Bread in the microwave

 I used to make a quick loaf in the microwave, many years ago, when the kids were all still at home. We always used to have it with soup for dinner. I had a recipe originally but I made it so often that I didn't need to look at the recipe  as I knew it by heart. Then, for whatever reason, and probably after the kids moved out, I stopped making it for a while. Then when I wanted to make some to go with some soup one day, I found that I couldn't remember the proportions to use and nor could I find the right bit of paper with the recipe on it. 

So I have spent a bit of time on the internet recently hunting for a suitable replacement recipe. The original was not a yeast bread but a quick soda bread type but with an extra twist or two to make it suitable for the microwave. I am trying to cut down on the amount of gas and electricity I use so the occasional loaf made in the microwave helps with that. Also, when you get to lunchtime and realise that you have forgotten to make a proper loaf, it helps to have a super quick microwave recipe at the ready!

The recipe I have found is from wiki:

www.wikihow.com    How to make bread in the microwave (simple method)

However, I have been tweaking the recipe so that the bread is more how we like it. Also, the wiki recipe is plain white flour and as that does not brown in the microwave, it looks very "anaemic" which is not so appetising. The white version also tastes a bit "woolly" because of the texture. The wiki recipe also allows for 2-3 tablespoons of both oil and milk so that could make for a very moist dough. I also found that the wiki version stated 5 minutes in the microwave to cook the bread. In my microwave, 4 mins 20 secs was quite sufficient for these quantities. If cooked for longer then I found that one end of the bread gets a little dry. It is quite edible but just like a slice of bread with a little bit of rusk attached to it : )

So this is my version:

3 heaped tablespoons wholemeal flour

2 heaped tablespoons plain white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg, beaten

2 tablespoons milk

2 tablespoons oil

3 tablespoons water

• Add baking powder to flours in a bowl and mix well with a whisk or a fork
• Add egg and mix
• Add milk, oil and water and mix well
• Knead the dough for 2 - 5 minutes until you can stretch a piece of the dough quite a way before it breaks
• Shape the dough into a round ball and flatten slightly
• Score an X in the top with a knife so that the bread does not crack when rising in the microwave
• Put in a microwaveable dish with a flat bottom
• Microwave on high for 4 minutes 20 seconds

Notes:

- Aldi have wholemeal bread flour at 55p for 1.5 kg as well as 45p for 1.5 kg of plain flour

- If your heaped tablespoons of flour are bigger than mine, you may need to add a touch more water

- Your microwave will be different to mine so your bread may need slightly more or less time. You can always give it a 10 or 20 sec burst extra but if you give it too much, then the rusk texture is quite pleasant, especially with cheese : )

- I have a silicon "bowl" which I found in the Lidl reduced section for 50p. It is a flexible bowl which can be used for mixing, kneading and baking and although my husband thought it a very weird thing to buy, it is invaluable for making this loaf

- I intend to try this recipe without the egg and with a little extra water and see how it does as this will make it cheaper

I have found this a very useful loaf to have in my repertoire. This quantity is sufficient for my husband and me for both lunch and breakfast the next morning. It is lovely fresh but it does not keep very well but it toasts nicely. Enjoy!

Jabs and penny pinching

 We got our letters today to say that we can go and have our vaccinations for covid. I am pleased that we have both got them together so that we can use the car once to get both of us done. We went online and looked to see where we can go for the jab and it is miles away. Or we can wait and see where our doctor's surgery sends us more locally. So we will wait a little bit and see what the doctor says. And hide away from people as much as we can.

I haven't been for a walk for a few days so we have seen fewer people than usual recently. I did something to my back the other day and I am having enough trouble getting around the house without trying to walk anywhere. It is a bit easier today so I am hoping that whatever I did is healing now. If I knew what I had done, I would try not to do it again!

I am trying to stretch our food to lengthen the time between visits to the supermarket. My daughter went to Lidl the other day first thing in the morning and brought us round a £1.50 veg tray and also a fruit cake that she had made for us. Lovely! There is not a huge amount on the allotment at the moment and besides I don't want to walk there at the moment. Maybe later in the week I will be able to go and see if the asparagus kale has survived the cold and snow. I do hope so because I have missed it. I really liked the selection of fruit and veg in the Lidl "too good to go" box and it will stretch nicely what we already have in.

Our freezers are quite full and my problem is that I am stretching things too well. Or so my husband tells me. If I get out a pack of mince, for example, by the time I have added oats, grated carrot. onion and maybe a few lentils as well, the one dinner sized pack will probably do three meals. Mince and potato pie, pasties or mince slices, lasagne, burgers, meatloaf, meatballs, cottage pie etc etc. If I am making burgers, meatballs and meatloaf, then I usually add part of a packet of stuffing mix to stretch it. So there is always enough of the burger mix to make a few meatballs to have with pasta and tomato sauce. The meatloaf always makes three dinners. A mince sauce for four portions of lasagne or cottage pie will always have enough for a filling for a pie or slice. So my husband is complaining that if I get out one thing from the freezer, then I am wanting to put more back in. He wants to empty the freezers a bit and I am not succeeding in this. He doesn't object so much if there is something in pastry for him, though, I have noticed : )

This and that but not much of it at all

 Well, here I am with not a lot to say because I have not done a lot in the last couple of weeks. I have been for walks when it is neither raining or snowing and admired all the snowmen in the gardens I walked past. I have done quite well in not spending much this month. My tooth that had a piece broken off is not hurting nor is it sensitive so I have decided to wait and contact the dentist later. The car needed its MOT and service and also had to be taxed for tomorrow. It sailed through its MOT, which was great because it is 10 years old now. The brakes had been worrying me because of the noise they were making but the garage decided that the noise was probably because the car has been used so little over the last 10 months. So I have no need to worry as they could find no reason at all for the noise. 

Apart from car related bills, we have only spent £34 this month on food. No other things were bought. We had plenty in the cupboards and there is still some veg at the allotment so I have been trying to stay away from shops. This new strain of the coronavirus is worrying since it is so easily transmitted. A friend of ours is a nurse and has just gone back to work this past week after having the coronavirus for the second time. So I am keeping away from people as much as I can!

DIY liquid hand soap

 I was looking on the internet for something else and came across this article. A happy chance. I decided to give it a go and as a result will not be buying any more liquid hand soap! It is so easy and you make enough to do a long time with just one bar of soap. If you look at the link then please remember that the article is American and their pints are 16 fluid ounces whereas our pints are 20 fluid ounces. The only thing that is more awkward is that when you press the plunger on your recycled liquid soap bottle, you do not get just a dollop on your hand. Instead you have a little trail attached to your dollop which you need to "knock" off the spout of the bottle. It takes a lot longer to say it then it takes to do it and I am now so used to doing it that it has ceased annoying me. Besides, I think of the savings and it is fine : )

The article I happened across is at:

https://originalhomesteading.com/diy-homemade-liquid-hand-soap/

1 bar of hand soap at least 100g- any kind but I used just plain because I wanted to add teatree oil

3 1/4 pints of boiling water (the Americans use half a gallon but this is 3 1/4 British pints)

That is it. Just two ingredients for the basic recipe.

Grate the soap into a large saucepan. Pour over 3 1/4 pints boiling water. Stir until all the soap has dissolved. Cover with a tea towel or piece of newspaper to keep dust out and set aside overnight. The article warned that the mixture can take from 12 to 24 hours to congeal but mine had set to a jelly like consistency within two hours. 

Now is the time to add any extras. I added 2 tablespoons of glycerine and 1 teaspoon of teatree oil to make may soap antibacterial. You can add whatever essential oils you have on hand or just leave it plain.

Mix it well to turn it back to a liquid. I started with a wooden spoon but decided it would be easier to use my hand blender. It took a very short time to turn it into a pleasant smelling liquid which then remains as a liquid. Pour into a container for storage using a funnel. I used a well washed 4 pint milk bottle.

So that is almost 3 1/2 pints of liquid hand soap made from just one bar of soap and some ancient glycerine from the kitchen cupboard and some tea tree oil that I found in the back of the bathroom cupboard. I am finding that the homemade liquid soap makes one bar of soap last a lot longer than usual so it is definitely a winner : )

Yellow stickers : )

Yesterday I popped across the road from church to Asda to get some milk. Happily there was a chap doing second reductions. He had quite a lot to do and I stood and waited patiently until he had reduced the things I had my beady eye on. He also had a whole tray of extra large oranges to reduce. The first reduction had them marked down to £1 for four of these huge oranges. Several ladies looked at them and asked if they could have a pack. To each one the Asda man replied that they could but if they waited a couple of minutes, he would be reducing them further. Every single one of those ladies said that they could not wait, took a pack of the oranges and went on with their shopping. He was reducing everything to just above half of the already reduced price. I was left wondering if this is a sign of our "instant gratification" world that we live in these days.

Mincing matters

I popped into the supermarket after a meeting at church the other evening and found a 750g pack of reduced fat beef mince for just 74p. There were two packs so I brought the other one home for my friend who was absolutely delighted. She was going to the market later on the following afternoon so she paid me for her mince with almost a kilo of mushrooms bought as an end of day bargain. So we were both happy. Bartering works!

The thing is that the freezer is full to bursting so I couldn't divide the mince up into meal size packs and stash it there. And I couldn't do my usual and stretch it into umpteen meals because I couldn't freeze the extra meals. So I had to cook it and we've eaten most of it as is, without any stretching. I find that I feel almost cheated because I quite enjoy the challenge of seeing just how many meals I can get out of a pack of meat.

After my surprise party on Saturday, we went to church on Sunday and cooked dinner for 60 people.  We served slices of cold gammon with wedges and vegetables followed by strudel (choice of plum or apple) with icecream. The gammon was cooked at church while we were at the party on Saturday. This meal was a great deal easier to cater than the three course meal we served at the church members' meeting before Christmas. I have to say that there were no leftovers! I had been hoping that there would be a couple of slices o the gammon left (cooks' perks) but no such luck.  The gammon was beautiful and just vanished before our eyes along with all the wedges. It was definitely a popular meal. 

6 items gone

Aldi again

Just a heads up that there will be a coupon in the Daily Mirror tomorrow (Thursday26 Feb) for £5 off a spend of £40 in Aldi - plus a range of coupons for either 50% or 30% off a range of products.

I've got my list of things that I have been saving to buy in Aldi when we had another voucher : )

I also had an email from Sainsburys today that said if we spend £30 there by Wednesday 4 March then we will get a voucher for 10p off a litre of petrol.  We had a journey of 200 miles last weekend and another of the same length to make this weekend so if we can fill up after the travelling, then that fuel voucher will be very useful indeed.

Bargain hunting

I've been bargain hunting quite a lot recently.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you don't but this week, I've done well. 

My son has recently had notice that he is being made redundant and with three kids and a mortgage, I've been bringing them bags of goodies when I've found them.  I want to help but not to be patronising.  Anyway, they wouldn't like it if I spent lots of money on things for them. If I bring them a bag of yellow stickered goodies, then I'm just sharing the spoils and it has probably cost me £1 to fill a carrier bag.  It means that they have a little bit saved from the housekeeping that week to put away for what may be lean times ahead.  They are the ones with the baby on special milk at £11 for a little tin.  The baby is taking to solid food like a duck to water so that helps a bit too and the baby's big sister has just come out of nappies so that is also a help : )

This week I popped into Asda when I was passing and got 6 boxes of eggs (free range!!) for a total of 95p.  The eggs had been dropped and overwrapped in plastic so that they would not drip everywhere.  I felt the boxes carefully for solid feeling eggs and chose my boxes carefully. The 6 boxes yielded 22 whole eggs plus two that were very slightly dented but not cracked right through the shell. That is roughly 4p per egg!  Yes, I know that I have hens but the laying has not quite picked up for the spring yet (mainly middle aged hens) and I needed to buy eggs because I had promised to bake some cake for church.  And when I popped into the mini Tesco near me to get some milk, they had reduced the large loaves of bread to 8p : ) It would cost me far more than that to make them, so I had one for us and three for my son's family.  That means a nice lunch of scrambled egg on toast for under 10p per person, ignoring gas costs. That is definitely a winner for our budgets : )

Edited this afternoon:
Just been out to collect the eggs and give the hens some mixed corn. The laying is just about starting to pick up for spring but not reliably and those who are going to lay again (some are too old ever to lay again) are laying funny sized eggs.  Last week there was one egg that weighed about 10g.  Today, poor old Star went the other direction and laid an egg that weighed in at exactly 100g grams.  A medium egg weighs about 60g and that is what she usually lays...

Another electrical item for the list

My next electrical gadget has died and this time it was my iron.  I said earlier this year that this was going to be one for replacing electricals.  So far, we have replaced the microwave, vacuum cleaner, fridge, chest freezer and now the iron.  I've bought it from Tesco because they are doubling up the clubcard vouchers and it is free delivery to the usually useless little Tesco Express not far from here.  I paid for the microwave with clubcard vouchers but doubling the value means I got the iron for halfprice but also free because no extra money has changed hands.  And free is definitely my favourite price : ) I wonder which gadget will go next?

I've just finished day 3 of the new school year.  Where did my holiday energy go?  Why has it evaporated so quickly? The new year 7s look so very small and last year's year 7s who were "normal" in size just 6 weeks ago, now look enormous.

And just to add insult to injury, my husband is going round to my son's house tomorrow while I'm at work and will no doubt have a cuddle with our new granddaughter - and I won't.  Grrr.  Ok, so it won't be totally a social call.  "Dad - our toilet has started leaking and I can't see why.  Can you come round and help me fix it please?"  On the one hand, it is nice still to be needed - but he will still get a cuddle with both our little grandaughters and I won't.

I got a flyer from Farmfoods through the door this week and it seems that they are still selling a 1Kg bag of sugar for 59p.  If anyone is passing near a Farmfoods shop and still has jam to make, then it might be worth a call.  They also have two x 1 litre packs of orange, apple or pineapple juice for £1.  now that I have discovered a Farmfoods shop not too far from one of my occasional routes, I think I might be calling in more often. Every little helps.

Day out

We wanted to go for a day out for our wedding anniversary but it got postponed because of the arrival of our new little granddaughter.  So we've been now.  We spent a happy afternoon pottering around Ryton Gardens not far from Coventry.  Ryton is the home of Garden Organic and the Henry Doubleday Research Association. It was a lovely afternoon - warm but not too warm for walking.  There were hardly any other people there so we could potter and chat undisturbed. They have changed lots of things since we were last there so it was good to see some new displays. I have to admit that we skipped a lot of the flower gardens and concentrated on the vegetable areas, although they did have a couple of areas where all the plants were edible, even the flowers.  When we left, we drove to a series of lanes where we knew we could pull in and sit relatively undisturbed and enjoy a cuppa and a slice of homemade cake (banana and cranberry - one of our favourites).

While we were stopped there, we picked some blackberries to have with yoghurt when we got home.  I also picked a bagful of hawthorn, sloe, hazel and various other weeds that my rabbits love and which are not so readily available at home.

We drove home by a circuitous route that took us along lots of little lanes.  We saw lots of pretty villages and thatched cottages and fields of animals which we would not have seen had we stayed on the main roads.  It is one of our ways of stretching a day out a little longer before having to come back into "civilisation".

Our road home was going to take us past the large Tesco that I rarely get to and I was very pleased to find that they were doing their second reductions just as we got there.  So we came home with some reduced bread, fruit and veg and some chilled Quorn products.  We brought some home for our son and his family and called in to deliver it.  Any excuse for a cuddle with my new granddaughter! They were delighted with their pressie and it cost me less than £2 to give them enough food for all of them for a couple of days.  They were particularly pleased with the Quorn as those varieties of Quorn are much liked but out of their normal price bracket : )

Oops

Oops, my information was wrong - sorry. The Sun had only a coupon for £3 off a shop of £13 in Poundland.  My son ran into the paper shop and grabbed a copy of the Sun (embarrassment in case he was seen buying the Sun...) and ran out without looking at it (it always has a picture of whatever coupon on the front).  He was really disappointed not to get his free veg because they are a vegetarian family with a new baby and skint, to put it mildly.  Fortunately, I hadn't gone to get my paper so I bought it off him. I've never spent £13 in Poundland as I seldom find more than one or two things that are useful but I'm sure I can do it this once if I put my mind to it.  They sell plastic cups that we use at church, for example.  I would like to go back to making my own greetings cards as I used to really enjoy that and I know they sell packs of ready folded cards with matching envelopes. Actually, my eldest granddaughter might well like a pack of those in her Christmas stocking.  And the other grandchildren might well find something from Poundland in their stockings this year too... Sometimes they have the shampoo that I like in stock and just occasionally they have a food item that is cheaper there than elsewhere. But I too was looking forward to a free £5 of fruit to make some more jam for the coming year and am disappointed.

I am told that the voucher is in the pipeline so if you are interested, then check out the Sun each week, usually on a Thursday. 

On Thursday, our farmer friend was free to come with us to school to teach us how to take down a tree as there was a dead one and we had permission to do it.  It saves the school the cost of a tree surgeon and definitely benefits us!  The tree was not close enough to a building to be dangerous, which is why they were willing to let us have a go.  I was amazed how quickly it came down.  There was just the trunk as the branches had been cut off at some time in the past. However, my job was to clear up afterwards...  I spent a good four hours sweeping and raking the grass where the tree had been cut up.  We filled 6 sacks with the chippings and sawdust which, once dried, will be used to fill strong bags like flour or sugar bags or small boxes to make wooden "logs" to burn. There was still more but we had to be creative in hiding that in the bushes as we had no more sacks : ). 

Our friend cut the trunk into big slices with his ginormous chain saw and then left us to it. (He holds this chain saw steady in one hand and sharply pulls the cord to start it with the other hand - I can't even lift the chain saw...) Our job was to ferry the the wood to the car in a wheelbarrow, make the trip home, unload with a wheelbarrow  and go back and start again.  My husband did the ferrying while I cleared up.  I was SOOO tired.  Still, for the cost of some diesel, several cakes for our friend and a LOT of tiredness, we will have a nice stash of logs.  When we were just about ready to go home for the last time, one of the caretakers spotted us and said that he had put three pallets aside for us.  We thanked him kindly but I have to admit that it just about finished me helping to lift them on to the roof bars of the car.  We did not get to our lunch until after 4pm as my husband didn't want to stop to eat and I was so tired that I just wasn't hungry.

And I've seen my new little granddaughter four times this week since she was born.  Definitely a biased grandmother here.  I'm extremely partial to my other three grandchildren but there is something special about a very new baby : )

Freedom beckons

I went to Asda to get my Leerdammer cheese with the coupon from the link in my previous post.  I had two coupons, one for me and one for my husband and was delighted to find that Asda had the cheese on offer at two packs for £3.  The coupons scan at the till for £2 each so I had two packs of free cheese and £1 off the rest of my shopping  : )  I like Leerdammer as a change from our usual mature cheddar.

Just this week to go and then freedom: )

Coupons

There are a small number of good coupons around at the moment. I got them all from Facebook.

Free pack of Leerdammer:
http://bit.ly/1ot0XLx

Free 400g pack of Royal Canin cat food:
http://bit.ly/VSacNG

Free bottle of Coke Zero:
http://bit.ly/1obKlqd  (it is on page 3)

Just thought I would share  : )

Buttering him up...

One of the yellow stickered items I got at Tesco on Sunday was some cream:  four 300ml tubs of whipping cream at 11p each.  I've never made butter from whipping cream before - only from double cream - but for 44p, I was prepared to give it a go.  I was expecting a much lower yield because the percentage of butterfat is lower, but I was pleasantly surprised.  My husband begged for half a tub of cream for him to have with jam and bread.  I think he was hoping for scones made with the buttermilk but he'll have to wait for those. So I used three and a half tubs to make butter and got 550g which is now divided up into small pats and frozen.  I left one pat out of the freezer and lightly salted it for use now.  I freeze the butter unsalted because it keeps better and then just add a little salt when it is thawed.

Lovely, sunny weekend

It has been a lovely weekend apart from a couple of small showers on Saturday afternoon.  There are three scientists leaving at school - two retiring and one emigrating - so the "prep room" crowd got together for a bbq yesterday.  It was lovely and the couple of showers didn't spoil the fun at all.  Everybody brought something to drink or a dessert or something for the bbq and it was certainly a tasty spread.  One person made a baked cheesecake and I've got to get that recipe.  I just don't have enough superlatives to describe how wonderful it was...

I'd been to Aldi in the morning to spend my £5 off voucher from the Daily Mirror.  Church was low in tea and coffee supplies and as Aldi sell fair trade coffee, I stocked up.  Unfortunately, I didn't manage to spend just the £45 required for the £5 off voucher as my husband spotted the petrol chainsaw...  Now if I'd realised that they had a chainsaw on offer this week, I'd have bought TWO newspapers so that I could use two coupons.

So there was music rehearsal followed by church this morning and I called into Lidl on the way home and bought some of their fair trade tea which is still on offer.  Then a quick sandwich followed by a trip to Tesco.  I had a 73p price promise voucher and a £7 off a spend of £50 voucher plus several other coupons so we did even more shopping.  I also stocked up on the decaff fair trade coffee for church since it was on offer.  And I got lots of bread at 10p - 15p and bags of salad and some veg for the same sort of prices.  On the way home we delivered a bag of yellow stickered items to both son and daughter's houses.  These were well received, cost me about 60p and earned me lots of Brownie points (except that there is no such thing).  Isn't it nice to be able to spread a little cheer!  And I'm totally shopped out now.

Nice dinner

My husband fetched me from work today and I persuaded him that we wanted to go shopping.  He is not exactly the keenest shopper in the world.  I wanted to go to Asda and buy the pizza that I mentioned in the previous post. It was Goodfella's Smiler Pizza  and it was indeed £1.47 and using my £1 coupon, that made it 47p. We had it for dinner tonight with a 25p bag of salad and some of the cherry tomatoes that were half price in Lidl last weekend.  It was very nice too for a bought one (I prefer homemade really) and there is a second one in the freezer for another time. And there are a couple of loaves of bread now in the freezer for less money than it would cost me to make them.

We had to pass Sainsburys on the way home from Asda so I popped in to get the Millicano using the £1 coupon so I've got a couple of those now too and my Danio yoghurt. They had a huge quantity of melons at 50p and the packs of asparagus were all reduced to 60p.  My husband can't stand asparagus so I've got 2 packs to eat all by myself. Yum! I did buy him a treat of a bag of doughnuts for 30p and he'll probably eat those all himself.  Each to our own : )

So I'm really just confirming that those nice coupons do work and the offers in the supermarket are still running.  There don't seem to be so many nice coupons around any more.  A few years ago there were lots around for the things I wanted to buy.  Today I needed to go to a supermarket to get milk so it cost me just a few pennies extra to drive to Asda instead of just stopping at Sainsburys.  Today it was worth it but usually it isn't.

End of a long week

Well, it was just the same length as usual but it felt long...  I was so tired that I went to bed really early last night and watched the last of the series of "Castle" that I had recorded - and now I've got to wait many months to see what happened to stop the wedding.  At least they said that it was the end of this series and implied that there would be another series but what a cliffhanger!  They can't kill off the character after whom the series is named, or can they?

When I am tired, a whodunnit that is not too gory, is just the ticket : )

On a more frugal note, there are a couple of interesting coupons around at the moment.  One is for Kenco Millicano.  The coupon is for £1 off and although it usually costs £3.99, I've been told that Sainsburys have it on offer at £1.99 right now.  And £0.99 for 100g of coffee sounds good to me so I'll be going to check it out and hope that I've been informed correctly.  Our local Sainsburys is fairly small so I'll have to get to a larger branch as I doubt that our local will carry many varieties of Kenco.

https://www.brighttones.co.uk/#sunlight-blend


Secondly, Goodfella's Smiler Pizza is on offer for £1.47 at Asda at the moment.  This link will take you to a coupon for £1 off that  : )  All I have to do is persuade the good people at my local Asda that the coupon is valid and that they can accept it - they are not very trusting.  I'm not sure how they think that I can invent a Safe coupon...

http://goodfellaspizzas.com/coupons/


Thirdly, if you go on to the Danio Facebook page and "like" it (you can always "unlike" it afterwards) then you can print off a coupon for a free 160g single pot of any flavour of Danio yoghurt.



In May, Sainsburys kindly sent me a series of six vouchers for £4 off a £40 shop and 500 extra points if I used all the vouchers.  I haven't used any of them yet because I just find it difficult to spend that much every week.  I note that they give just one week to use each voucher whereas Tesco give two weeks which is more easily done. Yesterday, I got in the post another series of vouchers from Sainsburys but this time just four vouchers giving me £5 off each £50 shop and again with an extra 500 points if I use all four.  I might use one of the vouchers as I haven't done a big shop for a bit but that will be all.  If I can't spend £40 a week, then there is no way that I'll be able to spend £50...  Now if they sent me vouchers for money off a £20 or £30 spend, that might be different.

I did a middling size shop in May because I had a pile of Tesco vouchers that were up at the end of May and we had to go to visit someone that lived not far from a bigger Tesco with a petrol station. Normally it costs a litre and a half of diesel to do a round trip to the closest Tesco with a petrol station so we only go there if we are passing nearby for another reason. I had managed to accumulate (finally!) enough spending at Tesco to get a couple of pence off each litre of diesel so we filled the tank up and also the cans for the strimmer and rotavator.  I was pleased to find that their price was 2p cheaper than our usual local filling station too : )  The main thing that I wanted to spend my Tesco vouchers on was a new microwave as mine was defunct.  My new one cost me £8 after the vouchers so I was happy with that.  Also, with a little bit of shopping on top of the microwave, I now have another couple of pence off a litre of diesel for a fill up towards the end of June if we are passing anywhere near a Tesco filling station.

Every little helps!

Lightbulb Moment!

I've been following Jen's progress through her year of not buying anything new and now she is trying to reduce her use of energy.  You can find her blog at:

http://mymakedoandmendyear.wordpress.com/

It is a good read and I'm sure she would welcome your visit.  She had a giveaway recently and I was one of the recipients of an LED light bulb courtesy of the nice folk at LightBulbs Direct:

http://www.lightbulbs-direct.com/article/wont-cost-the-earth/

They have an infographic about LED bulbs that makes interesting reading.  The link above will take you to that article.  I tried to copy and paste the article here but it was way too large for this page.  There was a link which I was supposed to copy and paste here but that didn't work either.  Anyway, my poor blogging skills should not detract from finding out about how to not only save money but also to save energy.  I love it when things come together and I can keep money in the coffers at the same time as being environmentally friendly : )

£5 off at Aldi

Today there is a £5 off a spend of £40 in the Daily Mirror.  I shall be acquiring my copy of the Mirror : )

I'm reading that lots of people seem to be buying two copies of the paper so that they have two vouchers because they are dated for a week hence.  So one for this week and one for next week if they go shopping a little bit earlier in the week.  I have trouble enough spending the £40 in one week let alone two weeks running!

They seem to be printing a voucher for Aldi in the last week of every month so I think (now that I've finally noticed the trend) that I shall start keeping a separate shopping list for the things that we want that are good value in Aldi.  I do have difficulty in spending £40 anywhere in one go so this will give me a head start.  I can only bring myself to buy something if it is good value because otherwise there is no point to going to buy the paper specially and getting to Aldi.  I have the same problem with the £so much off a £spend vouchers at the other supermarkets too. This provides no end of amusement for my husband. Well, isn't it nice to be useful for something ?   : )

Making Marmalade

There are a lots of blog posts around at the moment on the subject of marmalade.  I've only once made marmalade from scratch with Seville oranges when a Spanish girl (from Seville itself) stayed with us and brought me some as a present.  She told me that the orange trees grow along the roadside and people can pick them if they want to, much as we do with blackberries.

Seville oranges are in the shops around now but they are pretty pricey so I thought I would post about how my friend makes marmalade. She uses a recipe that was in an ancient copy of one of Marguerite Patten's books.  She always uses this recipe and because it gives a fairly soft set, she adds half a tin of Mamade with the appropriate extra sugar and water. This guarantees a reasonable set.  You need to stir the Mamade before taking out half.  The other half will freeze if you don't need it straightaway.  Add the Mamade, extra sugar and water at the point where you add the sugar to your cooked oranges so you have it all together ready to bring to the boil towards a setting point.  This is another way of stretching the pennies because sometimes you can pick up a reduced price net of sweet oranges in the supermarket.  The combination of the flavour of the sweet oranges and the Seville oranges in the Mamade is really lovely. You do need a big jam pan or huge saucepan to accommodate everything, though.

To stretch the pennies even further, I have often added a half pint of apple pectin stock to the above mix along with an extra 8 ozs of sugar.  The result is a slightly more jelly-like texture but the flavour is still very good.  This produces an extra pot of marmalade really for the cost of the sugar because the apples were free windfalls.

One last point - I have tried this using a pressure cooker to reduce the cooking time and therefore the amount of gas used.  Shirley Goode said in one of her books that the anount of liquid should be halved by the end of the cooking time.  So I tried cooking the oranges in the pressure cooker with just one pint of water and it worked really well.  I ended up with the quantity of marmalade that I was expecting and the orange peel was cut up in a fraction of the time using scissors. Result!

Sweet Orange Marmalade

1 lb sweet oranges
2 pints water
2 lbs sugar
juice of 2 lemons

1   Cut or mince oranges finely, removing the pips
2   Soak peel and pulp overnight in the water, together with the pips tied up in a piece of muslin
3   After soaking, put fruit, water and pips into a covered pan
4   Simmer slowly until peel is quite soft
5   Take out bag of pips
6   Stir in warmed sugar and lemon juice (Add the Mamade, extra sugar and water at this point)
7   Bring marmalade to the boil
8   Boil rapidly in an uncovered pan until setting point is reached. This will take about 20 mins but start   testing after 10 mins.