Monthly Archives: April 2015

Trying not to spend money at the bank holiday?

staycation



Hello Dear Reader,

You know how the conversations goes! The bank holiday approaches and everyone starts thinking of going out and usually that can cost a lot of money. If you want to hear how I will spend my bank holiday by not spending, head over to HERE to read my blog post today.



When you’ve read it, pop back and let me know how you’re going to keep hold of your hard earned cash this weekend and still have a break and enjoy yourselves.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Love Froogs xxxxx

Chicken and Chorizo Jambalaya

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Hello Dear Reader,

I’ve pimped up a Slimming World recipe. I have the feeling their recipes have been invented by nutritionists and not developed by chefs. Their recipes are bland and too cautious so I’ve given it some welly!

Serves 1 really hungry woman, grumbling with hunger!!!

1 chicken breast cut into chunks
50g of chorizo, cut into slices - 6 syns
1 tsp each of: chopped ginger, garlic and chilli - I buy this in jars from the Asian supermarket in big 500g pots and pay about a quid each for them. I keep them in the fridge once opened and they last for ages.
1/2 chopped onion and pepper
6 chopped mushrooms
1 cup of frozen mixed veg
1 tsp of dried parsley
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup of basmati rice
1 cup of stock





Get a frying pan really hot - no need for oil
Throw in the chorizo and allow it to release a little fat
Add the chicken, peppers, mushrooms, onions and fry
Add the chilli, ginger and garlic- turn the heat down - and fry gently
Add the rice, tomatoes, mixed veg and stock and simmer until the rice has absorbed the liquid.
Season with salt, pepper and a spoon of dried or fresh parsley.

The chorizo gave it smokiness and the trio of ginger, chilli and garlic added to the flavour. I think everyone has a hungry day and today was mine. I didn’t eat it all and I’ll have the rest for lunch tomorrow.

Over to you, who else feels that ‘healthy’ recipes can be a bit bland?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxx

Cheap Healthy Eating

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Hello Dear Reader,

Thought I’d share my food from yesterday and today. Yesterday, a lighter version of cauliflower cheese.

Steam broccoli and cauliflower.
When cooked, stir through a pot of fat free quark
Pop into a casserole dish and sprinkle with 25g of Parmesan cheese and place in a hot oven.(5 syns)

I also roasted sliced peppers and courgettes, which I sprayed with fry light.

I ate three chipolatas - (6 syns) and a piece of bacon.



Here’s my food for today.

Breakfast - 3 scrambled eggs with a handful of ham and some tomatoes.

Cauliflower cheese, roasted courgettes and peppers with a piece of bacon. Apple, satsuma, yogurt and kiwi. (5 syns for the Parmesan cheese)

Supper, that I ate at Slimming World as I went straight from work was ham salad, with some fat free dressing, apple, satsuma and yogurt.

Week two and I’ve lost half a pound! ( Peter Kay and ‘I could @&£? a pound!!!!’) so three and a half pounds in total!

I’m going to reduce my portions, I am a hearty eater!

I need to look at some recipes and adapt them to be ‘lighter’

Over to you, any ideas?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxx


Budgeting for planned spending

Budgeting




Hello Dear Reader,


Budgeting isn’t boring; it’s liberating! It means I can look at our finances for the year, months and weeks ahead and not have surprises. This does mean we make plans and regularly review them and that’s exactly what we’ve done tonight.

Both our holidays have been saved for, budgeted for and months in advance paid in full. We bought our holiday and ferry crossing online and used the ‘manage my booking’ facility to pay for both in full.

Our bills, with the exception of our water bill (no discount for monthly payment) is also paid online with my banking app on my phone and I set the money aside to pay every quarter. My car insurance is due any day and we’ve put money aside to pay it in one go. I never automatically renew and simply use my renewals notice as proof of my ten years no claim discount and then search for the best price that also has the best cashback, either through Quidco or Top cashback. Each year, I get around £50 back which reduces my policy to around £120. I do te same with house and contents insurance.

As we’re going on holiday (twice) this year, we need to do some planning and organising so we don’t waste money when we get there. We’re self-catering so, all bar a meal on the way there and one on the way home, I’ll cook in the apartment which really keeps the cost down. We also save money by taking everything that you need self catering but isn’t provided. Forgetting the odd items can soon lead to browsing, supermarket trips and spending knowing that ‘I have that at home!’

So, we’re making lists and beginning the prep early to spread the cost. We’ve broken the lists into: kitchen (from food, cleaning, sundries, equipment- no oven, so I actually take our toaster oven) cleaning/laundry, car requirements (hi-vis ect), toiletries, bedding, medicine and first aid and clothing. It sounds a lot but it all easily fits in the boot of our car in stacking boxes.

My financial plans for next month are to pay for: European breakdown cover for 12 months, dog sitting for second holiday, next quarter’s water bill as it will arrive when I’m just about to go on holiday. No surprises and all budgeted for. I could bore you with all the planned spending and saving over the next few months but I’m sure you get it.

Budgeting and planning doesn’t make me feel restricted but helps us relax knowing that bills are all covered and we can treat ourselves to holidays without a credit card in sight and can come home without rendering ourselves skint!

I’m back to writing my lists. Over to you Dear a Reader, what needs to go on my list for our self catering holiday so we don’t run up expense by forgetting anything.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxx

A perfect day!

cornwall
Hello Dear Reader,
Quick hello and popping off again. A perfect day when all members of my family were here today. They are well, independent, getting on with their lives, doing their own thing, their own way and they are just great.
I’ve waited for what happened today to happen. (nope, sorry…no details)
I’ve waited years.
It happened.
So, everything was okay in the end.
Lunch was lovely, I skipped anything ‘synful’ or fatty but took great pleasure in serving lovely food to everyone else.
Woods were walked in.
Bluebells were sniffed and admired.
Lots of smiles and laughter.
Until tomorrow,
Love Froogs xxxx

Nifty, thrifty week and dreaming

Budgeting


Hello Dear Reader,

Another wonderful week in sunny Cornwall. Today, we tootled about, washed and hoovered the car and had a bumble around the local charity shops. Not a great haul today but a great deal at the Sally Army shop where I bought two bright summer t-shirts for £1.50. DB got himself a bio but best of all, I bought an empty sewing case to put together a sewing kit for my daughter. All in all, a fiver for the lot.


My slimming world meals are going well, it’s quite an odd concept that there are foods that I can eat as much as I like of. I mixed tikka curry powder with cheapie fat free natural yoghurt and coated chopped chicken and baked it for twenty minutes. A 49p bag of Aldi salad and half a tin of 33p Aldi sweetcorn. The salad dressing is yoghurt, mint and a drop of water to thin it down. All really cheap!


My big treat this weekend has been a cooked breakfast, all week it’s just porridge. It’s like staying in our very own hotel. Nothing flash at all has happened this week but it will all be worth it.




On Thursday, I watched the Pont Aven sail into Milbay and remembered that with a bit of scrimping here and saving a few quid there means we’ll be off to Brittany in the summer holiday.

Over to you Dear Reader, share your thrifty week. Here’s mine - dried all the washing outside, started on a leftover red, white and blue quilt for a baby boy who’s due in September (all the bits from other quilts being made up into a baby quilt) and kept to our budget all week. So, what about you?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxx






Student Stew

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Hello Dear Reader,

Everyone has a student stew recipe! You know the one. It’s the end of the shopping cycle and there’s bits and bobs to use up. It’s also all made in one pan, at the end you can add a tin of potatoes. Dead cheap and easy, very little washing up! Into my stew went:

200g of Turkey mince,
1 chopped onion,
1 chopped green pepper,
1 cup of frozen minced veg,
1 tin of chickpeas,
2 tsp of Mexican spice,
1 pot of passata

1. Fry the mince, onions and peppers with some fry light.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to the boil and simmer for twenty minutes.
3. Serve with rice.
4. I didn’t have any rice!
5. No students were harmed in the making of this stew.

According to my lovely Slimming World guide book, this is all free food and my stew made four portions so plenty for tomorrow’s lunch too.

Over to you Dear Reader, what’s goes in your student stew? We’re you ever a student who lived on bowls of cheap stew? If so, what went in yours?

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxx

Supermarket sweep!

Budgeting




Hello Dear Reader,

They are all at it! They all hide their unit prices. I would love every supermarket to have to show the price of everything, even if it’s a multi-pack, pre-pack or slice of how much it is being sold for by the kilo! We all have to stand there and work it out. I have to take something like a pack of tomatoes, which for example are being sold for 69p for six and if it has a weight, work out how much it is per gram and then times that by 1000 and work out how much that is per kilo. It’s time in my life that I’ll never get back. Now, I know that you and I stand there quite unashamedly in the supermarket, with a calculator and work out the unit price and then, and only then can compare that with loose vegetables. I’m happy to read the back of the loo rolls and discover that the value pack has far less in terms of square metres than the more ‘expensive brands’. Even laundry detergent bottles, and washing up liquid bottles that look the same are actually bigger or smaller on closer investigation.

So, Which magazine have been investigating masses of complaints that supermarket deals are not always what they seem. See here for the article in The Telegraph.

This doesn’t affect me as I’m really judicious about what I buy and check prices and compare on a regular basis. I make time for this, I’m worried for the people who don’t make the time and end up paying over the odds because they think they’ve got a bargain when they really haven’t!

Yesterday, I was interviewed by Gary Hickson on Radio Lancashire about this very matter. You’ll hear that I’m none too impressed with the silly games that supermarkets try to play. You can listen to it here and move the slider to 1 hour and 18 minutes to hear Gary and I having an amusing conversation about what we think of the way supermarkets try to squeeze money out of us.

Until tomorrow,

I’ll just be frothing at the mouth at the way they want to fleece us all!

Love Froogs xxxx

Spicy healthy burgers

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Hello Dear Reader,

I love a meat ball, koftka or a burger! My local butchers sells four kilos of minced beef for £10 so I can make pure beef burgers really affordable.

Here’s how I made them.

Place the minced beef in a large bowl - season well with salt and pepper, don’t skimp.
2 heaped tsp of Baharat - it’s an Arabic seasoning with: allspice, ground black pepper, cardamom, cloves, coriander, nutmeg and paprika. If you can find any, have a go it’s great.
I also added one finely chopped red chilli




I have a really easy recipe for a creamy dressing, I add a tablespoon of mint sauce to a pot of fat free yoghurt and stir, that’s it. It’s delicious.


When I cook burgers or meatballs, I cook them in a frying pan, but periodically drain off any fat that renders out. I place a plate on top of them, hold it down and tip the fat out into a bowl and pop it in the bin when it’s cold.


To pad out salads and keep them affordable, I grate a couple of large carrots per person and pile it up. I really like the sweetness and carrots are really cheap.




The finished result is a pile of homemade burgers, fat free dressing and a heap of cheap salad. I bought the romaine lettuce on offer in Aldi.


Week one of Slimming World went well and I’ve lost 3lbs, there were some really inspirational people there who have lost a phenomenal amount of weight and some really funny people who head straight out to the Chinese takeaway after a half pound weight loss. I love people watching and listening to their funny stories.

Any one have any funny weight loss club stories.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxx





Thrifty weekend treats

frugal food

Hello Dear Reader,

We had such a lovely weekend. No bookings, no where to go and nothing to do. We had a great time at home. All the washing was dried in the fresh air, ironed and put away. I love the smell of fresh sheets and opening the linen cupboard and smelling fresh Cornish air on the sheets and towels. I also love having the time to make ‘fake aways’ instead of forking out for a takeaway.

I make fish and chips in the oven. I par boil the chips first, spray them in oil and bake them. They come out crispy. Instead of a bread or batter coating, I sprinkled 25g of grated Parmesan on top and baked it for just ten minutes in a hot oven. We ate that all with some steamed veggies (mixed frozen and frozen green beans) healthy and cheap. I always buy frozen pollock, it’s usually labelled ‘white fish’ so I always look at the back to see what it is and where it’s from. I won’t but cod or haddock, it’s expensive and over fished and getting rare. The frozen fish is £1.65 for 520g and is a much cheaper option, I buy it from Tesco.


There’s nothing like a big pile of carb filled chips at the weekend, good all week and a bit of junk at the weekend!


Sunday, instead of a big roast lunch and getting a fill of weekend junk, I made sweet and sour pork.

I used

5 pork steak with all the fat cut off ( a crying shame as so much flavour is in the fat, I usually leave some but we’re both trying to be healthier) cut into small slices. I bought two packs of pork steaks for £4 from our local butchers (Tregeagles) so they were just 40p each.
1 head of broccoli cut into small pieces
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 pepper sliced
1/4 tsp of five spice
2 garlic cloves - crushed
2 tbsp wine vinegar
1 tsp cornflour
4 tbsp soy sauce
200 ml stock ( I always use a cube and water)
Fresh pineapple - currently 68p in Aldi
4 tbsp tomato purée

In a non stick pan fry the pork and vegetables, use a little spray oil if it sticks. Cook for ten minutes.

In a jug, mix all the other ingredients. Add to the pan and simmer for fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve with rice, salad or noodles.


Now, after a weekend of ‘carnage’ I will lay off the starch!

Cheap, healthy (ish!) and not a chip shop or takeaway in sight.

Over to you, anyone else had a bit of a splurge this weekend?

Until tomorrow.

Love Froogs xxxx