Pay day celebration

Pay Day!!!!!!!!!! I've been waiting for this day to come round for what feels like months!! I squirrelled away my overtime payments and took it in one lump. As we are paid at midnight on the last day of the month; I was able to get up by half past five this morning and paid £1800!!!! off my credit card bill! So the money I've earned has already gone and there is no way it can be spent anywhere else even though I'd like to buy the wood for dearly beloved to build a permanent raised bed for the garden, I would also love to buy a greenhouse but we think we can cobble something together from bits and bobs.

Even with the massive financial addition; we carried on as normal. Supper tonight and a small lunch for both of us to 'ding' at work tomorrow is a side busting portion of chicken stew and dumplings. I browned off the chicken thighs (plenty of meat and we've no need for expensive leg or breast!) and put them to one side. Fried the onions, carrots and peppers and then returned the chicken. I added stock, potatoes and peas, thickend with some instant gravy and then added the homemade dumpling with half an hour to go.
I left them to simmer, whilst I sat down to read the magazine dearly beloved found on the train for me (always have a look in first class - they tend to just leave the magazines and papers) It was ready after simmering until the chicken fell off the bone and the dumplings had puffed up to twice the size. It's been icy cold and windy here today and this is just what I needed.

Rationing?

It is well documented the British diet was actually the healthiest during times of war time and post war rationing. The main stay of the diet was vegetables.

We fill up on huge platefuls of steamed veggies, piles of potato and very few expensive items such as faggots (sorry Ali....I know you read this, but the end of term has meant the leftovers are consigned to the freezer and I picked some ready made ones from Aldi on the way home and was £1.30 and some will go into Dearly beloved's sarnies tomorrow! )

I suppose I've developed my eating habits from my mum who was born in 1939 and grew up in times of rationing and then financial hardship of her own. As children we never flinched at mounds of liver casserole, haslet, brawn, mackerel and pollock until we couldn't get up from the table. Jam was always blackberry and sandwiches for packed lunch were always jam!!! Lemonade and ginger beer was homemade and often exploded in the cupboard under the stairs and every meal was accompanied by a pile of mashed spuds and steaming veg, piled so high that I often couldn't see around my plate. Even now, no meal is complete without lots of vegetables or salad and that will always take up three quarters of our plates. So supper tonight consisted of ready made faggots with mashed potatoes and a whole savoy and some huge carrots. Mum and the ministry of food would be proud. Cost as ever is under £1 per portion and it has certainly warmed and cheered us on this murky windswept evening. I like to keep people entertained so click here to enjoy a few minutes of "Wartime kitchen and garden"

Scrubbin' it on the cheap!

I'm feeling exhausted. I have a simple solution to feeling grotty and that is to smell nice. My mum used to say that there was no excuse to be dirty because soap and water was cheap! Well it isn't now. I shower and don't bathe and time my shower to five minutes.....so actually Mum....water is expensive! I got the shampoo as a total bargain from Co-op at a £1 each and it lasts for over a month for the two of us. The scrubby sponge replaces expensive exfoliators, pink girly razor is for staying pink and girly and the rash expense is the 'Sanctuary' perfume, which dearly beloved bought me from ebay(£7) with some money he had made from selling a few bits and bobs. The Boots body spray was £1.39 and although a deodorising body spray, it actually leaves a subtle all over fragrance that lasts all day. Well, I'm off for five minutes of pampering and then off to bed, smelling lovely for very little and cheered up to boot.

Sunday message from the frugal pulpit

Being a teacher saves me a lot of money. My life has a routine to it and very few suprises. Every teacher I know is a complete and utter tight wad, so we all take packed up left overs to eat in our classroom at lunchtime, we never go out to the pub together as we all live in the four corners of Cornwall and even Devon, we all dress plainly and modestly so there's no fashion parade at work and we all have frugal holidays (somewhere damp in a tent!) so there's no one up manship about who went where! So the routine of my life, even though forced on me, is not hardship and saves me money. I can and do wear the same suit for years and years! I can snazz up an outfit with a new shirt or scarf. I work regular hours and days so I can launder on Saturday and leave it until Sunday to dry and it'll be done by tonight.
My weekends are usually as follows. Saturday - clean, shop, cook, garden. Sunday - lie in, school work for about eight hour; iron work clothes, make lunches and collapse in front of the TV for the last time for a week. So there is no time to waste money or do anything that involves any expense. We also have a skill which means we can diversify to make money by exam marking, coursework moderating, one to one tutoring and I am always doing one of those to make extra money. Since my onslaught to eradicate my debts began I have earnt an extra £130 a week (after tax) which means I'm too tired to do anything and that saves me money too. The highlight of my weekend has been watching the Cornish drizzle dampen my new seeds, getting all the laundry done, all of my marking up to date and my lessons prepared for the rest of the week. So, being a teacher saves me money............I promise I am not part of the recruitment drive, but there is a shortage of teachers and joining the profession will save you all a fortune!

Garden vlog....my first attempt

We have patiently waited for weeks for the weather to improve and yesterday we managed to plant veggie seeds. Here's our container garden in my first attempt at vlogging. (rhubarb was £1 from Mole Valley Farmers and not Poundland = amazing how I couldn't remember the name of the place, the potatoes were £1 a bag too) The drone in the back ground is the A38!

Daily debt update

Anyone who has debt knows that it feels like a heavy load on your back - all of the time. Mine feels like that. I'm either planning work, checking how we can make some more money by selling things on ebay, looking for the most frugal food options, not using the water, electricity, gas or car and it consumes me!

I mentioned yesterday that Santander had offered me another 0% balance transfer option; although they would not increase the credit limit so I only moved £1182.75 onto a 0%. I still have a load on my back but it's amazing how it becomes steadily lighter. As I mentioned yesterday; I will pay the complete amount of my private tutoring cheque into my Halifax account and after that and the balance transfer my 'high interest' credit card will have a balance of approx £500. Somehow and don't ask me how just yet........I'll pay that off in a month!!!

My snowballing technique means that I will start paying what I used to pay to both cards to one of them. So, the weight feels lighter today.

In an answer to some of the replies I had yesterday. I have to make sure that neither of us spends anything as we both take the viewpoint that 'treats' are self-indulgent foibles that we can never afford whilst we owe someone else money. Our treats are time with each other, pottering around our garden, local walks, snuggling up together and watching a film, chatting in the bath together with plenty of bubbles or just cooking dinner together. There is nothing we can buy that actually makes us happy in any way. I also remember a truly important message that "God calls us to make the most of what we have; always remember the good, the true and the beautiful; be inspired and be inspiring". I also know that I have to live the change I want to see in the world and as I want the world to be more eco-friendly and less polluted; I have to live lightly on this beautiful planet of ours.

Snowballing debts!

One of the best way to get rid of debts really quickly is to overpay every month and that's what I've been doing. I've given up everything but breathing to do this but it's working and today I reaped the benefits of this. (Check out the link to a snowball calculator which shows how much less interest you will pay if you pay off your debts sooner. )

I 'snowball' debt payments, which mean I pay back as much as I can and as soon as one debt is paid, I snowball the next debt by moving the payment from the card/loan I have paid off onto the other debts so I never reduce the amout I pay each month and I keep over paying and eventually I clear the debts sooner, with less interest. (I pay £1000 in all a month towards: loans, cards and car payments)

I've previously tried to acquire a 0% transfer credit cards to move my debts into and had been turned down until I got a Santander card, which I've now almost paid off. I pay 83% more than the minimum payment! I am doing the same with my existing Halifax balance and I overpay that by 66%! I've been offered another balance transfer deal from Santander, which means I can stop paying the 17.5% to Halifax. I can pay off my debts even quicker.

I reach a milestone on the next pay day as that is when I am paid for the overtime I have done since November and will use that lump sum to pay off half the balance of my Halifax credit card. The existing balance will be paid off, with the interest free option by October this year.

Everytime I hear the little voices that tell me to keep a bit of the money I earn and treat myself; I make sure I ignore them and do without everything I can possibly live without and pay back every last penny as quickly as possible. The result of the privations will mean I will have no credit card debt in 6 months time!! I will then just snowball the payments in the direction of my bank loan and car payments! It's amazing how a snowballing technique soon turns into an avalanche and I know I will be completely debt free by 2012.

Frugal with my time.........am I bothered?

It's been a long, long day in the life of a secondary school teacher so

In the words of Lauren "Am I bovvered?" - go on clickety and enjoy!



I leave home at six thirty and walk, with dearly beloved, to the station and arrive at my desk, from door to door an hour later. I then catch the five forty train home and I'm back in my home a full twelve hours after I originally left. I usually head for the kitchen and love to cook up something tasty and frugal. Today I just made some chips and ate them with a £2 Lidl lasagne that I bought chilled and I've had in the fridge since the weekend. It was delicious and so easy to just pop into the oven and as we only ate half the lasagne, supper has only cost 65p each!

How many ways can I use up leftovers?

Clickety Let me count the ways clickety.........................I make my own bread and save all of the crusts in the freezer; I then make bread crumbs in the food processor and love the way they are chunky and irregular.

I used up some of the remainder of the breadcrumbs by making a treacle tart and with some of the spare pastry; I made a cheese, onion and tomato quiche. We had no 'salad' in the house to eat with the quiche so I grated two large carrots, chopped two cooked beetroot and made salad dressing from the zest and juice of an orange, a splash of vinegar, some olive oil and a sprinkle of salt; all shaken together in an old jam jar.
Here's the quiche and treacle tart. We'll eat half the little treacle tart and freeze the rest; have a slice each of quiche and the rest will be divided up into portions for both of us to take to lunch for the next two days.


Supper! Treacle tart made from left over bread and instant custard (9p a pack from Morrisons!) Quiche with carrot, orange and beetroot salad.
Treacle tart and custard 50p per portion Quiche and salad 50p per portion so £1 per person per meal!

Where's my Michelin star?????

Take a bag of old crusts out of the freezer and ding them in the microwave for just a few seconds to soften. Then blitz in the food processor until large chunky crumbs. Pour the crumbs into a bowl and add some black pepper, salt, some lemony herb mix that you have lying around. Take the defrosted wild pink salmon, that you bought in Aldi for £2.50 for four pieces and roll it in one beaten egg, that you've diluted with milk to make it go further. Then roll in the bread crumbs, then dip back in the egg mixture and repeat with the bread crumbs - I like a crispy crust.
Bake the salmon (I use all of it, we'll eat the remainer cold for lunch tomorrow) in the mini oven for about 20 minutes. Cook the half packet of cherry tomatoes leftover from yesterday (25p in the co-op on my way home)
Take a bag of spinach - 79p Aldi and wash in warm water (that'll almost cook it) and cook it in a tiny amount of water and tiny knob of utterly butterly and then stir in half a pot of Aldi low fat soft cheese (49p a pot), sprinkle in a little black pepper and some squirty lemon juice that keeps in the fridge for years. It's now creamy and lemony. Pile up on a plate, we love it and there's so much nutrition for so little money.

Place the crispy salmon on top of the creamy spinach and add the cooked tomatoes which squirt and mush deliciously when you stick your fork in them and becomes almost a tomato sauce to eat it with. Very posh and cost? £1.16 per person!!! What do you think you would pay for that in a restaurant??? I hope dearly beloved appreciates the money I have saved him tonight!

Sweetcorn Fritters

Take two eggs, two tablespoons of SR flour, 1/2 tin of sweetcorn, half a cup of milk and blitz in the food processor at the end add in the other half of the tin of sweetcorn. Plenty of protein from the eggs and milk and we had them with a pack of cherry tomatoes I picked up from the co-op for 25p on my way home, I just fried the tomatoes until the softened and ate them like a simple tomato sauce with the fritters. Some days need to be very cheap, simple and quick! It already feels like it's going to be a long week and it seemed like a very long walk from the station tonight.

Cotehele House, Quay and Mill

We arrived shortly after 10 am this morning and the car park was already full! We spent a couple of hours around the house and gardens and then walked around the quay area. As ever, lunch was out of foil and a flask but we had a lovely few hours.

I know the National Trust is a charity but it's expensive and I was glad to have the chance to go for free. If any of you are in South East Cornwall; I can really recommend this house but you will need walking boots or wellies as it was too wet for us to access some of the walks today. Nonetheless, it is a beautiful place and so many of the flowers are already out in the garden.


The back of Cotehele house (the 'modern' extension)
Picnic down by the quay.

Free day out with National Trust

This is just a mini-blog as I need to get ready to go out. I discovered yesterday that the National Trust has free entry to their properties this weekend. We're off to Cotehele house today and aim to get there at 11 am as it's bound to be busy with it beign free. HERE is the link to the website where you can download a voucher for free entry. I'm off to make sandwiches and flask as when I say free........I mean costs me next to nothing, other than the fuel to get there. I'll tell you about my day in the Tudor Manor house (built in 1485)...........I haven't had a proper day out in ages so I'm really looking forward to this!!

Savoury pancakes

Start by making the pancake batter from eggs, flour and milk. Beat together vigorously until there are no lumps. Leave to one side. Some chemical reaction takes place when you leave the batter mix for a while. You will then need an assortment of chopped veggies for the filling and some leftover tomato sauce from dinner a few days ago.
Chop up the veggies and fry in a little oil until soft and then add the tomato sauce and leave to simmer whilst you cook the pancakes. (Notice Frugal Queen modelling her brand new second hand top from the British Heart Foundation shop - £2.50! to charity and a lovely new top for me)
Don't worry what the pancakes look like and try to make them as thin as possible.
After making a pile of pancakes, depending on the size of your family; it is time to make the cheese sauce. You will need 4oz flour and 4 oz of grated mature cheddar (or any tasty cheese if you have any lurking in the fridge) and about a pint of milk (The reason I'm making this is because we filled the freezer up with 7pm Morrisons' milk which was going for 9p for two pints) I always just mix up the cheese sauce ingredients and blast in the microwaves and keep taking it out and stirring it until it is thick enough and without lumps.
Then start to assemble your veggie savoury pancakes. Put a good dollop of the mixture inside each pancake and roll up and place into a buttered dish.
We're having three each tonight and we won't have anything with them as they're full of healthy veg, the protein comes from the eggs and milk and it's a really balanced healthy supper. Pour the cheese sauce over the pancakes and bake in a hot oven for around 30 minutes. Enjoy your frugal food.

Recycled Furniture

My dining room is never normally this tidy! This was taken when we had the house on the market and we 'de-cluttered' the house.

Nothing in this room is new or cost very much. The curtains are homemade. The floor was laid by my son, who is a carpenter. The dining room suite was £80 from a house sale and the shelves were made by my son and I recovered the chairs. I love this room and love polishing the table as it was the first piece of 'grown up' furniture I've ever owned as the table and chairs match the sideboard which also match the corner unit. I love the way the wooden floor shines when the sun hits it and remembering Sunday lunch with the family. It takes so little to make a house a home. Usually the room has racks of drying clothes and the table is covered in school work nonetheless; there's no place like home.

dearly beloved!

Nope, it's not our wedding! I have said..........as soon as we can afford it, we'll get married and we've never been able to afford the cake let alone the wedding. Here dearly beloved is an usher as his friend's wedding and we're watching the bride and groom on the steps of the hotel having their photo taken. Normally he's just mentioned in passing but today he gets the full page.

We met, an incredible twenty four years ago; we led different lives then. I was married with a small boy, running my own business in Bath and he was the friend of a friend. We didn't meet again for nine years until I was getting divorced and through the same friends we met up again and the rest is history.

He truly is the most incredible bloke who has supported me through some very thin times and took me and my two children to his heart and cared for our every need for many years whilst I was at college and then training to become a teacher. His positivity is endless and he has cheered me on at every mile stone and gone without so much himself and has never once complained. As we go through yet another thin time, he is as ever, incredibly supportive and loving. I thought I would list everything he has done for me.

Supported my two children and they have been sent on school trips and holiday, had music lessons, had wonderful birthdays and Christmases at his expense.
Gone without everything himself to pay for my children.
Gone without everything to support me through college.
Coped when both my children were teenagers and were extremely difficult.
Renovated two houses and learnt every skill to do it on the job.
Supported me to lose weight and loved me just as much when I put it all back on again.
Had a vasectomy, even though he has no children of his own, as I knew my family was complete.
Found the money somehow to pay for a barrister when my ex tried to get custody of the children.
Followed me and moved when I got a promotion
Who reads my blog every day and I know he will read this...................he really is incredible, supportive, loyal and truly my best friend and this blog is to honour him because he is dearly beloved.

Having a frugal good time

I've started thinking of the summer and those days, weekends and evenings where we make the most of every hour of daylight. I've also been looking back at the photos of us with the kids when they were young and they were spent on Plymouth Hoe, Tinside Pool, Dartmoor and camping in Cornwall. We had no money and used to pack up a picnic, a flask and get in the car and the only expense was the £1 for the Torpoint ferry and the fuel to get us where we wanted to go.
All the photos have smiling faces and the treat was the sandwiches and a drink when we got there and we would even sit in the car and eat it if it rained.

Now the kids have grown and even though we could do so many things; we still love to get outside into the air. Some of the things we have bought have been expensive initially but have given us years of service and days and days of enjoyment. We bought a new tent last year and it was a total bargain from ebay of £80 and I'm really looking forward to a few days away as soon as the weather gets better. We also have bikes and a bike rack and love to cycle down the Camel Trail or around Cardinham woods. A week's holiday for us will cost us around £100 and some of our lodger's money is going into a seperate fund to pay for a week away and this year we hope that our son and his girl friend will take some time to come with us and have a holiday. Nothing beats the simple pleasure of camping somewhere quiet and just vegging out by the tent with a cuppa, in a deck chair with a good book.

The money saving is going really well and we've spent nothing again this month and paid huge chunks off our debts, saved and not wasted a penny. Roll on summer!

In the blink of an eye

After my son's visit on Sunday I was left thinking about my click here daughter and how I haven't seen her in ages. "Slipping through my fingers - Abba"

She was a beautiful baby and as she laid in my arms only minutes after being born; I thought my life was complete. Mywonderful boy and my gorgeous girl! She was the baby who never cried, who slept all night and without comparison, was as beautiful as a summer's day. She truly was the happiest child who never cried, who skipped the terrible twos, who danced into school and loved the very essence of life.


At six years old she had a fiery independence and will to take the world by the throat and shake it! If she wanted to skate in the dark for one more hour; there was nothing anyone could do to stop her. There was a turning point with her at four years old when she started school where the world 'got at her' and she no longer felt like mine and I knew, from an early age that there was little I could do to change how she felt or the path she wanted to take.


By the age of eight a sadness had decended that engulfed her like a cloud that could suffocate her at times and it took another eight years for depression to be diagnosed and eventually fluoxetine finally took her away from me.

She's in a 'rough' place right now and no one else is allowed in. Sometimes we get a glint of the sunnier side of her being.

I had a text on Sunday and I keep reading it and reading it and reading it and although it just says "Happy Mother's Day" those words are as precious as the hug I got from my son and I know she has the strength of character to be OK in the end and she survives as best she can and her life is what she makes it. The end result is a daughter, who is nearly eighteen and still as comparable as a summer's day but more lovely and more temperate.

Fingers to the bone

Old Blog - from a year ago, that I revisited tonight. Times are still really hard for my son. We call him once a week when he is working away. He's fitting out a 'Howdens' store somewhere, I've forgotton where. Staying in a B&B/dole hostel and still working 16 hour days on 28 days straight without a day off. In these hard time, his survival instinct makes him perfectly well able to cope. This is what I wrote a year ago,  Froogs xxxx

My son came to visit me on Sunday. I looked at his hands and unknown to him, I wept over those hands when he left.

I'm extremely proud of my boy; I always have been. He was the most beautiful child and after a difficult birth, lay in my arms and clasped his hands together almost as if in prayer. These are the hands that played the piano and the guitar and never dropped a passed rugby ball. These are the hands I held when he needed me and stretched out when he wanted picking up.

These are now the hands of a skilled carpenter who can't get work where he lives so he goes wherever the work is. These are the hands that earn a living to put a roof over his girlfirend's head to support her whilst she finishes university. These are the hands that have fitted out shops, offices, built extensions, put roofs on, laid floors, built kitchens and built his granny's kitchen without payment..........so why did I cry?

As work is so scarce, when he has work; he works sixteen hour days and they are bruised, suffering white finger and shake when he holds cutlery. These are hands, that due to the fragility of the economy can't take a day off when they are in pain, bleeding or scarred. These are the hands of someone who doesn't complain but is grateful for every day's work he can get. These are a contractor's hands who doesn't know where the next job is or where he will lay his head next week. These are the hands on the end of the arms that held his mum tight on mother's day. These are the hands that will be working long after I've gone to bed and carry a takeaway back to a B&B to be eaten in the back of a van long after day.

We so often look at our own lives and the triviality of our own worries and have to remember that there are many hands that ache every day from the toil of just trying to keep a job. So I looked at my son's hands and no matter how proud I am of him, wept for the pain he suffers; just trying to stay in employment in hard economic times.

Love Froogs xxx

Foraging for lunch.

A wonderful sign of imminent spring is the appearance of wild garlic. (allium ursinum) The leaves are tender and soft and can be picked without disturbing the root. So, whilst walking the pooches I picked a pocketful to make a flavouring to go with our lunch.
Give it a good wash and then dry it. Chop it finely with some salt and stir into a paste with some olive oil. Rub it all over the free range chicken (or fish?) near the end of the cooking. (excessive heat kills the flavour)
Oh, to be truly frugal, use the heat of the oven to cook the food for the rest of the week. I cooked two casseroles and two lasagnes whilst the oven was being used.
More typical behaviour of the frugal as gas is horrendously expensive!! Why waste it by only cooking one meal.