Scones...

We picked up some buttermilk on Sunday.  Going cheap.  I bought two, froze one and used one to make 15 lovely scones.

450g self raising flour (aldi 45p for 1.5kg), plus extra for dusting

100g cold butter, cubed (tesco 10p reduced, normally costs £1 for 250g

85g caster sugar (Aldi 89p)

284ml buttermilk (Tesco 28p)

5ml vanilla essence (no idea how much)

I set the oven to gas mark 4, then rubbed in the butter to the flour.  Added the sugar and mixed.  Add the vanilla to the buttermilk, stir and heat gently in the microwave until warm, then add to dry ingredients.  Bring together and press out to 3cm thick on a floured surface and cut 6cm circles.  Reshape trimmings, press and cut again (makes 15-18 scones).  Add a splash of milk to the buttermilk container and brush tops of scones with milk.  Cook in oven for 12-15 minutes.  Serve with jam (and cream if you have it - I didn't but it was still delicious.

Total cost about £1 for all of them,  jam was 29p value branded strawberry jam.

Soya protein mince (H&B)

One of the main tips I have read seems to be making what you have go further.  Making mince stretch by adding lentils, oats, soya protein or a mix of all three.  I've done this before using 400g mince, 400g made up soya mince and 100g lentils but I cant for the life of me think why I stopped doing it.  Maybe when we didn't live near a health food shop and dried soya protein was not easily accessible... who knows.

I phoned Mr Cat as he made his way home yesterday and asked him to call into H&B (LS15 store) to pick up some Soya protein mince.  A 375g bag is the equivalent of 1.5kg of mince when made up.  I don't think i can buy poultry mince at 1.5kg for £1.89 or 3kg for £2.84 (they had their buy one get one half price offer on) so he picked up two packs, one savoury and one natural.

Our plan for either this or the next weekend is to make up some mince based meals for the freezer (Bolognese, Lasagne, Chilli, Shepherd's pie etc, using at least 50% soya mince to make the meat stretch further.  That and a handful of red lentils to increase protein content whilst keeping costs relatively low should help us on our journey to living a more frugal life.

I want to use this to keep tabs on what things cost, package sizes etc.  

Cat.x

We must live within our means...

We have stumbled through life these past few years and made no economies... Unless we act soon, once again we will face those awful words "insufficient funds for transaction".  There are many areas we can target to make economies.

Groceries:
Make a list, buy only what is on the list, cook from scratch, bulk cook, become friends with my freezer.

Gardening:
Grow our own fruit and veg.  We are very lucky to live with a large garden with mature veg plots and large greenhouses.  We just haven't made the best use of them.  This has to change so we can grow more of our own food.

Freezer friendly:
Batch cook foods and freeze extra portions.  Blanche and freeze cooking essentials, especially gluts from the garden.

Gifts:
Make far more gifts for people.  If they don't appreciate them, they don't get them in future!

Lodger:
take in a lodger to increase monthly income

Make do and mend.  If it breaks, fix it.  Don't buy it, wait a week or two and do without.  Ask "do we need it, can i buy it cheaper anywhere else"?

Keep a spending diary.

This will be my record of what we are going to do, what worked, what didn't and to look at more improvements.