Monthly Archives: October 2013

Salmon, Dill and Creme Fraiche Topped Baked Potatoes.

frugal food

Hello Dear Reader,

I spent most of the day walking around Blisland and then onto Berry Castle near St. Neot. It is infact, an the remains of an ancient village or settlement. It can be found on the southern side of Bodmin Moor - map reference SX197689 Landranger Map 201. The walk was easy from the road and was clearly marked with a gentle incline to the settlement itself. Once there, the views across Cornwall were inspiring and left me with an appetite. It’s just the weather for baked potatoes and when Mc Cain’s offered me some of their ready baked jacket potatoes I was happy to try them.

Serves 2 - you will need:

2 ready baked potatoes - these need microwaving for 7 minutes. Usually, I just cooked potatoes in the microwave and they just don’t have the flavour of a real baked potato. These did and they are delicious. £1 - big baking potatoes are expensive any way and not much less than these so as they are already baked saving the cost of the electric, then they are no more expensive. www.mccain.co.uk
2 salmon fillets - you could easily use value fillets - £2
100g of Creme Fraiche - you can use the rest of the tub with fruit, in a quiche to enrich a cheese sauce or with cereal for breakfast - 36p.
50g of mayonnaise - 15p
1 tbs of chopped dill - 20p - you can chop the rest, mix with some butter and freeze to use again.
A cup of cooked peas or any veg such as carrots or green beans - it’s a great way of using up cooked veggies.
Half a lemon - 15p
Bag of salad - £1 - you could easily have this with some steamed green beans

Total Cost - £4.86 - £2.43 per person. Just think what you might pay for this in a pub?!

This is what you do:

1. Cook the salmon - I put mine on a lightly oiled griddle and cooked on a high heat - do not over cook.
2.Mix together the salmon, creme fraiche, dill and mayonnaise - I also added a squirt of lemon juice.
3. Fill the baked potatoes.
4.Serve with salad.

I would never switch my oven on to just bake two potatoes and I think that these will save you money as you won’t be spending it on energy that has just become even more expensive!

I’ll have two more baked potato recipes to share with you on Friday and Saturday and I think these recipes are real winners.

Over to you. Share your favourite baked potato filling? Who else wouldn’t waste the electricity bill on two potatoes?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxx

Planes, trains, buses and ferries

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Hello Dear Reader,

As promised, I am back to share the cheapest ways possible of getting from A - B. I’m going to use local examples and explain how I found the information so you can search, wherever you are.

Buses - Some people are entitled to free bus transport:

A. People who are blind or partially sighted
B. People who are profoundly or severely deaf
C. People who are without speech
D. People who have a disability, or have suffered an injury, which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on their ability to walk
E. People without arms, or who have long term loss of use of both arms
F. People who have a learning disability
G. People who would be refused a driving licence on medical grounds under Section 92 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (except on the grounds of persistent misuse of drugs or alcohol).
H - Also if you are in receipt of the state pension - this is no longer 60 ladies so get walking until you get it!
I know plenty of retired people and wished they would use the bus services more as it’s there and available and FREE!

Bus Season Tickets - As a mature student, I didn’t have a car and made regular trips to university on the bus. I bought season tickets for three months at a time. However, I could have saved money by buying an annual bus ticket. The longer the duration of the ticket, the greater the discount. Buying a ticket everyday is just throwing money away, get a season ticket. It’s a big initial outlay but the savings are massive!
Free School Transport - this is available IF your nearest school is more than 2 miles away if the child is under 8 years or less than 3 miles away if your child is over 8. This only applies for the nearest school, if you choose to send your child else where then you will have to pay for them to get there.

Student Bus passes - Most college students and university students can be concessionary bus passes which will allow them almost unrestricted transport within a certain area. A major bus company across the UK is First Bus and you can follow the link to find information on student bus passes.

National Bus Travel - Bus tickets can be bought at their cheapest 12 weeks in advance, anyone who wants cheap travel for Christmas have missed that opportunity. The cheapest way to travel is major city to major city e.g Plymouth to London. Also, if you travel by Megabus and are prepared to travel at night and buy your ticket months in advance - you can travel for Plymouth to London and back again the next night for £14! Take your own food and drink and you’ll be able to have a day. There is a way to have a trip away on a Megabus for free and that’s to save your Tesco Clubcard points. You can double your clubcard vouchers by exchanging them for Megabus vouchers. (£5 of clubcard vouchers will buy you £10 worth of Megabus)

Other bus operator offer discounts to youth, retired, disabled, groups, families and allow you to purchase a discount card which is very much worth buying if you make frequent journeys, for example, a family going to visit grandparents each school holiday. Stage Coach buses offer further discounts for frequent users, the more you travel, then the greater the discount as they offer loyalty discounts.

Trains - If you want to travel at the lowest prices then you will need to book your train ticket 12 weeks in advance. You will need to be quick as the special offers are few and far between and get snapped up quickly by savvy travellers. You can currently buy train tickets up to 3rd of January so get those bought now if you intend visiting anyone in the New Year. The train operators offer Season tickets and ‘Railcards’ which can be used by a variety of users. All offer 30% discounts off the ticket price and offer greater discounts for railcard users who buy railcards valid for three years. If you are intending to travel by rail then make sure you check out the most up to date offers which can be found on Money Saving Expert and if you subscribe to the Trainline’s ticket alert emails, which will let you know of the best offers available to you.

Planes - I don’t travel by plane so this is all from research.

  1. Buy in advance - the closer you get to the flight you want to take, the more it will cost.
  2. Shop around for the same flight. Use as many price comparison sites as you can be bothered to trawl. Here are the ones recommended by Money Saving Expert Skyscanner, Travel Supermarket, Kayak, Momondo.
  3. Consider a package deal - you can sometimes get a full holiday for less than the standard flight price - book but don’t stay and just fly. Seems implausible to me but a common practice from my research.


Ferries - Those of us who use ferries to get to mainland Europe, usually use the nearest port. We use Plymouth to get to Brittany. It’s often cheaper for us to get a package deal with accommodation and the ferry crossing than it is for us just to have a ferry crossing. There are ferry price comparison sites where you can sign up to get the latest deals: aferry, myferrylink, directferries and travel supermarket. I find reasonable (they are certainly never cheap) ferry deals by signing up to the local ferry company who send me offers by email.

I intend to travel more once we have downsized and further reduced our mortgage and I’ll be taking my own advice and will be looking for cheap travel deals.

Over to you. I was grateful for the wealth of information shared by American readers for American readers. I can only write about money saving ideas for travel in the Uk and from the UK. If you have any money saving ideas to help readers where ever you are in the world. Tell the rest of us the cheapest ways to get around your country.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxx




Getting from A-B frugally

money saving
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Hello Dear Reader,

This Sunday, I will be with Tracy Wilson on Radio Cornwall sharing ideas about cutting the cost of transport. Like food, rent or the mortgage, we can not get away without paying a huge chunk of our incomes transport. Obviously, the most expensive and most convenient is to own our own cars. If that’s our choice, then we have to tax, insure and maintain them as well as paying for wear and tear. I’ll start with the ways I save money on my car tonight and then move onto as many other forms of transport as I possibly can over the next five nights.

If you have any money saving ideas about getting from A-B frugally then email them into [email protected] and we’ll share them with listeners on Sunday. I will of course put the listen again link on Frugal Queen after the radio programme has been transmitted.

Frugal Car Ownership

Cheap Petrol - Really? Well hear me out. I buy 33 litres of fuel a week - every chuffin’ week!

Find the cheapest fuel - I buy my diesel in Plymouth for £1.35 a litre, instead of £1.39 locally and save £68.42 a year.

I pay for my fuel with my cashback credit card (I PAY IT OFF BY DIRECT DEBIT IN FULL EVERY MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!) and get 3% back on my fuel purchases and get £72 back every year.

I use my Tesco clubcard and get 780 club card points a year - I treble them by using them for a meal out and turn £7.80 into £23.40.

By shopping around, using my cashback credit card and saving the ‘points’ - I get £163.82 back, which I consider to be a saving each year. I effectively get 3.6 weeks transport for free. It might not seem much but if you found £163.82 down the back of the sofa you would feel very rich.

Cheap Car insurance - It is possible to cut hundreds from the cost of car insurance by shopping around. to start, I use all of the price comparison websites until I find the best deal. I want the least excess and the most cover for my money. If I whittle it down to two or three deals then I closely scrutinise the small print, which one offers free car hire if my car is undrivable? Which one offers free legal services with the price?

Next, I get a quote and store the quote number as it will be valid for a period of time.

Finally, I purchase through a cash back website such as Topcashback or in my case, Quidco - I usually get £50 back.

This year, the lowest quote I could find was £177 and got £50 back so my car insurance was £127, fully comprehensive, £100 excess and free legal cover/car hire if needed.

Cheap Car Servicing - We use fixed price servicing and shop around. We try and find one with free car hire for the day, or a collection and delivery service in with the price. We get the car valeted in with the price and then ask for a discount if we return. Every year, we haggle a discount from a main dealer as they shut the local branch and we have to get the car serviced in Plymouth so we get a 10% discount on top. As we bought the car from new from the same dealer we haggle for the service we always used to get in the price that they no longer provide. So, we still get the free car hire for the day, the car is valeted and we get to drive a swish new car for the day.

Cheap Breakdown cover - How much cover do you really need? We decided to go for basic cover. If we break down, then the AA will tow us to the nearest garage. We rarely go very far and felt this met our needs adequately. We used the AA this time as their basic cover was £28 and we secured a £10.50 cashback via Topcashback (I’m signed up to all the cashback sites) which reduced my cover to £17.50 a year.

Cheap Tyres - Take advice and do your research. Our car is sporty and has low profile tyres. They cost a fortune! We don’t use the main dealer discount tyre retailers such as Quickfit or ATS but our locally owner tyre shop. It does mean we have to queue up behind dumper trucks and tractors, it does mean we have to stand in the yard in the snow but we pay for what we get not a fancy waiting room with piped music. We don’t economise and buy cheap tyres as we rely on them to save our lives on an icy road so we buy good tyres for less. We save about 25% on tyres, fortunately we don’t do enough miles to have to buy new tyres every year.

Drive Economically -

  • Watch your speed - keep at a steady speed and drive smoothly.
  • Keep the car in good condition.
  • Ensure you have the correct air pressure in tyres.
  • Remove any excess weight - don’t carry anything you don’t need.
  • Cut down on air con - it’s Britain for heaven’s sake not the equator!
  • Plan long journeys and take food and drink
  • Car pool or share the cost of the journey.
Finally, if you don’t need a car - don’t own one. Personally, I liken car owner ship to setting fire to a huge amount of money each month!

I will be back tomorrow, and the rest of the week giving you other money saving transportation ideas. If you have any money saving ideas for car use or any type of transport, then send them to [email protected] and we’ll read them out on Sunday morning. If you would like to be on the programme and would like us to call you (UK only I’m afraid!!!) then send me an email and I’ll take your details to the studio and we’ll get you on air.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxx


Lamb shanks with honey and soy marinade.

frugal food

Hello Dear Reader,

Just in case the power goes off later with our Hollywood epic/blockbuster/should have Will Smith in it storm that’s predicted, I wanted to make sure I cooked the most expensive item in my freezer in case is was spoiled! Apparently, we’re about to get weather that’s quite normal if you are in the Caribbean or Florida but we only get about every 25 years!Floods, 80mph wind and disruption has also been predicted so I’ve cooked lamb and pork to last for two days. I can warm it on top of my woodstove if I have to.

In light of my forthcoming storm, I thought it wise to eat the best meat! I cooked lamb shanks in honey and soy and the effect was simply stunning!

Ingredients -

Leg of lamb/shoulder of lamb or lamb shanks - I had the latter as they are the cheapest.
100ml of soy sauce
100ml of runny honey
100 ml of stock

Combine all of the above and marinade the meat for a few hours. I used the roasting bags that I had left over from Christmas.


I cut the ‘spare’ part of the bag off so it didn’t catch on one of the oven shelves. I also marinaded some pork belly to make ‘sticky pork’ That marinade will require:

50ml soy sauce
50g of honey
50g of soft brown sugar
heaped teaspoon of dried ginger
2 cloves of garlic - crushed
1 tablespoon of tomato ketchup

Mix well together in a saucepan over a gentle heat. Pour over the belly pork and marinade. This is great eaten cold with salad. It means two slices cut into chunks will easily feed four people.

When you roast the meat in the roasting bags, they swell up and keep all of the moisture and flavour inside. Every hour, I took the meat out of the oven and gave it a very gentle shake.

The end result is meat so tender that I could have carved it with a spoon. I poured the cooking liquor into a sauce pan, mixed 1 tablespoon of corn flour with some water, stirred it through and then stirred it over the heat until it thicken slightly.

I served it with mashed potato and veggies. I was sticky, sweet and had an oriental flavour and would recommend this recipe to anyone.

As ever, because I don’t cook on a Monday, we’ll be having the same again for supper tomorrow night.


In case anyone is worried, we live on very high ground and we are not at risk from flooding, which I’m sorry to say will happen to quite a few people. I hope everyone battens down the hatches and stays safe and warm tonight and that they tempest passes by without anyone getting hurt.

Over to you, anyone else making storm preparations?

Until tomorrow, unless we have no power?!

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxx

Dolly Knockers and the storm

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Hello Dear Reader,

Apologies for my absence. Dolly was spayed on Friday and she’s been sore and sad ever since. I’ve spent most of the last 48 hours with her on my lap.

I’m cooking up a storm which is appropriate as we have a huge tempest on the way.

If anyone loses power for any time, make sure you do not open your freezer as it will stay frozen for a while. If the power comes back on and the food is defrosted then make sure you cook everything immediately and then refreeze cooked food.

I’ll be back tonight - power permitting.

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Gluten Free Creamy ham and leek with pasta - 94p per portion.

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Hello Dear Reader,

Almost a week into the gluten free! No complaints so far. My ankles and joints are less puffy and the bathroom issues have not been present this week……………..I may be onto a winner.

Here’s how to cook this.
1 heaped tablespoon butter 10p -
30g of gluten free plain flour - 4p - Asda
500ml of skimmed milk 25p
2 leeks chopped - 35p
Handful of chopped ham. - 87p - I used chunky smoked ham off cuts.

Boil some water
Add 100g gluten free spaghetti and cook as directed. - 27p - Asda

£1.88 - 94p each - of course, if you can eat gluten this will be much cheaper. But at under £1 it’s still an affordable yummy supper.

Melt the butter in a pan.
Add and fry the leeks
Add the flour and stir well
Pour the milk in and stir well
Bring to the boil and reduce heat and simmer.
Add the ham stir through and simmer for a few minutes

Drain the pasta and stir the sauce through the pasta.

Sprinkle with cheese - optional


I found that gluten free pasta soaks up more sauce which wasn’t a problem. I can’t tell the difference between gluten free and normal pasta.

Over to you Dear Reader, share your favourite pasta sauce. I could taste the leeks in this and purposefully cooked them less and they really went well with the ham.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxxx

Chicken, Leek and Chorizo Risotto

Budget recipes, frugal food

Hello Dear Reader,

We’ve had rain, wind and storms and every time I open the front door bits of garden and shrubbery get swept into the house! It’s just the weather for a chicken pie! In the absence of pastry, although I will get round to gluten free pastry, I decided that the contents of the pie could go into a risotto.

You will need

2 chicken breast or thigh in cubes
500ml of vegetable or chicken stock
2 leeks - chopped
1 cup of mixed frozen veg
2″ of chorizo - also chopped
200g of arborio rice
10ml of oil
10g of butter
3 finely chopped garlic cloves
1 heaped tablespoon of parmesan - I found a dried similar cheese for a lot less.


Add the oil and butter to the pan
Add all the other ingredients except the rice and stock and stir well

Stir through until the chicken and leek are cooked.

Add all the stock at once, no faffing around here!

Stir over a gentle heat until all the stock is absorbed and the rice is cooked just as you like it. This can take around 15 - 20 minutes. Stirring constantly.

Serve with a sprinkle of the cheese on top of each on. I know!!! It’s not a chicken pie but it doesn’t have any gluten and it does have that comfort that only a risotto can bring on a cold night.


I like to simplify my cooking and make it simple for everyone else. If I make this again, I would use more leeks as they lost their flavour with the stock and the cheese.

Over to you Dear Reader. Who else is being battered by terrible weather? Who else is traveling to work in driving rain and coming home to a garden full of branches?

As an aside, there are plenty of gluten free products on Approved Food at the moment. I’ve just taken delivery of lots of very much reduced items to keep me going to a while, including gluten free stuffing mix so I can make faggots.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxx

How to cook a perfect steak at home

Budget recipes, frugal food, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post
Hello Dear Reader,
The very very last thing I would ever order if I ate out (in the UK) would be a steak! Here to get a steak done just right you’ll need to order it blue! I heard the perfect description of how to cook a steak (the way I like it) “Clip its horns, wipe its arse and walk it round the grill!” If I’m paying the cost of a steak, which in my case at current prices is £2 each, then I’m going to cook it my way.
I’ll start off with the recipe for Balsamic dressing to go with the salad.
3 parts oil
1 part balsamic vinegar - we buy ours in Aldi, but this is from a cupboard clear out from mum-in-laws.
1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon of honey
1/2 teaspoon of soy sauce
Put into a jam jar, put the lid on and shake.
Onto the steak.
This is rib eye steak - aged and hung with fat marbling through it. A well aged steak tastes far better than the bloody red beef you might be used to from a supermarket. I’m not worried about the fat as I don’t eat steak every day.
Cover with a plastic bag and beat it senseless with a rolling pin.

You steak is now flattened like a badger on the A38.

Drizzle some oil onto the steak and massage in. Oil on the steak and never in the pan!

Turn the steak over and massage a tiny amount of oil into the other side too.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

You will need a cast iron grill pan and you should set the flame under it at least fifteen minutes before you start cooking. The pan should be smoking hot before you use it.

I cook my steak for under five minutes on both sides. I don’t want to spoil it.

When I eat steak, I just serve it with salad. No chips, onion rings, peas or any thing else - just salad! Of course with some balsamic dressing.

Be as generous as you like with the dressing. I also don’t eat any low fat or artificial alternatives just real salad dressing.

When some of the fat starts to render down, the steak is cooked enough and I turn it.

A medium rare steak should be as soft to touch as your cheek. You are touching your cheek right now! Medium is the touch of your chin and well done similar to the touch of the tip of your nose. You’ve just touched your cheek, chin and nose haven’t you?

I cut my steak down into strips and serve it on top of my salad.

Medium to rare steak with salad in under twenty minutes of getting in from work including salad and dressing for £2.50 each.

Simple steak supper for £2.50 per person. I don’t think the Harvester can compete with that! We don’t eat out so can justify the occasional steak.

Over to you, how do you cook your steak? Who doesn’t cook steak at home and likes to leave it to a chef? Who also thinks that only the French can actually cook a rare steak with out over cooking it! Who likes steak tartare? Who has a really good recipe for it?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxx

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

debt repayment


Hello Dear Reader,

Across the UK and behind closed doors, people are lying. They lie about how much money they earn, they spend, how many clothes they buy, how often the use their credit cards and they lie about their credit card bills. Worst of all, they lie to their partners and to themselves.

I know, because you tell me, that some of you are trying to reduce family spending alone because your partner does’t share the same view point. They tell you that life is for living and that you might die tomorrow. In all likeliness, you’ll live into shivering old age because you didn’t save money to keep yourself in your dotage. In most cases, the lives you describe are openly antagonistic with one person being thrifty and the other being a spendthrift. I have no idea to sort out your relationship problems or what advice to give you. You have to make your own decisions.

I would ask everyone to think of the following. Do you and your partner know how much the other earns? Do you both sit down and work on household accounts together? Are you both responsible for balancing the books and paying the bills? Do you both check receipts and keep a record of spending? I’m not asking you to turn your dining room table into Barclays but you should be at least able to be honest about spending. If you are both in the financial dark then you could shed some light onto your household budgets by doing some or any of the following:

  • Keep your payslips/salary statements in the same file and both know how much the other earns.
  • Agree between you a spending limit per person per day/week/month.
  • Agree a saving amount either individually or jointly when you are both paid.
  • Share the financial routines and check meters together, pay bills together and have a sort out the finances meeting once a week.
  • Agree a budget for food, menu plan together and food shop together and when it’s done cook together.
  • Keep bank statements in a shared file and if you bank online, give each other your log ins and have an open and honest discussion about spending.
  • Go through bank statements weekly to check on each other’s spending.
  • Have joint ‘No Spend’ days every week. Try keeping money in your wallet all week and only spending on a Saturday or pick a day.
  • Discuss any individual purchases - if you get your life under control then you will make your coffee at work, take lunch with you, have a library book to read and you won’t need any unplanned spending. If you need to buy clothes then discuss it with each other. If you share finances then you need to get used to planning the spending of them.

If you have no debts but you are not a saver then you might have to cut back on spending to leave money for saving. If one partner doesn’t like making a pack lunch then trade a job you don’t like doing to make lunch for them and help the family finances. If you have debts then you need to work together on controlling your spending so you have what is necessary and learn to go without what isn’t necessary until you have your finances under control.

Getting your finances under control is so much easier when you do it together. If you are already doing this then all power to your elbow if you are not and want to then this is the time for a family conference to discuss the issue. Either scenario isn’t easy but will be worth it.

Over to you. Who has a financial partnership that works well and you want to share the secrets? Who has a ‘sort the money out’ night? Who keeps financial accounts either on a spreadsheet or in a double entry book? Who is struggling to support a spender? Who spends but needs to change? I’d love to hear from you.

As I suggested, try just one thing and be honest with each other.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxx

Specialist diets on a budget?

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Hello Dear Reader,

I am a life long sufferer of IBS and now added to shitting myself if I’m too far from a toilet (no fear………I never go that far from one!!!!!!!!!!) I’m getting migraines and joint pain just for the bleedin’ fun of it! I eat a low gluten diet but not entirely free of it. I stumbled across the cure for just about all my ailments by going on a carb free diet. Not so much as a fart, head ache, sore knee or back ache. However, I occasionally allow starch back into my digestive system and it all goes downhill from there.


I’m loathed to go down the gluten free route as £2.50 for a loaf of bread and £1.70 for a bag of gluten free flour is a total killer, but so is running to the loo with a headache and sore knees! I’m going to do my very best to eat an almost gluten free diet without breaking the bank. I needed to be able to feed me and DB without choking him on dusty baking that just doesn’t have the melt in the mouth and buttery crumbliness of those well bonded gluten strings that only wheat can provide. However, if you’ve ever tried to live carb free, you will recognise the symptoms of licking the TV screen when the Great British Bake Off is on the BBC.


I’ve been adding carbs to my diet with gluten free alternatives and I must say the bread is disgusting, the biscuits are gritty and the crackers crumble to dust when you take them out of the packet. I must be able to do better. I made Raspberry and Apple crumble and make four for the freezer. I can’t tell you how nice it is to indulge in a ‘pudding’. I also made a sponge cake which looks better from the outside than the inside. The base of each ‘sponge’ is tough and the top is oily? It’s looked too wet when I made it. I tried to scale up the recipe, which I subsequently discovered on Gluten Free forums not to be a good idea but to follow the recipes. I will try again. As odd as the texture may appear to me, it’s a whole heap cheaper and better than any of the gluten free bakery products I’ve bought.

I will be trialing some gluten free carb loaded recipes and if I get them right, then I will allow them back, albeit in small amounts back into my diet. There is only so much meat and two veg with porridge for breakfast every day that any woman can manage.

Over to you. I know some of you have to stick to gluten free diets and I would love any advice or tips on gluten free baking. I’m going to attempt some bread as it can’t be worse than the slices of cardboard I’ve tried this weekend.

I’m looking forward to your advice.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxxxxx