Pilchards and no pay?

Then it's good enough for me.

I've had a funny old day at work! I've had a king size bollocking for not being prepared to work for nothing on a Saturday! We've been asked to attend a training day, where we will be trained to observe teachers and give feedback........ on a Saturday! I assumed that we would be paid but we're expected to come into work for the day for no pay; so I refused. I'm not contractually obliged. I've been told that I will not be able to observe staff if I don't attend the course and if I can't do that then I won't be fulfilling my obligation as head of department. I asked my union rep to ask for us to be paid and was told that the staff couldn't be made to come in and the training relied on goodwill of the managers to come in. As you can imagine I told them to stick it in their Ofsted report and file it. I was called a maverick and that no one else had complained...................can you hear the workplace intimidation taking place yet??? So; I'm still wrangling for pay! If they think I'm dragging myself away from DB on one of the two days I get to spend with him a week then they're sorely mistaken! Any way back to Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall. Of all things he made sardines and posh stuff on toast. Here is my frugal alternative. Buy a tin of pilchards.....they are are the same fish!

Mash in a bowl, add some salt and pepper and a dash of vinegar....lemon if you have any. Spread onto toast and eat. It nearly choked me after today, but I managed because it's delicious.

It's tough, but you know you have to!!!

Budgetting is so tough. We've had a tough month because we haven't been as disciplined as we must be. A few quid here, too much diesel there, toothache......dentist bill, follow up treatment, dog and cat insecticide. Budgetting is about putting money aside for what you have to pay for, what you will pay for in a few day and what you might pay for. It's also about leaving some spare in case you find something you want to pay for.

Budgetting really can get us down and it did today. We are not geographically close to DB's family and we have to put money aside to go to see them. We've already assigned the lodger's money for that. I need a new waterproof coat and some shoes and I'm on a mission to make the money for that. I will start Ebaying at the weekend.

It is totally vital that people budget, that you pay everything on pay day, that you buy the big month shop, that you buy all of the toiletries and pet food in one go. In fact bulk buy anything durable to last the month. Now we know of everything we have to pay and what we have left. We also have to make sure we don't spend any of the 'what we have left' until the week before pay day, in case anything pops up, such as a tooth ache that needs treatment.

My advice to everyone for a budgetting 'must' this month, is cold and flu remedies. There are some snotty and claggy old germs stamping around and they are bound to get you. A bottle of Beechams cold and flu remedy can cost £5, so stock up. Buy some long lasting lemon juice and a squeezy bottle of honey. Get some Benylin and paracetamol. If your first aid kit is low, fill that up on pay day too. All of the little extras can throw your budget out of balance so prepare for it.

Our budget is below. We get paid individually, we pay bills from individual accounts so that's how I itemise our budget. We sit down together and thrash this out. It's tough but we know we have to do this and we've had words with ourselves and have been very stern with each other and told each other not to spend anything without consultation. I'm sure that we've missed important items and I'm sure the 30th of October will come round with us having nothing but pennies to our names. We remain positive in so much that our debts are steadily decreasing and we are getting better and better at doing more with less.

Anyone on this journey with me will know that feeling when you just have no spontaneity and a coat and a pair of shoes must be earned as an extra. I remind myself that this is only temporary and I am 21 months from being debt free, selling the big house, downsizing and saving money for dinner date and a hair do! Until then we fight the good fight with frugal good humour.

As usual, double click the image below to see it.

Some days you're the dog....

and some days you're the lamp post! You know who you are..............and we love you xxxxxxxxxxxx

Toffee Apple crumble

Yesterday, I tried to make fudge. I got it to the 'ball' stage when dropped into ice cold water and then kept stirring it for another ten minutes, then another and then another. It just didn't 'turn. I poured it into the mould but it stayed soft. It was not to be wasted so I made Toffee Apple crumble.

I made crumble as usual, by rubbing half the weight of fat to flour, I then added half a cup of sugar.

I peeled, cored and diced the apple, placed that in a small dish with chunks of the fudge. I sprinkled the crumble on top and cooked it in the mini oven for 40 minutes.


I thought the custard mix had been discontinued but there it was when we went at the weekend. 6p and it makes four servings. You just add boiling water. We think it's lovely.

I made two crumbles from the windfall apples, the it all went wrong fudge. We had half of one tonight, we'll have the other half in Tupperware for our lunch with the rest of the custard and one will go in the freezer.

The end result was soft apples in a toffee fudge sauce, with buttery crumble and custard. Nothing gets wasted here, even if it goes wrong.

Homemade stuffing from saved breadcrumbs

We save all of the ends of the loaves and stick them in bags in the freezer, we then wizz them through the food processor to make breadcrumbs. I use these to coat meat or fish, to make stuffing or to make faggots. I have onions from the garden, which are stored by hanging them in the shed and I still have sage growing in the garden. To make sage and onion stuffing, I took a handful of sage leaves, one onion and a small bag of bread crumbs. I finely diced the sage and onion, mixed that with the breadcrumbs, seasoned with salt and pepper and mixed it together with two eggs and some water.

You can shape this into balls and roast on an oiled tray but I stuffed it into the cavity of the chicken. Behind the dish is a pot of yesterday's mincemeat and some of the chillies that I picked today.

I make the most of the heat and expense of the oven by cooking the vegetables in with the chicken. I peeled and sliced, carrots, two leeks, an onion and some parsnips.

I placed the stuffed and seasoned chicken on top.

Here is the end result, served with shredded steamed cabbage and some of my damson jelly. the whole point of having stuffing is that it not only moistens the bird but make the meal go further, we also don't have potatoes when we have stuffing............it's enough without it!

We both work late on Mondays, so I plated two more meals in readiness for tomorrow. All we will have to do is microwave them. I also made flapjacks and an apple crumble whilst the oven was on and I shall make chicken and vegetable pie with the leftovers from today. Nothing's wasted and we also don't waste time or the electricity bill either.

Frugal Mincemeat

I've added the finished result as the mincemeat took three hours to slowly cook. The house smells fruity and spicy. I like the large lumps of apple, which are cooked but still have their shape. I made four large jars for 89p per jar and each jar would make 24 mince pies. It's a very cheap yet indulgent treat to eat throughout December and the New Year and nothing beats homemade. The full 'how to' is below.

I've had another happy day pottering about my kitchen and after seeing Christmas goods in the supermarket today, I thought I ought to start making some things to spread out the cost.

The recipe and full instructions for this can be found by Googling "Delia Smith Mincemeat" and you will find her methods and instructions on the BBC food site. You can make this and not cook it, but by cooking it, you will stop the apples from fermenting and making the jars explode. This will last for years but I give a jar each to family members in advance of Christmas so they can make mince pie with the gift I give them. I have adapted the recipe and haven't included the expensive dried fruit but substituted the cheaper mixed fruit instead of singular packs of fruit, peel and I omitted the almonds, which are expensive. Even though I have made this cheaply, it knocks spots off anything you can buy as it has so much more flavour and texture. Ingredients: 3 large cored and diced cooking apples, zest and juice of 2 lemons and 2 oranges, 350g of soft dark brown sugar, 4 teaspspoons of mixed spice, half teaspoon nutmeg, half teaspoon of cinnamon, 6 tablespoons of sloe gin (should have been brandy but I don't have any) 1 250g pack of suet (I used beef suet but you can use veggie suet).

How to make mincemeat. Pour two packs of dried mixed fruit into a large pan/casserole dish. Remove zest off citrus fruit and add to the mixed fruit.

Add the suet.

Squeeze the lemons and oranges.

Dice the apple - I leave mine in biggish lump as I don't want my mince pies to be just goo.

Stir everything together.

Add the sugar - you can see now that I've remembered that I am going to slow cook this in the oven and have now transferred this to a casserole dish!! Doh!

Add the cinnamon.

And the nutmeg.

And the mixed spice.

And the fruit juice.

And what every kind of wintery booze you have, if you have rum, sherry or brandy, then add six tablespoons.

Stir everything together, place a loose lid or loose foil over the dish and place in a low oven, 120ish for three hours. Whilst typing this, I remembered that I could have saved the electricity and had made this in my slow cooker. Which ever method you use, leave it in the oven for around three hours until everything is soft and cooked. More photos to come when I take it out of the oven.

How the other half live

When we usually think of poverty, we think of the pre-welfare state starvation that could happen to any family who were suddenly jobless or parent less. People died of 'filth diseases' and starved; internal parasites were a common cause of death. Anyone who reads this and works in education in the UK, will know of families who live in real deprivation and their children suffer. Usually, they don't do well in school and it is the minority who rise up out of their circumstances and make something of themselves: I know, I was one of them. Even though we do everything we can to raise aspiration and close the gaps between rich and poor; it's difficult to support your children with their maths homework when you watch the last 20p count down to zero on the electricity key meter.

One of my greatest ambitions once I am debt free is to do more for others. I have to admit I was physically in pain, when I watched the Channel 4 programme "How the other half live". The premise of the programme works to find a family who will benefit from sponsorship by a family who can afford to do so. Up and down this country tonight, in over crowded, sub standard housing; families will be doing what they can to get by. There are incredible families, often 'working two jobs' where mum will come in from work and dad will go out and somehow they manage to just pay the rent and keep the bills paid. There are however, families so deeply in debt, trapped on benefits, without any qualifications who can see no way out of their circumstances.

The Channel 4 programme I watched, showed one such family. Mum and dad were of very limited ability, both had health issues, their children had learning difficulties and seven of them lived in a two bedroom house in the middle of a crime ridden council estate. They were given much needed relief by a supporting family who gave them some money. The children were bought beds, bedding, shoes and clothes and you would have thought it was Christmas day. That moment humbled me and made me realise how incredibly fortunate, well off and comfortable I really am.

It also made me incredibly grateful for the intelligence and resourcefulness of my parents. My mother would buy jumble sale jumpers, unpick them and knit me something fashionable from a pattern in a magazine. She would also buy jumble sale clothes and fashion them into something nicer with her sewing machine. We were very well fed from fresh veg from the garden and the fish my dad caught from the harbour wall. We kept warm from well stocked open fires because Dad and his friend would clear the trees that died from the 1970's dearth of Dutch Elm disease. We were well educated because: they made us respect and work for our teachers, we went to Sunday school and we were taken to the library every week. We never knew we were poor.

I am lucky enough to be part of the other half, who has a warm comfortable house that I can afford to pay for, with a plentiful kitchen. We both have good jobs and we never go without. I should never forget how well off I am and today and every day; should count my blessings.

Bums on seats!

Too busy to type! Open evening tonight; doing our best to fill the falling roll. Would all fertile people please have a baby or seven as our schools are diminishing! Hopefully we'll have filled a few empty spaces tonight.

A strangle hold grip on debts.

Living on a budget! Not always fun but necessary for everyone! I used budget brain and updated it to show alterations of standing orders and overpayments. Please excuse the big gaps between pictures today but I have screen copies from the budgetbrain website and the format isn't easy to port over. Double click to see the budget below.
You can see these pictures by double clicking them. It makes you put everything on the sheets, from boiler insurance to life insurance. Our clothing allowance is £30 a month and that includes shoes for both of us although that's mainly limited to a new pair of work shoes once a year. As you may already know I buy my clothes from car boot sales, charity shops and posh things from ebay.

Living off a immovable budget is difficult. It means you have to forgo spontaneity and plan for activities. You can never just 'go shopping' unless you have set aside a specific set amount to take and you take that in cash and nothing else. You can not afford meals out and birthday and Christmas presents are always handmade. You start to live very very differently and start to put money aside for trips to relatives as you know you need some spare money for the fuel to get there.
What ever we have left at the end of the month goes onto credit card bills. Every so often, we'll log onto our accounts and see what the 'odds' are. If I have £243.26 in my account, I will often transfer £3.26 over to a credit card account and what ever I have left at the end of the month goes onto my 0% credit card to over pay it even more and pay off what I can. It leaves so very little for anything else that a day out, or something for the house has to be very carefully thought through. If I need a new coat, then I have to make some extra money to do this. If we need anything at all we try and sell something to pay for it, or we wait until payday to spend what's left if there is anything left.

We also try to have a treat, usually on pay day it's about ten quid which we spend on wine, some chocolate and a big bag of crisps. We always factor in a couple of days out a month where we spend a few pounds on some diesel and get out for a day here and there. I also buy a few craft items to make presents from. This month I bought coconut oil, cocoa butter and Shea butter to make some 'posh' soap for presents for family and friends. I will spend money on ingredients for mince meat, Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings, which are also for presents this month too. So a bigger than average spend for the end of September.

I know there are people who read my blog who are: careful with money and are living OK, some are in debt and are already doing something about it, some are on low fixed incomes such as a pension and are using their frugal skills to live as comfortably as possible and some people who need to embark on the journey and lifestyle I am on, but haven't jumped in with both feet just yet.

Where ever you are and who ever you are, make a budget. Know what you have. Know where it's going. You may see, like we did, that there is a little bit of slack and we can pay a little bit more to our debts each month or not worry when the dogs need grooming. We have as Foster Mummy says 'nuff pence' and we're getting by in style. I don't mean to boast but I'm blogging on my lap top whilst wrapped up in bed with the leccy blanket on and I'm deliciously toasty. DB is next to me and reading and our pets are at our feet. All is well!

OOOOOOOOO! I love it!!!!

My second batch of soap has turned out better than the first, so I'm looking forward to being progressively better at soap making. I have masses of my old soap left. I have grated it and blitzed it and added washing soda and I use that to wash the dishes and the clothes. I use it simply grated and without washing soda to wash the windows, the floor and door frames. I have even used the remnants of the 'washing bucket' to clean out the toilets and it cleans that too.

I have a bar of it by each sink, I use it in the shower and I love the fact that I've made it! It looks a bit angular but that soon soften up once it's been rubbed over wet skin or a flannel. I've made bigger bars this time as it shrinks as it hardens and it gets better the harder it gets (absolutely NO 'Carry on' jokes permitted in the comments as I know how silly we can get with a bit of double entendre!!!)

I used to love to wander through Dingles, sniff the Chanel and marvel at the Clinique and buy the odd treat of toiletries but my new found love of the soapy smell of homemade soap around me, the laundry and the house is something I have just fallen in love with. It's just the soapiest mildest most natural soap I have ever used and as I've just got out of the shower, should you sniff me........you discover that the lavender whiff it leaves behind is just lovely.

A lot of month left at the end of the money!

I'm using up what ever we have and know quite confidently that I don't have to buy anything until pay day in 10 days time.

Dinner was simply what we have laid around. Cous cous with diced onion, tomato and green pepper, with lemon juice and dash of olive oil and chopped mint. Tofu and Bean souffle, carrot and nut rissoles and cannelini bean dip. It's a bit of a blow out for a Monday night. I'm trying to cheer our lodger up tonight, his wife works at the other end of the country and it's hard for them to be apart. He's a vegetarian so I thought I'd make some supper for him too.

Homemade Liqueurs! Pissed? I will be!

Lots of people wanted to know how to make sloe gin and the other liqueurs I have made. I haven't drunk any of these yet, so I don't actually know if they are any good or not. Here's how I did this. Firstly, I bought 1 bottle of Tesco vodka and 2 bottles of Tesco gin. Just under £8 per bottle! I know that's a lot of money but the liqueurs will last me for months. When I made the sloe gin, I collected 250g of sloes and I froze them and this causes the skins to split. I decanted the 75cl of gin into a larger bottle I had and added the 250g of sloes and 250g of white sugar. I put the lid on and shook it. Every so often, I take the bottle out of the cupboard and I shake it. As the days have gone by, it has darkened and become richer looking.

I used two bottles for the blackberry gin. I decanted half from one bottle of gin into another and added 125g of blackberries to each bottle, as I squished them down the neck, one by one. I then used a funnel and added 125g of white sugar. As with the sloe gin, I shake it periodically and it's darkening every day.

Are you picking up on a pattern here? Same weight of sugar as fruit, stuff fruit into the spirits. I used vodka with the raspberries after seeing a bottle of rapsberry vodka in the supermarket. I bought the raspberries and blackberries on offer and both were 99p a punnet for 250g.

Here's the haul so far. I added a dash of vanilla essence to the raspberry vodka and a dash of almond essence to the sloe gin and didn't add anything at all to the blackberry gin. Foster Mummy makes blackberry vodka and tells me that you should keep it in a dark cupboard, if only to stop visitors thinking that I have a boozing problem! I'm hoping to get started on these for Christmas! but the longer you leave them, the better they are. When you want to drink them, simply sieve into a clean bottle and I assume eat the fruit before falling asleep on the sofa!

Frugal Soap Making tutorial

To make soap you will need some basic equipment. A very large measuring jug, wooden spoon, goggles, thick rubber gloves, apron, stainless steel large saucepan, a hand blender, moulds for the soap and accurate digital weighing scales.

The ingredients, suppliers and prices:

295g of caustic soda - Boots - 1.44
750ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil - Tesco -2.25
850ml Sunflower Oil - tesco - 1.05
625g Cookeen - Tesco - 1.25
half small bottle of Lavender essential oil - Liskeard posh handbag shop/now closed - .50
900ml water - I use bottled but you can use tap.

total = 6.49 and I will make 24 large bars of soap at 27p per bar.


I followed the instructions and recipe for soap on the Channel 4 website. There are many soap making websites, with recipes on the net. It is very easy and very cheap to make. Do not imagine your soap to turn out to be the mass produced type of soap you find in Tesco, the cheapest bar I saw in there today was 43p for their ivory soap. There soap will have animal fat as the main product, certainly will not be one third olive oil and certainly not have the purity and simplicity of homemade soap.

Start by very careful and accurately weighing your ingredients. Add the solid oil to the liquid oil and gently heat in a stainless steel saucepan until all the ingredients are liquid. Leave to cool.

Now measure out the water and ADD THE CAUSTIC SODA TO THE WATER!!! NEVER the other way round!!!



Make sure you are wearing gloves, apron and goggles all the time, if you splash your skin or clothes you can make holes in your clothes and seriously burn yourself.

When the oils and caustic and water mixture are a similar temperature, gently pour the caustic mix into the oils. You can check the temperature by touching the outside of both containers. They should be still warm when you mix them.

The mixing and blending takes ages!!! and ages!! and ages!!! You will have white finger by the end of it, but you just have to keep mixing.

The more you blend and stir, the more gloopy and custard like the mixture becomes, as it saponifies. As it starts to thicken, you can add the essential oils. It's your choice. I like something inoffensive and simple, such as lavender.

You can see from the picture below that the soap is starting to reach trace, when it does so, you can lift the blender out, pour the mixture across the surface and it will leave a trail.

Below is an example of the soap being at 'trace'. I have lifted it out of the mixture and it leaves a noticable pattern when I stir the surface and drop some soap on top.

Below is an even clearer picture of trace.

Below, you can see the pale colour of 'real' vegetable soap.

I pour mine into plastic tubs, but old margarine tubs or ice cream tubs will do. I fill them right up so I can have quite large bars of soap as they shrink when you dry them.

The soap starts to set and harden straight away. This is the second batch of soap that I have made and I am already using the previous batch. It is a low foaming soap and very mild on my skin, as well as having a gentle lavender fragrance that permeates through our home. It grates well for clothes and household washing and it holds together well in the shower.

I mixed the oils and caustic mixture at a warmer temperature than I did last time and I only used my hand blender to mix it, it came to trace quite quickly and I blended it a lot more thoroughly than before and I used more essential oil than before. You will find that subsequent batches of soap are of a better quality than your previous attempts.

It's a very low cost alternative to the artisan soaps that you can buy from companies such as Faith in Nature and Ecover. It's very soft on my clothes and has a gentle real soap smell on dry laundered clothes as well as leaving my skin really soft from the conditioning affect of the olive oil.

After pouring into moulds, I put the lids on the boxes and they are sat wrapped up in towels to keep them warm over night. I will remove the towels and check the soap tomorrow morning, although it was set when I checked it a few hours ago, the latent heat keeps 'cooking' the soap.

Tomorrow, I will turn it out onto a scrubbed chopping board, cut each box into eight large bars and I will store it on a tray at the top of the airing cupboard for a month before I use it, however, the longer it dries in the air, the better is seems to get.

It's also a lovely hobby and fun to do. (P.S - in case you think I've been lazy, today I have made: Blackberry gin, blackberry and apple jelly and the soap)