Slow Cooked Guinness Stew, Nom Nom.

A couple of weeks ago I got some Tesco loyalty vouchers. They send them out every quarter in recognition of what you spent in their supermarket over 12 weeks.

I obviously have been a very frugal shopper for the last 3 months as I only got £2.50 plus some money off vouchers.

So over the weekend I went off and bought a bottle of Guinness using the 50p off a 500ml bottle of Guinness token I had and my vouchers. I also bought an onion and a Tesco Everyday value tin of mushrooms. It came to practically nothing with my vouchers / tokens.

I had bought some stewing beef months ago and only used half, so I defrosted the other half over the weekend. Cost £2.25 (for the half that was left).

I chopped the beef up, my goodness it was so tough I had to keep resharpening the knife! I then coated the beef in a dusting of plain flour, and fried it to brown it off with the chopped onion.

I transferred the lot to my slow cooker, then put the Guinness into my pan to collect all the tasty bits for 20 seconds before then adding it to my slow cooker too with the tin of mushrooms and 3 "about to put into a Food Waste Friday post" mushrooms which were gasping their last breaths.

Hmm, a scooch through the cupboards. Yup, add a reduced salt stock cube, and "Oh thats brown, so what the hell" big dollop of Reggea Reggea Sauce.

I put the lid on and left on high for 3 hrs (7.30pm - 10.30pm) before reducing it to low overnight.

Tuesday I woke up to an amazing aroma permeating the flat at 7am. I quickly turned it all off and transferred the contents to a cold mixing bowl and sat it in a sink of cold water for 20 minutes whilst occasionally stirring to get the heat out.

As the sauce was still thin I was planning on thickening it when I got home, however after I had covered it with tin foil and left it in the fridge during the working day it thickened up by itself.

So last night I got home decanted a bowl full into the microwave and nuked it for a couple of minutes, I served it sitting on the sofa watching rubbish tv with a defrosted buttered Warburton's roll (reduced aisle 12 for 10p). Probably should have had some vegetables too, but Aww Heck it was too delicious to wait and I had a salad for lunch. The meat after 12 hours of slow cooking just fell apart.

I know I should not say how delicious my own cooking was, but "Oh My It Was So Yummy!" and I always love being able to walk in from work and eat something homemade within 5 minutes. It will do 4 meals, so at 56p per portion. Frrrrrruuuuugal!

Frugally yours
Abigail
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Entertaing On A Budget.

How Do?

I do not know about you, but I had such a lovely weekend with my friends it seems a shame to return to work yesterday.

Whilst we were out all the time, it did end up being pretty frugal. I took out £50 for a weekend budget and ended up having a lot left which pleased me.

We were back on Saturday to ThomasLand at Drayton Manor for the little boy to visit. Up early and there for the gates opening at 10.30AM meant we got our money's worth. Closing time was 2.30PM. Only opening 4hrs is a bit of a swindle in my humble opinion, but the 2 yo was shattered and it meant his mum and I could have a quiet 1.5hrs round the shops whilst he slept.

We got in on a 2-for-1 deal, so my half cost £13 including parking, but it is just magical to see the kid's faces. As the main park is still closed and it was another blustery damp day, ThomasLand was quiet and there was little, if no waiting for the rides.  This means the toddlers can be allowed to roam free as there it plenty of space to keep an eye on them. Parents are much more relaxed under such circumstances, and therefore so are the kids.

I learnt my lesson from last time and we took sandwiches and homemade cake to eat. So only bought drinks at total cost of £3.50. I do need to invest in a flask I think.

In fact I only spent £1 whilst we wandered round the shops too.

Having visitors does stretch ones budget, entertaining is not cheap. But, I enjoy doing it and everything does not have to be Cordon Bleu. Am a big fan of home cooking with plentiful portions and tasty sauces. I had planned every meal ahead of schedule.

The homemade pizza went down very well on Friday. (pic to follow later) and I made the Lemon Torte featured on SuperScrimpers last week. It is supposed to feed 8, nope 4 I reckon. My gosh it was so delicious. Especially with a little of an already opened bottle of Bailey poured over. Yum!

Saturday 8AM, I put half of the stewing steak in the slow cooker with mushrooms, onions and a bottle of Guinness. 6 hrs on high then a further 4 on low rendered it so tender a fork made the meat fall apart. Served with a pastry lid, mash and peas, it was pure comfort food after a long day on our feet. (the boy had fish fingers). The meat for that came in at £1.20/portion.

Sunday morning we were out again, so whilst cooking some Pikelets for breakfast I roasted the chicken for lunch too then wrapped it in foil for whilst we were out. Only the veggies to do once we were back.

As expected the Chicken did 2 adults and 1 child's dinner, there is a further 4 more meals there too. Plus Sunday evening after stripping the carcass, I boiled up the bones then added left over potatoes, some stuffing and the remains on the bread sauce. My Sunday lunch soup smells and tastes divine. Frozen now for another day. That means the chicken has done 9 meals, roughly 27p per portion.

I picked up my Avon order yesterday evening at Book Club.

This came to a total of £5.50, but the bath foam will last 3-4months. I could get an alternative brand cheaper, but I do not think it is as indulgent. The hand soap was on special offer for 99P as was the shower gel at the back. They will be kept for when my current ones run out. I only buy these products when there is an incentive to do so. BTW the bath foam was reduced too!

It is back today to the £5 Challenge, I spent £1.09 today so £3.91 to last until Friday.

My savings are still looking pretty healthy, which is good as I am still trying to sort out my new front door.

Frugally yours
Abigail
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I Faced An Old Enemy and Won, hahahaha!

Hello to my two new followers - Sandra and Becky Bee I am so glad to meet you. Also thank you so much Becky Bee, Scarlet and Lizzie for such kind comments, they really keep me going!

I have been a little bit lax in the last few days blogging, but I have been so busy that it is 20.09 now and I have only just got to sit down.
Saturday, I was up early and by 9.30AM, the car had been vacuumed /washed and filled with petrol ready for a day out with my nephew- we went to Thomas Land http://www.thomaslanduk.co.uk / . He loved it so much he could barely talk for the first 2 hrs. He was so good and never ran off once, a good achievement since he is only 3.
ThomasLand in Staffordshire at Drayton Manor is not a thrifty day out at all. Tickets booked in advanced, plus parking came in at £29.50 for 1 adult and 1 child. No deals could be found anywhere since it was half term. However, since everyone else checked the weather reports it was sooo quiet, the only downside was it poured mid morning. We both got soaked.
But, look at this picture and tell me it was not worth it. We spent nearly an hour
in this shed watching the toy trains.

Food, in these places was expensive too - 2 sausage rolls, a fruit shoot, hot chocolate and a milky way (yes all major food groups covered) came in at about £10!. Lesson learnt for next time I think - will be taking a packed lunch.

Got home, had about an hour then round to see The Chap for dinner. Got back early this morning and have been cleaning, washing, baking and tidying ever since.

Thanks to Frugal In Norfolk for her bread tutorial - I had it open and faced my nemesis again. http://frugalinnorfolk.blogspot.com/2012/02/making-bread-my-way.htmlLook at these results..

So whilst I had the oven on it seemed wise to use up the space, so I also made CornBread which I have been dying to try for ages. I think i bought the cornmeal back in December.
I had never had it before, but knew it is very popular in the USA with a lot of savoury and sweet alternatives. I have started with a savoury basic version from the BBC website. I have frozen it into portion sizes for future use, I would love to try a sweet version next

I also made a beef and mushroom casserole. Plus I used up the chicken stock from during the week's chicken and made a chicken/leek/potato soup.

The beef came from the freezer and was some reduced stewing steak and I put it in a pot with the defrosted New Covent Garden Soup mushroom soup and paprika / onion. Made a delicious yet thrifty tea with some veg and a couple of pieces of the cornbread. 

(please note my food is a bit like me, it photographs really badly! :o) )
I had to go shopping again on Friday after work, here's the pic

It came in at £9.63, so £5.84 left to spend until pay day in about a week and a half. I will need to grab some more milk and maybe a couple of potatoes, but it should be fine. We will see!

See the toothpaste at the front that was FREE!! Hurray, I often fill in forms online to get free stuff sent through and this little baby as waiting for me on the mat when I got home. Thank you kindly!

No food waste this weekend, so delighted at 2 weeks running.

And apart from taking The Nephew out for the day, and paying for petrol I have not spent another penny. So still in funds for this month without raiding the savings.

Currently on the search for a bread making book not using a machine, saw one on Friday in charity shop but for a pamphlet type book with only about 20 pages they wanted £1.50. I put it back on the shelf and walked out nose in the air. I would not have paid £1.50 for it new with so few pages. So still looking.

Conclusion - would go back to Thomas Land again The Nephew so enjoyed it, the bread has been a huge success and I am still in funds, life could be worse.

So any ideas what kind of bread to try next?

Frugally Yours
Abigail x

Late to the Party – or how I do my best

I have had such a lovely and productive weekend.

Sunday evening quickly arrives again though doesn’t it?

I have really tried to curb my spending since the new year and the only sale items I bought was a new slow cooker as my last one was made back in the early 90s and I was getting pretty worried about leaving it on when I was not home.   I had been eyeing up the Tesco model but at nearly £30 could really justify it since I had one that worked well. However when I went in the other day it was reduced to £12 so I grabbed it and the old one went on freecycle and was picked up a day later.

This week I did had a wander around a House of Fraser sale and discovered some tins half price for baking and since the Great British Bake off has a lot to answer for I grabbed them both which came in at £7 for the two – they are really good quality too. So that means I have a proper bread loaf tin for the next foray into bread making. Plus a square tin will come in useful for the brownies I like to make.

I also grabbed some Christmas cards for next year, which meant I got all my cards sorted for under £4. Not to bad considering I am sending about 40 or so currently.

So under £20 for a bit of sale shopping I hope is acceptable and will not break the bank for this month.

Slow cooking really is the most delicious way of making your food and tenderisers meat like no other. Cheap cuts after sitting in the slow cooker for a good few hours just melt in your mouth.

Remember those drumsticks I bought the other day? Well here are four of them. I defrosted them about 12 o’clock today and them browned them for a a minute or two on each side in a pan before putting them inside the slow cooker with a real hotpotch of ingredients. I rarely follow a recipe unless looking to impress visitors and generally just chuck in store cupboard contents.

Today I added an onion, and the rest of some large mushrooms I had intended to stuff, a tin of chopped tomatoes, some sweetcorn then a teaspoon of chilli powder half a packet of barbeque seasoning I had open, some garlic and a stock cube. It looked a little watery later, so some thickening granules were added. Not rocket science but it really tasted delicious for dinner and should do me for at least three meals.

So these two photos ultimately turned into this...

Which nicely leads me on to a menu plan – to budget most wisely it seems to me that organising what I am going to eat for the week  makes me get the most out of my money and what I have in stock without buying anything unneccesary.

For breakfast I have sultana bran this week which should last me until at least Friday morning, though I will have to buy extra milk.

Sunday

Dinner – Chicken Drumstick casserole with rice (I got this rice free with a Sun token from their Friday freebie)

Monday

Lunch – ratatouille on toast (ratatouille home made and currently frozen in the freezer)

Dinner – Chicken Drumstick casserole with either the left over rice or some of the potatoes left from the cheap bag bought on the 27^th Dec – they still look fine

Tuesday

Lunch – ratatouille on toast

Dinner – The frozen tuna fishcakes I made last week – this will finish them off . Plus I will not be getting home until later and I they will be ready in jiffy once I walk through the door

Wednesday

Lunch – Cheese on Toast I still have some babybel in the fridge.

Dinner – 2 findus crispy pancakes I found hiding in the freezer yesterday along peas and probably a jacket potato

Thursday        

Lunch – cheese on toast

Dinner – mackerel with peas and mashed potatoes

Friday

Lunch - cheese on toast

Dinner - eating with sister

Saturday

Eating with sister.

I have got so much done over this weekend, I finally tackled the ironing mountain that has been building up since Christmas, since it was getting pretty irritating having all these weekend walkers turning up to my door wanting to scale it as part of the 6 peaks challenge. And turned this….

Into this in an hour and a half.

I also cleaned out the fridge and looked through the kitchen supplies, I only needed to throw an old banana that was nearly walking its way to the kitchen bin.

I cleaned W Towers too, so really the only jobs left are to turn these Christmas Cards

 into tags for next year and sort out the paper work for the last 2 months that needs to be either shredded or filed. It is a job I really loathe so I cannot see it being tackled until next weekend as I am out every night this week.

All in all apart from buying The Chap and I a takeout at the weekend and filling up the car, I really feel that I have not done too badly this weekend spending unnecessary cash.

As an aside, giving away my old slow cooker on Freecycle was a new experience for me. I only joined about a month ago and already was gifted a grow your mushroom kit which I am really looking forward to getting started on. It was nice too, to give something away. I had so many responses and I am so glad that it has been gifted to a person who will use it . It is not thrown away or given to a charity shop as I do wonder whether those establishments would have wanted it.

Freecycle around where I live seems to be very successful, and it is lovely to receive the messages, now I feel a bit more confident about using the process I am hoping to clear out some clutter from my home.

Everyone out there has probably been using it for years, but I am always late to the party and only joined Facebook in the summer after vowing never to join its ranks. It is fun, though I never want to get to the point of using Facebook to stay in contact. I am a bit old fashioned and like to speak to my friends pretty regularly or at least personally email them.

The Chap and I went to the cinema last night too using some vouchers he got for Christmas which also pretty much covered the popcorn and drinks there. Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol. It was really good fun and with some very amusing moments courtesy of Simon Pegg. However there were one or two scenes which made me feel sick as I am not one for heights. Great Saturday night date movie. We both enjoyed it, though the conversation home did centre on Ethan Hunt’s car…

Frugally yours

Abigail

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