New Year woes and good things

 Christmas and the New Year feel like a long time ago now. We were meant to go to our elder daughter's for New Year's Day but the day before, small grandson had turned all spotty with chicken pox. He has now kindly passed this along to his dad who had escaped it as a child. Poor man! Our son's family has two members down with Covid but they are now on the road to recovery. The other family members seem to be escaping. Isn't it hard when you have a house full of people and bedrooms shared and then some go down with Covid. My son is sleeping on the bed settee which is not built for tall people like him.

Not to be left out of the sympathy stakes, I have had a heavy cold, my husband has had a funny bug and I have hurt my knee somehow and am hobbling around with a borrowed stick and feeling like a very old lady. What a family! I am discovering that it is not easy to walk around a supermarket with a stick because it keeps slipping on the tiled floors. I keep having to try to make the stick land on the joints between the tiles otherwise it doesn't provide any support at all. I have been trying not to walk too far and to rest my knee but I have had to go to a supermarket three times this year. One time, I called into Asda in the evening on the way to somewhere else and happened to be there when they brought out a trolley full of final reductions. Everything was reduced to 10p or 20p and I definitely came out of the shop with a smile on my face and a bag full of bread, broccoli, sausages, ham and yoghurts. And I spent a whopping £1.30 too : ) Fortunately there was just enough space in the freezer to put some of it away for the following week. It certainly cut the housekeeping bill for a couple of weeks.

Egg problems and bargains

My new hens -  I've had them since the end of September but number 4 of the five just started laying this week and there is one still not laying. They were supposed to have been about 15 weeks old when we got them and should start laying between 18 and 22 weeks old. The first started laying after 9 weeks and then another started 3 weeks after that and the third about 3 weeks after that. Had them 16 weeks and the fourth has just started laying and one still to start. If they were 15 weeks when we got them as they should have been, then that makes them over 31 weeks old. These are just commercial little brown layers and I've never had one go beyond 20 weeks before it started laying in 20 years of keeping hens so something is wrong somewhere...

There just don't seem to be many bargains around any more. When I see a yellow sticker, my beady little eyes light up and then I see they have only knocked 10% off the price and I go away without it. A few yellow stickers not only gladden my heart but they surely make the pennies stretch a lot further. Sometimes the yellow stickers can also mean that we eat something (I'm thinking steak here) that we love as a treat but is normally way out of my price range. However pickings have been slim around here for over a year now. Still, I did find a big bargain this week. I was down at church and popped across the road to Asda afterwards, about 8pm. There were not many reduced things there but in the reduced section someone had put a whole tray of pint pots of double cream dated for that day. But there was no yellow sticker. I spotted a chap restocking the shelves nearby and went and asked him if he knew the price. He looked at the date and said that if I waited a bit, he would go and reduce them. He reduced them to 20p! The low price must have been because of the quantity of pots of cream and the lateness of the hour. I can make almost 10ozs of butter from a pint pot of double cream and this will cost me 20p instead of £1.40. Yum! I brought home eight of the pots of cream : )             I divide the butter up into small portions of about 4ozs and freeze them. I find my homemade butter does not keep as well as bought stuff but small portions work just fine. I make the butter in the food processor and keep the initial whey and the water/whey mixture from the first washing and use that for making bread and scones. Lovely! My husband loves it when he gets homemade scones spread with homemade butter and homemade jam.

There is such a thing as a free lunch!

When we were in Cambridge just recently, I popped into Waitrose because I had a till-spit coupon for a half price jar of coffee. They didn't stock the brand of coffee I needed at that branch of Waitrose so I was feeling really disappointed. I had a £2 off a spend of £10 coupon as well and I had planned something else to buy so that I would end up in profit and they were spoiling all my carefully thought out plans. So there I was still stood in front of the coffee shelves when a Waitrose lady stops beside me and asks me if I would like to have the sandwich she was carrying. I must have looked startled because she had to explain to me that she meant to give me the sandwich and I would not have to part with any money. So I did not get my jar of coffee but I left with a sourdough baguette filled (generously!) with roast beef and horseradish and rocket. It was absolutely delicious and I've been feeling quite kindly towards Waitrose ever since.

They are quite an expensive shop but often their special offers bring the price down to the same as everybody else's special offers and you do get a free cup of coffee, if you bring your own cup and a free newspaper if you spend over £10. We don't have a branch very close to us but we do pass one every so often and I always check their offers and the coupons they send to see if it is worth calling in. It is one shop that my husband doesn't mind shopping at because he gets the cup of coffee..... : )

New Year - that was ages ago

Christmas is past. We had a lovely family time. We split up into two groups for Christmas Day dinner and then everybody brought some food and we all got together in one house for a buffet tea on Boxing Day. I really enjoyed it and it was great to watch the grandchildren opening their presents. But New Year is past as well. We went out to our friends' farm on New Year's Eve with a few other friends and we had a fun evening and saw the New Year in together.

Now we are a few days into January and things are getting back towards their normal routine. I made about five gallons of broccoli and stilton soup for the church coffee shop the other day. I got the broccoli on the last day that Aldi had it at 19p so it should make a decent profit for the coffee shop. I also got carrots at 20p to make carrot and coriander soup as well.  And of course, I stocked up on Christmas veg for us. There is no problem about storing it all in a cool place this weather!  : )

We went to Waitrose the other day too. Waitrose and Aldi are only a couple of doors apart. Waitrose had reduced some of their Christmas items to clear them off the shelves. We bought a cooked ham which was a dry cured hock with a mustard and honey dressing. It weighed two kilos and was just beautiful. It was sold originally for £35 but we got one for £5. The bone was much smaller than I was expecting so there was a real lot of tasty meat for that money. Yum!

I've been invigilating in school again this week. I don't mind being paid for being bored. I did an extra session this afternoon as the real invigilator didn't turn up and they phoned me as I live quite close by and could get there quickly. Their loss and my gain : )

Wishing everybody all the best for 2018.

Bargains and busy-ness

Life just seems so busy at the moment. Since my last post we've had two short trips to Cambridge which I find very tiring. We came back last night from the second. It was rather wet in Cambridge yesterday...... Not much good for sightseeing! Happily I found the library and spent the afternoon there in the warm and drying out. I also read a John Grisham from beginning to end. It is a long time since I had enough free time to read a whole book in one go but I really enjoyed being able to do that.

I was supposed to be going cycling with a friend this morning but the drizzle turned to heavy rain so we changed our minds about the ride. Maybe we are more like fair weather cyclists : )  I've enjoyed going cycling recently. Our local council is trying to encourage people to get out cycling more, both for health reasons and to promote leaving the car at home. I've got my level 2 cycling proficiency now although I feel really insecure on the major roads still. Free classes - my favourite price. I've finished the course now but we are allowed to borrow the bikes and go in small groups out locally for a couple of hours. I'm hoping to acquire a bike now. And Christmas is coming...

It is soup season again so I'm back making soup for our church coffee shop every week. This week I made carrot and leek. They were on offer in Aldi in their super six so it seemed sensible as it makes it rather cheaper to produce 3-4 gallons of soup. Next week it will be pumpkin soup, hopefully, as there are so many pumpkins in the shops right now.

We have a new Lidl in our area which opened today. I've been to shop there this afternoon - by car. For six weeks, if you show the card they were handing out today, they will give you a free grocery item each week on spending £20. I reckon I'll be there most weeks for the next six weeks too. I can stock up on things that I will need for Christmas and the freebies are things that I use.

We called in at Tesco on the way home from Cambridge last night. I've never had so many bargains midweek. We brought back a boxful for our son, our daughter and my best friend as well as for us. We have some things that I would never have paid for, such as venison sausages (40p!) and there were also mega bargains like bread at 3p. All the recipients were thrilled and it was really good to be able to give them all such a nice gift. It cost us very little to give them each their box and it will make a real difference to their housekeeping budget this week.

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Lemonade

I happened upon some yellowstickered lemons this week - 4 lemons in a pack for 8p : )
So I decided to make some lemonade. I haven't made any for years. I used to make it when the children were small if I found lemons on offer. The lemons this week were lovely plump ones and unwaxed too. I love this hot or cold. Today was a hot day and I had this cold but diluted with sparkling water rather than tap water. It definitely hit the spot this afternoon.

This is my recipe that I was given years ago. As I had 4 lemons, I made 80% of the quantity:

Lemonade

5 lemons
4 pints boiling water
3 lbs sugar
2 ozs citric acid

Grate the lemon rind into a large saucepan.
Cut off as much pith as possible from the lemons, cut them into quarters and blitz in the food processor.
Add blitzed lemon and the other ingredients to the saucepan and stir until the sugar has dissolved.
Leave to cool.
When cool, bottle and store in the fridge.

Lemonade is a slight misnomer as it needs to be diluted. If there is space in the freezer, you could always put the lemonade into small bottles and get one out of the freezer at a time. Or make a half quantity.

I find that 2 tablespoons is about right for a half pint mug of water and I like it both hot and cold. It is also nice diluted with sparkling water.

I'm not sure how long it will keep in the fridge as it is so long since I made it but it is at least 3 weeks. When the kids were all home, keeping it was not a problem!

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A good day

It was a lovely day yesterday. My husband had been asked to preach at a church about 20 miles away. They are a small church family and no longer have a fulltime minister. A lady who was at our church for over 30 years retired to this little town to be close to family. So this church asks my husband to preach each year in the run up to Easter. They are a lovely fellowship and we enjoyed our morning with them.

Then we drove on another four miles to a Countrywide store and bought ten sacks of hen food. I reckon we saved about just over £30 on the price that we usually pay at our nearest feed merchant. The fun bit came next. We found a very small lane and parked in the least muddy field gate - and ate a picnic in the sunshine. Oh I did enjoy that! It was so warm that it could have been early summer instead of mid-March. It is amazing how much better life seems on a dry, warm and sunny day after a long wet and grey spell. I had made bread rolls which turned out really well and we ate them with cheddar and salad and cherry tomatoes and followed by some homemade banana cake with chocolate chips. We went for a wander along the lane and picked a bagful of goodies for my rabbit as we went and enjoyed the sunshine.

On our way home, we passed the big Tesco and called in to see if there was anything interesting in the rugby scrum that happens just before closing time and they mark down the chilled goods to silly prices. We managed to find enough meat for 11 dinners for the both of us (ie 22 portions) for an average of 11p per portion.  Those portions are unstretched and there may well end up being a few extra portions when it is served. I also brought home a bagful of goodies for my son and for my friend.  There were so many things on the bargain shelves that people took everything they wanted and there were loads of things left over.  I would like to know what happened to them and hate to think of them being thrown out.

When we first arrived at Tesco and had just parked, I spotted my friends from the farm just getting back into their car so they said to call in on our way home . They had their first calf of the year born on Friday and it is just beautiful.  Mum is a medium black Dexter and dad was a red Dexter and the little heifer is a beautiful red. Mum is not doing too well on the milk producing front and the little calf has to have supplementary feeds and, well, somebody had to do it : ) 

What a lovely day.  A good service at the little church, a really enjoyable picnic in warm sunshine, lots of hen food and Tesco goodies which have saved us lots of money and gladdened the hearts of three families and a cuppa with some good friends to finish. And the icing on the cake was giving that beautiful little heifer a bottle of milk.  This day was good from start to finish and I shall look back on it and remember it with pleasure.

This isn't a brilliant picture but it will have to do.

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Fewer Hens

I've lost two hens in the last two weeks, both little brown Warren hybrids.  I'm always sad when I lose them because they are my pets as well as my egg providers. One hen was one of the old age pensioners and the other was one of the youngest group.  When I say 'youngest', they are actually very middle-aged but they are the youngest that I have. I could do with a few genuinely young ones so that there is a reliable supply of eggs. The girls are laying right now because spring is on its way but that won't last and I doubt if some of them will lay any more eggs after this.

I went to visit my farmer friend yesterday to see the first of the lambs. Very cute! Lambs are always very appealing and innocent looking. One of the mother-to-be ewes is so wide that she is wider than she is tall - maybe triplets? They lost one ewe last night because she had a prolapse. Being a smallholder is sometimes difficult.

Their hens are getting old too although they are not as old as mine. They are going to get some day old chicks after Easter so we are thinking about getting some with them and sharing the cost of delivery.

On the way to the farm, I called in at the large Tesco at yellow sticker scrum time and came home with a nice bagful of goodies.  Still nothing for my son but I got three meals of fish for my friend and enough things for lunches for us for over a week (some went in the freezer) but just one dinner this time. In Tesco, I was just bending over to lift something from the lowest tray of goodies when a lady came up and literally pushed me right out of the way so she could have whatever she had spotted. I was appalled at such behaviour. There was plenty of goodies for everybody there to go home with a bagful.  I obviously need to sharpen my elbows before I go there again although I probably won't be out that way until the calves are born on the farm. But a bagful of such goodies really makes the housekeeping str-e-t-ch : )

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Bargains and busyness

I seem to have been busy this week doing lots of different kinds of things and I'm finishing the week feeling tired. I'm glad that there is less in the diary for the coming week.

Last weekend we went on a romantic Valentine's Day outing to a big Tesco - 12 miles round trip and not my usual store. I was hoping to find lots of yellowstickered goodies so that I could take a big bagful to my son and his family. I don't seem to have been able to find much for them recently. They are all veggie but I didn't find anything for them. There wasn't even any bread or fruit or veg suitable for taking to them. However, for us meateaters, there were most definitely goodies to be had. In fact I brought home enough meat and fish to do us  dinners from Sunday night through to Thursday night. And I brought the same home to my friend. Both households were well fed this week even if I had gone with the intention of feeding my son's household rather than ours.

We seem to have had lots of meetings at church this week. Sometimes it is like that and everything seems to happen in the same week.  We were at church this morning and had a breakfast meeting before the music group practice before the service itself. guess who was down to prepare the breakfast? Yes, us - so we had to be up early and get there in good time to get breakfast ready before the others came. My husband set the alarm clock. In fact  I was stood beside him when he set it. I don't know when he set it for but it wasn't for the time we needed this morning. Fortunately I woke up a mere 30 minutes late and with a mad rush and the benefit of all the others being late, we managed to get everything done. But I feel like I haven't quite caught up with myself all day and am definitely heading for bed early tonight.

On Friday night, we went to my daughter's for dinner.  My SIL's mother and a couple of friends were there too. It was a really pleasant evening.  All we did was natter but it was a lovely meal and pleasant company and was really enjoyable.

If you use Quidco, they have the new Yeo bio yoghurts with £1 cashback and they are on offer at Sainsburys at £1.50 ( = 50p for 4 lovely yoghurts AND you can claim for each of the 3 flavours available)  .  Quidco also have various Tate & Lyle sugars at £1 cashback and they cost £1.99 for Demerara and others that are useful to have in the cupboard. Quidco are also offering  a free 100g of smoke and fire turkey slices from the deli counter at Tesco - if you are fortunate enough to find a Tesco that stocks it. I've been to five Tesco stores on two towns and nobody working at a deli has ever heard of this type of turkey. If you find it, please tell me.

Still bargain hunting

I'm still bargain hunting.  At the beginning of the week I went to Farmfoods who had put one of their leaflets through our door.  The most interesting thing was the box of catfood at cheaper than I have seen it anywhere else by a couple of ££.  We have a branch about a 6-7 mile round trip away and not on one of our normal routes so we very rarely go.  This time I went to get the catfood for us, for both our daughters and some other things for our son and also an item for our neighbour.  They have coupons on their leaflet giving a 10% discount.  A nice little bonus as all the items I went shopping for were at good prices anyway.  However, when I had put in the trolley all the items we had gone for and an item that was on special offer that I hadn't spotted in the advertising leaflet, I was nearly at £100 and at that level, the discount goes up to 12%.  So I bought an extra box of catfood in order to get the extra £2 discount..  So everybody was very happy with their shopping and only our diesel got used. instead of four cars going.  (The catfood is dated for 18 months ahead so I can intersperse it with other food so my little moggies don't get bored.)

I also spotted on the Moneysavingexpert supermarket coupon list (well worth a visit!) that John West tuna spreadables are offering a 50p coupon.  Now at the moment, Asda have those at £1.50 for two tins.  So I printed out one coupon for me with my email address and my husband printed out one for him and I went and got the two tins for 50p total.  Now I know that it probably would be slightly cheaper to buy a Lidl/Aldi tin of tuna flakes and make my own sandwich filler.  But these two tins will be in the cupboard ready for impromptu picnics in the summer when we just take a little tin like this and a pack of rolls or pack of crackrs. Also once a blue moon or so, I like to pack something like that for a longer journey when we don't know if we will require a snack on the way or not - and if the tin is not opened than it will live back in the cupboard ready for another day.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/supermarket-coupons

Some of the coupons are for products that I wouldn't be buying but sometimes there are coupons which stretch the budget nicely. It is a place that is worth a regular visit. For example, there is £1 off a 500g pack of Clover which is currently on offer at £1 in Asda : )  Also there is £1 off a pack of New Covent Garden soup which is on offer at £1 in Sainsburys and £1.05 in Waitrose.  Now I can't get Sainsburys to accept coupons printed at home and I have tried three different stores recently although they are fine with "official" manufacturers' coupons. Waitrose will accept coupons printed at home and I was almost passing a store when I had out collecting somebody from college on Friday.  And it counted towards my £5 spend for a free newspaper and my free coffee.  The last time I was in Waitrose I even managed to get a free bag of used coffee grounds from their coffee machine which I put in my wormery and my little worms chomp their way through and turn it into fabulous compost to enrich the soil that grows our veg. The bin was still out this visit but unfortunately there were no grounds left. : ( 

And just to make things clear, normally I make our own soup but it is nice to have it in the fridge for days when the clock seems to fast forward itself.  Although having said that, the only time I actually buy soup is when a) it is a brand that makes good soup and b) it works out to be free or near enough.

Bargain!

A friend phoned me today to say that she had been shopping in Sainsburys today.  So we went to Sainsburys too and bought Robertson's mincemeat, 454g jars dated June 2018, reduced from £1.50 to 10p.  So that is next Christmas taken care of : )

Mincemeat is also great in baked apples, in flapjack, fruit cake, mixed with stewed apple and topped with sponge mixture.  At 10p, that is way cheaper than dried fruit.

They had lots of jars in the shop we were in so if you are passing Sainsburys in the near future...