by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 8, 2017 | My Diary
Today is wet, wet, wet and we decided to have some rainy day fun. We visited a town we haven’t been to before. First up, we had a big cooked breakfast, which neither of us usually do. After taking our time, reading the papers at the pub we were in and sitting...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 6, 2017 | All Recipes, Less than 500 calories, Other
If you grow runner beans, you may well have times, like me, when you are a bit overwhelmed with them and don’t know what else to do with them. Personally, I think home frozen runners are vile. I’ve tried numerous different ways of preserving them and haven’t liked...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 2, 2017 | My Diary
I’m feeling thoroughly birthdayed today. It was my birthday this week, oh how those years whizz by! Mike bought me a magnificent double stemmed orchid, and a lovely soppy card. I seem to have success getting orchids to reflower, so I have quite a collection now....
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 24, 2017 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes
Having tried faux Nutella with hazelnuts and butter, I wanted to try another version with oil. Having run out of hazelnuts, I used walnuts. So I nipped into the kitchen and this was rustled up in just a few minutes. Home Made Walnut Nutella Priced at Asda, July 2017...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 17, 2017 | Making Money
Have you ever heard of Massive Online Open Courses, or MOOCS as they are shortened too? They have been around quite a while, but I’ve never actually investigated any. Never had time! The concept The concept is that an expert decides to write a course about something,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 11, 2017 | All Recipes, Lunches, Other, Round Up Post
Whilst gardening on Saturday, I was musing about baked bean paté / hummus and what different flavours could be achieved. I came up with over 30 without trying very hard at all! And as I was writing this post, I kept thinking of more! So this has turned into an...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 7, 2017 | My Diary, Saving Money
Went for my regular coffee meeting this morning and had a little look at a couple of the many charity shops afterwards. The first one had an utterly gorgeous wicker sofa, complete with cushion over the whole seat. Would have been wonderful in the garden. But it would...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 5, 2017 | My Diary
Had the U3A cookery group here yesterday. As usual, we fitted in lots of different recipes in our two hours. As well as a couple of made up things, I wanted to try some recipes from a new book. I saw a couple of recipes from Izy Hozzack in the paper and liked the look...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 4, 2017 | All Recipes, Other
Sometimes, I get a bit of this and a bit of that fruit wise. There are lots of things it can be used for. I’ll use it for smoothies, or fruity, oaty crumbles, or a pie, or clafoutis, or a sweet omelette, or baked oats, or even just as it is, maybe with a splash of...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 3, 2017 | Budgeting, Saving Money
A quickie for you today. Do you look at Groupon at all? I do, and occasionally I’ll buy something. The Offer Last week I saw that they were offering Cusheen toilet rolls at £11.99 for 60 or £22.99 for 120. They are 3ply (although see the verdict) and 145 sheets...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 29, 2017 | My Diary
I’m sitting on my sofa, back after a couple of days away. Back before Christmas, I noticed somewhere or other that Adele tickets would be on sale for Wembley. Well, I’m a bit of a fan, so I decided to see if I could get any. I was on that site on the dot...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 26, 2017 | My Diary
I updated my silk flower arrangement today, to be used for the next three months. This is what it looked like before. A base foliage display, fixed in resin in the vase, white Ranunculus and three different shades of Lilac. Stripped out the Lilac and put them away...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 25, 2017 | Bready Things, Other
A couple of very quick things for you today. Super simple. Do you remember I bought some big bags of wonderful sun dried tomatoes from Healthy Supplies. They taste wonderfully fresh and tangy, the best I’ve had. If you can afford the initial outlay, they are a great...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 21, 2017 | Puddings / Desserts
It was the U3A AGM yesterday. We offer tea and biscuits usually, but because it was the AGM we upgraded to cakes. I decided to take some cheesecakes in ramekins. I did a strawberry topped one and this salted caramel using a recipe I’ve used before. The strawberry ones...