Trying to be frugal?

Last week I blog hopped and found some very interesting blogs of people that are trying and succeeding to live frugally. They made me think of how we shop.. we are the traditional shoppers, we do one weekly shop and in the same supermarket each week. But it has made me think of what we buy. We do buy the cheapest tinned tomatoes because we use them as a base for soup, curries and bolognaise sauce or whizzed for a passata, but for everything else we buy the brands we know and like. But we are savvy and don't always buy so called bargains until we have done a quick calculation,  to check if 2 small packets of the equivalent weight is cheaper than the 'bargain' larger size. Thank goodness for the mental maths lessons of our generation!

 I have always grown tomatoes and we have a veg patch where we grow salad crops,  beetroot, radish, carrots, chard, squash, courgette and runner beans. Then in pots and bags we grow potatoes, more carrots and more tomatoes. So we do have a lot of veg from our garden.

An early morning view of our small but productive patch.

A lunch of a ham and mushroom pastryless quiche (frittata) with our own veg.

And from one of the blogs, I hopped to a recipe site and made these rustic herby crackers, using chickpea flour (besan flour) and ground flaxseed and my own rosemary, sage and thyme chopped up finely. We had them for lunch with my own sweet Sungold tomatoes, picked from the plant and warm from the sun. Absolutely delish! The pate was from Mr Waitrose although we normally we would have my homemade salmon pate..

So probably not frugal but do you know, I felt as though I was 'saving' money because I never really thought about how much we grew in our modest sized garden.

Of course at the moment I am limited to what I can do one handed but I can still sow seeds and prick out seedlings so not totally useless!

Thank you for all your good wishes and comments on my Five on Friday.. and welcome to my three new followers; perhaps when I am back to normal I will write about what I can do with two working hands!

XX