Frugal Packed Lunch

Well today was another no-spend day. I'm up early to go off on a 'school' trip tomorrow, with the college I go to one morning a week to study horticulture. It is a sort of side-project while I save up for my Garden Design course.

 

Tomorrow will be a real test of my determination not to spend anything during the week. The whole trip is mercifully free, but I know that there are lots of cafes and resteraunts where we are going and I could easily blow £15 on lunch. I don't have it in my budget ergo, I am not spending it!

So tonight I scoured my imagination and what was left in the fridge and cupboards to make something nice for lunch. It's not so bad missing out on buying lunch if you have put some effort into your picnic.

 

First, breakfast. It is was tradition for me to buy breakfast such as a croissant or breakfast bap and a coffee in the college canteen and eat it with my fellow students. For obvious reasons, this won't be happening any more.

 

So, I scoured the cupboard and came across these:

 

 

Which are traditionally fairly breakfasty, no? I also found a manky banana. An online search threw up Banana and Prune Muffins.

 

 

It took about five minutes to throw in the other ingredients and lazily mash them with an electric whisk.

 

 

I found some old cupcake cases in the cupboard - I didn't buy them and have a feeling that either LB is a secret baker, or they belong to his ex-girlfriend. Oh well, waste not want not!

 

 

25 minutes later, I have breakfast for tomorrow, which I will take with a flask of coffee. Cost was: 200g Morrisons Savers Self Raising Flour (4p), Banana (15p) Prunes (79p) Egg (16p) Oil (25p) 100g Sugar (14p) = £1.53 for 10 so 15p each. Bargain!!

  

 

Then I made six rolls - this is the same dough recipe I always use and comes out at 60p for 6 or 10p each. I will put 1/2 tin of tuna (50p) and tablespoon of mayo (35p) in two of these, making a total of 95p.

 

 

But just in case I am still peckish - it's a long day - I whizzed up some hummus using a tin of chick peas, garlic, tahini, olive oil and lemon juice. I will chop up some carrots and celery in the morning and apologise profusely to my fellow students for reeking out the minibus!

 

Then, since I was in the zone, the Archers was on Radio 4 and all was good with the world, I carried on and made tomorrow's dinner, Chorizo and Chick Pea Stew.

 

 

This is quite cheap as a tiny bit of chorizo goes a long way.

 

 

It bubbled away for about half an hour while I did other stuff.

 

 

And I made enough for two lunches and a main meal. This cost 94p per portion (£1.05 for the tinned tomatoes, 33p for the pepper, 75p for 6" of chorizo, 79p for a tin of chickpeas, 15p for the garlic and 25p for some red lentils, 15p for an onion 10p for spices and 20p for oil) which, even with a hunk of sourdough bread for lunch, and a jacket potato for dinner, is pretty darn frugal.

It sounds like a lot, but I came home at 6.30 and was sitting down with a cup of tea and 'The Thick of It' re-runs by 8, having eaten the stir fry I also cooked tonight. One thing to be said for frugalism - you don't have time to get bored!

 

Frugal Newspapers

I used to regularly buy a paper on both Saturday and Sunday, as I have a romantic notion about leisurely flicking through the paper while I sip coffee and eat croissants at the weekend.

Actually they usually ended up being placed unread and still folded in pristine virgin fashion, into the recycling bin - I never had the time to read them and then they became superseded by events. Obviously in this new frugal era, I can't be spending £5 a weekend on papers (£260 a year!).

Hardcore frugalists remind me that all content is available on-line for free - but firing up the laptop of a Sunday morning and reading online - when I spend 37.5 hours a week gawping at a monitor at work, does not have the same appeal. Besides, I get told off by the work IT people for getting crumbs in the keyboard.

However - there is Waitrose!

 

 

Obviously, my Waitrose shopping days are probably long gone, and I will be making the humiliating walk through the same local Waitrose carpark to the Lidl behind.   However, I do still have my 'MyWaitrose' card. Waitrose dogfood is the best I have found, and the most reasonably priced, at £2.50 for 6 cans. If you spend a minimum of £10 (24 cans of dogfood) you can get a paper for free. So now, I pop in of a Sunday morning to buy 2 weeks dogfood supply and pick up the Observer absolutely FREE. The trick is obviously to buy what you went in for and NOTHING else (I only took £10 in cash lest I be tempted).

 

So this evening (not having time at the weekend anyway) I sat down for an hour and treated myself to a flick through the papers. Although the news is obviously now out of date, this is only about ten pages. Most of the paper is comment, the Weekend section or the Magazine, which don't really date and can be read during the week or even the following Saturday, giving me the feeling I have bought papers every day, for nothing. It is really relaxing to just sit with a cup of tea and read for an hour.

 

The weeks that I don't need dogfood, I will be investigating the prices of their fresh, frozen and value ranges to see what else I can buy that was on my list anyway- and I will not come out with £50 of scented candles, luxury greeting cards, preserved artichoke hearts, avocado oil, baby vegetables or artisan bread!

 



Sunday

Another great and frugal day. We were invited around to great friends for a meal - we always go there as they have young children, but to spread the burden, I brought dessert.

I plumped for Apple Crumble, using some leftover apples we had in the freezer (from someone with too many back in the autumn). To ensure it got there in one piece, I made a 'kit' that could quickly be assembled at her house.

Total cost to me was £4 for the wine (Aldi again!) and £0.98 for two packets of custard - the rest was made using what we had in the kitchen. We had a lovely evening in, sitting in the garden and chatting and laughing into the night- our contribution cost £5 but good friendship is priceless!

And this afternoon, I made a quiche to take to work during the week. This was another cheapy, as I used up all of the old veggies from the fridge.

 

It cost:

Butter - 100g (39p)
Flour - 200g (6p)
4 eggs - (66p)
100g cheese (57p)
Mushrooms (10p)
Onion (15p)
Chives from the garden  - free!

Total: £1.93

LB and I will take a quarter each, each day - so 48p for each lunch, with some homemade coleslaw and leftover salady bits. Tasty!

Worth Wearing means Worth Reparing! And other things

What a brilliant Saturday. I really enjoyed pottering about and getting things done.

 

Total Spend:£9.05

 

I achieved a LOAD today, just pottering and doing the things I knew had to be done. Here's what I did:

 

1. Got my Shoes Repaired

 

 

 

These shoes were discounted to £22 and I wore them to work none-stop last year. However, that annoying thing happened whereby the tip of the heel falls off after a while and you are left trotting about with this annoying squeak of metal on floor tiles. Once upon a time I would have binned them, but I have bought myself another year out of them by paying £7.50 to have them repaired - much cheaper than buying another pair and I must admit, it feels good to mend what you have.

 

 

 

 

2. Tended my Veg

 

I spent two satisfying hours down at the allotment, hoeing, watering and planting a few things out. I will introduce you one time soon. At the moment I have strawberries just about to ripen, rhubarb, potatoes, butternut squash, broad beans, carrots, swede, turnip, cauliflower, red cabbage and broccoli up there growing away nicely. I even picked up some tomatoes for nothing, to go in the greenhouse  conservatory from a plot holder who had grown too many. They were a bit straggly and desperate for a bigger pot.

 

 

But with a bit of TLC they have perked up and will be just fine.

 

 

 

The garden is where I grow all of the high-maintenance stuff, like courgettes, beans and lettuce which need daily picking and watering - I just don't get to the allotment every day. It isn't beautiful for a wannabe garden designer I know - but we don't think we will be in this house for that much longer, so I have resisted the urge to make it pretty - it is productive though.

 

 



Things are growing away - we will have salad all though the summer from this tiny plot. I extended it recently and was about to get some 'Warrior Compost' from the recycling centre (£2 a bag - needed four bags) but then thought again. We had a large delivery of manure at the allotment last year - so I bagged some of that instead and brought it home in the car in some rubble sacking - praying I didn't need to do an emergency stop. I dug this in and incorporated some blood, fish and bonemeal and it is ready to go for the courgettes as soon as they are big enough.

 

3. Made some Bread

 

I have recently re-started making my own sourdough bread. I have bought it in the recent past for £2.70 a loaf - I just love the tangy flavour and the lovely texture. But, no more now I am frugal. So, last week, I set my sourdough starter off.

 

 

 

It is really simple - flour and water mixed and left to 'harvest' the yeast in the atmosphere, which is 'fed' and nurtured to grow a little yeast colony - which you then use to make bread. If you are interested, this is the recipe I use.

 

 

It rose sedately in the conservatory all day...

 

 

 

And was ready much later that evening .It is a little flat I concede - I think it really needs a large loaf tin as it lacks the robustness of normal dough. But it tastes divine!

 

This cost me: 500g bread flour (53p), salt (2p?) water (free!) and a little slug of vegetable oil (5p). Grand total: 60p!

 

I also spent £1.55 on a reel of black cotton and most of the day working on a super-frugal sewing project, but I will save that for another day, when it is finished.

 

What a relaxing and satisfying day.

Frugal Friday

My first frugal Friday was lovely - I really wouldn't have had it any other way. At the end of a long week, I really don't want to do anything other than crash on the sofa and really, even if the cinema and a pizza out was free, I don't think I would have the energy. Which made fitting it into my new frugal life easy peasy.

Every Friday, a good friend of the Lovely Boyf (LB) comes round with his Game of Thrones box-set. This has been going on for some time now as we were a bit late to the party. But now we are hooked!

 

 

Good free entertainment - but I spent £3.99 on a bottle of red at Aldi. I am a bit of a wine snob but actually, I have to admit as I polish off the remainder while I type, Aldi wine is fine - it was still a nice treat to relax with on a Friday night, and still less than a pint from our local! I have made it last all weekend though, so I suppose you could argue I only spent £2 of it on Friday!?!

Rather than get a takeaway, I made homemade pizza. I have a bread maker and it takes no time at all to whiz up the dough (although I have done this by hand and it is no trouble either). I make it on a Thursday night and bung it in the fridge, so all I have to do is roll it, load it up and bung it in the oven. I can honestly say that having taken years to perfect this, I prefer my own pizza to Dominoes - far less dry and doughy and just to my liking. It goes down well with the boys too.

I wish I had remembered to take a photo of the finished result before it was scoffed, you will have to trust me, it was delicious.

Dominoes charge £16.99 for my pizza of choice - I calculated that mine cost: 500g Flour(58p) 5g Yeast (6p) Oil (10p) Water (free!) 2 Mushrooms (10p) 1/2 red onion (5p) 3 bags value Mozerella (1.35) 1 tube tomato puree (49p) 1/2 tin tomatoes (15p) garlic granules (5p) 1 whole tomato (15p) = £3.18, so £1.05 each! Bargain.

I Ain't Buying!

So I think this whole frugal, simple living experience will be a lot easier and more enjoyable if I get my head around the non-consumer thing. I am trying to develop an awareness of money-making companies to persuading me to buy things I don’t want, the idea being that I can see their efforts for what they are – to boost their profits at the expense of my pocket – and become immune to it. Or even contemptuous of it!

Well, I was presented with such an opportunity this morning when I dutifully went to pay off my monthly catalogue payment. Predictably, I had forgotten my log-in to my account, and so re-set it. This email arrived seconds later:

Thank you for choosing to shop at www.littlewoods.com.

Click here to change your password and start shopping.

Kind regards,

Online Customer Care

Well, actually Online Customer Care, all I wanted to do was change my password and pay off my bill so that I am one payment closer to getting out of your debt!

Once logged in, for the first time I really noticed the bombardment of attempts to get you to shop:

I fell for this one last time, hence the reason I am now having to log on and pay off my account. The problem being that 12 month’s time became now, and I am now just as reluctant to part with my £37.24 as I was back then. Funnily enough the lottery win/rich husband/unknown windfall didn’t materialise and I am still strapped for cash, only now with this extra bill to pay.

Having paid off my instalment, I was reminded that my credit limit had been increased to £600, and that I had £522 to spend today. What on? I don’t need anything. Do I?

Oh wait, the holidays are coming up…I need to make the whole family look gorgeous!

Because it isn’t enough that they spend their time having fun, they have to look gorgeous while they do it!

Once upon a time I fell for this attempt to sell me ‘good times’ by posting pictures of young beautiful people enjoying themselves in new gear,and launched a campaign every April to get ‘ready for summer’ – usually a crash diet, frenzied exfoliation and a whole load of new summer clothes, which in reality only got worn once as summer turned out to be about 3 weekends in August.

This year I will be wearing my trusty denim skirt and scuffed old daps, £1.99 flip flops and stretchy tops. I will be focussing on what is actually important – spending time in the countryside, trips away in the camper, nurturing my allotment, having picnics and reading in the sunshine. Wearing brand new clothes will not make any of these things more enjoyable, nobody will notice what I am wearing anyway and in fact, knowing I am in debt because of it and thus further away from my goal, would actually make me miserable.

But wait…

Father’s Day! My dad won’t know how much he means to me! How do I demonstrate my filial affection?

 

An Iphone wallet? Hang on a minute…I think this might be bullshit. My dad wouldn’t know how to turn an iPhone on, let alone require a swanky new wallet to put it in. I am quite lucky in that my family don’t go in for extravagant gifts, and I can honestly say, hand on heart, that my dad would be more impressed with a bottle of real ale (£1.99). Or I could make him a cake, or have the family over for lunch, or spend the day working in his garden. Either way, I am absolutely certain that the only person who would be delighted if I forked out £39 for an iPhone wallet this Father’s day is Mr Littlewoods.

Yes, it’s working! Damn you Littlewoods and your cynical attempts to guilt-trip me into buying stuff I don’t need. What a load of tosh -  I ain’t buying!