Feed your family for 50p

What if I told you, you could feed a family of 6 this hearty meal for just 50p per person? It's true, last night we had sausage and pepper casserole, with herby dumplings and carrot and swede mash. It was filling, delicious and best of all cost £3 for the ingredients! I'm trying to get my weekly shopping as low as I can, but still cook home-made, nutritious, meals. In this week's shop that was just over £42 -for everything not just food- I bought the ingredients for the casserole, that was to feed 6 of us. It was delicious, made from scratch and everybody was left full and satisfied.

Pack of 8 sausages each sausage chopped into chunks of 3- 85p 

Red pepper sliced - 25p  (Part of a 3 pack)

Half a box of mushrooms chopped - 43p

500ml Carton passata - 35p

2 Large red onions - 13p 

300ml Beef stock - (2 cubes and water) 6p 

(optional for flavour - 200 ml Red wine - 78p )

For the dumplings:

300g Self-raising flour - 9p

100ml water

herbs -6p

Full swede cubed - 45p

Bag of carrots chopped - 29p

Place all casserole ingredients in a large pan on a high heat and cook for 15 minutes

Add a tbsp flour and stir in stock, passata and red wine if you are using. Simmer for 10 minutes and transfer to an oven proof casserole dish and put into a pre-heated oven at 200 for 45 minutes to an hour.

Place the carrots and swede into a pan of boiling water and cook until soft and mashable, roughly half an hour to an hour.

For the dumplings, mix the herbs in with the flour, add the water gradually and stir with your fingers

until everything comes together in a big ball.

Half the mixture then again and again and roll into balls. After the Casserole has had 45 minutes- an hour, pop the balls onto the liquid and cook for a further 30 minutes. Mash the carrot and swede with a knob of butter and freshly ground pepper and serve.

The art of thrifty gifting

We all have that one month that seems to be full of occasions, mine's March. Neve is ten and Chase is two this month, I know, I planned that well. My dear brother Steven has also, very inconsiderately I might add, decided to get married in the same month and as if that wasn't enough we have Easter to look forward to too! So, with all these events to buy gifts for, and of course new outfits, I need to keep costs down without looking like a tight wad, although with my dad being a scouser, I could blame him-I joke he's actually very generous! I have a way of buying gifts without spending a fortune, that are memorable and pleasantly received. I will use the last gift I gave as an example. My brother's lovely fiancé Charlotte has not long found out she was pregnant, much to my delight, although I cursed as another gift would be needed. I scoured Asda for the cheapest things I could find, that would relate to pregnancy and bought a gift bag to put everything in. I ended up with:

2 notebooks, one for him to keep the baby appointments in and one for her to document the pregnancy and birth.

A pack of Twining's ginger tea for if she was feeling sick.

2 face masks and a box of bath salts to have a pamper night while they had the chance.

A pair of booties for the baby. 

A box of paracetamol for him for when the baby was born!

I wrapped all the items in silver tissue and labelled what each one was for and it went down a treat. All for just short of £7! 

This was just an example of one type of gift, but the main idea is put some thought into it then you can get away with spending a bit less and not look like a cheapskate. Use their age as inspiration, for instance you could get a ten-year-old ten things from the pound shop, or if it's a wedding anniversary use the colour, buy red for ruby, silver or gold for 25 or 50 years (obviously not real silver or gold, just the colour) or you could make it a funny gift and buy a friend who you know doesn't like the thought of ageing, a pack of incontinence pads, a cover your grey dye and some slippers! Let your imagination go wild and think how you can make the next occasion memorable for someone without breaking the bank.