I made these low sugar oat cookies by mistake as I was following a recipe by What Jessica Baked Next for hob nobs, and I forgot to put the syrup in.  These are therefore a [...]

For years I was trapped in a fast life.  I was juggling parent hood as a single parent, a full time responsible job, the improvement and the upkeep of my home, studying, and a tiny [...]

I have been accused recently of being too extreme and fanatical about my frugal habits.  Why do people think that they can comment about my life when it is not impacting on theirs? I am [...]

A few weeks ago Mr S made me a raised, box tub out of some pallets that we had been given.  Previously he had made me a box out of some scaffolding planks that had [...]

What are Cleavers? If you were a bit of a rascal,  like me, at school you will remember cleavers as the sticky weed that you might have placed on some one's back.  Some people call [...]

It has been a very wet 18 months in the UK and farmers are already warning that there will be a potato shortage this year as many fields are still not ready to plant. Inevitably [...]

I had a couple of over ripe bananas to use up and I was short of things to eat for breakfast. I  therefore thought that I would make some banana pancakes. Now I know that [...]

This is my third week of just eating what we already have in, except for milk.  I have still been buying some staples and some reduced meat with my food budget, but have only been [...]

About 3 times a month I make what I call a pauper's stew.  This is a stew that I make in the slow cooker with any thing that I have that needs using up (or [...]

I am living out of the cupboards, fridge, freezer and garden at the moment.  I am buying some food like flour and oil, but it is not for use this month.  It is to replace [...]

Not that many years ago, everyone's lives were ruled by the weather and the seasons. Living by the seasons was a necessary way of life in order to survive.  Now, seasonal living has almost been [...]

People ask me why I don't go back to work as I could stop being frugal. I keep being told that I still have plenty to offer and I could enjoy a much better standard [...]

We never buy food especially for lunches.  We use what we have in.  Often this means using left overs.  The other day we had a bit of spicy stew left and some mashed potatoes,  There [...]

At them moment we are not doing any food shopping for 2 to 3 weeks.  I have an annual food budget and we have plenty of food in the house and so I will shop [...]

We keep looking for imaginative ways to use our sour dough discard. I am also looking for ways to use up some of the 15p carrots that were discounted over Easter. Last week we made [...]

As you know we are on this journey of using and keeping our sour dough starter.  We were given our starter when we attended a sour dough bread course at Apron strings in Hedon. We [...]

The rhubarb is loving all of this rain and so I am harvesting it a lot recently. Already I have made rhubarb gin, rhubarb brownies and a couple of days ago we made rhubarb crumble [...]

I get asked almost weekly for our meal plans or what kind of things we eat on such a low food budget.  I think that we eat really well, considering. Our meal plan varies every [...]

When the weather gets warmer we will be eating more simple and cleaner meals.  Every week we will have chicken with either chips, grains like quinoa, or homemade savoury rice, and a fresh salad picked [...]

My water bill is one area that I have been able to reduce my bill over the last 4 years.  Saving water is not only good for the environment, it is also good for my [...]

Mr S built me a raised bed that is quite tall to save me bending when I am gardening.  I could not afford to fill it with compost and so decided to fill it using [...]

Adding flavour to simple food is important.  We grow a wide selection of herbs and buy spices in bulk.  To help flavour our food over this coming year I decided to make some wild garlic [...]

This year I am trying to add more variety to the food that we make with wild garlic.  In the past I have just concentrated on pesto or adding fresh leaves to stews or salads.  [...]

There was an abundance of wild garlic this year and we preserve it to flavour our food all year, as well as using it for cooking in spring. Today I fancied making some cheese and [...]

I think about food security a lot at the moment with everything that seems to be happening in the world. My time line, the media. and my YouTube seem to be filled with scary stories [...]

Now that we have a starter we have started making sour dough regularly.  This is the recipe that we use to make sour dough bread.  It was the one we were given by a company [...]

We recently attended a sour dough course and we were given a sour a dough starter which I have been trying to keep alive.  I have wanted to make sour dough bread for a long [...]

It is that time of year here in the UK and the sowing of seeds has begun in anticipation of a garden full of food during the summer.  There is nothing better than the feelings [...]

I often get asked if it is worth growing my own food.  It does take quite a lot of time and effort, but it allows me to live on a small food budget and eat [...]

It is Mother's Day at the weekend here in the UK. A nice idea for a present is to make an afternoon tea.  We used to make afternoon teas to earn extra money and one [...]

I did a lot of thinking yesterday about how our words, mindset, and the way we think about things has such an impact on our happiness and outcomes.   Changing our mindset can change our life. [...]

I use casseroles and soups to use up bits of wizened vegetables and odd bits of cooked meat.  It is also a way of using small quantities of uncooked meat that would not be enough [...]

Batch cooking is great for saving  time, saving waste, and saving money.  It gives me the ability to have a nutritious meal on a day when I don't feel like cooking. I also don't want [...]

The potatoes that I bought for 15p a bag at Christmas are starting to sprout now and so I am finding different ways to use them up without wasting them.  We like to eat a [...]

We had one of the Christmas red cabbages left which are reduced to 15p in supermarkets over the festive week.  The outside was starting to change colour and so I decided to make some pickled [...]

Any one who has been following my website for a while will know that we try to make as many things from scratch as we can.  This is for 3 main reasons.  We need to [...]