Tag: shopping

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treasury ~ food budgeting

Like HM treasury, I have to maintain control over our spending. Keeping within a budget with the weekly food shop has become increasingly difficult. Avoiding waste is a must. I think most people have their preferred places to shop and mine is Sainsbury’s – they have the best range of organic foods in our area for both fresh fruit and veg and they have their own range of organic groceries too like lentils, beans, milk, cheese and pasta, and also stock other brands. We don’t have any farmer’s markets nearby for the fruit and veg, so that is not an option for us.

I use the self scan shop on my mobile app to take advantage of all the personal offers that are tailored to what we normally buy. I also collect the personal extra Nectar points that, like the scan shop offers, change each week. Then there are the general store wide Nectar card reductions on items and you can also collect 1 Nectar point for every £1 spent. Unlike Tesco and some of the other supermarkets, there are never many yellow sticker items at Sainsbury’s, but often they are not things I would want to buy.

All these offers and points might seem small but over time do accumulate and save us a lot of money, not always on the total amount of the weekly shop because I buy multiples of the items when they are on offer, enough to make sure I won’t run out until they have the item on offer again. However, it does reduce the amount we spend on food over the year.

Just buying items only on offer (where possible) means we each have to make a list of our personal offers on the app and then check on other offers as we go down the aisles. At the moment we are waiting for the Alara muesli to come back on offer, DH has only one box left so it will be touch and go whether he can spin it out until the next offer appears on the shelf! We generally have a list of things we are running out of and of course there are some dairy items that we will always need to buy weekly like fresh milk and yoghurt and fruit and veg.

I always have an alternative in mind should we need something that is not on offer. So for instance, I buy the Plenish brand of organic almond milk in a carton. This is frequently on offer in the chiller fridges near the ordinary cow’s milk and it has a long enough date to buy 3 at once (I probably use just over one carton a week). If it is not on offer I know to go to the aisle where they have the longerlife milk cartons and same Plenish almond milk in the longlife version will usually be on offer when the fresh chiller one isn’t. This has an even longer date so I keep 3 of these to hand in the pantry and rather than buy a fresh one not on offer I will wait and use a long life one.

If one brand of organic butter (my preference is Yeo Valley) is not on offer when I need it I can usually find the Sainsbury’s organic version is. It may seem a strange way of shopping but it works for us and saves money whilst still be able to buy the food we like and the organic versions.

It is just a different way of shopping that I have learnt over time and I have a mental list of all the products we normally buy and as I trundle up and down the aisle with my trolley I am always on the look out for the red stickers on the shelf edge that indicates a product on offer. I am well tuned into spotting them a mile off!!

So down to the nitty gritty….

Yesterday’s food bill came to a total of £77.81 and I saved £20.15 from all the offers, plus I gained another 717 Nectar points (77 basic and then 640 in bonus points) which is about £3.58. My £77.81 bill was made up of mainly offers, but I did buy a birthday card, a packet of beetroot and some of the fruit that were not on offer.

Meanwhile, DH spent £55.32 on all his offers and the only items not on offer were the bread, 2 avocados, 3 Bramley apples, a pack of raspberries and a pear. His savings were £3.69. He also had a voucher for extra Nectar points on a £20 spend and in total 675 points worth £3.37.

Our total Nectar points at the moment are worth £80.97, once it reaches £100 I will use it to buy my groceries in Sainsbury’s and then transfer the £100 I would have used from my bank account into my savings account. If you get my drift.

My pantry is well stocked now and I know next week I might not be able to take advantage of certain items if they are on offer purely because we won’t need them for a while. The cheese was on a personal offer and will be grated and put in the freezer.

So now it is a matter of getting it all prepared and cooked. DH made a batch of tomato and red pepper soup with those leftover from last week’s shop, one will go in the freezer for later.

DH has, over the last few years, taken over a vast amount of the cooking. He is a whizz at making nutloaf, lentil curry, or ratatouille, but he tends to make the things he knows and not try new recipes. That is down to me and something I need to get to grips with. I have 2 or 3 folders full of tear out recipes from magazines, and it is my intention to try them out – the ones that we don’t like I can then throw away.

Generally, we have very little ultra-processed food, but avoiding processed food is a different challenge. By processed this would include bread, pastry based meals, cereal or cheese as they are all in an altered ‘processed state’.

Luckily, there is always room for improvements in any diet and these are best done a little at a time, mainly by either doing a food swap or learning to go without.

After doing quite a bit of research and listening to some of the doctors and researches on You Tube (this can be good or bad – I think there are so many opposing ideas of a healthy diet and claims that are not founded on gold standard research) both DH and I have come to the conclusion that we need to lower our carbohydrate intake of bread, potatoes, pasta and brown rice and increase our protein intake and dark green veg.

I have found that listening to the practicing GP Doctor David Unwin quite enlightening. He has helped many of his own patients reverse their type 2 diabetes as well as his own. His own story is very interesting and the reason he is very keen on a low carb diet.

This is the interview with Dr Chatergee another prominent doctor fighting to promote healthier living.

For a while now I have been close to the limit, but not quite crossed the line for type 2 diabetes with my HA1C level which should be in the range of 18.0 to 41.0. Mine is currently 39.0 a tiny shift from the previous 40 and what my doctor terms pre-pre diabetic. I was quite shocked at this result as I am not overweight and I prefer savoury foods to sweet, hardly ever eat cakes or add sugar to anything. So rather than wait until it gets any worse I am taking action now and trying out this low carb diet to see if my HA1C level improves.

We have already implemented some of the suggestions. We only have a small amount of brown rice now (about 1-2 tablespoons each) with our curry and instead have it with a good helping of green beans.

Most days we have a large pot of homemade soup on the go and depending on which soup it is we will throw in chickpeas, red lentils, edame or cannellini beans for added protein and fibre. We have cut down to one slice of bread with our soup and will probably cut it out altogether soon. Instead we have a small salad of watercress, little gem lettuce, tomatoes, beetroot and sometimes coleslaw with it. We might also add a small chunk of cheese.

Not eating fish or meat makes the protein side of things more difficult for vegetarians. You have to eat far more plant protein to equal meat. We already have a fair amount of pulses and beans and I would not want to increase the amount of cheese we eat so I will probably be looking to make more nut and egg dishes.

We made an effort to reduce any snacks and have cut out packets of crisps altogether – I no longer go down that aisle at all. I have bought some cashew nuts instead, but they are a bit moreish. Neither of us liked the seaweed thins my SIL recommended as an alternative snack – she will be getting the rest of the unopened packs when I see her.

We have reduced the biscuits to one pack a week, but we might only eat half now. I am fortunate in not having a sweet tooth but I do like the occasional biscuit with a cup of tea, especially when we are outside gardening – that old saying a drink is too wet without one. I tend to buy the dark chocolate Petit Beurre or the Bahlsen Leibniz, whichever is on offer. Sometimes we will have a couple of crackers (Carrs melts) instead with nut butter as a snack.

We have been following this new regime now for 2 or 3 weeks – so early days. DH is really up for the challenge and is beginning to try new recipes that I find and think of alternatives; we have not felt the least bit hungry or missing the snacks of crisps. I expect the extra protein is keeping us fuller longer.

I have even unboxed the spiraliser I bought last summer and have not used yet and found a nice handy place for it in the kitchen cupboard. I can make a vegetable spaghetti amongst other things.

There are a number of recipes I want to try. I saw on Pinterest one for red lentil and herb flatbreads (no flour, so no gluten) and another making a quiche within a crisp potato base rather than pastry.

So small changes and I am hoping better health.

As requested I will post the mushroom soup recipe (it is rather flexible though, we often don’t make it to the exact recipe).

I will also post the Lentil and Mushroom bake. It is one of those dishes like curry that can gain in flavour overnight.

To answer Sue’s comment about the mushrooms – it will be the mushrooms that give the dish flavour, so something like red peppers, courgette, feta cheese, tomatoes or walnuts. If it is just the actual mushrooms you don’t like you could add a tiny bit of mushroom stock for flavour.

I am just going to flick through some recipes now to make a menu plan. I will only try one new recipe each week as time is quite valuable at the moment and once this cold spell is over we will no doubt want to focus on the garden again.

I know many bloggers are looking to alter or modify their diets, especially when it comes to ultra-processed foods and gluten free. What a shame the NHS is always many years behind the research. Practising preventative medicine, by altering your lifestyle and diet, is so much better than fire fighting conditions with medication like statins and diabetic tablets.

Have a good weekend, back soon. x

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dear diary ~ end of the week’s groceries

On Monday, I decided both the fridges needed a wipe out whilst I was surveying the last of the vegetables left over from last Wednesday’s shopping trip. Since my friend K passed away and we no longer take her shopping with us, we changed recently from shopping on a Tuesday to Wednesday as it is a bit quieter both in town and the supermarket.

We have an intergrated under counter fridge in the kitchen where I have milk and dairy produce, dressings, nut butters and anything like mayonnaise that needs to be ‘more to hand’. The larger larder fridge in the utility room is mainly for our vegetables – we don’t need it to run flat out, it only needs to serve as a cooler place to keep them fresh longer as we only shop once a week. Not everything is kept in the fridge though. Tomatoes, for instance, are better stored in the pantry along with the onions and potatoes, fruit and avocados.

The photos below are all the ‘left overs’ to make into a few meals and eaten up before our next shop.

Some of the red peppers and the large tomatoes will make tomato and red pepper soup, together with a couple of the carrots and onions, a few sticks of celery and some red lentils. I always add a potato rather than flour to thicken and that probably makes it gluten free too.

We had two containers of homemade mushroom soup in the fridge so had one of them for lunch and I opened a small can of chickpeas, rinsed and dried them off then dry roasted them in my green pan with a tiny bit of olive oil. I then added those remaining few button mushrooms. This made a lovely garnish for the soup and we had it with some buttered brown rye bread and a piece of Wensleydale and cranberry cheese.

For our tea I had to buy a few more mushrooms to make this Lentil and Mushroom bake. It is so easy and doesn’t have breadcrumbs so is again gluten free. The recipe called for brown lentils (I used a packet), an onion, some sliced mushrooms, mixed herbs, 1 egg and seasoning. Once all mixed together put into a loaf tin (I used a shallow pyrex dish) and bake for about 35 minutes until golden. I decorated the top with the three cherry tomatoes!

Eat hot or cold.

We had half of it with the remaining parsnips, roasted, some but not all of the cabbage and those few bits of broccoli.

It tastes better than my photo looks! I will definitely make it again.

For lunch yesterday we had the last avocado as a starter, then the final container of homemade mushroom soup, to which I added the rest of the can of chickpeas and DH made a large amount of coleslaw with the cabbage and a couple of carrots and mayonnaise.

DH does not like raw onion so he omits that. There was enough coleslaw for our evening meal too. He also buttered the remaining slices of rye bread and added a slice of the cheese.

As I bought some more mushrooms yesterday from the village Co-op with my £1 reward to make the Lentil and Mushroom bake and didn’t need all of them, I will use the rest today to make more mushroom soup together with the one leftover leek, a potato and the rest of the celery.

For tea last night we had the other half of the Lentil and Mushroom bake, a small side salad of the few lettuce leaves, slices of red pepper and coleslaw, then added a baked potato and opened one of the vacuum packs I keep in of ready cooked beetroot.

All the fruit has been eaten with my yoghurt for breakfast (save the lemons) or as a dessert.

That has pretty much emptied the fridge and pantry of the left over bits and pieces of fruit and vegetables ready for our fresh shopping trip today. All that remains are a few onions and the courgette.

It has taken a while and been quite challenging but I have now got to the point where all of my supermarket shopping in my trolley consists of either the Sainsbury’s personal scan shop offers or the general Nectar offers throughout the store and the ones that gain Nectar points. Over time this does save us quite a lot of money and unless we are desperate for an item then it only gets bought when it is on offer. I have a good idea now how often an item is put on offer so that I know how many multiples to buy to keep us going until the offer comes around again.

For instance, in the butter section, they revolve the offers around the different brands very frequently, but for something like our Meridian brand of nut butter or Alara Muesli I could wait 6 weeks. Luckily, many products have a long shelf life so presently I have 3 jars of nut butter in the pantry bought on the last offer.

These days if I have to buy anything full price in Sainsbury’s it would be unusual. The prices keep on shooting up all the time and I will be adjusting what we eat to keep the bills down to a reasonable level. I stick to Sainsbury’s as they have the best selection of organic produce and groceries and often, like the Sainsbury’s organic baked beans, they are much cheaper than the ordinary Heinz brand.

I stopped buying any crisps a while ago and don’t really miss them. DH stopped eating those little tubs of chocolate mousse or creme caramel (highly processed) for a dessert and instead I buy him a tub of creme fraiche (I have greek yoghurt – he has an aversion to yoghurt) to have with the fresh berries or he stews a punnet of plums when the are on offer.

After doing quite a bit of research recently we have decided to eat fewer carbs like bread, pasta, potatoes etc and substitute with other low carb foods….but that is another post.

Thank you for reading, I hope you are able to manage the rising prices to save money in whatever way you can.

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Any good tips always welcome.

Back soon x

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treasury ~ miss moneythrift

I hadn’t intended to have a blog break, but I have been busy and haven’t really wanted to stop the momentum by blogging about it. So the days have been a flurry of activity, but the long, cold evenings have been a welcome rest and snuggled under my throw I have taken to watching Bleak House and marvelling at Charles Dickens, such a wonderful story teller, inspired by real life, and in particular the names he gives to his characters – Guppy of Kenge and Carboy (you couldn’t make it up so well as Dickens did), Miss Flite, Lady Dedlock, Krook and Smallweed; all their names suit their characters.

So at present, I am thinking of myself as Miss Moneythrift as it is that time of year to overhaul the financial situation here.

Many moons ago, I decided to plan each month of the year around one aspect of my life and it went something like this – January Finances, February Health and so on…. as I remember it worked very well for the first few months but fizzled out towards the second half of the year, but the more important things were covered. A whole year is a lot to plan for at once so, after a lot of thought recently, I decided I would split the year into 4 quarters so that my plans only stretch to cover the first 3 months and I would combine this with focussing on one aspect.

The first being finances.

I have at last documented all the receipts for December that didn’t get done before Christmas, balanced the statements and paid any outstanding bills – there are few of those now as most things are on direct debit. Thankfully, I am left with a healthy balance and as the advice of Mr Micawber in Dickens David Copperfield – “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [shillings] and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”.

Once all the savings interest is updated I shall be able to run the year end reports that will tell me exactly where we spent our money and what our passive income is. I can then adjust our budget for this year, although I will probably break some of this down into 3 month periods too.

I can already see that we managed to get through Christmas without breaking the bank, but…and there is always a but, this is a heavy month for us with the cars – insurance, car tax, MOT and servicing all to be done in January. To cope with this I save a little towards it each month in our bill account throughout the previous year.

As January is also a long month for the housekeeping money I have been grocery shopping at home (rather than going for our weekly shop at the supermarket). The pantry is well stocked since before Christmas with dry, canned and packet foods, so a plentiful supply of ready cooked lentils and beans, coconut cream, passata, pasta and the like. We have been using these up together with the vegetables in the fridge. The freezer is also well stocked with bread and rolls to last us until our next shop so all we had to do this past week, to keep us going, was buy a few extra veg and some fruit for breakfast.

We were snowed in on Friday and had a treacherous walk to the village for milk, potatoes, carrots, broccoli and a courgette to top up. I also bought 2 bananas and a pack of raspberries – altogether it came to just under £10 but it will keep us going until Tuesday, our usual shopping day, and it means we have saved around £80 this week already.

As readers may know, we have for a long time always bought organic food and although it is much more expensive, we still prefer to do this and save money in other places.

There have been a few programs on TV last week about the food we eat. One of them comparing how much of our income is spent of food now to in the 70’s. I was quite shocked to find it is substantially less. In the seventies it would be on average 30% of our income and now only around 11%, this isn’t a reflection on the price of food either but the choice of food – low quality, highly and ultra processed with cheap ingredients, or even no recognisable ingredients like in Pot Noodles and strawberry smoothie.

I decided a long time ago that I would only buy quality food, those that have the least processing and without lethal preservatives or pesticides and grown in naturally fertilised soil – it made sense to me as it is something we are eating 3 or more times a day and should be a pleasureable part of life. So if you were reading my blog for any frugal tips around food, then it will not be about skimping on quality.

Where I do save money is by only buying groceries when on offer and stocking up with them if the dates are suitable. If there are vegetables on offer we buy extra and make soup and stews and alter the weekly menu to suit. We minimise waste by cooking only what we can eat to ensure an empty plate and keeping any of the tougher parts of a vegetable, like broccoli stalks, to add to the soups we make, so nothing is wasted.

In and amongst the adding up and balancing bank statements I have been doing a bit of house clearing whilst it has been too cold to go for any long walks, and now there is a nice little pile to leave our house – bags for the charity shop, recycle and a few items to return to friends and daughters.

I spent a whole day in our craft room cum office sorting out paper. It mounts up quickly and every so often I need to tame the pile. I think this year I have not used very many of the craft papers for cards, but aquirred more from somewhere (though I think it breeds secretly when I am in bed!). I really need to get down to some crafting and sewing, but I know it will not be this week as we have mum’s celebration party next weekend and Master Freddie’s party the weekend after. There is also the cost of mum’s celebration to take into account as well as two major presents….could be bread and jam for the rest of the month!!

Inbetween, we have hair and dental appointments (more expense) and the car is booked in today for the MOT and service…and of course it is the bigger of the two services (they alternate yearly) this year, which is always an extra £100 on top – lets hope they don’t find any fault to remedy as well.

I will leave you now as I continue my hunt for a suitable birthday card with 100 on it.

Have a good week,

Back soon x

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seasons ~ twixmas

I love this time of year so much I invented my ‘twixmas season’ – the interval between Christmas and New Year. Although not a true season of course, I can treat it as one as it is a very defined period that we don’t have at any other time of year; the Christmas festivities are over, the hard work done and the new year is a few days away – it is a good time to stop and catch my breath, a time to reflect and review and formulate plans for the year ahead.

My Advent calendar is fully opened now and very colourful, I might make another next year. Below I just thought I would show you the delightful Christmas card that Master Freddie made and the school printed them.

During these few slow days of twixmas my new notebook is being prepared – next year’s calendar pasted in, along with a note of birthdays and a list of intentions for the year – those endless tasks of home maintenance, self maintenance and any ideas that spring to mind for revamping the house.

There will be roll-overs to put down too from last year’s list….all those tasks that didn’t even get a look in – the ones where I wonder how on earth a year can pass and so many jobs still remain outstanding. After all, I really don’t remember lying in my bed all day….I am sure I was up and about ‘doing’ all day, most days – so why has so little got done?

I have known for some time what my focus word will be for next year, well actually it is two words, something that is much needed here; twelve whole months to Restore and Reset my life, in fact both our lives as DH feels exactly the same way. After the sale of the cottage last year and both daughters moving this year, we have both felt to be wandering a bit in the wilderness with no real objectives in mind.

Of course, I had to Google the differences between restore and reset and as I read through the definitions it has more than confirmed this is the right road for me.

Restore: is to put back something to how it was before or return to an earlier good condition. This is exactly what I need for my health, sleep, exercise, routines and systems that once worked well.

Reset: is to start again after a period of rest or change ( in my case definitely change) so you are better able to deal with life or a situation. If I were a computer it would be putting myself back to the factory setting!

I see reset as an opportunity to shake off all those bad habits that I have acquired recently and begin new ones that are more aligned to a better, healthier, less stressed me. I need to take stock of my life and identify the changes that have happened over time that are really not helping me, and restore anything that has worked before.

It is about recapturing the essence of any period of my life that was balanced and worked well. Since we sold the cottage last year we have not got into any routine here at home, other than shopping on a Tuesday….and now we don’t even have my friend K to pick up anymore, but Tuesday is as good a day as any for us to continue doing our shopping on.

In 2010 I came across the book ‘Everything That I’ve Ever Done That Worked’ by Lesley Garner. It is a series of short essays where she documents everything in her life that she has found to work for her, especially in times of stress and trouble. It started me thinking back then of just such habits, routines, systems, attitudes and behaviours that have worked for me in the past and those that really didn’t.

Presently, I can name a few unhelpful habits I have developed that will be detrimental to my health and well being (perhaps not immediately, but certainly in the future), and I need to get myself on a new and better path.

As I have pondered over these two words I have come to the conclusion that many of the RE words are going to be utilised within the bounds of Restore and Reset.

Rest, reconnect, recharge, reflect, review, recycle, rearrange, return, revamp, recover, reduce, reflect, relax, renew, replenish, research, resist, return and revisit.

I need to do all these, and no doubt more, to improve my life and now is a good time to start.

So I am taking the opportunity this week to recover from all the pressures that Christmas brings with it – often nice pressure, but even the accumulation of nice pressure is stressful.

Recovery for me isn’t lying down on the sofa watching endless TV, but rather having a good potter around the house putting everything slowly back into place and making plans.

Along with recovery, I went shopping today to replenish the pantry, mainly of bread, milk and fresh fruit and veg that we needed, but not before making a menu plan – that is certainly on the ‘it works for me’ list.

I used my personal Nectar discount offers that are given for using scan shop – I had 10 reduced price items, nine of them are items we normally buy and wanted, which is good…but when did I ever buy an Aero chocolate mousse? Sometimes, these computer generated offers are far off the mark.

My personal Nectar points were good too, 110 bonus points (worth 55p) on organic leeks, and 90 bonus points (worth 45p) on large organic tomatoes, organic broccoli and varying points on twenty other items. If I had used them all I would have added £4.15 to my Nectar points spend total. There was also 3 x bonus points if I spent over £120 but I certainly wasn’t spending that much. DH has his own offers of Nectar savings and points. We tend to just buy anything that is on offer each week where we can, and if it is a very good offer we will stock up with 3- 6 items depending on how often we would buy the item and how often Sainsbury’s put them on offer. I find their offers are very cyclical and come around every 3 to 4 weeks on main items like butter, tea and coffee.

Once I have done a bit more sorting at home I will be in a position to attend to any returns and the recycling.

I know of one or two bloggers who will choose a new focus word for the year and I am always eager to see what that word will be, equally I like to hear of those plans or (dare I say it) resolutions for the new year that you might have.

Do excuse me now I am off to the local pantomime, Beauty and the Beast with the family…my Christmas treat. X

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