by Thrifty Lesley | Oct 1, 2020 | All Recipes, Other
Our little apple trees are usually very generous and I give lots of them away. We have a Discovery, a very early variety, that doesn’t keep and indeed should be picked and eaten still standing by the tree to enjoy it at its best. It’s a huge cropper and I...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 22, 2020 | All Recipes, Less than 500 calories, Puddings / Desserts
I made these rather wonderful easy poached pears without wine today when we had guests for lunch. I thought I’d see if I could frugalise the recipe. I have described these as with no alcohol, although I realise that the process of simmering a wine based...
by Thrifty Lesley | Aug 29, 2019 | All Recipes, Breakfast, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
Do you have cheese sandwiches for lunch? Are you a little tired of them, or maybe wanting to ring the changes a little? How about making a potted cheese. I have lots of little bits and pieces of cheese stashed away in the freezer, things left over from various events,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 7, 2018 | All Recipes, Breakfast, Less than 500 calories
I have been following Slimming World for a few weeks now in my ongoing attempts to lose weight. I cant stand boring or bland food, so am constantly looking for nice things to eat that are allowed. I’ve written before about how delicious overnight oats are, and can be...
by Thrifty Lesley | Oct 20, 2017 | All Recipes, Dinners
This recipe is one I have been making for decades. I first came across it at the house of a close friend when we went for dinner, and he kindly gave me the recipe Sweet Bean Curry Ingredients 175g dried beans, £1.06/500g, 37p Tblsp vegetable oil, £1/litre, 1p an...
by Thrifty Lesley | Oct 8, 2017 | All Recipes, Dinners
This recipe came about when I was googling for savoury recipes to use apples. I came across one that I’ve modified here, it only uses one apple, but that’s one more used. Chicken, Quinoa and Apple Burgers Ingredients 300g chicken breast, £5.84/kg, £1.78 2 spring...
by Thrifty Lesley | Sep 14, 2017 | All Recipes, Less than 500 calories, Sides
Mike went to the Co-Op this week and came back with one of those little magazines that supermarkets do. One of the recipes caught my eye. It used pears, but we eat our pears unripe, straight from the tree, still crispy. I thought it would work well with the apples...
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 | Feb 5, 2017 | All Recipes, Puddings / Desserts
Darkness and Light January and February are such dark and gloomy months. I like to get outside whenever I can to get some daylight on my face. Can’t say sunshine as there probably wont be any! Yesterday, Mike had cabin fever and was pacing the house, it was dark,...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jan 6, 2017 | All Recipes, Dinners
I bagged some lovely organic beef mince on yellow sticker last week and stashed them in the freezer for when I was ready to use them. They worked out, even on yellow sticker, at just a bit more than ordinary 10% fat beef mince, that’s the organic part I suppose. Today...
by Thrifty Lesley | Oct 14, 2016 | All Recipes, Other
This Apple Curd recipe originated from the wonderful cheap family recipes. The original uses oil, but I have substituted butter as I think it works better. I have been using apples in lots of things lately, as I have had quite a few from the garden. I’ve practically...
by Thrifty Lesley | Feb 24, 2016 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Lunches, My Diary
low carb soup Still on my quest for nice things to eat on this high fat, now even more low carb, diet my coach has put me on, I thought I’d do some soup. I love soup and have it often. It suddenly occurred to me today that if I didn’t put in my usual scoop...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 19, 2015 | Cakes and Bakes, Christmas, Love Your Leftovers
A few days ago, I made some mince pies for the U3A Christmas meeting. I had bought a new large jar of mincemeat, but then remembered I still had 2.5 jars of the same size left from last year. So I dug out one of those and used that. I made some oil pastry, then used...
by Thrifty Lesley | Dec 7, 2015 | Lunches
Tried the first experiment with reviving dead bread stored as breadcrumbs today. Had a look in the fridge and found a few bits and pieces that I thought would work, got a bag of breadcrumbs out of the freezer and had a play. I have set out below what I used to give...
