FEELING FRUGAL

I've lived in London since 2003.

When I first moved here from university, I had no job, but some savings left over to keep me a float. I soon learnt how to make money stretch.

Since then I have had several jobs before embarking on my current role, in which I have been in for nearly nine years!? I now have a steady income and long gone are the days when I'd count the pennies in my wallet to decide whether I could upgrade from value beans to the branded version.
Recently, quite a few of my friends and family's situations have and are changing quite considerably for lots of different reasons. The linking factors between them all, will be or is, a restriction in their day to day budget.

It is at time like these when you end re-assesing your own situation and consider your own lifestyle.
I personally loath wasting food. I can't bare throwing something that I've paid for, into the bin, that said I understand that my food shopping could be a little more organised and controlled. This set me out on doing some research on frugal feeding.

As I mentioned on my previous post, it is easy in London to spend £5 on lunch when at work, which when you add it up is £25 per week totalling at an eye watering £1200 a year!!!
I've always tried to take my own food in with me or buy bits from the supermarket. But after doing these calculations I shall definitely keep my homemade lunches going, and find new ways of using up left overs.

In doing a bit of research I have come across very interesting blogs some of which I have learnt a lot from and found quite inspiring:
A Girl Called Jack
Skint Dad
Frugal Feeding

A Girl Called Jack is a blog written by Jack Monroe, whose life circumstances changed from being employed in a 27k job, to being unemployed and having a little boy to feed. She ended up being in a situation where £10 had to stretch to feed her for 10 days... that's £1 a day... £1 for 3 meals a day....
All of sudden £7 for one meal at lunchtime seems extortionate!

So in a bid to embrace and make the most out of my current circumstances I've decided to start adding to my savings account rather than subtracting. To do this I'm going budget my food shop and become more aware and pay attention to how much money os spent on food.
On top of that I intend to start making a more regular visit to our local food bank in lewisham. After reading a few blogs it really does make you aware how important food banks are!

This is my list of leftovers from the weekend which I need to use up in some sort of way:

• Stale Bread
• Peas (we had friends over on the weekend and made one too many peas...)
• Glutt of celery
• Leftover mashed potato
• Chickpeas (I'd soaked to many dried ones on the weekend and now they need eating!)
• Bendy carrots

STALE BREAD
This has to be the best idea yet!
I often find that you don't always managed to eat a loaf of bread before it starts to go stale. So you end up having lots of toast or throwing it away. The obvious ideas include Bread & Butter pudding, Deptford Pudding and Summer pudding. The problem is when it is just yourself or two of you. I mean you can't sit and eat a whole bread & butter pudding every week. Well you can but you'd turn into a house!
The Jamie Oliver programme was on TV the other night and he showed how quickly you can make croutons. These croutons are delicious and can be used as a savoury snack as well as on soups or salads. If you store them in an airtight container they can last weeks unless you eat them all on the first day!
I've made these a few times now, using a whole selections of different breads, from sliced wholemeal, to french stick to sourdough. The more rustic varieties had  a better texture in my opinion, but all were good and all got eaten!

Pre-heat the oven to 220 / 200 fan assisted

Get your stale bread and either cut into 1 inch cubes, tear into mouth sized morsels or slice into oval  disks that are great to place on soups.

Pop the chopped up bread into a big bowl and drizzle a GOOD amount of extra virgin oil over with a sprinkling of sea salt. Toss the bread so it's all evenly coated and then pour out onto a baking tray covered with some baking parchment.

Pop in the oven and check after 10mins to check they are toasting evenly. Once golden brown take out and allow to cool.

FRIDGE LEFTOVERS TURNED INTO SOUP

 Once you get idea of the basics of soup making, there is no excuse to waste any food in the fridge.

To start I make sure I have three things - oil, 1 onion and some stock. So that's the base.
Then I look in the fridge/cupboard and try and find two items that need using up that I think might go.
These have included things like:
Carrots and a pack of dried red lentils
Courgettes, spinach and some frozen peas
Celery and a potato
Beetroot and apples
.....the list is endless!!

I am no genius and do not have a brain full of endless recipes. However I do have access to the internet and google! I type in the two items I need to use up into the google search, adding the word soup at the end and then view the results via images. By viewing images rather than links, I can usually determine
if I think it's going to be a recipe I'm going to like. It usually is ;)

When I first started doing this I was quite astonished that my searches would end with a choice of  three recipes for me too choose from!

This week my leftover soup was pea, spinach and celery!

BUBBLE & SQUEAK!

Now I currently have a load of mashed potato in the fridge and chickpeas from when I soaked too many for another recipe. Tonight half of the mashed was used in a quick bubble & squeak with peas and a fried egg. A meal for King!


The mash can also be used on top of a fish pie and cottage pie etc. But whilst searching for recipes it also lead me to find this fantastic recipe for Chickpea Samsoas!


I'd have to tweak the recipe, so it works for me and the ingredients I have. It may go wrong, it might not be as good as using the exact ingredients they have in the list. But it does mean I use up food that would otherwise be thrown away!

If it goes to plan I'll pop it on the blog!

Happy Monday x