Is it easier to be super frugal as part of a couple or as a single person?

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 24 August 2011 in Featured, frugal | 13 comments

I was thinking about this question the other day – is it easier to be super frugal as part of a couple or as a single person? – but I think I should immediately clarify that while I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on it, I have no intention of leaving my lovely boyfriend if single “wins”! :)

It generally is cheaper, of course, to be part of a couple – often two incomes coming in but many living costs don’t go up (or don’t go up that much) so regular outgoings on bills are roughly halved. Two people who like spending time together don’t generally need a bigger house/flat than one person; insurance costs don’t really go up when there are two of you; utility bills might go up a bit and council tax will go up when you lose your single person discount – but since you’re sharing it, you’ll be paying less overall.

But while it’s cheaper in general, in my experience, having to consider the other person in the relationship can make it more difficult to be frugal in other parts of your life. I’ve noticed that when the two of us are home at the same time, we’re more likely to put the heating on/light the stove than if there is just one of us there (especially if that one of us is me). Similarly, our meals tend to be more extravagant when we’re both eating than when we’re dining solo – dinner becomes an event which necessitates a proper meal rather than just quick’n’easy snack that will more than suffice. Similarly, John doesn’t expect for me to live in a fashion show but I think I’d probably be even scruffier/pyjama-clad around the house than I am now if my only audience was feline/canine.

John and I are generally on a very similar wavelength when it comes to (not) spending money and that sort of thing but, for example, he buys more expensive bacon than I would or is more likely to put the heating/stove on before me when it’s chilly (he’ll put a jumper & socks on first, of course, but I’d be more likely to get under a blanket too). I’m fussier when buying home furnishings (fabrics, colours etc) so spend more money on that sort of thing than he ever would. John also earns considerably more than me (because he’s in a higher paid profession and works more hours) but even though we largely pool our money, our income disparity means we have different opinions on what is affordable and what isn’t because the same amount of money represents a lot more time worked for me than it does for him.

Basically, I think we’re both much happier to “make do” when we’re home alone. When both of us are here, we settle at a higher unspoken comfort level to possibly avoid upsetting the other unnecessarily.

That might just be us though – I’d love to hear what you think from your experiences.

If you’re in a relationship/have a family at home, do you & your partner/kids have the same frugal outlook? Does it cause any problems? Do you have to compromise on anything? If you have different frugal levels/requirements, how do you make it work?

If you’re single, do you have any habits that you think you’d change if you were living with someone else?

Homemade takeout

Posted by louisa on Monday 22 August 2011 in cooking, Featured | 3 comments

Steel Kitten has blogged about learning how to make her own kebab meat for homemade donner kebabs and it’s made me think about how we’ve slowly been replacing takeout dinners.

I’ll be honest – we still do eat quite a bit of takeaway/delivery food – but it is less than it used to be. When we lived in Leeds, we were in a prime spot for takeout – we were in the overlapping bit of four different takeout areas so had a huge variety of places to choose from. It was mostly junk food takeout (but done well) but there were a few more better quality places (eg Box Pizza – who when they first started out did fancy burgers too) and restaurants that delivered too. Lots of tasty temptation.

Since moving, we’ve become disillusioned with the takeaway options around here but still have takeout cravings/the urge for lazy comfort food at dinnertime so have started making more of our own takeout favourites at home:

Curries

We are curry fiends. In West Yorkshire, it’s almost rude not to be – there are so many excellent restaurants around. We still eat curries out of the house about once a fortnight but we also make them a lot. A few years ago, we went on a cookery course taught by one of the head chefs of a local restaurant chain and it vastly increased John’s cooking confidence so he’s the one that tends to cook them at home. He blogged a few of our favourite recipes from that course (lamb achar; lemon rice; chicken jalfrezi) but he’s tweaked them over the years so next time he makes them, I’ll document the new versions (especially the keema & chickpea version of the achar – that’s my favourite :) ).

We used to have daal a lot when we were veggie – with rice as a main dish rather than just the side dish it’s relegated to a lot over here. I used this recipe for tarka daal, and this for a yellow split pea one.

Obviously just about the best thing about curry is that it’s one of those foods that tastes better the next day and it freezes really well too. We always cook curries in large quantities (one of the few things we batch cook) so we can have a homemade ready meal/homemade takeout when we’re feeling lazy — healthier and far cheaper than ordering in. Daal doesn’t freeze as well (or rather, whole pulses don’t defrost well in my experience) but wetter soup-y style ones don’t suffer as badly as they’re already mostly/entirely broken down.

Cost per portion: (some sort of meat curry)
take-out/delivery – about £5-6 a dish, plus extra for rice/chapatis from some places
homemade – (made with organic & local meat) about £2, including rice
Time to make: 1hour+ – but can be batch made and frozen (then takes about 10 mins)

Cost per portion: (some sort of veggie daal)
take-out/delivery – about £4-5, plus extra for rice/chapatis from some places
homemade – no more than £1, including rice
Time to make: about half an hour

Surprise damsons

Posted by louisa on Friday 19 August 2011 in homebrewing | 11 comments

Our fab friends Vic and John B texted the other day to ask if we’d like some damsons – they’d used as many as they could but had some spare that needed eating/processing ASAP. “Some” turned out to be about 5kg (11lbs)! Thanks so much Vic & John B! :)

Last year, we thought our mysterious plums might be damsons – they’re about the right size – but the colour is very, very different. Ours are a very deep pink when ripe but these are such a rich indigo-blue, it’s almost unreal. I feel by the process of elimination, we’ll work out what our plums are eventually :)

We gave a few handfuls some to Strowger & Urbanwide for eating and my John turned the rest into wine last night. He did a lot of exclaiming about the amount of sugar needed for the wine – it’s a good job I don’t have any immediate jamming requirements as he’s used up practically every grain of sugar in the house.

Have you grown/foraged damsons this year? What did you do with them? Any favourite recipes?

Not fishing in Whitby

Posted by louisa on Thursday 18 August 2011 in goals | 8 comments

I’ve had “go sea fishing” in the North Sea on my goal list last year but faff and disorganisation meant it didn’t happen, so it was pushed onto my goal list for this year. Eight months through the year, faff and disorganisation were at risk of having their way with things again, so rather than postpone any longer, we decided to go risk going in the busy summer holiday period yesterday.

We found an afternoon “taster trip”, took the doggie to her granny & pop-pops’ house for the day (she’s their granddog) and organised our schedule with a good hour/hour-and-a-half buffer zone between getting there and needing to go to the boat, just in case we got lost, got stuck in traffic or had trouble finding a parking space. That hour/hour-and-a-half buffer zone would have covered one or two of those eventualities but, as it turned out, not all three. It took us nearly twice as long to get there as it should have done, and we missed the boat (literally) by about ten minutes. Somewhat annoying.

Lemons/lemonade – we were in Whitby, my favourite seaside town (sorry Southport, you might have birthed me but your sea is, frankly, a bit rubbish) and had already mentally committed to having an afternoon off so we played tourists: a walk on the beach, fish & chips, donuts, some casual jet jewellery window shopping and some serious seagull watching. We parked at the Abbey so got to have a distant gaze at that too.

I also indulged my craft bone with a visit to Bobbins, the mostly yarn/some antiques shop in the shopping area on the east of the harbour. I stroked various yarns before buying some King Cole Riot DK (very nice, even though it’s 70% acrylic).

It’s a shame we didn’t get to go fishing but we still had a jolly pleasant afternoon in the sunshine. We were hoping to actually go fishing next Wednesday but as the Whitby Folk Festival starts next Monday, I suspect it’ll be too busy for us – but we will get there, we will eventually, we will!

(Photo from a previous wintery trip to Whitby – we didn’t think it would be sensible to take an expensive camera out on a fishing trip so didn’t have one yesterday. Imagine the same shot with a brighter blue sky and about a hundred times as many people :) )

UK people – have you been to Whitby? What are your favourite spots there – any recommendations for places to eat/drink for when we do return to fish?

Alphabet in August – I to L

Posted by louisa on Monday 15 August 2011 in meta | 0 comments

This is a month-long creative exercise led by Chiot’s Run: descriptive words and pictures about me/my life starting with each letter of the alphabet. Most people are doing a letter a day but I’m doing it in groups instead ;)

• Alphabet in August – A to D
• Alphabet in August – E to H

(I love it when it’s icy in winter and I have a good excuse to hide inside near the stove, crafting with animals on top of me :) )

I is for…

• Interested: in everything. All the time.
• Introspective: this exercise is an example of this! I’m generally much more negative when introspective in my own brain though and have had to stop keeping diaries because they just became negative introspection feedback loops.
• Introverted: I came across this list of myths about introverted people a few months ago and nodded a lot.
• Insolent: I generally don’t mean to be but I often come off that way because I don’t blindly abide by a number of social pleasantries for the sake of it (see “introverted”). I also usually beat myself up about it for hours afterwards (see “introspective”! ;) )
• Idler: Different from being lazy (which I also am, see below), I greatly value regular periods of idling – downtime playing computer games or relatively mindless crafting etc. With those distracting my conscious brain, my subconscious can figure things out all sorts of things for me or produce a variety of creative ideas.

(John, my favourite meatbag. Well, human meatbag. We share a brain as well as a home but we rarely share dessert, oh no.)

J is for…

Wild plum/cherry plum ketchup

Posted by louisa on Thursday 11 August 2011 in cooking, preserving, wild food | 2 comments

As I mentioned yesterday when discussing my SUPER AWESOME YUMMY jam (it’s gooooooood), I used the rest of our last plum-type fruit harvest to make some ketchup.

Last year, I made jam and spicy chutney but this year I was inspired by a tweet from Jono from Real Men Sow‘s tweet linking to a cherry plum ketchup recipe a few weeks ago.

Since it was a bit of a test, I quartered the quantities of Norfolk Kitchen’s original recipe (although accidentally only halved the amount of onion) and added about 10ml of Worchestershire Sauce as well the vinegar because I thought it would add some nice undertones. I also added a little water, maybe 100ml in total, while it was simmering as I thought it would be getting a little sticky for ketchup.

My quartered amount – based on 500g of plums – made more than I thought it would – 3 bottles full of sauce (this old Heinz bottle and two Encona ones). I imagine a week or two of “aging” will help the flavours develop but it’s already pretty tasty – fruity but savoury. It’s a lovely colour too – a proper full-bodied deep red – first taste with the eyes and all that ;)

Like Tracey, I’ll probably use it with things I wouldn’t normally Heinz up, like cheese on toast. I’m also interested to know how it will work with the Swillington Farm pork and plum sausages we have in the freezer – double plum action! :)

This year’s wild plum/cherry plum jam

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 10 August 2011 in cooking, preserving, wild food | 4 comments

I wasn’t planning to make any jam from the mysterious plum-like fruit that grows outside our kitchen window but when John said he wasn’t sure if he could be bothered making wine, I had to do something with our first harvest. And boy, am I glad I did.

It was about 1kg of mysterious plums (pre-stoning), about 300ml of water, about 750g of sugar and 2tsp of vanilla extract/flavouring.

I’m not sure whether it’s the vanilla or the fact that the plums were super mega ripe when I used them but YUM. I think it’s far nicer than last year (although to be fair, it is a while since I ate last year’s jam so I might be misremembering it/confusing it with something else).

I only made about 3lb because I wanted to make some ketchup with the rest of the plums I had to hand (that’s cooking as I type) but it’s so nice that I want to make more straight-away. Thankfully it looks like we’ll get a few more kilos of fruit yet!