It is lovely and hot outside. I just thought that I would do a quick post with some easy, home made, freezer treats to cool us down. Home made no churn ice cream http://Strawberry and [...]

Knowing how to make simple, tasty meals from cupboard staples is a life saver. It saves on shopping as there are no expensive ingredients, and keeping it simple means no technical cooking methods. A few [...]

I made myself an omelette today. Before I added the eggs, I sauted some radish tops with garlic and onion leaves, and added a bit of spinach. There are so many second crops that we [...]

Everything is going up, except our incomes. Most people are having to tighten their belts. I find that reducing household spending works best when you target the few categories that usually consume most of a [...]

There’s something people don’t talk about enough when it comes to money, and that’s the embarrassment when you find it hard to make ends meet. I definitely felt it when I was younger. It is [...]

One of our favourite meals is chicken strips in a wrap with salad. These are some thing that we make regularly and these chicken strips make a great, healthy alternative to the McDonalds ones that [...]

I have been asked to share some frugal meals that we make. These are links to some of them, but there are many more on the website. These are old blogs and so prices of [...]

For months now I have been telling people to slowly stock up their pantry.  2 months ago I got called a conspiracy theorist, and a scaremonger.  Hopefully people are waking up now with what is [...]

A lot of people have asked me how I produce so much food in a small urban garden, mostly using containers. One of my tricks is to use successional planting. It sounds technical but it [...]

Frugal fun isn’t about deprivation, or as boring as some people imagine. It is about shifting where the enjoyment comes from. When you stop relying on spending, your creativity emerges, and you also  notice how [...]

We tell ourselves that this month will be different. We have stuck to our budget and been more disciplined.  Finally we get things under control. Then something small happens. A stressful day. A bad mood. [...]

I made this for the first time this week and was really pleasantly suprised. It is easy to make, and tastes like a melt in the mouth shortbread. Mr S loved this cookie tray bake, [...]

The price of food continues to go up. The television and newspapers tell us that there will be food shortages this year and into next year. However, don't despair. There is so much free food [...]

Rhubarb is a perenial and grows every year. It is the gift that keeps on giving and my crown of rhubarb will probably outlive me. It is at least 25 years old, probably older as [...]

For a long time, I thought simple living meant leaving. Leaving the noise, the pressure, the constant feeling of being behind. I imagined in my dreams a small cabin somewhere quiet, maybe a bit of [...]

Much of modern life is organised around the assumption that more is naturally better. We have more possessions, more convenience, more options, more improvements to makes. The idea appears so often that it begins to [...]

To provide myself with food at low cost, I tend to look back in history rather than have a modern food cupboard. Lots of people would probably open my pantry and think how boring my [...]

I have been thinking back to my childhood in the 60s and 70s lately. It dawned on me how many ordinary services have disappeared in my lifetime, and how much daily life has changed because [...]

I had been given some short date cream last week. With it I made garlic butter, some icecream, and used the rest to make mini trifles. Trifle was always a pudding served at Christmas or [...]

I had forgotten to take anything out of the freezer, and didn't feel like cooking. My lettuces and green leaves are just beginning to be ready to harvest but I decided to make a salad [...]

Nature is my safe space. It is where I escape to when times are hard. By the time Easter arrives, something has usually shifted, even if the weather remains cold and uncertain. The light lasts [...]

Sometimes I buy those cheap  canned tins of peaches. They are a good fruit as a back up. I use them in trifle, chicken and peaches, on skewers in kebabs, or mixed with other fruit [...]

As we all know, fuel is increasing in price at the pumps, almost daily. A lot of us are trying to reduce our fuel costs, and use our cars less. However, that isn't always possible. [...]

The oil crisis is going to hit us all hard soon. I am not just talking about the price at the pump. Supermarkets put out a warning this week in the UK to say that [...]

Lettuces used to be cheap. I was shocked to see them at 89p each, today.  Those salad bags that quickly slimy, are around £1 or over. We never buy them and yet enjoy salad leaves [...]

We are eating out of the cupboards at the moment as money is scarce. I always ration meat as it is so expensive. When I freeze it, I divide it into 4 or 5oz portions. [...]

I love it when wild garlic is here again. It feels like the promise of Spring.  That heady aroma as I walk through the woods, fills me with joy. This free plant adds taste and [...]

I have always followed world news, financial markets, and watched harvests and weather conditions. This has saved me lots of money for years. For example, I slowly stocked up on on olive oil and coffee [...]

Our household at the moment has lost more than 50% of it's income due to unexpected ill health that came right of the blue. No warning, and none of the expected health risks that someone [...]

My name is Toni Graham and I am a chocoholic. 😊. Up until recently, a day would not go by without me having chocolate in some form or other. However, chocolate and cocoa have really [...]

This is the 2nd in a series about how we make sure that we have enough nutrition in our diet, whilst living on a low budget. Vitamins are needed for a lot of different functions [...]

Mr S is coming home from hospital next week. He has lost a lot of weight and ironically I noticed that his hospital food had very little protein in it. He looks like he is [...]

I made these for a buffet table recently, and they went down really well. They are a twist on an old classic that my mum made me as a child, and are an easy no [...]

Freedom is one of my most important values. The freedom to be me. It took me a long time to achieve it. At last I am taking the opportunity to live my life the way [...]

I only found out about this way of sowing seeds recently. Apparently seed snails have been trending for 2 or 3 years, and people have had positive results. I am attracted to it as it [...]

Getting through winter and the hunger gap is my biggest challenge as we rarely buy any fresh fruit or vegetables at this time of year. My only exception is that I do buy an odd [...]