Stampeding through a sensible, scrimping September!

[PeoniesforMissAnnersley]

Thought I'd do the honours

With kids back at school and autumn weather drawing in we all need a very sensible September. I'm putting up my thermal curtains and refusing to put on the heating until October. Who's in?

Nearly 5 days to payday, very tight

I don't get paid until 27th. Dp gets paid Saturday though. Car tax due this month £100 for six months.

We get paid at the last possible working day so mine will be the 30/9!!

Sorry been MIA for last few days. Lot of late nights for work reasons. Spent £2.40 on the bus. Usually drive.

Will have to do a biggish shop on Saturday to pick up last minute stuff for dd's birthday. I'm leaving for Germany on Monday for a 2 day meeting.

6 days until pay day and very tight indeed!! Squeeezzzzzeeee.

Although, had a couple of 'get out of jail free' cards One of our toilets decided to keep on flushing, and flushing, and flushing. Our house is 3 years old now. However, the builder popped out and fixed it for free, which was not at all needed but I would recommend my builders again and again. Nothing is every too much trouble and they still do stuff for people that moved in years ago!!

Also, phone line and internet access down. I hate BT with a passion, their customer service via the telephone is utterly terrible. I was told that if the fault was mine, then I would be paying £130 for the repair. It turns out the fault was external, despite a stroppy text saying their tests showed it was internal and the engineer was absolutely lovely. Apparently, they had told a 91 year old man to get down on his hands and knees, unscrew the test socket and check his line before they agreed to come out last week. A man who can hardly get upstairs and walk and was having to try to get to a payphone to call them. He fixed that for free, as he was so disgusted.

We've had pasta and sauce tonight, from the MN recipe book. Second servings from one pot of sauce, with added mascarpone cheese. So very economical recipe as its basically two tins of tom's, celery, garlic, beans, seasoning, small spoon of sugar, rosemary and anything else you have available, cooked slow in the oven for 90 minutes and then whizzed up. Fed four of us twice, but I reckon you could stir in lots of differing ingredients if you have them in the cupboard spare (bacon, chorizo, chicken, veg etc).

I have plenty of meat etc in the freezer, but my tinned stocks are quite low now, so I need to balance.

When my DS was tiny, it was For Sale signs that fascinated him . We were moving at the time, he knew 'for sale', 'to let', 'sold' etc and quite a few local agents names

spotty - yep, DH's car needed taxing this month, as did his middle age crisis sports car, as did my horse box. I forgot about the last two and it's really made it hard.

and I would be in bed at 8pm through choice most nights tbh!!

Thanks mojito, its comical really me running around the house switching lights off and cutting out coupons when dh is off booking b&bs but I suppose part of the joy of being frugal is that there should, theoretically, be money saved up for spending. Where are you based btw? fluffy I would not even usually spend that much on birthday or Christmas!! but dh took me away in the summer for a surprise weekend so do feel like I want to spoil him a little in return.

1.59 on a few things for dinner from aldi. I'm going to do a big shop tomorrow. Usually only do a weekly food plan but am going to buy up until the end of the month (30th is also pay day for us). Problem is I've restarted weight-watchers so saving money by carb-loading is out! I try to just do loads of veggie/vegan stuff like zero points soup, veggie bolognaise and veggie curry but then I run out of ideas! Any frugal low-carb vegans out there who want to share their recipes?!

My credit card bill this month was bearable, but it included £200 for replacing the iPad the girls broke on holiday, school dinners and a few extras I treated myself to in duty free.

I just did a big Tesco shop and was horrified at £195, but then I realised we have been home from holiday almost 3 weeks (when it comes on Saturday) and I have done one shop plus a small top up.

£3.59 on cat litter at the local shop. Not cheap, but cheaper than entering Tesco and coming out with a basket full!

£9 in Tesco at lunchtime.

Had a lovely supper tonight.

pack of reduced sausages (75p)
tin of tomatos (35p from aldi)
big slosh of very cheap red wine we had left over from the other night (maybe 50p)
plenty of lentils (maybe 50p worth)
half a pack of cooking bacon (81p for 500g from Morrisons so 40p )
a couple of onions (bag 39p from Aldi 8 in bag so 10p)
some garlic (no idea sorry)

cooked in the oven slowly for a couple of hours in a casserole.

Gorgeous meal for £2.60. Fed 4 of us and still got some of the lentil / bacon mixture left over for soup another time.

Other half of the cooking bacon will do for carbonara

Lovely lists! We has half a huge marrow with eggs parma ham pasta sauce and cheese nom

for your friend Italian.

Quick help needed please. I've got a teenage boy staying over this weekend and between him and my DS I fear there won't be enough food to go around. Can anyone give me your easy to cook but incredibly filling dinner recipes. The boys aren't into beans or vegies for that matter and I'm trying not to buy loads of ingredients as I am skint until next weeks payday. I have mince in the fridge, sausages and want something I can put on the stove or in the oven and not have to think about. I just don't want to be tied to the stove this weekend.

All ideas appreciated.

Pancakes - dirt cheap and filling..they can have 20 each!
Toad on the hole... Again cheap and filling with a jacket spud.
With the mince I would make spag Bol...pasta is filling.
Have you got any fruit?
You can make on the turn bananas into Banana bread and if you have apples you can bake them and serve with ice cream?
Good luck

Oh yeah toad in the hole mmm or lasagne with garlic bread and salad or even chips!

Should be nsd today as I'm working. Oh actually food shopping coming later think that's £61

Pancake recipe;
1 cup of s r flour
1 cup of milk
1 egg
Bear into a batter
2 tbsps of batter for each pancake - fry for 2 mins or til the batter bubbles

Makes lots of small American style pancakes - we add blueberries, banana etc
Can also be served with ice cream

Thanks guys. I'll make the pancakes for breakfast tomorrow to fill them up and looked up a recipe for chicken curry as I had some curry paste in the fridge to use up. That's dinner tonight sorted and breakfast tomorrow. I bake a lot but one thing I'm not good at is pancakes so I'll try your recipe Badvoc as they sound yummy.

I do have some fruit to use up so thought I would make an apple crumble for desert tomorrow and I'm also going to make some Chelsea buns as I have all the ingredients here. That can be their snack during the day.

I'll do spag bol for dinner tomorrow night I think.

Thanks again all.

You can put red lentils into curry and spag Bol. They cook into the sauce so you don't notice them but they are very filling due to the protein content.

I like the pancake idea, we are going to struggle with snackie bits til thursday... Excellent idea

I need to go to tesco later to get a couple of bits, might stock up on milk, bread and fruit to see us through to next thursday.

I was supposed to go out to a school meet up in the pub tonight but its 10 miles away so can't afford the petrol... Was planning on nursing 1 drink all night!!

needastrongone I feel your pain, I really do, don't get me started on BT. We had our phone and internet go down a few months ago and they wanted me to test the equipment by getting the box-thing off the wall and I couldn't get the thing off, so I had to agree that if it was a problem with my equipment it would be the £130 charge. The man at the 'help centre' was so rude and impatient with me and told me to use a screwdriver! I don't know what he thought I was using, my bare hands maybe? I also had the stroppy texts you have had. I cranked up nearly £10 on my mobile in the week it was out as there are certain calls that are essential and I tried to get this refunded from BT - in the end I got a very rude assistant to agree to refund me £5 as a 'gesture of good will' after I said how dissatisfied I was with having no phone/internet for a week, and how a company like BT is the flagship company and their customer service was shameful. I don't know if you know, but you can log into the BT wifi for free while you are without internet. You just use your email address and the password you would use to log onto 'my BT'. It is painfully slow but better than nothing.

Mojito teenage boys eat loads so your suggestions sound great. I would buy an extra box of cereal (in my experience they like Weetabix) and a big 4 pint bottle of milk rather than expensive bits to fill him up. Don't worry about this looking a bit inhospitable - when DD(18) has boys over, after dinner if they are still hungry I direct them to the cereal and it is fine, it is what they are used to eating, and they get through loads

Italian I am sorry about your friend's DS that is very sad

How about something like cauliflower risotto sixforgold? It's quite tough doing low-carb vegan recipes, especially in the cooler seasons, unless its curries, soups and bolognaise ,isn't it? Why not add in Mexican inspired recipes to the mix - like mexican veggie & bean stew or chilli? Or stuffed veggies. And remember that curries can be made in a variety of styles. I really like the Holy Cow blog for ideas.

italian yes, I can understand why you feel so down.

So far this month, I have earned a grand total of [drumroll].....£56. Please don't all congratulate me at once.

hello all. Have had such a stressful few days - was admitted to hospital on Thurs morning for emergency surgery but by time list started at 1 lots more very sick people had come in and I was starved for over 24 hours and ended up being sent home as they won't get to me today now and there's only a skeleton staff there at the weekend. I have a bed on Monday and have to go in starved etc but obviously there is no guarantee it won't happen again.
And every day that passes there is more chance of this problem flaring up again which could be life-threatening. But because it isn't life-threatening right now they can't put me at the top of the list. SO SO SO frustrated and sad and exhausted.

Sorry peonies thats rubbish for you

Fanta - They are utterly rubbish aren't they? I was also told to unscrew the socket, test the phone in the test socket, in an extremely rude way. How can you tell a 90 year old man who can hardly bend to do this? In fact they are SHIT (excuse language). We will be changing, the texts just finished me off.

MissA - oh no, that is awful, really rubbish for you. Hope you are not too uncomfortable.

I have a teenage son. Cereal. Cereal. Cereal. They do eat a lot. Pasta (bolognaise if you have mince) Sausages, you can even do hot dogs if not a crock pot type thing. Even cheap noodles work. If you have eggs, then a fry up with your sausages?

Morrisons shop was £90, a touch over the £75 budget but DW tablets were on offer, as was washing tablets. I bought everything that I could on offer.

Should be a cheap weekend as DH is away.