Tasty tea time treats and the joy of Freecycle

 We have family staying this weekend and they all seem hungry all of the time. I don't mind as I love to feed them. I made ginger nut biscuits; they are crispy and yet chewy and they burst with ginger. You know me well enough to know that they cost pennies.

Here's the ginger nut recipe.

10oz self raising flour
7 oz sugar, I used soft brown but any will do.
1 tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda
2 tea spoons of ground ginger
6 oz margarine
1 tablespoon of golden syrup

Set the oven to 180 degrees centigrade - place baking paper or grease proof paper on two baking trays.

Met butter, golden syrup and sugar in a pan, do not allow to boil

Add all of the dry ingredients so it combines into a very thick paste.

Use a spoon to scoop a pebble size amount of mixture and roll into a ball on your hands, it will feel very oily, it supposed to.

Arrange the small balls onto the two trays, press down slightly.

Place in the hot oven for approx 16 - 18 minutes

Lift the paper off the tray with the biscuits attached and leave to cool on the work surface, still attached to the baking paper.

When cool they will be crispy and hard, eat as soon as possible, best served with a cup of tea.

 I also made a Victoria sponge sandwich, filled with my homemade blackberry jelly. Plenty to keep people going over the next few hours, minutes, seconds until they are all gone. Dearly Beloved sees my baking as an affirmation of how much I love him and takes it very personally if anything shop made comes into the house. Not that I would, the prices of shop bought cake never reflect the quality, meaning they cost a lot but don't deliver.

 We've been really lucky this week with freecycle. I've got rid of an old filing cabinet and a hover mower, to people who are glad of them. In return, I snaffled a Dyson, it's partly working and I think there's a blockage some where that Dearly Beloved is convinced he can fix. I now have two partly working Dysons and any minute now (please DB?) they will turn into working Dyson.

 We also now have a beech coffee table. I'm looking forward to people coming round for tea or coffee as I have somewhere to put plates of biscuits and tea pots and other such paraphernalia. It never ceases to amaze me that people just throw such things away, but at least they make sure they go to a new home and get used.

Worth his weight!

Just as we've bought a 'new' chair; the sofa has decided to give up completely. The wooden frame is coming apart. Dearly Beloved has mended it today.......with bits of an old shelving unit we used to have in our old home. The feet have cracked and fallen apart and now it has wooden blocks, covered in carpet remnants for feet. He's given up an entire morning to keep this old sofa going and I can't begin to explain how appreciative I am of what he has done.

I'm sure that many people, would look at a broken ten year old sofa and think they'd had good wear out of it and would take it to the tip. I will replace the sofa with one from either eBay or the free ads but until then, the repair will leave us with a sofa that can be used for many years into the future. You see, it's not about being frugal, it's about not wasting the world's resources and just making do with what we have.

I've also recycled the soap that went wrong. I've reprocessed it as 'hot process soap' and it's worked this time. I has a darker colour and will be for personal use instead of the Christmas presents I had hoped to give, but again, it's not wasted. Sometimes I have to see beyond money saving and debt repayment and tread lightly on this planet.

New Furniture!!!!!

It's been a good day and a bad day. Dearly Beloved has poorly teeth and his treatment cost us £100 today! BAD! But he's worth any amount of treatment for him to feel better. I have had a better day. I won the ebay auction and have a new chair. I have two sofas and I'm short of seating when people come round as they are little two seaters. I paid £1.20 for the chair!!! Also! I have to collect it from the road next to where I work! So all is good.

I was asked for the recipe for dumplings. Here it is.

100g SR four, 50g suet, half teaspoon of salt and water to mix. Mix the water with your fingers until it is doughy. Divide into balls, I make large dumplings. Add them to the almost cooked stew or casserole for the last half an hour, keep the lid on the pot. I make mine in the slow cooker but I think you get bigger and fluffier dumplings if you do this in a saucepan with the stew bubbling at a steady simmer.

Thanks for the lovely remarks yesterday, it's great to think that I'm inspiring anyone to save money in these hard times. Let's all keep it up together and we'll all get through this.