General Chat

Cooking soup, boiling up peelings for the chickens( rather than just giving them mainly ready prepared feed from the pet shop), working out how to best use my left overs (lovely bubble and squeak for the girls with their omelette tonight) and buying veg in bulk very cheaply....and trying to rise to the challenge of not letting it go to waste.

Looking back I can't believe how wasteful I have been. My great grandmother used to use EVERYTHING and I think ultimately this spell of poverty (I use the term in jest for now....just lol) is actually going to do us the world of good in the longterm.

Any tips on how I can use my food leftovers more economically would be more than welcome xx

aw i save loads, by lunching at mams as often as i can haha

i love good old bubble n squeek, i bet it right smells at yours at the minute tho :)):))

i found this web page when i was doing me old, throwing to much out

http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes

some brill recipes for leftovers

OOoooo ta Stray.....I'll bookmark that one hon cheers xx

Smells lovely here.......I love the smell of good old bubble.......used to have it as part of my dinner on a monday when I was a kid lol xx

Hello Muffy....... viewing it all as a challenge is great : )

Bubble and squeak never ceases to amaze me in as much as the kids would tuck into it with gusto but the day before they sneered and grumbled at the same vegetables ( when they where in tact.....lol ) .

My OH does most of the cooking and has been very resourceful in the past with left overs , he is far better than I at that sort of thing .

One word of advice though . Never make " stew pie " ...... it just doesn't work........lol........but we still laugh about it now .......we called him Desperate Dan for awhile after he made it......lol

OMG Muffy, where do I begin?

Ok Chicken (not yours lol), roast on Sunday, cold on monday, curry on tuesday (you can add veg and potato to bulk it out. Boil up the bones to make a stock, which can then be frozen for future use or to make soup.

mash and a leafy veg, along with anything other leftover cooked veg can be mixed with an egg then fried to make bubble and squak, great with bacon or sausages.

Make a huge casserole, it does for two days, and the flavour is better on day 2 lol (just done that)

If you've cooked too much of anything, plate it up on a plastic plate, cover and freeze, you'll soon collect enough to feed you all for a week.

Be careful with leftover rice, you MUST heat that through thoroughly.

I won't say what to do with leftover wine....that doesn't happen in your house any more than it does in mine. hehehe

I don't deal very well with uncertainty Amanda but I'm a very positive person when faced with something I can meet head on lol.

I'll remember the advice re the stew pie......I'm a bit unimaginative with leftover stew......I tend to just freeze it and give it to OH for lunch a few weeks later with some bread lol.xx

I boiled up chicken bones for the very first time today TW *proudly* smelt like s*** though LOLOLOL but am going to use it for the French Onion soup I'm going to cook on Weds (3 enormous onions from the market on Sunday......only 50p.....couldn't resist lol)

I feed the chickens left over rice they love it !!! so i won't try to salvage any of that.......thanks for the heads up xx

ill tell u whats a really nice and cheap meal, we call it panaklty up here

potatoes carrots and onion, chopped n cooked in water
then add an oxo, gravy granules to thicken
then add a tin of corn beef cubed

its gourgous on a cold night

Oh Muffy, I have a wonderful recipe for lobster bisque!! *searches in cupboard....

I'll try that Stray.ta....... I think I have a tin of corned beef in the back of a cupboard somewhere lol xx

*yikes*

Lobsters.............don't you have to cook them alive?????

*sobs* lol xx

Muffy have you tried the money saving expert site? They've got many forums that can help including an old fashioned board dedicated to thrift. They've got some good recipes on there. I love the thought of you raising chickens - who needs that farming game on facebook lol

Chickens are just one of the nicest pets there are SRS....sooo friendly. Plus they have the added bonus of gifting me the odd egg or three lol.

Is that the Martin Lewis site? I think I have that bookmarked.......but I'd forgotten about it........thanks I'll look that up again xx

Someone I know has chickens and gets great delight from them. Such beautiful creatures. I would love to have a few.

Yes it is his site, haven't been on for a while. His site is valuable in itself but the forums are great, something for everybody. I love the thought of the old style forum though even though I don't live by it. It just reminds me of the war time spirit and I love their obsession with vinegar, stardrops and these cleaning wipes they talk about lol

Pies are good and not too fattening if you only have them once or twice a week.

Make enough filling and pastry for 3 pies and freeze 2 for future meals.

My 'economy' tip is to add potato slices (par boil first) in with the meat. They absorb the flavour and you will need less meat.

I have made 3 pies today using 800g of mince. Each pie serves 4.

Another thing, when I was a kid we had 'afters'. It filled the corners so the main course needn't be so large.

That reminds me of when we were particularly poor when my kids were babies.

The DSS as it was then messed up our dole, and we went 6 weeks with nothing coming in. Family allowance was spent on nappies and babymilk for my daughter, and mum gave me a fiver a week, and a bag of storecupboard stuff, like flour, marg, salt, gravy, cereal etc.

Out of that fiver, I would by a lb of sausages, a tin of beans and a joint of brisket. Some lovely neighbours would leave lots of veg on the doorstep from their gardens.

so, bangers and mash on saturday, roast on sunday, and meat and veg pies for the rest of the week. By the time six weeks were up we were sick of meat and veg pies, but we were fed and not hungry.

When we eventually got the backdated dole they owed us, I had enough to treat us all to fish and chips from the van that used to come to the village we lived in, and ended up with food poisoning! Put me off battered cod for years that did.

*shudders* I bet it did !!!!! Fish squits are the worst !!!!

Mscratchit .......Can I confess I have NEVER made a pie......*blushes* I don't even know how to make pastry !!!!

lol TW, i bet you were gratful for the pies, after havign the dodgy fish n chips lol

i remeber when i was little if u were on the dole, they did a thing every few months, were u got a slab of butter and a tin or 2 of stewing steak lol xxx

edited posted twice

No need to blush Muffy.

Easy as pie! Well, I don't know who made up that saying but pie making isn't easy to start with.

I use plain flour (the cheapest I can get) and half the weight of the flour in fats. I find half lard/half butter is best. Spend a bit of time to rub the fats in the flour until it all resembles a creamy colour and breadcrumb in texture. Add only a very small amount of cold water; stir round with a flat bladed knife until the mixture becomes a bit like playdoh.

Knead briefly and roll up in cling film. Chill in fridge for half an hour before you use it; it will be much easier to roll out.

As to quantities; today I used 22oz flour and 11 oz fat. That made 3 pies.

Kitchen was hell of a mess, though!

Birdi