Today we received a letter from Santander letting us know that the new total for the mortgage is £64,425.00 Yay! The letter then informs us that our monthly payments will now go down by the princely amount of......wait for it, drumrole...... £1.80 .... Awww!

At first we felt quite let down but on reviewing it, over a year that comes to £21.60 saved against a paltry £5 over a year if we left it sitting in our savings account! Personally I would rather be bringing down that total anyway! This way we are heading slowly but surely to our target of becoming mortgage free with another £16.60 saved!

Today I visited our local Barnados charity shop with a bag bulging with de-cluttered articles! Great feeling! Unfortunately I came out of the shop with another 2 bags of bargains! :) For £10 (everything is 99p) I got 4 t shirts, 1 shortsleeved jumper, 1 beautiful teal varigated wool shawl, a Cath Kidson magnetic board with a shopping list and notebook attached and 3 toys for when my little grandaughter visits! Very pleased with this, my first visit to a charity shop since I hurt my foot!

Cooking up a storm today, 2 packs of half price steak and kidney in the slowcooker, half of which are now 2 steak and kidney puddings (using up some of the approved foods suet mix) the other half is bubbling away as a stew with yummy dumplings in! If I have any spare energy I shall go make some apple cinnamon muffins, need to use up some apples for the box delivery!

I've been taking a leaf out of Frugal Queens book and spent some time bulk cooking for the freezer! I now have more than a dozen home made "ready meals" available! That should help us resist temptation to order a takeaway!

I have 2 portions of soya bolognaise, 4 portions of chilli con carne (minced beef and soya mix to stretch it) and 8 portions of italian pasta soup (I doubled the recipe), which is more like a spicy vege stew, it is so filling! Here's how to make the soup:-

Italian Pasta Soup

1 large onion (finely chopped)
1 lg clove garlic (crushed)
2 sticks of celery (finely chopped)
1 tablespoon olive oil
15oz tin of tomatoes or 1lb fresh tomatoes
1 + 1/2 pints of stock
4 oz wholemeal macaroni
1 handful of chopped parsley
2 carrots (grated)
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Saute the onion, garlic and celery in the oil for 5 minutes, without browning. Roughly chop the tomatoes (skin if using fresh)and add to the pan. Stir in the stock and bring mixture to the boil. Reduce the heat and add the pasta/macaroni. simmer for 15 minutes until just soft. Chop the parsley and add with the grated carrots. Stir and season to taste! Serve with chunks of wholemeal bread. My cookbook says this amount will serve 4, has 163 calories a portion and is high in fibre and vitamins, it is also very yummy!

Now that we have all been reminded of just how dangerous a police officers job can be, perhaps the government can leave their pensions alone! Tereasa May are you listening?

It's too hot outside today, so after pegging my washing out on the line, to take advantage of this free heat, I did a stocktake indoors.

We shopped at Costco at the weekend, we do this every 3 to 4 months, and spent £150 on food, so £50 or less a month. This ensures enough meat and fish to keep us going until the next visit. We have a good supply of pulses and we bulk buy tinned tuna, tomatoes, sardines etc.

For this we got:-
5lb minced beef,
2 large chickens,
11 large chicken breasts, (1 enough for 2-3 portions)
4 huge gammon steaks, (thinking quiches etc)
18 thick sausages,
big bag of cod loin fillets,
big bag of salmon fillets,
big bag of fish fingers,
Large tub of hommous (it freezes)
Mozzarella,
Cheese spreads,
Babybels,
huge block of mature cheddar,
so lots of protein, also:-
6 large mixed peppers,
large bunch bananas,
lg bag of salad potatoes,
Butternut squash wedges,
lg bag of sliced mushrooms,
18 fr eggs,
1 kg yogurt,
2 x 500g bags of gnocci,
very large jar of tiptree marmalade,
3 large bottles pissata,
2 large bottles black olives,
6 pkts wm pittas,
2 seeded batch loaves,
18 bags of tyrrells crisps (a naughty treat)
1 big bag of sweet potatoes (costco ones are larger and nicer than the ones in the supermarkets)

Most of this has been packed into portion size packs and frozen down for later use. I can feel the wolf running far away from the door!

We have 2 organic fruit and veg boxes delivered a month @ £14 each and shop only for essentials to a max of £30 a week. This should total £198 for the month and includes dog food and treats. I am going to try to cut the weekly shop down to £20 if I can to make some more savings. Time to use up all the old stores!

Hello again! After a long break, due to illness and the demands of 2 weddings in the family, I am going to give blogging a go again. We still want to do everything we can to pay down the mortgage, preferably before we hit the big 60 and I would like to record our journey. This week we managed to pay another £1,000 off the balance, slowly but surely we will get there! Today I have been using up some of the huge supply of frozen bananas we have in the chest freezer. I found this fab recipe on MSE Old Style, it is fatless yet makes a really lovely tasty fruit loaf. Thank you to the original poster whoever she/he is!


Fat Free Banana Loaf

5 large bananas,

6oz soft brown sugar,

8oz SR flour (I use wholemeal)

2 eggs,

6oz sultanas (I use a mix of sultanas and chopped dates).

Mash the bananas and mix in everything but flour. I make this in my Mum's old kenwood chef! Add flour, the consistency is quite wet, so don't worry. Use a 2lb loaf tin and cook for 1 hour at 170c. I add cinnamon as well. Makes a lovely moist loaf. Although fat free I do sometimes slice and spread with a tiny bit of butter - yummy!

Recovering from lofty perils!

Well I seem to be back in "recovery" this week, this time recovering from clearing out the loft! 10 days of hard work and each day we managed to get 2-3 bags of "stuff" to our local Age Concern charity shop, recycling as much as we could! My husband is certain that the house has now raised itself up by a couple of inches! :)

Letting go was always a problem for me, letting go of the memories, of links to the past and the people we have lost. I really used to tie myself up in knots over this! Now after some thought and prayer I choose something small for the memories and hand the rest over to be of use to others. I seem to be a changed person! yikes!

We found some great treasures as well! My wedding veil, the box was crushed but the veil has been washed very carefully and is as good as new and my daughter is going to see if it will do for her wedding next year.

We are also sticking to the new rule - for everything coming into the house something must go. I found a lovely "like new" fluffy dressing gown, much nicer and longer than the one I had. That one was a charity shop buy as well, soft and fluffy but very pink and too short to be really warm, in fact I used to resemble a large pink marshmallow when I wore it! Now it is washed and packed and ready for the charity shop and the new longer burgundy one is washed and in regular use, and very cosy it is.

I found a super little rectangle shaped pyrex - perfect for small lasagnes, so a little blue patterned sweetie dish has left the building!

Lets hope I can keep this up because I never want to have to go back to sorting out that mess again!

Charity shops - be considerate when you donate

Recently we have spent a lot of time visiting our local Help the Aged Charity Shop! The "stuff" in our loft is shrinking down and the space available is growing at last!

All this has taken time, effort and energy. Not just the heaving bags of "stuff" down the stairs to sort out, but the washing/ironing of clothing, washing up of glassware and crockery, cleaning up of toys before giving them away to donate.

We have all by now perhaps heard the tiresome joke about what to do if your suit needs dry cleaning "take it to the charity shop - let them do it and buy it back"!
I worked in a charity shop (Cancer Research) as one of the many volunteers and they work very hard for no pay! These are wonderful, caring people wanting to give something back to the charity that has perhaps helped them or a relative with the illness. They are most definately not our servants!

The task of sorting out the donations can be a mixed blessing, some of the donations are a superb gift to the charity and help to bring in much needed funds, for which the charities are very, very grateful, but some items show a distinct lack of respect for the volunteers. Opening a black sack one day I found in amongst someones dirty laundry a filled nappy!!!!!! The whole lot had to be thrown away!

The charity shop I worked in did not have laundry facilities, if something needed to be washed and was worth doing, the manager took it home to launder at her own cost. We did steam iron some of the donations but that took up a lot of our time where we could have been sorting or helping in the shop. Some ironing is expected as often clothing is held in sacks for a while before sorting and the upright steam iron contraption was quite popular to use! :)

Now when I spend my pennies in the charity shops I think about all the work that has gone into the presentation as well as the bargains I find!