Miss Thrifty

This is a new way to save money on the dinners that you cook at home. And no: it doesn’t have anything to do with my tips and tricks for filling your supermarket trolley for £30 or less. Nor am I about to prescribe a diet of Supernoodles and tap water sandwiches.

Instead, I’m going to recommend The Resourceful Cook: a lovely new website, which provides weekly meal plans with accompanying recipes, to fit your budget. Oh, and like all the best thrifty services, it’s free!

Simply select how many people you are cooking for this week (1 – 4), and select the Great Value Suppers option (low calorie and vegetarian meal plans are also available).

I have tried meal planning websites before, but often the “value” recipes are nothing to write home about. This one features some delicious recipes at budget prices. The Great Value Suppers plan is £26 for two people for seven dinners. The vegetarian plan is £25 for two people for seven dinners.

As you know, I spend very little at the supermarket (less than £26 a week, all in). But one reason why I like The Resourceful Cook is that each individual meal is broken down into pounds and pence – I can dip into the site as and when I wish. The dish pictured above is Tandoori Spiced Vegetable Skewers from the vegetarian meal plan, costing £1.58 per person. Here’s the recipe:

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This is one (well, six) of the nice things about moving out of the city. At my husband’s workshop, one of his regular customers is a local farmer, who tips in eggs:

The eggs always appear mysteriously, as the day dawns: my husband turns up for work in the morning, and there they are outside the door, waiting to be cracked and gobbled. I like it when the eggs appear: they are good, tasty free range eggs. And they keep our supermarket bills down.

The nice farmer isn’t the only one who tips in food. (more…)

Were you wondering why I had been quiet these past few days? Well, this packed cool box, which was sitting in my kitchen on Friday, should provide some clues as to why.

It contains:

- 2 x locally caught trout, neatly packed
- 1 x empty plastic jar, filled with homemade seafood chowder
- 1 x empty ice cream tub, filled with tomato soup made from homegrown tomatoes
- 1 x empty peanut jar, filled with cream of tomato soup made from homegrown tomatoes
- 1 x jar of homemade quince jam
- 1 x jar of homemade greengage jam
- 1 x jar of homemade blackberry and apple jam
- 1 x jar of homemade orange marmalade

It can mean only one thing…

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UK readers will know that VAT is due to rise from January 2011, from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent. (For non-VATable readers from elsewhere: VAT is short for Value Added Tax and it is like U.S. sales tax, except that it is added onto the price tag rather than at the checkout. Oh, and individuals can’t reclaim it. Nobody likes it.)

Now at the time of writing, January 2011 is still a way away, but this hasn’t stopped people stroking their chins and pondering the impending rise. My eye was caught by this piece in the Telegraph, about the foods upon which VAT is levied and the foods that are VAT-free. This is a subject that is far more bewildering and complex than you might think! (more…)

Do you have a ruined saucepan sitting on the side or lurking in the back of your pan cupboard? Have you incinerated its contents into a black, crusty glaze that is resolutely soap-proof? Don’t chuck it! Help is at hand.

Funny About Money has just published a great post called How to Rescue a Scorched Pan – Easy! Give it a read – and get your saucepan looking all shiny and lovely again.

Funny burned the polenta. The pan looked like this:

After a liberal application of bicarbonate of soda (or baking soda, as it is called in America) and NO SCRUBBING, her pan looked like this:

Marvellous, no? Her post reveals all.

Note: as you know, I’m a big fan of bicarbonate of soda. I use it for all sorts of things, from cleaning a really dirty oven to making my own bog cleaner (nice). I recommend that you steer clear of the bicarb sold in UK supermarkets, because it is relatively expensive and sold in measly quantities. I buy bicarbonate of soda in 2 kg bags for £3.99 a pop, from online mail order company Summer Naturals.

A slow cooker, I have discovered, is a gift from the Kitchen God. I’ve had mine since November and I’ve become ever so slightly obsessed with it.

Slow cookers have been popular in America (where they are also known as “crock pots”, after the Crock-Pot® brand) for ages. They used to be popular here, too – and from what I can gather, are gaining in popularity once again.

For the uninitiated, this is why slow cookers are great:

1. They save time. You pile your ingredients in the slow cooker before work, turn it on – and come home in the evening to a yummy stew, all cooked and ready to go.
2. They are easy to use. See above.
3. They save on washing up. Generally, washing up = one chopping board, one kitchen knife and a good wipe around the inside of the slow cooker.
4. They reduce food waste. No need to let those squooshy tomatoes or that stray courgette go to mush – chuck them in the pot.
5. (Drumroll) They save money! They don’t use as much energy as an oven or electric hob. I have been making frugal-but-fabulous dinners with cheap ingredients including root vegetables, tinned tomatoes (value range), dried pulses, herbs from the garden and lots of crusty bread.

Today is a case in point. We haven’t done our  January supermarket shop yet, partly because all the snow up here in North Yorkshire has made it difficult to get around and partly because, like most people, we are el skinto this month following the excesses of Christmas. So we’ve been making do with our dwindling food stocks. Open the fridge or the cupboard door and there isn’t much to look at but right now, bubbling away as I write, is a stew made from the following: (more…)

Life has been so busy recently. It’s good busy rather than bad busy – bustling, rather than overloaded – but I am finding that right now, what I really treasure is “me time”. On a Saturday morning I like to sink into my cosy leather armchair, red and orange leaves floating past the window, bathed in the soft autumn sun. And I like a nice mug of tea.

When it comes to tea, I’m an out-and-out snob. I don’t cut corners. Economy teabags cost next to nothing, but they taste horrible. In fact, when I am at home I don’t tend to use teabags. I don’t like my tea leaves ground into thin dust. Instead I have a longstanding crush on Waitrose large leaf tea. I’ll drop by there, just to pick up a box of Assam or Kenya. It’s £1.49 for 125g – the same price as the teabags. Oh, but large leaf tea tastes so much nicer! Leave it to brew for a few minutes, and it has far more strength and flavour.

So why don’t more people drink leaf tea? (more…)

Frugal Grandma spotted the Six Thrifty Uses For A Lemon post, and kindly forwarded a couple of tips of her own. They have a lemon+saucepan theme:

When you boil a Christmas pudding – or any pudding come to that – put a slice or two of lemon into the water. It will stop the saucepan turning black; in fact it will clean it!

If you have a discoloured saucepan, cook plums,  rhubarb or apples in it (always putting a slice of lemon in with the apples, for flavour).   These clean the saucepan beautifully.   I don’t know the effect on your insides when you eat the fruit, but I’m still alive and kicking.

F.G.    xx

You know, for the forthcoming Miss Thrifty blog revamp, I’m thinking of giving this septuagenarian superstar her own section; what do you think?

Image credit: audreyjm529.

One of the most popular posts on Miss Thrifty is the Make Do and Mend post, which features some of the choicest nuggest from the Ministry of Information’s wartime compendium of household tips. Those nice people at John Lewis have just published their updated take on this book. Sadly they haven’t sorted out their online PR and I can’t find a link to the book anywhere, but the Daily Mail ran a selection of its tips today.

Two of the ideas that caught my eye featured that most useful of fruits: the lemon. Lemons are what, 22 pence each? If you are like me, you will cut one into wedges for fish, or into slices for boozy drinks – but there will often be some left over. Leave it in the salad drawer or on the fridge shelf and it withers away. So here are some of my favourite ideas for leftover lemons: (more…)

Last month I found bags of grilled, frozen aubergine slices in the freezer section at Asda. £2.20 for 500g. Thought I’d give them a whirl. I do like aubergines, but they usually go at £1 a pop in fresh produce and I’m always in a race against time to cook and eat them before they go brown and soggy. Also, I hate fannying around with the salt and the muslin when I go to prepare them.

Sadly, after the frozen aubergines had been sitting in my deep freeze for a few weeks, I realised that I didn’t really know what to do with them.  They were featured as a Delia “Cheat” ingredient last year, but that was for a meaty moussaka – and I don’t eat meat. Also, I read a couple of Delia-themed reviews in which people claimed that the aubergine slices were dry and flavourless. Hmmm: maybe not such frugal food after all?

So I asked the nice ladies over at Cookware Essentials if they would help me out with a suitable (and frugal!) recipe. They duly obliged, with an aubergine, tomato and pasta dish. I tinkered with it some more, and I’m pleased with the result:

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