Foodie Friday!

 

I got another decent Lidl box this week and was also early enough to get 2 chicken breasts for 90p!  I'm getting more useable coupons on the app now so had a 25% off for unsalted butter.  It's already a good price at £1.69 for British made butter so I was happy with the discount.  I had 3 free bakery items to claim as well but didn't realise the croissant one hadn't activated.  The wee focaccia with cheese and tomatoes and the pretzel are now in the freezer to test how well they freeze!

I made kiwi compote with the perfectly ripe kiwis 🥝 I'm not making jam this year (jars and equipment are somewhere still packed in a box) but compote freezes well and I've plenty of freezer space now.  Plus compotes use less sugar than jam!!

I also made apricot compote.  It was more fiddly as I had to skin them first.  So I now have 6 pots of compote, each one probably has about 2 to 3 servings depending on how greedy I am!

I also made strawberry top syrup!  I saw this on Pinterest and have been saving the tops all Summer in the freezer.  It's so easy.  Put in a pan with water, bring to the boil, add sugar and simmer until syrupy! Strain and bottle.

It's not going to last long in the fridge as I didn't sterilise anything  for long term storage so it's now frozen in wee tubs in the freezer!  It's absolutely delicious considering it's made from the bit you'd normally compost! 🍓

I did put all this in a video for Foodie Friday on YouTube but despite 3 attempts to upload it won't let me.  All I get is a corrupted file message 🙄 I haven't done anything different so suspect it's a ploy to get me to upgrade to the paid version of Clip Champ.  We'll see if it uploads the next one.

I'm realising now how much of a commitment having a 'popular' channel needs. Even when I'm not on the laptop I'm getting notifications/comments on my phone all day and all night.  I haven't figured out how to stop them yet!  I'd say about 90% of the comments are lovely/respectful/genuine.  The rest are people who clearly don't watch the whole thing and jump right in with questions (I'm STILL getting the how old are you/why are you not getting your State pension!!!) Some are saying I shouldn't have a dog if I'm poor (eh, where did I say I was poor??)  I've deleted a few personal ones that commented on my lack of make up (WTF?) and hair.  And banned one guy who was demanding a lot of personal details about my kids, grandchildren(???) and went on a rant about single women, the declining population and immigrants.

Someone said YouTube is like the Wild West!  Yup!!! 🤠

Help needed!!!

 

I've opened Pandora's box with this Youtube nonsense.  I actually couldn't sleep last night and woke up with a dread feeling.  Yesterday's video has had over 13K views in 24 hours.  This tells me that there's both interest in what I'm doing and a need to talk about what happens when you retire and have very little money.

In amongst the comments about how I'm doing it wrong, how I'm paying too much for xyz or that I'm secretly living on my mega savings (def not!!) there were some genuine comments from some people who are surviving on very little money while paying rent.  There were some good discussions lost in the forest of comments.

But I've lost count of how many times people asked the same things over and over especially where it's clear they didn't watch the whole video until the end.  Why am I not getting my state pension?  Why haven't I applied for pension credit? Why am I paying life/pet/house insurance?  What are you going to do if xyz breaks down?  Why aren't you using the rental income from the flat?  At least those people had looked at my other videos!

I put Luna into daycare yesterday so I could get some more unpacking and sorting out done.  Instead I spent the day and evening answering all these questions as politely as I could (an old people pleaser habit!)  I got up this morning and there were a whole load more 😭😭😭

Oh wise ones, what is your opinion on all this?  I've only been doing it for 3 weeks and it's quickly become serious.  All I wanted to do was make wee videos saying here's a Lidl box and look how I've used it to save me money!!

Filling up the freezers

I made my final car payment this week!  My wee 4yo car is now all mine 🚗 So that frees up a nice wee amount each month which I will be adding to my savings from next month.  But to celebrate I bought another freezer!!  Same silver colour as my fridge freezer and it fits nicely into the corner on the other side of the table.  It's not plugged in yet in this photo, it's just been dumped for the gases to settle!   I chose this Indesit one as it's able to keep food frozen for 12 hours if the power goes out.  

I popped into Lidl on Monday and got lucky again.  I knew I'd be able to use up everything and put it in my new freezer 😊  From the above,  I chopped and froze the melon (it was perfect!!) and peaches (had to skin them first.)  I made a sort of tomato relish by chopping up the really ripe tomatoes and cooking them with some sugar and vinegar.  Delicious!!  I've used some of the peppers in a sweet and sour sauce today.  I squeezed the oranges and froze the juice in ice cubes.  And Luna has been eating the cucumber with me as a snack! 🥒

Then last night my DIL gifted me some of her 10p fruit bargains from her Sainsbury's Local.  The plums and apricots have been poached and put in the freezer.  The kale was just sorted into a freezer bag and half of  the pineapple was used in the sweet and sour sauce.  Guess where the other half is??  Yep, the freezer!! 😂

I made a short video of the sweet and sour sauce as I just can't edit in a lot of clips and photos to a longer video within a reasonable time.  I've got other stuff to do!  It took 3 hours to upload a 15 min chat for editing.  So I think creating shorts of me cooking works better then I can just do a one take chat to camera for the other stuff with a wee bit of editing.  Thanks to Mean Queen for that idea!  What do you think?  Opinions welcome!

Luna doesn't like it!

Luna is a bit bemused that I have a table in the kitchen now!! The side eye is ridiculous when I'm eating!😂She had developed a bad habit of sitting right beside me on the sofa when I was eating and tried to lick my plate. So, yeah she's not happy.  To use a Scottish phrase "she's pure raging!" 😂😂

She sits and glares at me from the other side too!  But it's so good to have a space to eat and work at again.  And Miss Luna will just have to get used it!

Today I got my notepad out and sat with a coffee to try and work out some things regarding the YouTube stuff.  I now have an astonishing 1161 subscribers and that £1.76 video has had over 17K views!!  😱 I only re started the channel 2 weeks ago!

Thanks for all the input on how I should go forward with it all. I've decided I'm going to post 2 videos a week on Mondays and Fridays.  The Monday one will be a general frugal chat about what I do and the Friday one will be food related.  I know the Friday one will be more popular based on the analytics! I'll keep them to around 15 mins max and I'll try to do one take to the camera and then add in things when I edit it.  It's editing that takes up all the time due to the slowness of Clip Champ.  But as it's free I'm not complaining.

I'm still keeping my blog going as usual.  I enjoy writing too much.  I'm not linking them and I'm not mentioning this blog so they're completely separate things.  You'll still get to read the rubbish on my weekly doings!! 😂😂

Trip to IKEA and YouTube commenters!

 

I had a lovely day with my DIL, my eldest son's wife visiting IKEA in Glasgow.  I had a list and I stuck to it!!  I knew exactly what I wanted to see and what I wanted to buy.  I got a table and chairs for my kitchen.  It's Pinntorp, a gateleg folding table.  It fitted the space I had perfectly!

My DIL helped me build it.  We're both pretty handy with DIY so table and chairs were built in a couple of lazy hours.  It extends easily to seat at least 4 maybe more at a pinch.  I don't do big family dinners any more so I don't need a big table.

Ignore the 'mess' on the left hand side as I quickly moved stuff to set the table up.  But I'm thrilled with it especially as it leaves me room to fit in a second freezer!! 🎉 I make my last car payment this month so there will be some extra cash in the budget next month!!  I really miss having a big freezer so 2 wee ones will have to do.  More space to store bargains 😊

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my YouTube adventures.  As of tonight I now have 871 subscribers!  And the £1.76 video has had an astonishing 11K views!!! On the whole the commenters have been really supportive but I actually laughed and even put a 😂 in my reply to the woman who said she hoped my food was rotten.  Someone else commented on my £400 mixer (I'm assuming she thought I had a brand new Kitchen Aid and not a knackered 18 yo Kenwood!!)  And someone thought if I can afford to shop in M&S I shouldn't be using the food waste shop.  It's as if they didn't even watch the video!!! 😂😂😂 

Well that escalated quickly!

Oh my goodness!  I have 587 subscribers and my last video had 4.1K views in a day!!!!!  😱 It's rather overwhelming and very unexpected.  It seems to have appealed to a lot of people.

As much as I really love watching American frugal channels, I always feel we don't get the same level of deals and coupons here in the UK.  I also watch a lot of shopping and batch cooking videos but their target audience is feeding your family on a budget.  And since I retired I've watched retirement videos too.

There aren't many UK channels about older women living on their own, on a budget (by choice) and enjoying it!!  I think I've found a gap in the market!  Mean Queen springs to mind and I've found a couple more but haven't watched many of their videos yet.

I have a new found respect for YouTubers.  It clearly takes A LOT of time to put together their videos.  Yesterday I tried to photograph and film some of the prepping and cooking of the veg box contents.  I have tons of footage and photos and that took the best part of a day.  But I quickly came to realise that even a 5 min video clip takes up to an hour to upload on Clip Champ.  It's the free editing software on my laptop.  It has a paid upgrade option which I suspect is much quicker but I really don't want to pay (atm) to make videos.  And I don't want to be tied to my laptop all day either!

Roast butternut squash and apple soup 

I thought it would be a good idea to show everything I made from the £1.76 shopping trip (and a few folk thought so too) but it's going to take me hours and hours of uploading and editing.  So I've come up with a quicker video idea of a week's meal plan showing what 'could' be made with the contents plus a few storecupboard essentials. I'm hoping that with editing in a few photos (they upload really quickly) it will still be a useful video.  What do you think?

Huge big thank you to everyone who has subscribed and commented on my videos.  I haven't promoted them or even told my friends and family about them yet.  So it's all down to you guys kickstarting the process that seems to be getting them noticed!  I never thought much would come of it so wasn't prepared.  I really need to work out a way that I can keep blogging (not giving up on the blog!!) and making videos that are useful and still getting on with my life of doing up this house and garden on a teeny budget!! 😊

Jackpot!

 

Oh my goodness, I hit the jackpot today!  I think I got my best ever Lidl veg box plus a good amount of healthy food from the community food waste shop and M&S.  Everything in the above photo cost me £1.76!!  Honest!

I did a lot of walking too so I'm feeling blessed and virtuous and a bit sore tonight!!  I've frozen what needed to be frozen but I now need to work out some meals and recipes to make the best use of everything I got.  If you've got any suggestions let me know! 😋

New handles

 

It's been bugging me since I moved in that the 3 doors in my small living room all had different coloured and shaped handles.  One was even on upside down and the tubular latch had been removed.  No idea why!

So today I replaced the latch (don't look closely if you're a joiner!!) 😂

And I fitted new handles to the door that leads into the hallway and stairs.  This means I can close this door properly when I have to answer the front door and keep Luna safely in the living room.  The handles are just from B&Q (Breage is the design) and costs £25 for a pair.  The design is very ergonomic and actually feels nice when you hold it.  It'll cost another £50 to do the other 2 doors so hopefully I can get them done soon.  In the past when I've tried to match light sockets and switches throughout the house they stopped making the design I used.  So I don't want to wait too long, just in case!

I made another video while Luna was at daycare.  I was practising my editing skills on this one.  I can't believe the response I've had on the first video and I've got an amazing 343 subscribers! 😮 Apart from one narky comment, everyone has been so lovely!

My DIL asked me if I had ideas for more videos.  I've got a few but if there's anything you think I should cover let me know! 😊

Pushing myself out my comfort zone

 

I made some tomato sauce with some of the veg in the Lidl box.  I thought I'd film it since Luna was still at daycare.  Oh my goodness, seeing and hearing myself is way out my comfort zone!!

I did invest in a tripod ages ago but I'm just using my android phone to film and Clipchamp for editing which is the free software on my laptop.  Already I've learned about unflattering camera angles 😱 and sound quality when you're cooking.  I know a microphone would fix the sound issues but it's not in this month's budget so I'll just have to speak louder!  I can add photos and text so I'm definitely making my brain work hard!

As I've now been officially retired for a year 🎉 and I've moved house as planned, I need to start building my 'retired life.'  Teaching myself to make videos is just one thing.  What else could I do to push myself out my comfort zone?  Any suggestions?

I finally did it!!

 

I finally got round to changing my YouTube channel name and made my first video on living well on less!  Eeek!  Be kind, I'll get better! 😁