Doubling down on no/low spending!

 

Unfortunately despite doing really well, Luna didn't get signed off by the vet school as her liver enzymes are still a bit high.  She's to take a liver support supplement for the next month and they'll do more blood tests.  So a bit more expense!  And I finally heard back from my pet insurance who said they can't pay out as the 'condition' was diagnosed within the first 14 days of the policy starting.  So puppies are insured from when they're born until they leave the breeder.  Then there's this 2 week/14 days window where they're not, even though you pay for the policy to start from the day you get them.  And you can only start a policy from the time of legal ownership, no earlier to cover that 2 week gap.  I'm not surprised they've not paid out (bunch of crooks!!!) but I am annoyed.  It's a heck of a lot of money to come out my savings so I'm doubling down on the no/low spending.

Frankly I'm not spending money on anything but the barest of bare essentials.  I'm eating out of the freezer and storecupboard for the next few months and looking at every single thing I eat and drink!!  I need to get creative!

I'd drunk all my Rocks blackcurrant squash.  It's my absolute favourite but at £3.50ish a bottle it's very much a luxury.  And I discovered when I looked closely at the label it only has 740ml.  Not even the standard 750ml of most other squashes!  Shrinkflation again!!

So I've decided to make my own cordials. The worst that's in them is sugar!  (BTW I looked at the ingredients on a Ribena label!!! 😦)  I had loads of dried elderberries in the store cupboard so made around 1 litre of  Elderberry, ginger and lime cordial.  (I had some frozen lime juice and chopped ginger in the freezer.)  It's blooming delicious!! 😋 And very dark as you can see in the photo, that's a clear glass bottle!   I have some ideas for other fruit cordials/squash so I can use up more of the fruit in the freezer and create drinks without additives and artificial sweeteners.  Since giving up my diet Coke habit I've been looking for drinks that are less processed.  Obviously I could just drink more water 🙄 but I do struggle with that.

I finally had enough ripe Roma tomatoes in the freezer (I've been adding them as they ripen on the window sill) so I cooked them.  Just tomatoes, nothing else added.  I've got a very disappointing 3 freezer tubs worth (each around 350g) which isn't even the equivalent of 3 tins of chopped tomatoes.  They taste good but nothing special.  I can buy a tin of basics tomatoes for 35p.  Hardly seems worth the effort and asking a favour of my plot neighbours to water the polytunnel when I wasn't able to get to the plot.

I harvested my chillies.  I let some ripen fully and left some green.  Neither have any heat.  Zero chilli flavour.  My green fingers have deserted me this year I think!

But my DIL is developing hers!  I've even got her saving seeds for next year!!  Sunflower and poppy seeds drying off on the window sill 🌻

And she's becoming an expert on finding yellow stickers!  Note how it says Too Good to Waste instead of reduced!!  She just happened to be in Waitrose at the right time and got around £65 worth of meat and fish for £22!!!!  She gifted me the above lamb mince 😊 Down from £6.55 to an amazing £2.59.  It's already cooked with grated carrots, courgettes (home grown) and onion (home grown!) and in the freezer. She also got a large fillet of wild Alaskan sockeye salmon down from £15 to £5.  We cut it into 4 decent portions and she gifted one to me!  It's also in the freezer 😋

I did get one of my important jobs ticked off my list ✅ I got my chimney swept!  It cost me £100.  I had the woodburner installed 6 years ago and the chimney hasn't been swept since 😳  So it's now all ready to be used when the weather turns colder (garage has a decent store of wood and heat logs bought in the sale) and I can also tell prospective buyers next year that it's been done and leave them the certificate!