Saving on Packed Lunches:meat slicer

My Christmas present to myself this year...

Andrew James Meat Slicer

This fearsome looking beast cost me around £50 (should have been £140) and has nearly paid for itself already in the month that I have had it. How? I buy boneless roasting joints when they are reduced for quick sale and pop them in the freezer.  Then I take them and roast them in the oven and after they have cooled slice them up and package into 100 g packets.  Normal cost, for roast pork for example, around £2 per 100g pack - the last joint I roasted this way cost me £6 and I got a meal for the family and 9 bags of sandwich meat - saved £12!  I estimate that it should (even allowing for purchase price) save me about £100 on sandwich meat this year alone.  It even slices bread so I can turn my own bread from the breadmaker into sliced bread for the freezer (saving around 60p per loaf after ingredients and power).  One gadget that I am glad to have in my moneysaving kitchen.

christmas tree hair clips and others

More for sale - when I get around to listing them!

Folksy here we come.

Handmade Christmas decorations for sale

Finnish Star

Polish Star

Chocolate Mufffins:Home-made versus shop-bought

One of the treats that we like to pick up when we do our weekly shop is Double Chocolate Chip Cookies or muffins.  Even with special offers they set us back at least £1 for 4, (although if you buy them singly at Tescos they are 80p each!).  Normally though I pay on average £1.50 for 4 big sized muffins (38p each) for the kids lunchboxes once (or maybe twice!) a week.

After a quick search I found this recipe which should make 20 muffins (albeit smaller than the ones I usually buy) and they should freeze so they don't get snaffled by a the family gannets!

The recipe uses the following ingredients:

• 140g plain chocolate
• 375g self-raising flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 55g unsweetened cocoa powder
• 85g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 6 tablespoons sunflower oil
• 375ml milk
• 140g white chocolate chips

Although I followed the recipe I substituted a the same weight of basic chocolate bars chopped up for the white chocolate chips- naturally the plain chocolate was basic too so about 30p a bar

Here's the costings courtesy of the Tescos website for convenience.

2 x 100 g basics dark chocolate bars (half of one of these to make chocolate chips) @30p each= 60p

1 x 100 g basic white chocolate bar (chopped to make chips)= 30p

basics self raising flour @52p for 1.5 kg = 13p

own brand baking powder @99p for 170 g (1 tbsp is about 15g) = 9p

basics cocoa powder @£1.29 for 250g = 29p

sliver spoon caster sugar @ £1.08 for 1 kg = 10p

everyday value eggs @ £1.50 for 10 = 20p

vanilla extract @ £1.04 for 38ml (1 tsp is about 5ml) = 28p

sunflower oil @£1.39 for a litre (tablespoon is about 15ml) = 13p

milk @£1.18 for 2.2 litres = 21p
cake cases @55p for100 = 11p

total for 20 muffins - £2.44 or 13p per muffin (before fuel costs...)

So assuming that I use the oven when something else is in there so that the fuel cost can be disregarded that would save me 38-13=25p per muffin.  If my 3 children have chocolate muffins twice a week (regardless of school weeks or home weeks for once) that could save me 25p *3*52 = £39 across the year.  

Of course the one item that really sticks out as making the whole thing very expensive is the vanilla essence - I for one would not have thought that vanilla essence would add 28p to a recipe; in fact if pushed I would have guessed at about 5p.  Maybe future experiments can see if this can be halved or even omitted without spoiling the recipe.  If I can get away with no vanilla then the cost would be £2.16 or 11p per muffin saving another £3 across the year. Maybe worth thinking about.....

More updates :
Music Magpie - £24.46
Saved from housekeeping budget over last month - £317.15

total savings - £859.90+24.26+317.15= 1201.31

1.7% of total.

Car boot sale

Another £85 for the pot from the things we don't want via a car boot sale as manned by OH.
Savings to date :£774.70 + £85 = £859.70
1.2% of total. from March 2012 to my sons 18th birthday is 113 months (just under the 10 year target I set myself in March) 6 months have already gone - 5.3% of the time ; not looking good is it? Must do better as school reports are prone to say :) never mind onwards and upwards and onto the next challenge.

More decluttering with music magpie!

Another £12.18 for the pot from Music Magpie.

Savings to date -£762.52 + £12.18=£774.70
Still 1.1 %

Claiming refunds etc

Our people carrier broke heavily in April and has been at the garage ever since.  However it has now been sold and although the £3000 we got for it after the garage bill has already been allocated somewhere else (out-building roof) we had filled in the SORN forms at the beginning of June once it became obvious that it was not going to be a quick fix and the car was going to be off the road for a while.  This means a refund on road tax of £110 - well worth the 10 minutes it took to fill in and post the forms but one which in the past I probably would not have bothered with since it is a hassle to get stamps and take it to the post office.  (stupid huh!)
Other things I probably would not have bothered with in the past include the printed coupons you get given at the checkout.  This month I managed to bag £9 worth, (provided that I can be organised enough to use them within date!)
£119 for the pot takes me over 1%

savings to date = £643.52 + £119= £762.52  - 1.1% of total