Pantry / Store Cupboard

Today i received an email from a concerned reader who was afraid of my financial circumstances with two children.But also from another reader who asked what kind of things do i have in my store cupboard.
So i thought to make it easier i would just post pictures up.

                                                               Top of the pantry

Middle and bottom

The floor of the pantry

As you can see i have tons of spices, tins, pasta, dried noodles, flour, bag full of potatoes.
So don't worry my children will have protein, vitamin, iron filled tummies.

My basic essentials i try to always have in are:

Non-Fresh
Baked beans
Tinned tomatoes
Chick peas
Tuna
Tinned Fruit
Kidney Beans
Dried Noodles
Pepper 
Salt
Chilli Powder
Pasta
Oats
Lentils
Rice 
Bread Flour
Plain Flour
Self Raising Flour
Yeast
Jam
Sugar
Stock cubes
Diluted Juice
Tea Bags
Coffee
Vegetable Oil

Fresh
Carrots
Onions
Milk
Garlic
Cheese
Eggs
Butter

Pets
Cat food dry and tinned
Cat Litter


I find if i have these basics in, i can make anything from soups to curries, from flapjacks,porridge to pancakes.

Its hard to start off a store cupboard of any kind, its expensive to buy everything in one go.
So instead i buy say an extra item every week.
For instance today i saw 4 tins of chopped tomatoes for £1 so splashed the extra £1 and bought them. Now i already had four tins in the cupboard but thought its good deal, works out 25p a tin instead of 37p.
Its little things like that really help you out in the long run.

I must admit most of the non-perishable items we eat are the supermarket basics.there is nothing wrong with this as generally the food has less in than brand names.


Hope that gives you some ideas :)

It's been a while ....

Last time I posted I wasn't very well, my health was at an all time low. Everything was getting me down including my slum of a private rented home.
Since then I've been exceptionally busy, we've been offered a house off our local council. Myself and my partner have been on the lost for about a decade. Guess what were taking it!
Today had been a mixture of packing and baking.
Made a batch of twinks, lemon curd cake and a chick pea and chorizo casserole.

fruity bread yummy

Hello,

Well its bread day made a huge 700g bloomer, a small loaf and a fruity loaf.
Now i've never made a fruit loaf so thought what the heck lets give it a go.

So for the bloomer, fruit bread and small loaf i've just used the same recipe as i would for a basic large white loaf. Now i've made it by hand as my bread machine has broken down. The bread machine recipe is on further on the blog to.

Which is 

Basic Bread Recipe
300g Strong White Bread Flour
300g Plain Flour
1pint of warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
7g dried fast action yeast 

For the fruit bread, same as above but also add 100g of whatever dried fruit you may have.

If making by hand place the flour in first ,then the salt, sugar and yeast.

Mix together till fully combined. Then slowly add the water whilst stirring till it has formed into sticky but not wet consistency.

Now leave to rise dough till its doubled in size. Once it has done this, knock the dough back down again .

You can now shape into loaves, buns etc Place the shaped into a loaf tin, baking tray and leave to rise again. Once it has done this, preheat the oven to gas mark 5. Leave for 5 minutes for the oven heat up and place the bread dough in the oven.

Bake for about 45 minutes or till cooked.

After you have mixed the dough it shold kind of look like this, if its too watery add more flour and mix again till its the right consistency.

I then  split the dough into two pieces, one for the fruit bread and one for the small loaf.

I place the small loaf dough into a separate dish. 

Then added about 100g of mixed dried fruit mix. 

I then mixed it all together and placed it back in the bowl.

to rise.

After placing the bread into bowls i covered them up with a carrier bag to trap the heat in to help them rise.

Heres all three of looking scrummy :)

ahh fresh bread, can't beat it.

Paying off debt whilst having gadgets

I as recently reading an hearing people complain about others having technology i.e ipad's, tv's, whilst saying they have no money.It got me thinking as this is my family right now. As you all know this month in the madhouse will be very tight and monetatry wise they is nothing to spare.

So i thought i would share our reasoning behind having tablets, pc's and consoles whilst maintaining a steady pace of removing debt and living within our means.

I also wrote something very similar on a forum i visited earlier.

I think having the latest gadgets and using techology such as ipads, tablets, smart phones,  tv's etc is fine as long as your not getting into debt to get them. I know its sounds silly but hear me out.

My partner and two children are obsessed with gadgets and they love mucking around with computers and playing on games.To be honest i like them to but not to the same degree. My partner decided that he wanted to have internet upstairs, so he re-routed cables so now if we wanted to we could effectively have the internet anywhere in the house.

For instance my eldest son is 12 years old so he's a typical teenage boy, the moods, humor, the lot. He has a pc and a Xbox 360 in his room. We decided when he when 10 years old he could a desktop pc in his bedroom, this was the first electrical item in his room. We decided we would allow him to have these for both his homework and entertainment. The Xbox he chats to his friends through, as he rarely leaves the house and suffered form bullying when he was younger. He's not a fighter and prefers to walk away, unfortunately this affected his confidence so even now he still gets bullied. Except now they older kids with weapons. So for me personally i'd rather him socialise with people who he likes and he feels safe at the same time. Its funny because you can hear him laughing his head off and he puts mates on loud speaker, so sometimes they's four of them all shouting and laughing at the same time!

My youngest son is 8 years old, he only has a radio in his room as we still think he is to young.
Instead in the living room he has a wii and lots of games, before we got it he struggled to play with other children. But since he started playing on the wii it has really helped his communication skills. He now is able to have a conversation with another child, which is so amazing and such a dramatic change. To go from from barely stringing two words together  to having a full conversation. This year for christmas we decided to get him a tablet, he asked santa for an ipad, but they are just too expensive so went for an unbranded one off ebay. The tablet itself helps to calm him down and gives him something to focus on when were out and there's too much going on around him. Also we thought it would assist him with spelling and homework. To be honest it really has helped bring him and the tablet also has a physical keyboard he uses with it too, so it is very multifunctional.

A bit about us myself and my partner do not smoke, we very rarely drink alcohol. At christmas we bought two bottles of white wine and we stilll have one left.We  try and go on very cheap uk based holidays and we budget for them accordingly. We both cook from scratch when we can, take our children to the great outdoors and visit lots of historical sites.

We have a landline and broadband, BUT we don't have any channels including the bog standard terrestrial ones. If we want to watch anything we use 4OD, itv player and bbc iplayer. this is our own personal choice, so whilst we have technology we also mix it with the traditional. To be honest we don't really watch that much tv, and don't watch soaps instead we prefer drams, documentaries and films. Before we made the decision not have sky we used to sit and veg out in front of the tv, our life was dominated  by the tv guide and soaps. We also craft, make things such as benches, garden, go camping and we have a house full of books, toys and board games. When my children's friends come round they ask how to play connect 4 as they have never seen them before. Some of these children are 13 years old!

Recently we bought a new 40" flat screen tv for £250in the sales, it has freeview on it but we haven't tuned it in as we don not have an aerial. It is essentially a monitor so we can watch dvd's and play games on. Before that we had a 20 yr old tv that died a death just before christmas 2012, it had been going for a while but i refused to buy a . I wanted a smaller one but all the 20" inch tv's were than £250!!!!

We have mobile phones for business and personal but getting a contract was cheaper for us than PAYG.
This year all of our christmas presents were budgeted for and we never spent extra on credit cards. I had about £200 worth of vouchers / money which i earned from completing surveys. We used them to pay for games and gifts off amazon and ebay. The rest we paid from our cash budget. My partner was shocked that the Halo 4 game was £39.99, i bought ours off amazon using vouchers, in the end it was free.
My youngest wanted wii Lego batman 2 for christmas, priced at £25, i got it for £5 from argos. Using a mixture of nectar points and survey vouchers.

So really it does depend on your lifestyle, we don't buy designer labels, we sell / buy on ebay and hunt around charity shops for our clothes.

Right now were skint, our finances are poor, but that's not because of christmas, its through mismanagement and losing money.T he last three years of my life have been a complete turn around, we went from withdrawing cash from credit cards to pay for childcare and rent. To now , personally anyway, we have consolidated our cc debt onto two cards. I have probably paid over £6k or more worth of debt off on a very tight budget. Still have another £4k worth of debt on cc's but still it is slowly being paid off.

What i'm trying to say just because people have ipads/ tablets doesn't mean they haven't budgeted accordingly. It could be they are doing from an educational / social point of view. Or they could have saved up for the item, and thought right we have saved £200 up, dads gave us £50 for christmas,shall we treat ourselves. Its the end of the year and you know the coming year is going to be hard and you so you think yes. Lets go buy the tv so we know if the weather is rubbish and we haven't got any money to have a day out. Instead we'll make some home made pizza's, juice and home made popcorn and have a film day / night.
Its fun and everyone enjoys it, that way you don't feel deprived and you can have a good time without spending a penny!

So for us in our household its all about consciously deciding what to buy.

I hope what  i've written makes sense and can give you an idea of how you can live simply whilst having things you want.

kez x