Frugal Food: Easy Cheesy Muffin Scone

My little girl has to take a morning snack to school each day.  One of the things I send her in with are these little buns, a cross between a muffin and a scone, the recipe for which I found in the Co-op's free magazine.  

They are easy to make, can be flavoured with anything lurking in the fridge and freeze well too.  I usually make mine with bacon, tomato and cheese and I keep a supply in the freezer so that I know I always have something to hand if the fruit bowl is empty.  

All a bit different to my school days.  I just got sent in with some coppers to buy a bag of pickled onion flavour Outer Spacers from the school tuck shop!

Easy Cheesy Muffin Scones

Butter or oil for geasing

7 sun-dried or cherry tomatoes, chopped small

250g SR flour

80g grated cheese

200ml natural yogurt

sprinkle of herbs

1 large egg

3 tbsp olive oil

Preheat the oven to 190ºC / Gas 5

Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin tin with butter or oil

Put the flour into a bowl, add tomatoes, cheese and herbs

Put the yogurt into a jug, add the egg and oil, and stir.

Add the yogurt mixture to the flour and mix

Spoon into muffin tins (try to do it more evenly than me!) and bake for 20-25 minutes or until light golden.

With Extra Strawberry

This is another attempt to squeeze out every last drop! I had  a couple of jars of strawberry jam in the cupboard with barely enough left to put on a slice of toast but too much to just discard.  I was making a blancmange for my little girl's pudding so put some of the milk in to the jam jar, swooshed it around to wash all the sticky remains off the side of the glass and added the now pink milk to the saucepan.  Awww, yum, I'll be doing that again.  The pudding, pips and all, was delicious - or rather all that extra sugar was! 

The Beach In Winter

Swimming in the seas around Britain is not for the faint hearted, even in the height of summer and certainly not on a chilly January day. Instead, there was kite flying.

Some castle building.

Ball kicking.

and bubble blowing.  Perhaps we'll source some wetsuits before our next visit!

Too much stuff

I knew before we moved house that we had too much stuff.  Now that it all has to be allocated a new home, I've absolutely had it confirmed!  

Charity shops are partly to blame for my over-consumption, particularly on baby and child things.  Take videos for example.  We must be one of the last households that still uses a video!  Not for taping, just for viewing.  Charity shops tend to price kids' videos between 20p and 50p so I have ended up buying quite a few........!  My daughter from a very early age would decide which she wanted to watch, then delight in operating the video buttons herself.  A good lesson in independence, cause and effect etc!

We pruned our collection (do we really need twelve Kipper the Dog videos?!) and sent them back to a charity shop for some other equally old-fashioned family to enjoy.  

These past few weeks I have visited the charity shops only to drop stuff off, with no browsing allowed so that I don't come home with more.  I am doing well but the car boot season starts soon..................!

Is there anything that you have bought too much of because of the cheap-as-chips price?

Rubber Gloves

rig

I am forever ruining a pair of washing-up gloves by spearing the left hand one with a knife or fork prong.  I usually throw the ruined one away and keep the spare, hoping that next time I will jab the right hand of the new set and end up with a pair.  But no, I've just amassed a small mountain of right handed gloves!

Then I saw my friend had turned one left glove inside-out so that it fitted the right and now had a usable pair.  Why didn't I think of that?!?

Frugal Food: Cheese and Lentil Loaf

When I was an impressionable teenager I became a vegetarian after watching a tv programme about factory farming.  Fourteen years later, I was a backpacking vegetarian who was very hungry after travelling in Central America.  Walking past a bakery in New Zealand, I spotted a delicious looking bun in the window.  I asked at the counter if that was bacon on the top of the bun.  'Yes' they said.  'I'll have one' I said.  And so ended my strictly vegetarian years! New Zealand turned me!

I did hang on to some of my vegetarian cookbooks though and Vegetarian Kitchen by Sarah Brown is still a firm favourite.  Her cheese and lentil loaf recipe is fabulous.  Easy to put together, very tasty and can be eaten hot or cold.  It's a good way to use up any old ends of cheese lurking in the fridge.  I usually eat it with a green salad and sliced tomatoes, sprinkled with salt and pepper to draw out their flavour.  Perhaps new potatoes too.  It's also good in a sandwich next day.  

Cheese and Lentil Loaf

175g red lentils

350ml water

110g cheddar cheese, grated

1 onion, finely chopped

tsp dried parsley

½ tsp cayenne pepper

little lemon juice

1 large egg

3 tbsp single cream or milk

Preheat oven to gas mark 5, 375ºF, 190ºC

Rinse lentils then cook in a tightly covered pan with the water for 10-15 minutes.  Check after 10 minutes to see if more water is needed.  The mixture should cook to a stiff puree.

Remove from the heat and add the cheese, onion, parsley, cayenne pepper and lemon juice.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg, stir in the cream or milk and then pour the mixture over the lentils.  

Grease a 1lb loaf tin, press in the lentil mixture and bake for 45 - 50 minutes until the top is golden brown and the mixture is firm to the touch.

Leave to cook for ten minutes in the tin before turning out. 

Pancake Day

We should eat pancakes more often!  They were scrumptious, easy to prepare and cook and very cheap to make.  Entertaining for the cook too as I got to yelp with glee at each perfect pancake toss!

I mixed up the batter in the morning and, remembering my mum's tip for making yorkshire pudding, left the mixture to rest under a tea-towel until it was needed.  By evening it was thick and ready to go.

Our savoury pancake was filled with ham and gruyere cheese, while the sweet was just some milk cooking chocolate, melted in the microwave then poured over. Delicious.

250g plain flour

Pinch of salt

2 eggs

500ml milk

Butter for frying

Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl.  

Make a crater in the middle and add the eggs.  

Pour in half the milk, then whisk, adding the flour from the edges a little at a time.  Add the rest of the milk and keep going until the lumps are gone.

Add a knob of butter to a hot frying pan.  Add a ladle of batter mixture only once the butter is sizzling.  Rotate the pan to get the mixture to cover the base evenly.  

After about a minute of cooking, loosen the edges of the pancake, give the pan a shake to check it is not sticking, then flip it in the air whilst whooping with glee. 

Cook the other side then serve.

Start again!

Well!  Long time no blog!  We are now in our new house, I'm up to my eyes in 'stuff'  that needs sorting and the budgeting is going well so far.  Of course, now that we are in the property, we realise it needs rather more doing to it than we anticipated so the pennies will need to be pinched even more to cover those costs.  

Now, someone who is working to tight budget should not be buying flowers but these beautiful daffs were medicinal!  This house gets less natural light than our last home and at this time of year, the natural is pretty grey and grim at the best of times.  Daffodils are such cheerful flowers, announcing that Spring is on its way, so at £1 a bunch, I had to have some.  Worth every penny.

Today is Shrove Tuesday so there will be pancakes for dinner.  For Lent I will be giving up alcohol and taking up daily blogging.  If I get some comments coming in, well it will be as good as a glass of cold pinot!