31 Days of Cheapness

I found a great frugal food website the other day: Cheap Family Recipes, and I'm really excited to share it with you!

The authors of this site have provided meal plans and shopping lists for incredibly cheap family eating. They claim that, if you follow the meal plans and shop wisely, you can feed a family of four for a month, for about £100. The recipes look tasty and well balanced, and they have two plans on offer: the vegan version, and a version that includes meat. They also offer the whole thing FOR FREE. I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I am rather excited to give this a try. Starting tomorrow, I will be following the Cheap Family Recipes 'option two' vegan meal plan for 31 days.

Bean Curry (pic taken from http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk)

Now, a few disclaimers. The prices on Cheap Family Recipes were calculated in 2010. Prices have gone up exponentially since then, pretty much everywhere. So I am under no illusion whatsoever that this will be quite as cheap as they're claiming. BUT the principle is still sound. The recipes still use very cheap ingredients so I'm interested to see how cheap it'll be to eat like this in 2014.

Onion Tarte Tatin (pic taken from http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk)

 Also, I am not feeding a whole family with this plan, as I am only carrying out this experiment on myself this time. So I have cut all the quantities down to single-person amounts, except where it's something I need for everybody in the house anyway (like potatoes), where I've just bought in bulk like I always do. I'm not sure yet how much it's all costing, mainly because I already had half the required items in my cupboard anyway, but I''ll work it out and put a list up soon.

Red Pepper Pasta (pic taken from http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk)

I'm also keen to see what happens to my body if I start following this plan. I need to go completely vegan again because of the effect dairy has on my skin (Psoriasis, spots and what not) and lungs (asthma), but I've been struggling to drop the last few non-vegan things I eat at the moment, because it's just easier to grab something convenient than make the effort to make a 'proper' vegan meal (and I can't afford ready made vegan convenience food, which is super expensive). I'm also interested to see if it will affect my weight. I'm pretty much smack bang in the middle of the healthy range if you go by my BMI, so it doesn't really matter if I stay there or even put on a little bit here and there. But I eat way too much junk food, which obviously will not be part of this new menu plan, so I won't be surprised if I lose a few pounds over the next month. If that happens, that's okay. As long as it's not more than a stone I'll still count as healthy.

Watch this space for updates!

Vegan Cream of Celery and Potato Soup

Sorry it's been a bit quiet. Christmas happened, and got in the way of any sort of decluttering activities. There didn't seem much point in repeatedly posting about all the things I didn't clean or declutter :-p Then, I came down with the mother of all nasty viruses (thanks to my germ incubator of a child) and was flat on my back for AGES. Today is the first day I am even vaguely able to think about looking at a computer screen without my head splitting in half! Anyway, I wanted to share this soup which I made the other day in a rare lucid moment between coughing and sneezing and passing out on the couch like some sort of zombie. Due to being ill, I had been neglecting the grocery shopping and my fridge was rather empty. So I invented this quick and easy comfort food with whatever I could find.... cream of celery and potato soup!

Chop, and throw into a pan:
One head of celery, one onion (I only had red ones, which was fine except it made the soup a bit grey looking. If you want green soup, use normal onions instead). Three cloves of garlic (this was me trying to kill my virus. You might want to use less). One potato. Add enough vegetable stock to just about cover the contents of the pan, bring to the boil then simmer it until everything has gone soft. Pour in about half a cup of soya milk (if you're not vegan you can use cow's milk instead). If you like it lumpy, heat through and serve. Otherwise blitz it up with a stick blender. This made enough for two big bowls of really thick soup. I had mine with hedgehog bread and it was really tasty!

Boo!

I'm still here. I haven't forgotten I started this blog. However, I have fallen off the wagon when it comes to decluttering and cleaning and so on. I've done the basic stuff like washing and tidying but nothing worth recording for posterity. Christmas got in the way, but now it's over....

2014 is going to be the year of the DeJunk. I've come a long way already (not that you can really tell by just looking at it, but I know how many bags have left this house in the last year or so and it's A LOT). I've actually got some places in my house that aren't complete nightmares any more. I feel like, with one big, last push, I could have this place sorted out completely by this time next year.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel, people. Watch this space...

FLYing with Stilton

So I bet you were all expecting this blog to be nothing but cleaning, decluttering and housework? Well, it's not. My quest to become organised extends to other areas of my life too, a philosophy that's shared by FLYlady as she very often talks about menu planning and cooking proper food instead of eating out or living on junk food.

As a full time worker who doesn't get home until 6pm every day, I frequently find myself with very little time to actually cook. This is compounded by the fact I'm vegetarian  (because I just don't like meat and never have done), my husband is an omnivore who loves anything spicy, and my son is a typical kid who only wants to eat kid food. Anyway, cooking for me is like being a short order chef - three separate meals every night, in a 30 minute window between getting home from work and world war 3 breaking out around me because WE'RE DYING FROM HUNGER HERE, WHERE'S OUR DINNER?? Perhaps understandably, dinner in my house is usually more of a 'what can I cook in 20 minutes flat' kind of affair and variety and taste can sometimes fall to the wayside in favour of filling a hole (or three) as quickly as possible. We don't usually do ready meals or TV dinners... but only because we don't really like them. Things could be a LOT better. Enter FLYing in the kitchen. I can do this...

Recently I have been trying a new approach. At the weekend, when I don't have to go to work, I am trying to cook at least one thing which is interesting, tasty, and perhaps takes more than 30 minutes to produce. I make several portions and freeze or refrigerate some of them for later use: my own version of a 'ready meal'. It doesn't solve everything but at least a couple of nights a week, there's something good to eat that wasn't just a quick and brainless 'open freezer, grab first thing you see and shove it in the oven' solution. Here's what I made yesterday... one of my husband's favourites.

Stilton and Broccoli Soup 

(Makes about three pints. If you don't want that much soup, halve all the quantities).

A large head of broccoli (300-400g)
2 medium potatoes
2 medium onions
110g stilton cheese
1.5 pints of stock (whichever kind you prefer; vegetable or chicken)
1 pint milk
A couple of tablespoons of oil
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon of cream
Salt and pepper

Chop up all the vegetables into smallish pieces, dump them into a saucepan with the oil and fry for about 5 minutes.

Add the flour and cook for about 30 seconds, then add the stock. Cover and simmer for half an hour. You will need to come back and stir it every 5 minutes or so, or it will try to weld itself to the bottom of the pan.

 When everything is soft and cooked, add the milk and warm it through for 10 minutes. Keep the heat low from this point on - only allow it to boil if you actually WANT curdled milk in your soup. (Don't ask me how I know this).

Take the soup off the heat. If you prefer your soups to be smooth, this would be a great time to process it with a stick blender. Otherwise, leave it lumpy.

Add the cream, stir, and serve.

This recipe makes 4-6 bowls depending on the size of bowl. It keeps well in the fridge for a few days. I have no idea if it freezes well because my husband gets through this stuff like lightning and it never lasts long enough for me to try. If I did freeze it, I'd probably do it without adding the milk and cream, and just add them on the day.

And so it begins...

Good morning. My name is Opalline, and I'm a clutterholic.

No, really. I am a terrible hoarder and I hate it. At certain times in my life, my house has literally been so jam packed with clutter that I couldn't move and it would have easily fitted into an episode of Hoarders. Finding anything was a nightmare. Achieving any sort of housework was worse. I was drowning in clutter and, slowly but surely, it was killing me.

At some point, and I believe it was about 11 or so years ago, I found this website:

Flylady.net.

(You can click on the picture to check it out if you like). Flylady.net and its associated email support groups are a free system that teaches, in a completely non judgemental way, people like me how to get organised and get rid of all the clutter in their lives. It's not without its bad points - it's very American, which I don't mind apart from all the reminders are in American time, and you have to do some mental adjustment sometimes to make things work in a UK setting. It's kind of set up for stay at home mums and requires a bit of tweaking to make it work for 'payroll' lifestyles too. There are a butt ton of email adverts and testimonials for Flylady products, which can be annoying as they're too expensive to ship over here and the ads get in the way sometimes. But regardless, it is MORE than worth it to persevere with the system, ignore the adverts etc, because this system WORKS. Believe me there are way more good points than bad. Stick with it, people.

Flylady (her real name is Marla Cilley, pictured above) is like the kindly Grandma or Mum who comes along just when you're feeling lowest, picks you up, shows you that you're not the only one who feels this way, then slowly and patiently helps you to fix it yourself so it will never be that bad again. She revolutionised my mindset. She stopped me from beating myself up and feeling bad and showed me that you can do anything for 5 minutes. That the house didn't get that way overnight and it won't get better overnight either. She taught me to Finally Love Yourself (or FLY) and most importantly of all, to take Baby Steps. To break jobs down into smaller chunks and focus on them one at a time so that I don't get overwhelmed and just quit even trying. My life and my home were well on track to being the clean, tidy, peaceful sanctuary I longed for (really, just being able to find anything within 5 minutes would have been enough. I don't ask for much).

So what happened next? I had a baby. And then I got severe post natal psychosis, and as my symptoms were 'atypical' and I was very good at hiding them too, it went undiagnosed for a very long time, and I was really very sick for three whole years. FLYlady fell by the wayside. I was lucky to make it through the week with myself and my family still in one piece, fed and clothed, let alone focus on decluttering and having a daily routine. My house more or less went back to square one and it was a very dark and scary time indeed. My baby is now 9 and a half years old and I am (thankfully) out of that dark and scary place once and for all. It took a very long time to get this far. Those three years caused damage that have taken years to undo, and some of it will never go. But I'm okay. My house, however...that wasn't so good.

By the way, this is NOT my house. It's a still from the programme 'Hoarders'. I don't have any pictures from the bad old days because I was too ashamed to take any. Although, it was never as bad as this picture. I am eternally thankful for that... but it was definitely heading that way. About a year and a half ago I looked at my house...really looked... and I was horrified. My hoarder side had been allowed to run unchecked for 8 years straight and boy, could you tell. I couldn't find anything. I couldn't move. My allergies were off the scale (because of all the dust). Everyone felt grumpy and irritable because they were living in a cluttered pit of despair.

It was time to do something. I went back to FLYlady. I rejoined the main group, and the UK support group. For about 6 months I just let the system wash over me, doing a little here and there when I felt like it and getting back into the mindset for FLYing. Then about a year ago I finally gritted my teeth, rolled up my sleeves, then started to attack my Clutter Mountain. Progress has been very slow. Partly because I work full time as well as being a mum, and partly because my allergies have prevented me from working faster. It's hard to declutter when everything you touch sets you off wheezing or sneezing. But I'm getting there! Some parts of my home are looking pretty good these days.  Other areas are still diabolical.  But I feel optimistic and hopeful nowadays, instead of overwhelmed. And I'm determined to keep going. My house is going to be clutter free, and I will be organised at last.

This blog is my therapy.... my place to document my progress, so that I have something to look back at and see how far I've come. I want to share it with the world, so that other people like me can see, and be encouraged. I want to help people, just like I needed help so badly in the bad old days.