I reached into my hessian onion sack yesterday and found 3 stored onions that had started sprouting. Instead of throwing them away and feeling disappointed, I plant them as a source of tasty food, pollinating [...]

People who have followed me for a while know that I keep my food budget low by buying items when they are on offer, bulk buying, and, also preserving home grown or foraged food. Buying [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I have been asked to talk about what we eat in a week. This was a question from someone who was sceptical about our annual food budget of £750. If I shopped regularly, I wouldn't [...]

I probably make a chilli in the slow cooker twice a month. It is one of our favourite meals. Sometimes it has meat in it (I brown the mince first before putting in the slow [...]

During the summer I dehydrated  different herbs, fruit, and wild ingredients to make herbal teas.  Herbal teas are a fairly new thing in my life, but a way I have found useful to add more [...]

Christmas shepherds pie is a great meal to make on Boxing day, or later if you have frozen the leftovers from your Christmas meal. There are no quantaties as you use what you have. We [...]

I see people still filling their trollies up week after week in the supermarket. My mind boggles over how they can eat so much and how they can afford it.. The fact is they can't, [...]

Cooking from scratch is a forgotten skill. However it would be so easy to revive if the will was there. I learned all my skills at school and in the Girl Guides. I believe that [...]

Sainsburys, a supermarket in the UK, are selling half price chickens if you use their loyalty card (Nectar). They cost £2.98 each. We haven't had chicken for ages as it has become so expensive. Early [...]

We don't  eat a lot of meat, and we definitely don't eat a lot of bacon because of the nitrates. However, every now and again I will buy a packs of bacon mis-shapes as a [...]

I have a glut of big tomatoes at the moment. We are eating lots every day but I don't want to waste any. I have no more jars to make passatta, and no room in [...]

We have had to eaten similar food each day recently as there is just no room in the freezer. My priority is to freeze vegetables and fruit for winter nutrition. During the summer when the [...]

Managing a low food budget is not easy, and takes time and planning. I seem to be spending a lot of my time preserving food at the moment. Trying to be food secure is a [...]

One thing that I like to do to save money, and cut down on shopping, is to buy ingredients that I can use in lots of recipes. One of these items is oats. Having them [...]

I love crystallised ginger in my baking but it is an expensive ingredient that I can not afford to buy very often. Sometimes my daughter buys it for me to thank me for helping her [...]

My pantry and freezer are always full, despite my food budget being below £700 a year. I think that it is so important to have a stock of food as we never know what is [...]