Welcome to another frugal round up, where I list my money saving achievements for the week. How has your week been?
Ours got really busy suddenly. I meant to go food shopping on Monday, but my daughter needed some help with something. Tuesday was a busy work day and on Wednesday we took Mr S’s mum out for the day.
In the end, I didn’t get to the supermarket until Thursday, by which time the fridge was looking a bit bare. It’s a good job we always have plenty of food in our stores.
Sorting the freezer
Having little food in the house meant that I had to address the mess that was our two freezers. I go through them periodically to make sure items don’t get pushed to the back and forgotten about.
Sure enough, I found loads of bits to use up, which meant it wasn’t the end of the world that I went food shopping a few days later than I had intended. It slightly messed up my meal plan for the week, but you have to be flexible sometimes.
I found two portions of frozen chicken curry that needed eating, and Mr S duly obliged. There were loads of frozen vegetables, so some of those got used up too.
I also found some mulberries that Mr S had picked somewhere. As we had run out of fresh fruit, these proved delicious on our breakfast yogurt – really sweet and juicy.
Home made soup
I had already planned to make stock using a couple of chicken carcasses I had frozen, so I did that. Then I used up some odds and ends of frozen cooked veg and mashed potato, along with several courgettes from the garden, to make some vegetable soup.
This has been good for lunches this week. It does contain some carbs with the potato, but I kept it as low as possible by eating mine without bread.
Bread pudding
Talking of bread, we had quite a lot of bread ends in the freezer. As I have been eating low carb most of the time, I hadn’t used them for anything. I decided to make a batch of bread pudding, using my favourite Cranks recipe. It’s such a great way to use bread up. As the news is forecasting that the price of wheat is likely to go through the roof due to our strange weather, it makes sense not to waste anything made from it.
It also gave me the chance to get rid of some dried fruit that had been hanging around a while.
The only problem with making this is that, of course, I couldn’t resist eating some! Not in the least low carb….I made Mr S take the rest round to his mum’s, where it was quickly demolished by various family members passing through.
George Foreman grill
My daughter was having a bit of a clear out and decided she had no space for her old George Foreman grill. She only has a tiny kitchen, so she has to keep the number of gadgets she owns as low as she can.
I was going to sell it for her on Facebook, but once I had used it a couple of times to check it was working OK, I decided to keep it!
It is brilliant. I have been using it all week to cook pretty much anything. It must save money on energy, because it cooks both sides at once and really quickly.
I didn’t NEED a George Foreman grill, but I am happy to have one!
Home made cleaner
As I was running out of my home made lemon cleaning spray, but didn’t have any lemons, I made a batch using a different recipe, here. This one is vinegar based again, with the addition of some borax substitute.
I prefer the lemon one, but this does the job just as well, and has the advantage that you don’t have to steep the lemon peels and wait. My plan is to buy a cheap bag of lemons next time I go shopping though. I will scrape the peels off, then slice the lemons into segments and freeze them for our G&Ts!
My week has generally focused on not wasting stuff, which is good as we head towards Zero Waste Week. You can find out a little more about that in this post.
Although I have cheated a few times with not eating carbs, generally I am keeping their consumption very low. I know it will make me feel better, but if I have the odd lapse it really isn’t the end of the world.
How has your week been?
I’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.
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