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nettle soup

Don’t worry – they don’t sting when cooked! Nettles are very nutrient rich and of course – free! Don’t gather them beside a busy road where they will have been contaminated by traffic fumes. If you keep cutting them from springtime you get a regular supply of fresh leaves, though they can get a bit insect infested during the summer! Below are two recipes for soup:

Version 1 – a “cream of” style soup:

Ingredients: nettleschives

2 tablespoons of vegetable margarine or oil
2 tablespoons of white flour
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Freshly picked and washed young nettles (several good handfuls – picked with gloves and caution!)
2 cups soya milk (tesco value is cheap and organic too)
1 cup water or stock
salt and pepper to taste

Fry the onion and garlic in the oil or marg. for a few minutes then stir in the nettles (no need to chop or remove stalks) until they soften. Stir in the flour and gradually add the soya milk and water or stock, stirring all the time. Add seasonings and liquidise. Delicious…

 

Version 2 – a versatile recipe using potato to thicken, ingredient quantities are totally adjustable:

Do an onion and 5 garlic cloves in some oil, add half head of celery, 2 potatoes, cover with water, bring to boil and simmer til soft then add bowl of gathered nettles, some chives and parsley (optional – feel free to experiment with other herbs), stock cube, salt for a few minutes and blend.

Other wild food recipes on site: dandelion fritters, creamy carrot and wild garlic soup and wild garlic pesto

Another good nettle recipe, Minty Pea and Nettle Soup is to be found here on the vegan family house site.

 



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Immune Boosting and Store Cupboard Recipes

What strange times we are living through. We very much hope that you are all well and safe and have plenty to eat and plenty of, the now most popular item in Britain, toilet roll!

Our recipe selection this time focuses on two things: immune support and meals from store cupboard ingredients.

First the immune system:
Wild Garlic Pesto – can be made with standard garlic too, both being anti-infective and immune boosting.
Nettle Soup – eat up those nutrients! And enjoy the anti-inflammatory properties of nettle (just poking through the ground now).
Sweet & Sour Red Cabbage – a brand new recipe on the site, this one, super cheap and also rich in nutrients.

Store Cupboard:
Yellow Split Pea Soup – delicious and nutrious.
Chick Pea Curry – super cheap and easy, can be made with dried or tinned chick peas.
Mixed Bean Casserole
and one that fits both categories: Chunky Purple Pasta

If you are experiencing anxiety over the current crisis, you could try a tapping meditation. There’s a free specific one here and basic information on the tapping points here

And if you want to stock those cupboards up, it’s better to do it somewhere that is set up for the purpose, rather than depleting the stocks that everyone needs. Approved Food is one such bargain place, selling soap and cleaning products too. And sometimes even toilet roll! Their stock changes daily.


Still a bargain for a traditionally published book at £2.99 for the ebook, our founder’s debut novel, THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR, blends an often overlooked period of history, the Scottish witchcraft accusations, in particular the 1597 Aberdeen witchcraft panic, with a love story.

Amazon

Author website

Wishing you all very well, in all meanings of the word!

All at Frugal Living in the UK
http://www.frugal.org.uk

and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/frugaluk
and now, Facebook!

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Autumn Clothes and Recipes

Well, we finally have cool mornings and darker nights again. But that summer was great! It’s given us an abundance of apples which we are using up in apple pies and crumbles and cakes both brambley and appley 🙂

Other recipes that are good for Autumn: Root Soup, Roast Pumpkin and Garlic Pasta, Beer Battered Onion Rings and Porridge with a chocolate swirl!

We’ve been doing some jumper and jacket updates of our wardrobes over at Everything5Pounds. Amazing bargains; we got a quite a few big brands in the mix this time.

And should you be ready to look ahead past Autumn: Frugal Christmas!

Don’t miss the daily deals from clearance food specialists Approved Food. Nature seems to be telling us to stock the larder for winter and maybe we should listen?

All at Frugal Living in the UK
http://www.frugal.org.uk

and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/frugaluk
and now, Facebook!

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Upcycling Pallets

This is not so  much a how-to post as an inspirational one. If you can get free pallets – and many companies are happy to give the old ones away rather than paying for disposal – there’s lots of things you can do with them!

We made some garden seats!

Woodland ones painted green:

A bit of purple:

And a table too!

There are good books with more instruction and inspiration to be seen here and you can even buy (or make!) waterproof cushions for them!

Our favourite is the pink!

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cheap shoes and wild garlic

wild garlic

The snow has gone! For now… So we’ve actually been enjoying the wild garlic that grows near us! There’s been pesto and creamy soup and lots of garnishing and adding to sauces 🙂

We’ve discovered a new source of discounted shoes. It’s not as cheap as Everything5Pounds but Schuh Imperfects have some amazing deals on big name brands. All the shoes will have some small imperfection, but it’s well worth a look for the massive savings available.

For foody bargains and filling up your cupboards (in case of more snow!) check out Approved Food. We’ve been using them for years and have saved hundreds.

Most recent posts: The 25p Meal and Making Money with Kleeneze – my story

Keep really really cosy! Eat soup! And hopefully this is Spring!

All at Frugal Living in the UK
http://www.frugal.org.uk

and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/frugaluk
and now, Facebook!

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Wild Food, Snow Food!

Last week we got excited about wild food: the wild garlic was through, we were looking forward to wild garlic pesto and creamy wild garlic carrot soup and anticipating nettle soup and dandelion fritters.

Then came the snow. Road blocking, face freezing, wild garlic covering, snow.

So we’re wrapped up warm in our £5 jumpers and back on the yellow split pea soup, the leek and potato and the mince and dumplings 🙂

In case you missed it last time, our latest super frugal post: The 25p Meal.

Keep really really cosy!

All at Frugal Living in the UK
http://www.frugal.org.uk

and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/frugaluk
and now, Facebook!

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Brambling Free!

Underground, overground, brambling free! The brambles of Wimbledon Common are we…

I don’t know if Wimbledon Common is a good source of brambles (blackberries) but many hedgerows are this time of year, and that means: fruity purple cakes. With chocolate chips. Just because.

Bramble Chocolate Chip Cakes
Ingredients:
300g Doves Farm Gluten free Self Raising flour
100g caster sugar
a couple of handfuls of freshly picked brambles
about a third of a cup of soya milk
about a third of a cup of sunflower oil
100g of chocolate chips (we used Moo Free)
water to mix to a good thick batter – though you don’t want it too runny

Mix the flour, chocolate chips and sugar together (keep some chips back for sprinkling on top). Blend up the brambles with the soya milk and mix this in along with the oil, adding some water if the batter is too thick. It should be purple!

Divide between 12 cake or muffin cases. Place in a muffin tin if using paper ones; silicone reusable cases are better in many ways, not least of which is that the cakes will not stick to them like glue as gluten-free mixes are prone to do. Top with the remaining chips. Bake at 200C/400F for 15 to 20 minutes until well risen and browning. And slightly purpling!



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Spring is almost Sprung!

snowdrop

Spring is almost sprung, it’s just waiting there on the verge! While it’s still cold we’re tucking in to hearty and warming meals such as our new recipe: Sausage and Bean Pie

Wild garlic is beginning to poke its shoots up in the woods; some areas may be further along than us so don’t forget our wild garlic soup and pesto!

Also looking ahead to Spring on the Free Food page, we’ve added links to SimplySeed who sell seeds at 50% less than High Street prices.

The Household Tips page has been tidied up a bit; don’t forget you can add your own tips in the comments section of the page.

Featured link: Approved Food, sellers of clearance food and household items, a source of many cupboard filling bargains! http://www.approvedfood.co.uk/?afid=7341ac

Enjoy the Sunshine!
All at Frugal Living in the UK
http://frugal.org.uk

and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/frugaluk

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Wild Food Season is here!

crocus

Spring certainly seems to have sprung here in Scotland and, most exciting, we gathered some wild garlic in the woods yesterday! We made pesto for lunch, recipe here.  You can also make soup.

Nettles are also beginning to poke their new green growth through the earth. We have two soup recipes for those here.

And before you know it, it’ll be time for the dandelion pancakes!

See our section on free food.

Perennial favourites: the make a few pounds page, the Days Out and Holidays page  and the food shopping tips section.

Featured link: Approved Food, sellers of clearance food and household items, a source of many cupboard filling bargains!

Enjoy the Spring and eat well!
All at Frugal Living in the UK
http://frugal.org.uk

and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/frugaluk
Sign up to receive the email version of these newsletters:



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Crumble!

rhubarb crumbleFruit crumble is a wonderfully frugal dish. You can use virtually any fruit (perhaps not banana!) and it’s a good way to use up items that might be passing their best. Summer brings luscious pink rhubarb, perfect for crumble. Autumn delivers apples and blackberries/brambles, also delicious. Here is a basic recipe for a combination of rhubarb and apples, adjust as you require:

Filling:
2 or 3 apples, peeled and chopped (if you use eating apples you could reduce the sugar slightly)
4 or 5 sticks of rhubarb, chopped into chunks
4 tablespoons of sugar
Surprisingly, rose petals combine with rhubarb to give a beautiful flavour.

filling

Topping:
100g. flour (for a gluten-free version use Doves Farm gluten-free flour)
25g. sugar
75g. vegetable margarine
optional additions: grated lemon rind, sunflower seeds, rolled oats.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Place the fruit in an ovenproof dish and top with the sugar. For the topping: rub the flour into the margarine until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Mix in the sugar and any other additions and place evenly over the filling. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about half an hour or until everything is bubbling: crispy on top, soft below. Lovely with custard or ice cream.

If you like this, you may also like our recipe for Apple Pie


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