Blessed

 So another fun packed skint week on the horizon ..lol  the van has entered the garage and we await the verdict on how much damage it has done . Himself is still on his extreme economy drive , you know the one where we cant go out and hes no money for the groceries but the delivery vans keep arriving for him . Not that we needed anything im well stocked up, in the slow cooker i have a really weird version of chicken stew , son donated some vile extra spicy chicken portions and i defrosted them peeled most of the god awful orange coating off chopped them and added to a bag of stock from a garlic chicken , three years out of date white tinned kidney beans and all the dregs of last years dried veg , plus three aged sticks of celery from the fridge it smells gorgeous ..time will tell 

The slow cooker died last week i spotted a big crack in it , son had some amazon vouchers saved up, so i now have a blue one because they were £10 cheaper . I still had the huge slow cooker but thats for big chickens and joints , not that ive used it lately . the everyday sized one does us for 2 nights of stew of some description . As kids we both grew up on mystery meat stew and big wedges of bread and butter or dumplings . I sometimes think that its yet another out of fashion food kids miss out on .Sometimes you just have to feel blessed by what you have , with good memories and bad times in the background 

£30 and Counting

 So another week of the £30 food budget and off to the social supermarket , 3 red cabbages ,2 large bags of string beans , bag of mushrooms and a mountain of sprouts ,4 huge cooking apples , celery  , burger cheese slices one frozen curry , tin of potatoes tin of irish stew tin of soup and a pack of tiger buns didnt go anywhere else so saved the money till i picked himself up from hospital after a minor bit of repair and popped into little Tesco on the way back .  a big bag of 11p giant oranges, a load of bakery, yellow stickers bananas 25p  huge bag full .

Today has been prep day So ive microwave blanched all the beans and sprouts , just loaded the big slow cooker with redcabbage and apple for xmas and beyond , more apples from the garden for the dehydrator .

Best find of the week i decided to repot my scabby dead looking ginger plant to find 2 huge roots , so ive loads of fresh ginger , repotted two little nuggets and have bought the planter in for the winter funny what you can grow from a 10p Tesco dried up nugget of ginger .

My big question is why cant the food pantry get rid of a lot of the veg they are given?  I seem to be getting mountains of it . Im more than grateful the price of a cabbage in the Coop can be £2.50 , in fact i cant afford any of their fruit or veg its out of my price range. This isnt a food bank its a community waste initiative . i know energy prices are stopping a lot of people cooking but i use the slow cooker and microwave for practically everything . The mountains of exotic bread i sort of understand most people wont have a clue what to do with it if its stale , but why charge such a high price instore for it when theyre giving mountains away ?  Must admit on the veg front theres a couple of things id run screaming from the building about Advocados and Aubergines my pet hates ..lol

Bad Habits

 So off to the cat jumble i went , managed to buy a weird handbag bright yellow and furry , couple of books and it was fill a bag for £3 on the clothing front . so it had to be done . out of a bag full two items fitted such is life and if i can find a decent clothes rail by spring i may carboot my huge pile of dont fit which will have amassed by then .im a really odd shape and size so if i had to buy from shops or online it costs me an arm and a leg because it mostly doesnt fit , so ive given up on them and just buy a mountain of might fit from the jumble and sometimes get lucky.  It was the last carboot of the season so i dragged myself out of a nice warm bed and toddled off to Metheringham there was a good few stalls and plenty of buyers but it was really baltic and the frost light was on in the car , bag of veg, a couple of giant Kilners and 3 balls of wool , how will i cope till the Spring..lol  On the busy front im drying endless apple chips made pear jam that im told is to sweet ??  last of the pears used but still mountains of small apples. Highlight of life in a small village seems to be the antics of Mavis the escapoligist sheep , just the one sheep who because i get up early i seem to be bumping into an awful lot while walking the cats first thing it came with us the other day the cats looked suitably disgusted 

Economy Driven

 The repairs to our van are going to cost over £2000+ so at the moment the whole of our income has to be saved to pay it we are nearly there, we have barely spent a penny for 2 months and i was given a £30 budget for this month...lol ..i like a challenge . Anyway it was off to the Sleaford Community Pantry this morning thats a whole £7 for whatever this weeks list is , now i usually walk round and have a good look then sort of write a menu in my head with whats on offer, this week i got a big frozen pizza for himself and a big tub of cottage cheese for me , 5 shelf items , so a tin of potatoes and a tin of carrots , a tin of Fareshare soup bag of oats and some cheese nibbles ,  veg items so a bag of carrots , bag of tomatoes small cabbage , cress and large cucumber , freebies were all manner of spices so i got a box of some kind of indian chicken seasoning , then the lovely lady says its compulsory to take at least 4 lots of bread even if its just to feed your chickens , it seems they had a bread problem lol they had received an unexpected delivery of huge amounts of posh bread as the lady called it , nobody really wants it but to me this is a bonus i came away with 4 small sourdough loaves all have been sliced and garlic buttered and popped in the freezer , that will make a whole winter of soup bread , huge bag of different bread buns all weird and wonderful ive sliced and tomato pureed them for whatever pizza bits i may have, into the freezer again. Bread and butter pudding my favourite , done a huge one with dried egg , nobody will know if i dont tell them , i will portion some into the freezer . Now ive just got to make our favourite coleslaw with mayo and mango chutney . Pop into iceland to see if theres anything with a yellow reduced sticker got two big bags of some obscure fish fingers for £1.75 each . still had nearly £10 left so to the Moy Park chicken factory on the way home . £2 fresh chickens with todays date , southern fried chicken bits for himself x2 , 4 big kievs and a chicken crown for sunday  dont think i did bad out of £30 plus my endless prepper pantry just adds together all the obscure bits . Only thing im getting low on is milk but ive started to cheat and rinse out the cartons and refill with powdered , himself wont touch powdered milk but he never realises that ive done this for years when we are hard up 

Stocking Up

 So its that time of year , stock the pantry for winter , ive always got a pretty full pantry, but during the winter we dont get out much ..lol  crutches dont do well on ice so himself is pretty much grounded once that starts . 5 miles to find a god awful cheap coop bread loaf , a butchers we cant afford and a community market once a month for gold plated veg . But we are used to it, so its just stock up well this time of year and hope for the best . These days its cook as much in the slow cooker as possible and use the microwave for most other things . I dont batch cook because himself wont eat stuff thats been warmed up , however he will eat a crap ready meal with the nutritional value of hamster cage droppings. but give him soup or stew out of the freezer and he turns up his nose. Men are just weird. On a plus front i popped in M&S at just the right time the other day and filled a big drawer in the freezer with heavily discounted decent ready meals , they also have their soups on offer at 62p which makes them 2p dearer than the Tesco own brand ones so ive stocked him a bagful of them . Still struggling on the veg front most of it is unaffordable though im hoping to get to the Community larder this week , ive tons of apples and pears still so im still dehydrating them and canning them Theres little leeks in the garden and thats pretty much it , desolate windy weed patch sums it up this year . Dried stuff wise i found a decent offer on amazon for red lentils and mung beans so i ordered a box full , amazon is a weird mix of tread carefully and decent offers that even with the monthly fee can work out really good .  Im a fan of Maggi instant catering mash that you can get in big sacks but its now got very expensive its much the same as Idahoan and lasts all winter . I ordered Sun mash this time its powder rather than flake very bland and hard to mix but hey it was on offer and adding a bit of flavouring never killed anyone . Im missing having squash but not having seen any around the boot sales i would imagine nobody has many this year , i will wait for the day after Haloween for the cheap pumpkins..lol i noticed a single golf ball sized one has set on down the garden im not holding my breath , the Tomatoes having yielded not a thing have now decided to go mental and ive  a windowsill full of green ones ...Its been a funny old year garden wise and im finding that its that time of year when i get really fed up and keep just staring out the window when i should be full of life and getting on with things . Winter is coming and i bleedin hate it , hes already moaning he wants the heating on and its to early yet...lol