Taste testing!

 

In today's YT video I'm tasting a variety of strawberries, tomatoes and apples after recent discussions about how fruit (and veg) is lacking in taste.  I got some from M&S, Waitrose, my local greengrocer and my Co-op.  Spoiler alert, the M&S produce came out top for actually tasting like they were supposed to!!  So I'm thinking it's worth buying more expensive in season produce but just less often so I can stay within budget.

Someone asked what I was going to do with all that produce!  You know me, I won't be wasting any of it!!  As I had too many strawberries to eat by myself I chopped the 'lesser' tasty ones and froze them in my wee tubs (right hand side) for using in overnight oats or yoghurt.  The wee tubs on the left are mixed fruit compote.

Some of the tomatoes I've just lightly cooked with vinegar, sugar and a pinch of salt to make a kind of sauce.

It's delicious with my sausage meatballs!

The remaining tomatoes on the vine will be roasted just as a side veg and the wee sugardrop ones I'll just munch on as snacks! 🍅

Luna is 2!

 

I can't believe that Luna is 2 today!  That wee cute puppy has turned into a doggy tornado!!

Cuteness overload!

With my gorgeous Emma!

Showing an early interest in where the food was kept!

Happy 2nd birthday Luna! 🥳

Bread and butter pickles

 

I got a cucumber in my Lidl box so decided to make bread and butter pickles.  No idea why they're called that.  If you know, leave me a comment!

Slice one cucumber finely and cover with 25g of salt in a glass dish.  Leave for 24 hours to draw out all the moisture.

Drain, rinse and pat dry, taking time to make sure they're dry.  Time consuming but worth it.

Bring 200ml of vinegar, 1 tsp of pickling spice, 1/2 tsp turmeric and 100g of sugar to the boil in a pan.  Simmer for 10 mins then add the cucumbers.  Bring back up to the boil for 1 min then pour into a hot sterilised jar.  They're ready to eat in a few weeks.

This is the only photo I could find of past pickles!  I've been making these for years.  They're one of my favourite and easiest preserves!

Ideas for Summer food that don't cost a lot

 

Rice crust quiche, carrot sticks, yellow peppers, spring onions, seafood sticks and home made hummus with crisps

In tomorrow's Foodie Friday video I'm talking about the cost of foods we eat in the warmer months.  A viewer asked if I thought it was more expensive to eat in the Summer as you can't do as much batch cooking and freezing.  So I gave it some thought and came up with some ideas using similar ingredients I'd use in Winter but prepping them for a picky plate or salad plate.  They last several days in the fridge so you could make a big enough batch to make several meals.  Each meal could be different depending on what you fancy!

Vegetables:

I buy carrots, onions, potatoes, cabbage and peppers all year round.  In Winter I'd cook them into meals etc but in the Summer I use them differently.  You could make various coleslaw dishes and potato salad.

Carrot, apple and onions in apple cider vinegar with mayo

Potato salad made with finely chopped onion, potatoes, mayo and chives

Meat and fish:

I tend to eat less meat in the warmer months sticking to chicken (which can be eaten cold) and the odd sausage.  But I do eat more things like canned tuna and seafood sticks.  Someone suggested batch cooking sausages and home made burgers on the BBQ (or in the oven) and freezing them so you'd have access to making a quick BBQ style meal.  

Eggs:

You can keep boiled eggs in the fridge for a few days so I do batch cook these for egg mayo.  You can also make quiches with or without a crust.  They keep well for a few days.  In the video I'm making a rice crust quiche.

It's featured in several picky bits type meals this week!

Other things to make using standard fridge and storecupboard ingredients could be tuna pasta salad, rice salad, couscous and hummus.  All fairly cheap and nutritious.

You could add pickles like beetroot, onions or olives.

You could serve bread and butter, cheese scones or oatcakes to fill tummies.  I make all these from scratch inexpensively.

And finally, some fruits work well with savoury things.  For example apples, grapes, oranges and pineapple.

So, does Summer food cost more than Winter foods?  As long as you're careful with what ingredients you use and how you use them I think it's about the same.  What do you think?

Refashioning clothes

 

One of my goals for 2025 is to 'Make/upcycle/thrift all my clothes except underwear and footwear' and so far I've only bought some M&S underwear.  I used to do this before I returned full time to teaching.  I went back through some old projects from around 2010/2011 to give me some inspiration to get my mojo going again!  I made this yellow dress from scratch using a tablecloth.  BTW that's Emma my black Lab in these photos 💕

This was my son's jacket.  It was a pale grey cotton that I dyed lilac and appliqued an 18 piece heart on the back.

I loved this jacket and wore it to death!!

This was a plain white cotton shirt style blouse I used to wear to work.

I dyed it red and shortened the sleeves.

Yep, my hair was a red burgundy colour in this phase!!

This was a dress my mum gave me.  I removed the sleeves, altered the neckline and shortened it.

I wore it on holiday to Vienna.

This is another altered blouse.  I think I removed the sleeves as well as the collar.

I rather liked that one and wore it a lot!

This was a dress that was too big for me so I took in the side seams and used the belt to make a rosette brooch.

The brooch was kinda lost on the dress but I wore it on other things!

Looking back at some of my previous stuff has definitely inspired me to get started again.  I've been clearing out my wardrobe and getting rid of the last of my 'work' outfits as they're now getting a bit ratty and have holes!!

What I ate in a day for £2.13

 

In tomorrow's Foodie Friday vlog, I'm sharing the costs of what I ate in a day.  I explain how I work out the cost of the veggies in a Lidl veg box simply by dividing the £1.50 cost by the number of items (6) so each item/pack is 25p.  Then within that 25p I work out what each single piece of veg costs.  For example a single pepper would be 25p divided by 3, a single banana would be 50p divided by 13.  And so on.

I had 6 Wagyu beef sausages that were reduced to £1.99 making each sausage 33p.  These were cooked in home made onion gravy and portioned into 3 servings.  I ate one and froze the other two.  Honestly, they weren't the best sausages I've ever had despite the fancy Wagyu content!

I have a load of butter in the freezer made from reduced cream so when I add butter to a meal/recipe it doesn't cost as much as shop bought.  

And so you get the gist of how I calculated the cost of what I ate in a day.  Here's the breakdown of each meal.

Breakfast: 42p

• 50g oats 6p (from a 2kg bag costing £2.45)
• 50g frozen raspberries 33p (from a 300g bag costing £2)
• Banana 3p 
• Peanut butter, no cost bought with a voucher
• Jam, free as was a gift

Morning snack: Free

Scone with jam and clotted cream, free gift

Main meal: £1.37

• 2 sausages 66p
• Instant mash 45p
• 1/3 of the sweetheart cabbage 8p
• 1/3 of onion gravy 18p (made from 2 onions at 32p, butter 10p, seasonings 10p)

Supper: 34p

• 1 slice home made sourdough bread 6p
• Butter 10p
• 30g cheese 18p (from a 900g block costing £4.99)

Grand total: £2.13

If I'd had fresh potatoes at the time or mash in the freezer, it would have been cheaper as the instant mash was just a storecupboard standby.  

It's not something I'll do regularly as it's faffy to work out the costs but it was an interesting exercise nonetheless 😊

Easy yoghurt cake

 

Ok it's not the prettiest cake I've ever made but oh my goodness, it's delicious!  As you can see it's half eaten already!!

I had a lot of Greek yoghurt to use up so I googled 'yoghurt cake' and THIS RECIPE popped up.  It's ridiculously easy to make BUT I only had 1 egg.  I knew you can sub bananas for eggs so I used 2 very ripe bananas and 1 egg instead of the 3 eggs.

And obviously I baked mine in a loaf tin as I don't have a round cake tin.  I quite often make cakes in a loaf tin as they're easy to cut and freeze.

My version of Easy Yoghurt Cake:

• 1 egg
• 2 mashed bananas
• 120ml rapeseed oil
• 125g full fat Greek yoghurt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 180g plain flour
• 180g sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt

1. Mix the egg, bananas, oil, yoghurt and vanilla in a large bowl.

2. Add the remaining ingredients and beat until well mixed.

3. Pour into a lined loaf tin and bake for 30 mins at 170C fan.

4. Check for doneness by testing the middle with a skewer and it comes out clean.

5.  Cool on a rack before cutting.

Obviously it tastes banana-y but it has a softer texture than banana bread.

I'll definitely be making this again!! 😋

Easy microwave sponge pudding

 

Even though the sun is shining brightly today, I felt the need for a comfort pudding.  And what's better than a sponge pudding made in the microwave in 5 minutes? 

I didn't have any jam so I opened a jar of mincemeat from the storecupboard I got reduced in January to 26p!!

Ingredients:

• 120g unsalted butter or spread
• 120g sugar (caster is best but granulated worked)
• 120g self raising flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• about 150g jam or mincemeat

Method:

Grease a 2 pint/1 litre pudding bowl with some butter.

Put jam/mincemeat in the base.

Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy in mixer.

Keep the mixer running and add beaten eggs and vanilla a bit at time with a spoonful of flour to prevent curdling.

Fold in remaining flour and mix well.

Pour mixture over jam/mincemeat and smooth the top.

Cook in microwave on full power for 5 mins. Leave to stand for 1 minute.  Check sponge is cooked in the middle.

Serve with cream, custard or ice cream.  It's that simple and very yummy!!

Vegetable curry and naan for £1.81

 

I made a completely from scratch vegetable curry with spinach, potato and chickpeas for my Foodie Friday vlog to show how I use my curry paste.  I also made some naan/flatbreads from THIS RECIPE and took some of my home made mango chutney from the freezer.  Recipe HERE.

I worked out that if I got a similar takeaway from my favourite local Indian restaurant it would cost me £12.49 for a vegetable curry (£8.99) plain naan (£2.50) and a portion of mango chutney (£1) and that excludes delivery or fuel costs to collect it!

Everything I used was a freezer or storecupboard staple.

My version:

• Curry paste  28p
• Onion (1/3)  10p
• Frozen spinach (180g)  21p
• Chickpeas (1/3 of a can)  18p
• Potatoes (1/2 of a can)  40p
• Coconut cream (1/3 carton)  20p

Vegetable curry: £1.37

(3 naan breads: SR flour  40p + Yoghurt  17p = 57p)

1 naan bread: 19p

Mango chutney:  25p

Total cost:  £1.37 + 19p + 25p = £1.81

You could make it for even less than that depending on prices where you live.  Plus I used organic flour for the naans.

The above portion of curry could easily stretch to 2 people served with rice as well.  And it was just as good as my local takeaway version! 😋

Curry paste recipe - 28p per portion

 

This is a recipe I found on a blog years ago.  The blog no longer exists but the recipe came from a lady called Geetha in London who gave it to her friend Elaine.

Curry paste:

• 1kg onions, sliced
• 25ml oil
• 6 cloves of garlic, crushed/grated
• 4cm piece of ginger, chopped/grated
• 3-4 fresh chillies chopped or 2 tsp dried
• 4 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes
• 1 can water
• 50g fresh coriander, chopped

Fry onions in the oil for about 20 mins until really brown

Add the garlic. ginger and fresh chillies and fry gently for 2 mins.

Add the dry spices and salt and fry gently for 2 mins taking great care not to burn them

Add the tomatoes and water and simmer for about 10 to 15 mins until thick and pulpy

Add the chopped coriander and stir for 1 min.  Switch off the heat.

When cooled either blitz until smooth or leave chunky.  Divide into 12 equal portions and freeze.

Use 1 portion per person straight from the freezer when making a curry!

As I explain in the vlog total cost of ingredients was £3.35 making it 28p per portion.

2025 Goals

 Happy New Year!  I wish you all good health and happiness! 

Every year I set myself some goals instead of resolutions.  I've reviewed last year's goals and was happy that I achieved 3 out of 4.  The 4th one didn't work out due to the timing of me moving house but I'm not beating myself up about it.

So, this is a year of using up all the resources I have saved and hoarded for decorating, DIYing and gardening in my new house.  When I need to buy something I'll try thrifting first, then my local recycle centre and even asking family/friends if they have what I'm looking for.  If I need to buy anything new I'll thoroughly research the best deal/prices!

2025 Goals: A year of using what I already have

1.  Create a permaculture garden from scratch

My garden is currently a patch of muddy/soggy grass and a decked area with some pots I brought from my previous house.  I'm aiming to create a space where I can grow food and flowers, where I can encourage beneficial insects and where Luna and I can relax.  I'm bringing as much as I can salvage from my allotment plot including my compost bins.  I have a ramshackle shed I'm hoping I can save and turn into a potting shed.

2.  Make/upcycle/thrift all my clothes (except underwear and footwear)

I've been slowly wearing out all old work clothes (mainly tunics and leggings) so will be needing to replace some items.  I'd like to start sewing clothes again and already have lots of patterns and fabric.  Other items can be thrifted and I know my Lovely Mum is hoping to do a clothes clear out this year so I might be able to upcycle some of her things.  

3.  Decorate my whole house

It's a small house, just 4 rooms plus a fully tiled bathroom (that I'm not touching) and hall/stairs.  I have a ton of white and cream paint, a few rolls of nice wallpaper I got on sale and loads of ideas!  I just need to motivate myself to get cracking!  I know I need to buy some electrical fittings and a curtain pole but I think I already have all I need.  If I can save enough money I might get my armchair professionally re upholstered.

I'm planning to video as much as I can and to keep a careful note of how much it costs.  I really want to see if it can be done!