. Now back to the good old fashioned frugal favourites. If you are well fed, you will be a lot happier. I watched '15 and counting' last night. One poor mum, who was at the end of her tether was coping with her own children, her step children and her sister's children. I wanted to get in the TV and give the poor girl a hand. We saw her shopping, I didn't want to put her down, she was doing her best. But I really wanted to help her budget with homemade food and get her kids motivated to do something to help their mum. A quiche in the supermarket will cost about £2.50, it will be tiny, tasteless and full of junk, fat, salt and even sugar. Homemade is so much cheaper.

 A lovely treat is a homemade dessert. I have some retro jelly/pudding pots that I picked up at a jumble sale last year, 10p for 4! I stocked up last year on some Green's creme caramel mix, so I can make 4 for 20p. I use UHT skimmed milk. Just follow the instructions on the packet. It's simple enough, but the good old fashioned original 'Tupperware' creates the most incredible dessert.

 I always buy a couple of packs of 'bacon pieces' or 'cooking bacon' which has now gone up to 78p for 500g. I use it in meat loaf, faggots and of course, quiche. This quiche has leeks, bacon, 100g of grated cheese, some skimmed milk and six eggs. It was 12" in diameter and will cut easily into ten portions. I always portion before I freeze, so we can just pull some out of the freezer for our lunch boxes.

Keep your eyes open for old Tupperware. It beats the current rubbish hands down. It lasts, it's incredibly well made and some of it is really quirky. I have a wonderful beige and brown milk jug, with a snap on lid, which fits perfectly into the fridge door. Another jumble sale find for 10p!

How do you budget? I know some of you take out cash and have an envelope system. Have you got any good old fashioned frugal favourites, whether that's food or a jumble sale find?

Over to you xx

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs

Quietly stashing it away.

Hello Dear Reader,

I'm planning another quilt, but this will be from entirely recycled fabric. I'll use an old sheet from the airing cupboard as the backing. I'm aiming to create patterns this time and spend a lot more time on the design. I'm making my own 'jelly rolls' as I've been watching tutorials on You tube of how to use jelly rolls to create interesting patterns and designs.

I've put a wanted ad on my local freecycle, asking for men's shirts or any cotton fabric. I'm also going through my own collection of fabric to see what I can use. It's going to be a much longer process and may not be finished for a very long time. The colours may be blues and pinks but this quilt will turn out to be quite green!

Here's the tutorial that I found really useful and hope to copy - enjoy!

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogsxx

Old habits die hard

Hello Dear Reader,

In the autumn, I picked, cooked and froze all of the remaining Bramley apples off our tree. It's only a few years old, but last year gave us a bumper crop. My portions were large and here's the remainder of the apple sauce we had from lunch today. I don't add any sugar to my apple sauce in fact, I just add lemon juice to stop it going brown. As we had a piece of pork, with lots of veg, we didn't need any dessert. In fact, we rarely have any at all. Inactivity and age means we have to watch our portion sizes and make sure we always leave the table feeling we could eat some more! It's a good rule to live by.

 I made a crumble mix with 3oz of plain flour, 3oz of marg, which I rubbed together and added a table spoon of sugar to the crumble and a tablespoon, which I stirred through the apple sauce. We'll have something small for dinner tomorrow night to leave room for a dessert. I'll keep the apple crumble in the fridge and I won't cook it until I have the mini oven on tomorrow and I'll squeeze it in somehow. We'll have instant custard with it too. I din't want to re-freeze the apple sauce as I've already defrosted it.

What old money saving habits can you not let go of?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxx

Bedding, Beef Steak and Blessings

Hello Dear Reader,

Here is the humbly jumbly, multi-coloured quilt. Quilted, edged, finished, laundered and drying. It's huge and it's taken ages.

Here's a close up of the backing and the edging.

Here's a close up of the vivid colours.

I also thought I would share the bulk buying I did today. Two packs of rump steak for £7, which worked out to be £4 a kilo! A kilo and a half of braising steak for £5, which worked out to be £3.69 a kilo. Also, beef skirt, which is the cut of beef steak we Cornish use to make pasties, was £5 a kilo. I will portion it out, and decant it into freezer bags. I find the local butcher much cheaper than the supermarket and I always bulk buy this way to get the best prices.

Onto blessings. They may not seem so, but we've really got to count them some times. Dearly Beloved is on his way to Plymouth to collect our twenty five year old son. He/son had a bad day yesterday and buried the third of his friends who had committed suicide. All of those beautiful young men were highly academic, had brilliant futures, came from loving families but found nothing in this world worth living for. We've had a rough week all round, a midnight dash to look after our daughter whose behaviour was so concerning that her flat mates rang us. She spent the night with us shouting, ranting at the world, crying until collapsing with total exhaustion at five in the morning. I spend many many hours convincing her, or trying to, that life is worth living.

We live in a world crammed full of expectations. We are supposed to be aspirational! Young people are supposed to 'achieve their full potential'. Like a lot of parents, I brought my children up to do well, to try hard and to do their best. If I could do it all again, I would tell them it's all bollocks! Do what you want, be happy, lay bricks, walk dogs, grow runner beans, love people and be happy with what ever you have. Tonight, home will be my son's soft place to fall, where his mum and him will sit down and talk about all the blessings worth living for. That young man's family are much in our prayers and I pray that the young man can find the peace in death that he never found in life.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxx