The de-humidifier has been running, but the windows were still streaming this morning. It all takes a while to dry out.
Walls next!

Yesterday, SIL-to-be plastered our ceiling. Not much to look at in a picture, but another big step forward.

The de-humidifier has been running, but the windows were still streaming this morning. It all takes a while to dry out.
Walls next!

Lunchtime, I got back from coffee with the girls to find my Approved Foods order waiting for me on the doorstep. Ooh, exciting!
All these olives, £7 for 28 tins. Lots of lunch sandwiches and additions to pasta.

I very rarely buy brands in supermarkets, but Birds Eye instant custard was on offer at 33p a sachet, and custard goes on DP’s frequent crumbles.

Two big Bisto tubes at £1.99 each

10 tins of very posh tuna at 50p a tin. Although I love the posh looking tins, it was the 50p that got it included.

Some more clearance items. 9 tins of orange segments at 33p each. I thought they would make a good breakfast with some thick yogort. You never know, DP might even get a crumble or two as well, maybe with some cinnamon and toasted walnuts in the topping.

Then some wholemeal spaghetti to top up our supplies. I have
lots of posh white pasta from AP at 60p for 500g, which I do use, but we really prefer the wholemeal type. So at 50p for 500g, this will come in very useful.

A massive bag of sage and onion stuffing at £1.99 for 2.5kg. This will be used for all types of things to inject a bit more flavour. Little nuggets on pizza, with any type of roast of course, tiny crispy pieces in pizza sauce etc

Some yummy dark truffles at £1.49 a box. Supposedly for Christmas, I planned to use them to put them in DP’s advent boxes, but relented and let him have one now.

And finally, one of those offers that they add at the checkout. An entire box of packets of 10 Cadbury Mini Animals for 49p

I have gone through this order in detail to show just how cheaply you can get useful store cupboard supplies. When I have priced up some recipes using a couple of ingredients from here, it can halve, or even more, the cost of the recipe. I know it can look like they are a purveyor of sweets, biscuits, jam and chocolate, but there is a lot more there than that kind of thing.

However you get there, do give them a try. You have to keep looking, as it depends what they can get what there is there. There are always lots of goodie type stuff which I try and ignore, I can do without encouragement to eat too much.

Sometimes I have to be creative to use what bargains I find. Do you remember when I got lots of tins of mango and coconut powder extremely cheap? I made up the recipe for chickpea, coconut, mango and spinach curry to use those and it’s one of my favourite recipes now. It is only 53p a portion buying the ingredients from the supermarket, get them cheap from AP and it worked out to just 23p.
That recipe led on to another as well, mango, coconut and feta pasta.

And yesterday, I used some more of that coconut powder to make DD2 and SIL a Thai Green Chicken Curry, 59p for the kidney bean version. Quick, easy and delicious, and even cheaper with AP coconut milk powder.

Boxes of cereal can usually be had for £1.49 a box. Yes, you can easily have a cheaper breakfast, but if you usually buy branded cereal, getting it from here will reduce the cost significantly.

If you can halve the cost of a goodly proportion of your meals, that cash can be made good use of elsewhere.

All of the recipes on ThriftyLesley are priced using current mySupermarket prices. So if you use the recipes here incorporating ingredients bought from AP, you can chop big lumps off even my frugal prices.