This week’s meal plan – garden a go go!

Posted by louisa on Monday 27 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 8 comments

Our first Swillington Farm meat box arrived last Thursday night – all the (fresh) meat we’re eating this week (and hopefully for the next three weeks!) will come from that. Most of it went in the freezer so we’ll have it across the month and like a veg box, we don’t have any choice in what’s in there, so it should encourage us to some try different things. We had some of the bacon & some of the sausages for breakfast over the weekend and I also jointed the chicken – we froze the breasts (which each weighed over 250g/half a lb!) and had the rest on Saturday/Sunday. Tuesday’s soup comes from stock from the carcass – it was supposed to be for eating today but it’s far too hot for that today!

As for the title for this one – the garden is finally providing! We’ve been having spots of salad for a few weeks (much later than last year for some reason) but various things are finally starting to shine. I think there is something from our garden – either veg or eggs – in every meal, hurrah :)

Sunday breakfast – eggs & sausage
Sunday lunch – leftover chicken & potatoes, with homegrown garlicky broad beans & salad
Sunday dinner – dining out – curry

Monday lunch – marrow flower fritters with salad
Monday dinner – rump steak with purple sprouting broccoli, homegrown potatoes, broad beans & salad

Tuesday lunch – chicken & sweetcorn soup
Tuesday dinner – pasta with chorizo, pepper & homegrown courgette

Wednesday lunch – leftover chicken & sweetcorn soup
Wednesday dinner – chicken jalfrezi with lemon rice

Thursday lunch – bread & meat with broad bean salad
Thursday dinner – leftover chicken jalfrezi with lemon rice

Friday lunch – curried egg mayo with bread
Friday dinner – homemade pizza, with salad

A year of The Really Good Life

Posted by louisa on Friday 24 June 2011 in Featured, meta | 10 comments

Well what’dya know, it’s a year today since I started this blog!

My first posts were about growing salad leaves, pickling wild garlic seed pods (which is something I’ve been meaning to do again this year but haven’t got around to it), some bargain batch-cooked dinners and about getting our first chickens – and our first egg.

What’s happened in the last year?

• We got the chickens – and got more but then lost two. But still ate a whole lot of eggs.
• Made fresh pasta from scratch for the first time – a big deal for pasta lovers like us!
• Made my first jams & chutneys – a whole cupboard full

• Made things from wood
• Learnt how to make soap
• Assist John in making his ultimately explosive cider ;)
• Learnt loads about making cheese
• Cold-smoked cheese and other things – yum

• Baked a whole lot of new stuff
• Refined some of my favourite recipes while trying to write them up
• Added a new (small) room to the house – will post pics in a couple of weeks when it’s decorated
• Had a “no spend” almost-month and kept a spending diary since the start of this year – which has made me more conscious about casual spending
• Surprised myself by not buying any clothes for seven months and counting

• Had some growing successes in our first year here – and our second year is off to a good start
• Planted lots of fruit trees and bushes/li>
• Made lots of new internet friends :D

I think the main thing that’s happened in the last year though is that between writing about things on here (and getting feedback – thanks for all the comments, guys!) and reading about all the exciting things other people are doing (both in the comments here and on their own blogs), I’ve been inspired to try things I’ve long wanted to try and experiment with other things that I didn’t even know I wanted to try!

Basically, it’s been a really good year :D

Six frugal-friendly tips to get the most out of shop loyalty cards

Posted by louisa on Thursday 23 June 2011 in frugal | 0 comments

Last week, I asked about who uses supermarket loyalty cards – whether they’re a frugal necessity or something to be avoided.

We had so many interesting responses that I thought it was worth summarising the excellent advice here. There *are* privacy implications and by using cards, you are generally making it easier for big companies to market their wares to you – but if you do want to use them, make sure you get the most out of them.

Turn them into vouchers/rewards

Lynsey said:
We have Tesco’s clubcard which is great as their vouchers can be turned into 3 times the face value for things like magazine subscriptions (we get ours using the vouchers) and it’s also very handy for us as you can turn them into Channel Tunnel vouchers so £30 of vouchers becomes £90 towards the crossing. We never use them in store for face value and always use them at 3x.

Jo of The Good Life also said:
I get quite a lot of vouchers back from Tesco which I use for meals out and magazine subscriptions. I’ve even had a RHS subscription and tickets to Gardener’s World Live though Clubcard Deals. You used to get four times the face value of the voucher if you spent them on rewards, but you now only get three times their value, but it’s still a great saving.

I’ve also seen the Frugal Queen talking about swapping her Tesco’s points into Cafe Rogue vouchers and my mum & dad swap them for magazine subscriptions and La Tasca (?) vouchers. If you’re already going to buy those magazines or dine in those places, this makes a lot of sense.

Resist their attempts to persuade you to spend money

Strowger78 said:
You have to be very careful! They will send you a blizzard of stupid vouchers for money off things that you don’t need. You must be disciplined and not use these.

And the same goes for those vouchers – they’re a waste of money if you wouldn’t normally buy those things.

Be inconsistent and they’ll reward you

Strowger78 also said:
The best results seem to come from not consistently shopping at one supermarket. If you always spend £100/wk at Tesco or Sainsburys, I think they confine themselves to offering you vouchers off things you don’t normally buy.

If you aren’t consistent, they’ll eventually send you bundles of quite useful money-off vouchers. For example I’ve currently got a load of £7 off £70 and £5 off £50 Sainsburys and Tesco vouchers. They send these to try to entice you “back” to doing your “main” shop with them.

Link your card to bank accounts/utility bills for extra points

Lynsey has a Tesco credit card and gains points for money spent on her card. Meg had her Nectar card linked to her gas & electricity company (until her power company stopped doing that); other power companies have, at least in the past, been linked to Tesco for similar purposes. Cooperative dividend points are earned on just about anything in the Cooperative family – including bank accounts with The Cooperative Bank and Smile.

Use them when buying same-price-everywhere things

Shoestring said:
I use my Boots loyalty card to buy all of my make-up and most of my skincare stuff (I build up points by buying other stuff there, like my Vodafone top up voucher.

I didn’t know you could collect point on top-ups — do stamps count too?

But most importantly: forget points, use the cheapest option in the first place

Joddle said:
Privacy isn’t my issue with loyalty cards. I think the clue is in the name really. Once a loyalty card is signed up to, it may be so that people choose to spend more money in that particular shop than they might otherwise.

I find that the cheap shops don’t offer loyalty cards as they keep their price point down in the first place. For example Boots = expensive; pound shop generally very cheap. Superdrug has recently started doing one, which blows my theory a bit.

I don’t consider Superdrug particularly cheap so maybe it doesn’t blow Joddle’s theory that much – but I agree with the rest: Wilkinsons, Home Bargain and the like offer name-brand toiletries for far cheaper than Boots (and Superdrug) – so much cheaper that points are very unlikely to make up the difference.

Any other great tips to add?

Payment for eggs? Or homegrown veg / homemade crafts?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 21 June 2011 in chickens, growing | 12 comments

Last week when John’s mum was visiting, she mentioned that she had been wondering about paying us for the eggs we give the family. I think we gave her/John’s dad effectively three half-dozens last week – which would cost about £5 in the shops, but cost us just under £2*. She tried to give us some money but John refused to accept it on principle, and bundled her out of the door before she could argue — it did lead us to talk about it afterwards though.

When we got the extra girls last year and it made it easier for us to regularly give away boxes of eggs, John & I talked about taking a nominal charge for them to pay for the extra feed and that sort of thing – but never actually got around to doing it. With the six girls now, we are really just giving away our spares; I think if we had enough chickens to warrant doing a “garden gate” stand to sell them (or sold them at our workplaces), we’d be more inclined to take money from friends but for us right now, while we’re ok for money and it’s just a casual thing, it feels a bit petty to ask good friends and family for £1 here and there.

Even if we were selling them though, John said he wouldn’t accept any money from his mum and dad because they’ve given, and continue to give, us so much – over the last fortnight, John’s dad has put up a fence for us, supplying all the wood (some free; some paid for) as well as labour — that is surely worth a few eggs!

Expanding from that, we realised that at least half of the people we regularly give eggs to frequently give us they’ve made/do something for us in return – and we like that idea of unofficial/unspoken bartering because it stops it being just about money and becomes about time/effort instead. There are a few people to whom we regularly give eggs that don’t really give us anything in return – and we’re not bothered about that (if we cared, we wouldn’t give them eggs so often!), but if they ask to give money towards feed now, we’re more likely to say “bake us a cake sometime instead”.

Something related: last year or so, I realised that I’m always more inclined to give produce or crafty things to other growers & crafters etc. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if I had a mega glut of things – but at the moment while my output is more limited, if I have to choice between giving stuff to a grower/maker or a non-grower, I’d almost always lean towards the grower. They realise that homegrown/homemade things aren’t necessarily always aesthetically perfect and they know the effort that goes into producing the finished fruit or project.

Someone who doesn’t grow their own veg may see as courgette as something worth (say) 60p, which may be a few minutes of their working time, the same price as a Mars bar or can of Coke, but a grower (or someone who has grown in the past) sees the ongoing care and attention that went into growing it, and that’s far more valuable. (I think that’s why people who grow/cook/make etc are generally less wasteful too – it’s easier for them to see/imagine the effort.)

What do you think? Do you sell your surplus at a “garden gate” or to friends and family? Or do you give everything away for free? How does it work for you?

* our per egg cost is usually around 9p, so £1.62, but has been a little more lately because of expenses to do with the red mite infestation last month; I’m putting it at around 11p or 12p an egg at the moment.

The weekend of exploding cider bottles

Posted by louisa on Monday 20 June 2011 in homebrewing | 7 comments

It actually started on Thursday night/Friday morning. I woke up to find Lily-dog shut out of the kitchen and John inside the kitchen looking confused. There were bits of glass on the floor but not enough to be a whole bottle or glass – but he couldn’t find the rest of whatever had broken. He was inspecting the empty beer bottles from Wednesday night’s beery evening when Detective Louisa stepped up and suggested the cider – which was housed at the other end of the kitchen, about 4m away – may be to blame. Lo and beyond, the rest of the shattered bottled was found.

John cleared up and put a towel over the remaining bottles – just in case any others decided to go bang. And go bang they did – yesterday morning while I was relaxing (well, gaming) on the sofa in the next room. I have no idea how we missed the first one – the second boom was LOUD. It turned out three bottles had broken – presumably one had set the other too off, and they had also shattered the glass of the kitchen clock (which was above the bottles) and left deep scars in its plastic. Thankfully the towel had caught most of the glass – but sticky cider dripped everywhere.

While he was cleaning up that lot, he put the remaining five bottles into a strong plastic bucket, with a piece of wood on the top, weighed down with a 2kg weight. Just after he’d finished cleaning up, one of those bottles exploded too – the force of the explosion didn’t break the other bottles but it was enough to lift the wood & weight to spray small bits of glass in the vicinity of the bucket. John immediately decanted the cider from the remaining bottles into strong plastic bottles and vowed that it would be drunk by his family that afternoon (it was).

We think a few things might have caused the explosions:

1. a little too much sugar added at the last stage
2. not enough air space left in each bottle
3. the bottles weren’t a strong as they appeared – he’d reused old shop-bought cider/beer bottles as instructed by experts/other homebrewers but perhaps they weren’t as strong as they should be. It was the bottles that gave way, not the caps popping off.

Whatever happened though, it was frickin’ scary and definitely something we don’t want to repeat. I can only imagine the damage it would have done to us or the animals if we’d been in the kitchen at the time.

Have you had homebrew explode before? What precautions do take to avoid it?

This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 20 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

Last week’s mostly-eating-from-the-freezer week was good – the closest we’ve stuck to the meal plan for a long time (aside from the beef goulash and “for next week”‘s sausage & lentil casserole swapped places).

This week should see the first not-just-salad crops from the garden – broad beans and new potatoes will definitely feature, and we might get our first courgette too. I heart this time of year :)

Sunday brunch – bacon butties (yay!)
Sunday dinner – roast beef dinner (John went to his mum & dad’s for lunch and brought a plate back for me)

Monday lunch – tomato soup with a pastrami & pickle sandwich
Monday dinner – pasta with tuna, sweetcorn, olives and chillis

Tuesday lunch – leftover pasta with tuna etc
Tuesday dinner – some sort of risotto (whatever John fancies making)

Wednesday lunch – poached eggs (hopefully! going to learn how to make them)
Wednesday dinner – the beef goulash I forgot to make in time last week

Thursday lunch – samosas, salad & pickles
Thursday dinner – leftover goulash

Friday lunch – bread, cheese & pickles
Friday dinner – new potato & broad bean salad (both from the garden, woo), with bacon/pancetta & poached egg (hopefully!)

Ten things about me

Posted by louisa on Friday 17 June 2011 in meta | 1 comment

Woohoo! Jo from The Good Life has given me the Kreativ Blogger Award – which she received from Bluebell at At Home in the Country.

Apparently I’m supposed to tell you ten things about myself – it means this blog is a bit long and self-indulgent though so feel free to skip ;)

In case everyone does want to skip the following waffle, I’ll pass the award on now – I’ll pass it onto Rachel from Growing Things and Making Things, Alexis from the Hour of Scampering, and over in the US, Kate from Living the Frugal Life (who I need to email – sorry for the delay Kate!).

Ten Things About Me

1. I don’t like any fruit
At all. At least not in its raw state, as juice or as a pudding when it’s still identifiable as fruit. I think I had a bad experience with a horrible fruity pudding when I was four and now anything fruity makes me gip (I like the smell of some fruit but can’t stand the taste of it). It’s an annoying trait because it does limit what I can consume from growing my own/foraging – I grow/forage fruit for (my boyfriend) John to eat or to turn into jam/fruity chutneys (which I do like).