Mini goals for June

Posted by louisa on Friday 3 June 2011 in goals | 7 comments

Frugal/money

1. Transfer Cash ISA to new provider
Been meaning to do this for a little while. I love my current bank’s ethical policy but their interest rate is appalling. I’m going to try to find somewhere still reasonably hippy-friendly but a little more generous.

2. Transfer to new energy company
Our cheap offer tariff has come to an end so we’re being shifted onto standard – time to move! I’ve used a comparison site and every single option will cost us more – so I’m going to explore cashback options to offset the hike.

House

3. “Clean slate” tidy the bedroom
The bedroom has been an utter tip – even by my generally untidy standards – since we started refitting the bathroom in February. We still don’t have any cupboard space in the bathroom yet so all the things that usually live in there are strewn throughout the bedroom, on the landing and in the spare room. The bedroom stuff is the worst – not only is it cluttering it up, it’s stopping other stuff going where it should go and encouraging further clutter. The cupboards *should* be built in the next few days so once all that’s out, I think the bedroom needs some love.

4. Finish painting the bathroom
Like Laura, we keep putting this off – but when the cupboards are in, we’ll really have no excuse not to finish it all off! Once it’s painted, we can “finish” it off completely – refit the radiator, seal everywhere, put up mirrors/artwork — can’t wait!

Growing, eating, making and chickening

5. Fill all my planters with soil – and plants!
I’ve got a lot of empty planters at the moment – waiting until stuff is ready to be planted out. But frankly, if it doesn’t happen in June, it’s not going to happen. I think there will be more than enough plants to go around – but if there are any empties, more quick salad leaves are always useful.

6. Learn how to poach an egg
I have never done this successfully. I would like to be able to do this successfully. If only I had a steady supply of really fresh eggs… oh wait!

Have you got any mini goals for this month? Do you have a foolproof poached egg method? ;)

Using our 100% vegetable oil soap

Posted by louisa on Thursday 2 June 2011 in making, soap | 2 comments

You may remember a few months ago I spent a bajillion hours waiting for some 100% olive oil soap to reach trace then, as a glutton for punishment, I decided to make a second batch of another 100% vegetable oil soap the same day.

We started using the 100% olive oil soap and have got through a few small bars of it – John likes it a lot. He likes that it doesn’t lather much (as it, conversely, encourages him to use less of it) and it doesn’t smell perfumed either (he hates perfumed things).

In a “why change what’s working?” way, we hadn’t tried the other set of soap – the 100% veg oils one – but I decided that should change this week!

The non-lye ingredients of the 100% olive oil one are pretty obvious – the 100% veg oil one a little more complicated — but still, everything bought from the supermarket. I used Frugal Queen’s recipe and method – olive oil, sunflower oil and Cookeen (solid veg shortening) – just leaving out the scent. It traced faster than the olive oil one thankfully!

The resulting soap is softer than the 100% olive oil one (apparently that’s down to the veg shortening) and not quite as pale – a soft lemon-ish colour. (It had some soap ash on it when I first picked it out of its drying place, which I’ve mostly scrapped off – hence the not-perfectly-smooth edges and slight colour variation on the before use picture above). It lathers quite a bit more than the olive oil soap – not crazy commercial soap levels but noticeably more. It did feel more like shop bought soap though – leaving my skin feeling a little “squeaky”. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just a thing.

I spent £5.27 on the ingredients (£1.89 on the olive oil [on offer at Netto at the time], £1.06 on the sunflower oil, £1.43 on the shortener and £0.89 for the caustic soda needed for this recipe – based on a 500g bottle from Wilkinsons; and I used tap water and no scent) – which I think out frugals the Frugal Queen ;) I ended up with 2850g of finished soap – the bars were randomly sized but if they were normal 100g-ish bars, that would be about 19p a bar (or about 24p a bar if they’re 125g, which was the weight I used to work out the per-bar cost of the 100% olive oil ones [35p]).

As I said regarding the 100% olive oil ones, I’m not sure I enjoyed the process enough to do it often but I like the idea of making a big batch every six months/year as necessary. Before the next batch though, I’m going to try handmilling some of the ones from this batch to try out different (frugal, supermarket-sourced) scents – and might try turning a bar into liquid soap too as that’s handy when my hands are filthy from gardening.

Has anyone else made the Frugal Queen’s 100% veg oil soap? What did you think of it? Or do you have any 100% supermarket-sourced veg oil soaps? Or suggestions for frugal scents and any handmilling/liquid-soap-from-bar making advice?

May – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Thursday 2 June 2011 in goals, meta | 5 comments

Another month that seems to have lasted ages but in a good way. Lots of long weekends too – but enough stuff going on to fill them with. I meant to write this post yesterday but was in the garden ’til past 10pm — so much to do!

Goals in 2011 progress

Things are still progressing in the garden – but slower than I thought in some areas. I only had my first fully homegrown salad last week – compared to regular salad from the garden in April last year. (I’m saying “fully homegrown” because we got two tubs of living salad from Lidl at the end of April and have cut-and-come-again from them several times – really been good value for money but not the same as growing from seed.) I’ve successfully taken cuttings from two perennial herbs too, so that’s another step – and I realised I should make that goal more measurable by coming up with a list of applicable plants/shrubs.

We’ve baked a good few times so are probably almost on track for the “once a week” goal, I’ve been making more stuff from wood so again improving those skills, and we went on a “learn to fly-fish” course while we were in the Lakes the weekend before last, which obviously isn’t the same as fishing in the North Sea but again, steps in the right direction. I like the idea of trying out the various different styles of fishing – see which one suits us/me best.

Not great goal progress but not bad :)

Mini goals

I set myself a few mini-goals this month – just a to-do list for myself really. Out of the five goals, I managed to complete one of them (pressure cleaning the coop) and half do two others (spent a lot of time looking at phone options and have decided I have to go see some in the flesh now; and, also I’ve sorted through nearly all of our kitchen cupboards). The other two things have been, um, forgotten. Will have to add them to my next to-do list…

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

I actually bought something this month! I bought three second-hand but BNWT bras on eBay – they are pretty but the focus is on functional, and they’re all replacements: I ripped one bra at the start of the month (not sure how), which spurred on my purchases, but earlier in the year had mentally retired two others because they were old and uncomfortable — so they’re on my exemption list.

Perhaps that purchase sated my previous “want new clothes” desires as I haven’t really been bothered about looking/thinking about buying anything else. Still no new clothes for six months now!

Quick tomato soup with chorizo and beans (recipe)

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 31 May 2011 in cooking, Featured, recipes | 3 comments

A common tip for people trying to eat less meat for frugal, health or environmental reasons is to use meat as a flavour not as an ingredient to add volume/bulk to the meal. I love chorizo for this purpose – the smallest pieces provide plenty of flavour. This soup doesn’t taste like a slice of neat chorizo, but the sausage adds a lot of depth to what is otherwise a pretty basic tomato soup.

Like our spicy tomato and lentil soup, this is a quicky and aside from the chorizo, is made from standard store-cupboard ingredients – so is a great last minute lunch soup. It’s not quite as frugal as the lentil one (because of the chorizo) but it’s still pretty cheap for something so easy and tasty :)

This week’s meal plan:

Posted by louisa on Monday 30 May 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

Another bank holiday in the UK – between Easter, bank holidays and our holidays, I think we’ve only had two five-day-working-weeks in the last two months :)

Sunday brunch – sausage, eggs & potato cakes
Sunday dinner – curry with the team

Monday brunch – pancakes, weeeee
Monday dinner – John’s previously frozen super special pasta sauce, with pasta & salad

Tuesday lunch – curried egg mayo with bread
Tuesday dinner – spicy pinto bean, pepper & chorizo stew

Wednesday lunch – some sort of veggie soup with bread & cheese
Wednesday dinner – pork chops with garlicky-tomato fried green beans

Thursday lunch – leftover veggie soup with bread & cheese
Thursday dinner – spicy smoked mackerel kedgeree

Friday lunch – samosas with salad/pickled veg
Friday dinner – burgers, with salad and bean salad

Have you planned your meals for this week? Are you having anything nice?