Miss Thrifty

I asked my Frugal Grandma if she would provide holiday cover while I am away on my Thrifty Roadtrip this week. Frugal Grandma can do anything…

When you make fruit pies put the bottom layer of pastry in the tin, paint with egg and leave to dry. This stops the bottom of the pie from becoming soggy with juice. Use the rest of the egg to paint over the top of the pie before you sprinkle with sugar, and this will make it nice and shiny. Try not to put too much juicy liquid into the pie as it will make its own when it cooks.

When you make a bread and butter pudding, put a smear of marmalade in the bottom of the dish. This greatly improves it.

At Christmas, mince pies are often a bit rich when you have been stuffing yourself. So in our family we always make a lot of little apple pies, which seem to go much faster. Don’t forget to make the tops of the mince and apple a bit different so you know which is which.

- Frugal Grandma

I asked my Frugal Grandma if she would provide holiday cover while I am away on my Thrifty Roadtrip this week. Frugal Grandma can do anything..

Biscuits gone a bit soft? Use them as a crumble topping over fruit, sprinkle with sugar and cook.

Don’t throw away the chicken carcass: boil it with the skin, then strain it off and pick out any pieces of chicken meat (horrible job). Bung them in the stock with salt and pepper, tarragon, dill, garlic and anything else that’s handy. (more…)

I asked my Frugal Grandma if she would provide holiday cover while I am away on my Thrifty Roadtrip this week. Frugal Grandma can do anything..

Frugal Dinner

This recipe is called Beef Collop; it was first made by my mother when she ran a small London cafe in the late 1940s. Meat was rationed at that time and my ma never liked to waste anything, so she invented this dish. It became so popular that she ended up having to buy meat especially for it.

If you have very little meat left from a roast, say 2 slices of beef (or lamb, pork or chicken), then do the following: (more…)

Ben & Jerry’s is half-price at Morrisons right now. It’s £1.80 for one of the larger, 500ml tubs.

Sadly, my local Morrisons didn’t have any ‘Cherry Garcia’ in (sniff), but I went for this sorbet one instead.

The best part? My husband’s away, so I get to eat it all myself. I give thanks to the higher powers that have arranged for this happy conjunction of events.

I’m surprised the mint and parsley have lasted this long, in their big fired pots out on the patio. But as the days get shorter and colder, both herbs have faded.

So I have now picked the nicest leaves and put them in the freezer. The mint goes in a water-filled spare ice cube tray; I don’t bother making parsley ice cubes, but chop the herb and chuck it in a freezer bag instead. I can pull the herbs out when I need them, and I expect that they’ll last until my fresh mint begins growing again and I can grow some new parsley from seed.  

I like the mint cubes in mojitos!

Bravo to Frugal Trenches, who has just spent a paltry £12 on her weekly grocery shop.

There are some nice things on her list, too. Don’t worry: she isn’t on tap water sandwiches for the rest of the week.

Dear Sainsburys,

I made the following observations, while walking around your supermarket today: 

1. I like your pouch of fresh hollandaise sauce for 99p. It is freezable, so I can pour the contents into an ice cube tray and it will keep us going for a while. This works out at good value. 
2. Talking of your fish section: can you cut the prices, please? The battered haddock at the fish and chip shop is cheaper than your woolly-looking fillet selection. Still, I suppose you’ll argue that your haddock is line-caught and the fish and chip shop’s were trawled in alongside innocent dolphins. Grumble grumble.
3. And no, before you ask: I’m not going to stoop to the economy salmon fillets. I have enough doubts about the provenance of regular-priced salmon fillets, thank you very much.  (more…)

Doesn’t this book look marvellous?

Make Do And Mend was published in the UK in 1943, by the Ministry of Information, at a time when food and clothes were rationed. Every British citizen was permitted one egg a week, a modest cube of cheese and unlimited bread and vegetables. Coupons for clothes were cut from allowance books; enterprising women supplemented these rations with garments cut from curtains, and kohl pencil lines up the backs of their legs, to look like stockings. Their cookware was handed over to be turned into fusiland turned into aeroplanes. (And if all this wasn’t bad enough, their towns and cities were being bombed at night.)  

This frugal tradition continued beyond the Second World War and into the 1950s, when the Manchester Evening News published Take a Tip : a collection of readers’ money saving titbits.

It’s funny, isn’t it? These little booklets have been hanging around for decades, unwanted and unread, gathering dust in attics and mouldering on charity shop shelves while we’ve been out spending and splurging on overpriced frivolites and cheap tat.

Now that we’re headed for a recession - a Depression, even, if the doomiest of the doom-mongers are to be believed - all these pearls of wisdom are suddenly relevant again. With our financial indexes plummeting, our markets in turmoil and our elected representatives banging heads with one another, this seems as good a time as any to revisit some of our forebears’ handiest household hints.

Here are some of my favourites: (more…)

Sabatier makes the most wonderful knives. The metal is thick and the steel blades are strong and sturdy. Holding a Sabatier it is ten times more easy to fillet a fish, carve a roast or fanny around with baby salad vegetables.

I cherish my block of Sabatier knives, and I thought I should really bring it to your attention that the ironmongery chain Robert Dyas is currently selling  Sabatier blocks for just £24.99 - that’s less than half the standard £59.99 retail price.

For your nearest outlet, click here. Alternative you can order online; the delivery charge is £4.95.

The five knives in the block are as follows:

Homemaker Barbi has a terrific tip for keeping the contents of your salad drawer fresh. Stick a clean, dry sponge in there! The sponge absorbs the excess moisture; foods that are prone to mould and mush, such as strawberries and tomatoes, stay fresher for longer.

I love tips that are as deliciously simple as this one.