Hello Dear Reader,

GOODIE BAG PRIZE DRAW GOES TO FRUGAL FAIRY - PLEASE EMAIL ME YOUR ADDRESS SO I CAN POST THIS OFF TO YOU AS SOON AS I CAN XXXX THANKS EVERYONE FOR ENTERING.

All do the pay day dance!!! I’ve been out today and bought all the meat we can afford for the month which came to £24. All the rest of the meals will be meatless and much cheaper to balance out the ever increasing cost of meat. I bought four lamb shanks for £7 (£1.75 each and each one is enough for the two of us) I’ve slow cooked two and we’ll have some with our supper tonight and I will plate two meals, exactly the same which will be ‘ding’ for our supper tomorrow night. Mondays are always tiring!

I bought 1.6Kilos of Braising steak for £6 and have bagged up and frozen four 400g portions, which I have already cubed to make my life easier when I get round to using the beef.

I bought two kilos of bacon pieces for £3.50 and have used three quarters of that in my bulk cooking today. I also bought a huge pack of bacon, which I have portioned into twelve slice packs to use for breakfasts.

Here’s the bulk cooking in action. Spanish style chicken stew, beef in ale and a thick ragu sauce bubbling away. I spread minced beef a long way and 400g of minced beef made two lasagnes and two cottage pies, I use carrots, celery, onions and minced bacon bits to make the ragu sauce really rich. I also use tomato puree (Approved food) and not tinned tomatoes to make a very rich sauce.

Whilst I was in the butchers, Dearly Beloved was at home putting up large hooks in the utility room. I have three clothes airing racks and I wanted them up out of the way so I can sweep and wash the floor easily without having to move things out of the way.

He also put up hooks for the mop, brush and floor wiper thingy which I sometime use with a quick spray and a wipe on the floor, (I make a spray with a dilution of floor cleaner and water and write onto the spray bottle to remind myself what is in it.) I spray directly onto a swept floor and wipe over with the large oblong shaped floor wiper. This is how I manage to ‘wash’ my floors every day…..it also keeps the house smelling nice)

Here’s the results of my labours. Eight portions of lasagne, assembled to be frozen but will be cooked when we want it. Four portions of Spanish style chicken stew. Eighteen portions of cheese, bacon and mushroom quiche (will be eaten over the weeks for lunches) Four portions of cottage pie (meaty ragu with mashed potato on top. Four portions of beef in ale (beef stew with plenty of veg and I used a bottle of beer that DB was never going to drink as he doesn’t like it).

All ready for the freezer. Oh for a blast chiller!

The quiches look a bit strange as I slid them out of the loose bottomed tins and then put them back into the oven to crisp up the pasty. I had some leftover pasty and made a Lemon Drizzle Bakewell tartish sort of tart.

You will need - short crust pastry, 4oz of SR flour, margarine or butter and the same again of caster sugar and two eggs. Beat together until creamy and add the zest of one lemon. Roll out the pastry and put into a loose bottomed Victorian Sandwich baking tin or one of those fancy tart tins if you have them. Add half a jar to three quarters of a jar of lemon curd to the bottom of the pastry case, pour the lemony cake mixture on top and bake at about 180/200 for half an hour. Your oven is not my oven and times and temperatures should not be taken literally. It may need to be hotter or cooler and cooked for less time or longer in your oven. When cooked leave to cool for five minutes. Squeeze the lemon juice into a cup and pick out the pips. Add three tablespoons of sugar and stir until it starts to dissolve. Spoon carefully onto the top of the still warm tart, even distributing to cover the surface of the tart. This creates a lemony crust to the tart and the sweetened lemon juice soaks into the tart.

To make a lemon drizzle cake (as someone asked for the recipe) - Double the above recipe and then make as you would a Victoria Sandwich in two lined baking tins. Fill with a lemon buttercream (6oz icing sugar, creamed with 3oz of butter/marg and the zest of one lemon.) Use the juice of three lemons and six/eight table spoons of sugar to soak into the tops of BOTH sponges - when they are totally cool, spread one with the lemon butter icing and place the other on top with the crispy lemony topping on the top.

I now need a lie down! I cook like this as it makes my working week easier as I get home at six and we’re both hungry and ‘ready meals’ mean we can spend time walking the dogs or on our hobbies. This also saves me money as I’m filling the oven in one go. I’m tired but know the effort was worth it! I’ve got a mass of quilting, sewing and knitting to be getting on with in preparation for gifts and it’s good to know that I have easy meals to help me through the week.

Over to you Dear Reader, leave a comment and tell everyone about your bulk buying or bulk cooking.

Remember it’s the 1st of October tomorrow so leave your purse and bank card at home, take your own lunch and coffee and let’s all get on with Stoptober and get to the end of the month with money in your account. Plan something to do with it: clear part of a debt, over pay your mortgage, get the car serviced, pay for your insurance in one go, put into your holiday fund? Or, just get by!

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxx

You will need two lamb chops per person. These are from a value supermarket frozen range and as I ate them I can assure you they turned out fine. I used three carrots, two medium onions and three large potatoes. The hotpot mix is one of my stock pile from Approved Food - follow the instructions on the packet.

I layered three chops on the bottom of the baking tin and then added half the sliced carrots and onions. I then added a layer of meat and repeated another layer of onions and carrots.

I topped it with thinly sliced potatoes and some olive oil on top. I then cooked it for two hours. One hour with the lid on and another with the lid off.

I cooked it in my mini oven as it uses a lot less energy.

The finish is sticky and can be lifted out gently with a slotted spoon. When stewing lamb is cooked, it can be just pulled away from the bone with a fork.

We had ours with green beans (frozen - they are cheaper and just as good for you) . It’s such an easy meal to just prepare and walk away from whilst you go do something else. The preparation took about ten minutes.

Hello Dear Reader,

Well, what a response! Thanks to so many of you for ‘signing the pledge’ and agreeing to make October, the month you don’t spend and it will be ‘stoptober’ for so many of us!

I would like to take this moment to send warm dry thoughts to any of you reading this who are up to your chuff in flood water! I really hope every one is OK and escapes the rising water levels xxxxx

On to supper. We don’t eat meat every day and even when we do, it’s becoming less and less affordable. We look out for neck, belly and flank. We stew shin and hocks. My theory of bread is bread can be transmuted to meat is meat as well. Gone are the days of chunky pork chops with kidneys attached! They are just too expensive any more. This is my mid week version of a roast supper. Tinned potatoes, belly pork cooked together in the mini oven. Cabbage and carrots cooked together in the steamer. Some apple sauce and some gravy.

Cook belly pork, just as you would loin chops. They are full of flavour and a firm favourite here and very affordable. In France, we love those thick slices of ‘poitrine fume’ and wish we could buy smoked belly pork here too. If you wanted to add a smokey flavour, just sprinkle with smoked paprika which gives the pork a lovely hint of ‘chorizo’.

Over to you Dear Reader, what cheaper substitute are you making do with?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hello Dear Reader,

It’s the end of the month and we’re all stretching the pennies until they scream for mercy. Here’s what’s going in our ‘leftovers’ lunch boxes this week.

I started by making the pastry. 1lbs of plain flour, 1tsp of salt, 4oz lard, 4oz marg - I make my pastry in the food processor. In fact, I’m a busy woman and I make most things in the food processor. I had some cold sliced gammon, which I cut into pieces, I chopped and fried 2 small onions and a small red pepper. I peeled and chopped 2 potatoes and had half a tin of baked beans. I combined the lot with a tablespoon of smoked paprika and made them into pasties. (I’m no purist, not everyone can afford beef for a pasty so put what you like in it) One of these each will be enough for an adult for lunch. They have a smoky bbq flavour because of the smoked paprika, but you could add a sprinkle of chilli and anything can go into this sort of left overs pasty. You could tell your children they are bbq bacon and bean pasties! DB likes the idea of cowboy pasties!

We had cauliflower and broccoli in a cheese sauce for our supper last night. I had some cold left overs. This is what I made. I put the veggies and cheese sauce into a bowl and cut up the pieces with a knife until they were bite size, I added three beaten eggs, 4oz of grated cheddar. I fried two small chopped onions. I then combined the lot together and poured it into the pastry and baked it all.

I also made a Bakewell tart. I make my quiches and tarts in a loose bottomed Victoria sandwich sponge tins. I get a deeper tart or quiche that way and I can lift it out easily. I got mine from a jumble sale. I rolled out the pastry, put in half a jar of last year’s damson jelly. I made the sponge mix with 4oz of SR flour, marg, sugar and two eggs all beaten together. I added a tablespoon of almond extract. (I bought 12 bottles recently from AP for £1 - the flavour of most cakes for the next six - twelve months will be almond) I poured that over the jam and baked everything at the same time. It will all require about 30-45 minutes. The quiche will be divided by six and the Bakewell tart will be divided by 10.

Here’s our lunch menus for the week -
Quiche, salad - Bakewell tart (we both have a coffee break in the morning and a small slice would be nice) - Monday, Wednesday and Friday
Pasty, Banana - Bakewell tart - Tuesday and Thursday.

When everything is cool, I shall portion everything and wrap it and leave it stored in individual portions in the freezer, ready to take out and put in our lunch boxes this week. We take our own coffee and milk to work and are therefore able to go the entire week without taking any money to work.

Over to you Dear Reader - does any one have any handy lunch box ideas that can be made in advance to make our working week easier?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxx