Hard Times

Although Mrs Scrungee's home made pizzas are far superior and probably cost slightly less, these are really cheap and can be prepared, cooked and served in under 10 minutes!

Use whole 'Sandwich Pittas' (4 for £1) http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/#/te.../warburtons_soft_brown_sandwich_pittas_4.html as 'pizza' bases and spread with tomato puree and then cover with cheese, etc. and you'll have really cheap 'pizzas' ready in 10 minutes as they only need a grill to cook them rather than an oven.

Although the 'normal' price is £1 for 4, we've been regularly finding packets of these reduced to between 5 and 20p so have been filling our freezers because they seem ideal to take on holidays, especially if camping with just a gas stove with a grille, so getting the 'pizza' cost down to about 20p each (we buy our cheese when half price or better and freeze it)

Something better and more homemade can be produced for about 30p each, but that invloves putting the oven on and waiting for it.

 

I will get some ,I am not a pizza fan but a useful ingredient for freezer when you get unexpected visitors, at lunch time.

 

This afternoon Mrs Scrungee saw a villager collecting fir cones & twigs that were obviously for burning rather than Xmas decs and they looked all furtive and embarrassed, which I can't understand why as we gather loads every time we go out. Various people people we know used prams & pushchairs to bring back firewood when taking their kids out (and some even beyond when they had kids!).

And all the free parking in shops' car parks seems to be more crammed than usual this Xmas, much worse than I've ever known. I've only paid for parking once this year, paying 30p at West Bexington because I was still catching mackerel beyond 8:00am when charges came into force.

 

I think the High Street retailers will be full of bad tidings - post Christmas Scrungee,

 

When the shops go completely dead between until pay day at the end of January?

As an indicator of how well the High Street shops are doing we look at what carrier bags shoppers are carrying and this year 9 out of 10 are from Poundland and Wilkos.

 

I've finally opted for Libre Office after years of using MS Office Professional obtained from software4students as you can't get it on all for all 3 machines in the household for about £60 anymore.

 

Cut down on your food shopping/pesticide bills and eat free, nutritional insects, etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22508439



Good job I'm a vegetarian (except for fish), but the rest of you have no excuse.

P.S. I always pick off caterpillars and feed them to my hens, so I guess that I actually get to eat them when I eat their eggs. They also go crazy for grasshoppers.

 

I saw some bookcases that someone had chucked out yesterday. They were in pieces so I picked them up and have now turned them into a raised bed of sorts! I cannot bear waste and will try to recycle just about anything.

 

Makes me laugh that some think recycling is new! Years ago bought an ancient coachhouse to totally renovate (fools rush in, had no idea what I was letting myself in for as the building was huge). Tried to renovate in keeping with building's age and discovered the "treasures" that can be found in skips. I managed to salvage 18 four or six panel doors for nothing except needed gallons of Nitromores to remove quantities of paint off them. The six panel doors I used downstairs and the four upstairs, nobody ever asked why they were different/noticed!Back then stipped Georgian or Victorian doors were sold in salvage places for at least £80 a pop. I also found a way of making the Nitromores more effective. Apply and then cover the door with cling film and leave for some time. Works quite well but still 1 of the most disgusting jobs known to man if your dealing with hundreds of years worth of old oil paint!

 

How did it turn out?
I used to be called eccentric for my recycling when I was a gal........Now I'm just fashionably odd!

 

Thanks for asking Lea....well the builders said it would take 6 weeks to renovate. 2 1/2 years later the coach house was finished. The house was stunning tho I say it myself BUT, funny how there is a but! the neighbours were hellish. All of them could have afforded to buy the house and renovate but didn't and then were green with envy that the house turned out so well. They didn't of course realise the blood sweat and tears we'd put into the renovations working all hours that god gave on it and putting up with INTERNAL snowdrifts at times.Upshot was we sold the house for a massive profit (didn't originally do it for that reason) and bought another property which had already been renovated (luxury). Did do a bit of skip scowering for the new house and found a fantastic cast iron fireplace which was scarlet! A couple of weeks of my hard work on that and it turned out beautifully, so beautifully infact that a person who sells reproduction cast iron fire places borrowed it to make a mold so he could make others. Nicest smallish cast iron fireplace I've ever seen before or since. This was all quite some time ago, long before the constant barage of renovation/property programmes on the TV. Now everybody is an "expert" I doubt there are so many good bargains to be had from skips!

 

Save loads of money by making a car out of old pallets!

 

The scrap price of empty baked bean cans has now fallen to £50/tonne http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/hard-times.40125/page-4#post-552353 so it's not worth saving and weighing them in at the local scrapyard anymore. I'll have to find a new moneysaving way to help ends meet.

 

Buy tinned potatoes and checkout recipes here (lots of cheap stuff to make on that blog) http://agirlcalledjack.com/category/below-the-line-budget-recipes/ They're only 14p at Asda (1p more at Tesco!) and I reckon the Asda ones taste the best http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/asda...da_smartprice_new_potatoes_in_water_550g.html