Pulled pork, a midweek roast

Hi everyone sorry it's been awhile since I posted, I was dealing with sick kids then a sick me :(

I made this a few days ago but only getting round to popping it up now.

For pulled pork you will need

Pork loin or shoulder, I bought a whole pork loin in the butchers for £20 and cut it into 4 so £5 I only used 1/3 of it to feed us all tea so £1.66 however if you can't get this I recommend a tesco pork shoulder, this will set you back back £3 and will do 2 meals as pulled pork.
Oil (I used fry light) 5p
any spices you can lay your hands on (I used pepper, garlic salt, paprika and a wee bit of chilli) 10p

Total for meat £1.81

Add your pork to the showcooker spray with oil, sprinkle on seasonings and rub it in. Add about a cupful of water.

Cook on low for 6hours

after 5 1/2 hours prepare you trimmings we had stuffing I picked up reduced

It had 2 packets in it so my stuffing only cost me 8p and I only used half (watch this space for what i do with the rest) (value stuffing is grand i normally use it)

We had potatoes 40p
carrots 20p
cabbage 30p
gravy 20p
homemade yorkshire puddings 30p

Total cost of trimmings-  £1.48.

Wee tip for you if your cooking alot of veg do it all together, in the pot below I have potatoes and carrots in the pan and cabbage in the colander then the pan lid on top so I don't need 3 different rings.

Excuse the state of my cooker the pan boiled over.

Remove the pulled pork from the slowcooker, normally you let meat rest however it's better to pull it when it's near falling apart, so with 2 forks shred the pork (or you can just cut it up) put it back in the slowcooker and mix with the juices. (i did take a picture of this but now I can't find it)

This is my dinner the one at the top is hubbys, I try to avoid to many carbs in the evenings but I love stuffing and Yorkshires.Kids dinner was long gone before i could get a camera :)

If I was a good blogger I would have shown you how I made my Yorkshires but my ovens abit iffy and doesn't get quite hot enough so it wouldn't be the best demonstration. I will show you one day, when I move.

1/3 of the pork has went in the freezer, the other 1/3 is going in a pie today. You can use this in sandwiches and wraps aswell, add some passata, peppers and sweetcorn and homemade wraps (another thing added to my list to post) top with some cheese and your have burritos.

It's world porridge day!

Anyone that's seen my grocery list will know I'm a huge fan of porridge, we all eat it. I make mine with full fat milk so not the healthiest or the cheapest but my porridge still only works out at 14p a bowl, you can do half water to cut costs and it's much healthier than other boxed cereals. I'm abit strange about breakfast those chocolate flavored cereals make my toes curl, why did anyone think giving a child chocolate for breakfast was a good idea?

Now I still have a very sickly boy and finally have a working drier so I'm quite busy today and I don't see the point in telling you all how to make porridge because most of you know how anyway. However i wanted to direct your attention to Mary's meals they provide porridge in schools in 3rd world country and are the brains behind world porridge day. you can find them on their site facebook or twitter.


Anyone that doesn't know how to make porridge here's A girl called Jacks express porridge
or Thrifty lesley posted a great jammy oat bars a few days ago that costs just 7p each!

How do you all like your porridge? I do mine in a pan either plain or with apple. I buy the cheap value porridge at 75p a kg and it lasts around a week, we eat it 3-4 days a week.

5 tips on "How to light the fire for less."

It's getting cooler here and i had a sickly boy at home today, so my fires lit. I figured now is a good time to tell you all my tips for a cheaper fire.

1. If you can afford it get a stove, preferably with a back boiler. I have a wee pot belly stove it uses a fraction of the coal my open fire did , acts like a big radiator and you lose less heat up the chimney. This is a huge expense but if the house we decide on only has open fires (no fire at all is a dealbreaker for us) we will be putting a stove in.Basic ones will set you back £600 just for the stove, we will allow £1500 for any extra work needed.

2. Light your fire with paper if you have any. I don't buy papers so don't have any. So I shop around and buy fire lighters for £1 a box in my local filling station, it's a value brand but works fine and works out cheaper than if i had to buy even a cheap paper, but if you buy papers anyway save them all year.

3. Shop around for coal and be prepared to go cash and carry. I buy doubles which is just small lumps of coal a bag delivered will cost you £8 here. I buy mine for £4.30 a bag and they put it into the boot for me. Scrapyards seem to like selling it cheap here however sometimes trailers just out of towns do a good deal. Take the cost of fuel into account. I only pop in if I'm passing or have completely ran out and it's only 2mins away from my kids school but I still don't want to waste desil, I usually buy 5 bag to make it worth the trip.

4. Buy in bulk. Alot of places (including mine, pity I don't have room) do discount on bulk orders of coal, it may only be 10p a bag cheaper but over a year thats an extra bag of coal.My logs will be coming at the start of the week I get 1 tonne for £50 delivered. I'm still using the last few from the bag I got last year.

5. Keep your eye out for free wood and pallets. We don't use sticks in our fire we use cut up pallets, hubbys work has loads of them, more than we can use and will gladly give them away. If your passing somewhere and see a big pile of pallets go in and ask. Very few people will say no. Just be sure to ask first.Keep an eye on gumtree aswell people regularly off felled tree's for free.

One last tip if like me you have a stove with no back boiler, get yourself a whistling kettle or a camping kettle and keep it on top, then you have hot water for tea or washing the dishes, or even washing your face.This is on my shopping list this winter if i can find one cheap enough.

We will be trying to go this winter with no heating oil, we have ran out and when I worked the cost out for last year it was shocking when we used it very little and mainly used the fire anyway.So I leave you this this picture of my lovely cosy fire (which could do with being painted), I hope your all keeping warm and well.

Slowcooker ham shank and soup.

Hi everyone I grabbed a few ham shanks when I was at the butchers on Saturday, I can't get any local sadly so I have 2 more in the freezer. For the family that loves gammon this is a bargain and it's not as salty as gammon so doesn't take as long to cook if you decide to roast it, but It's lovely and tender if slowcookers....;ets face it i prefer everything slow cookered.

Ham shank-£1.35
Stock cube- 2p
carrots 10p
onions 10p
pepper 5p
Total cost £1.62

Add 2pints on water to your slowcooker, add diced carrots and onions and sprinkle in the stock cube, add the ham and grind some pepper on top (or sprinkle I prefer fresh ground and the wee grinders are only 89p) pop the lids on. I cooked on high for 1hr then low for 4hours, 3hrs at high would do or all day at low.

Normally i would say leave meat to rest before touching it, but it's best to do this when it's nearly falling apart, so get a fork and a knife, cut all the fat off (I say cut it pretty much falls off when you touch it and is now cooling for the dogs) then remove the meat, you can just pull this off with a fork.

This is a pasta bowl, it has just short of 265g of ham in it making it 50p per 100g which is a similar price of  value ham, this won't last as long as thinly sliced processed ham however it will be much nicer and healthier, And you get the added bonus of this.....

Soup :)

(yes i could have got more meat but this will flavor the soup nicely)

So the bones back in and the slowcookers still on and will remain on til I go to bed, when i will switch it off and in the morning skim the solid fat off. we will be around 6 bowls of soup from this, I may even add more water. This soup only cost 3 carrots, and onion and a stock cube :)

If you don't want soup and you budget can stretch to it i would cook this in cider then make a white sauce with the stock. Or you can just make normal gravy.

So quick recap

for £1.62 (plud half a bag of shredded cabbage at 50p so £2.12) I will get

A generous dinner for 2 served with half a bag of shredded  cabbage

6 portions of soup

Scraps and a bone for the dogs

MIcrowave sponge

I was reading Frugal Queen's blog the other day and she reminded me of microwave sponge this is something we used to make all the time.

It's so easy because it's the same weights so easy to remember and no looking for recipes and it's very cheap. So I've pinched to...sorry froggs

This is all you need (and a mixer which is out of shot and not so much the kettle my kitchen is very small and dark so there gives the best light so i take most of my pictures there)

Mines plain like froggs you can use lemon curd, or jam or golden surup
4oz of flour- 5p
sugar- 10p
butter/marge-15p
2 eggs- 18p
total cost 48p

All prices are value

Basically  throw it all in a bowl and mix it together, being a lazy cook I measured everything into my mixing bowl on the scales and mixed it with a mixer so the only extra cleaning was the bowl I made it in a beaters. I did this including pictures for you lot in the time it took the kettle to boil for my cuppa, and it had done cooking before i'd even finished drinking it so really not having time or it will cause too much washing up is no excuse :)

Pop it in the microwave for 5mins then it will look like this and with all sponges a knife will come out clean if its properly cooked.

The kids had half of these with half a tin of value custard. so total cost per head is less than 11p. The kids might have the rest tomorrow or me and hubby might eat it later ;) it does look yummy

One pot beef casserole and baked potatoes

Hi all,

On friday night we had a house viewing at 5, adding to that it was a Friday and payday I was aware we could fall into a takeaway trap, which with careful planning could be avoided. By the time we got home the kids would need ready for bed and I'm not going to want to cook. so I called on my trusty slowcooker.

It will only be the 2 of us as granny will feed the kids, we have

1/2 a packet of beef frying steak £1.20
4 value potatoes 40p
3 value mushrooms 20p
1 onion 10p
2 value carrots 10p
seasoning 10p
gravy 10p

Wash and chop up all the veg (not the potatoes) and add to the slowcooker along with the meat.Cover with water. add season all or steak seasoning or a stock cube and some pepper.

*my meats frozen it won't make any difference and I've been doing it for years and never got sick.

Cover with a sheet of tinfoil.

Wash your potatoes and cut crosses in them. wrap in tin foil.

Put them on top of the tin foil in your slowcooker.

Pop the lid on and switch to low for atleast 6hours. Mine will be in there all day. Before dishing up stir casserole and add gravy

You won't get nice crispy baked potatoes but they will be cooked.

You can add other root veg to tinfoil and cook it the same as the spuds.

You can even do little parcels of stuffing.

Let the house hunting begin.

Hi everyone we made a decision that we didn't want to live here anymore. We are very grateful to the family member who allowed us to live here however we are surrounded by family and feel we would like more privacy and we really do need alot more space.

So we took ourselves off to the mortgage shop.

Now if any of you have this service I recommend you use it. Basically it's a free mortgage broker. Aslong as you go to them for your mortgage and insurance they won't charge you for the service they provide.

They were very positive we had thought to get a house we were willing to live in, in an area we were willing to live in, we would need to do co-ownership/shared equity however we discovered that was not the case so will not be going down that route.

I hate mortgages. I hate saddling yourself with debt your the rest of your life. I hate the fact that you could spend years making a house a home and illness or ob loss can take it away from you in a matter of months. However I will be as clever as I can. most mortgages have a 10% limit per year to overpaying. Which is fine at the start  but when we only owe £50,000 we will want to pay more. however we will be going on a fixed rate and when the rates up going back to the mortgage shop to look for a better deal. At that point any savings we have can be used to pay down our mortgage (something i didn't know) and the new deal will be for a smaller amount.

So the plan is to start looking

And to keep saving in the meantime.


*This is not a sponsored post, I'm just very happy with the service I received and as it's a free service I'm sure many of my readers will be interested aswell.