Chicken Soup for the Sick, Toffee Chocolate Crispy Bars and a Car

When I got back from Sheffield on Tuesday afternoon, my daughter, who had been house/animal sitting, seemed to be coming down a cold and by Wednesday, was feeling a bit under the weather. So, as soon as the animals were fed and watered, I nipped out to the shop to grab some chicken to make a big pot of my comfortingly nourishing cure-all chicken soup. It's quick to prepare, uses whatever vegetables you have in the fridge and tastes absolutely delicious. It's full of flavour and you can almost feel it making you better. Because, once again, my finances are a disaster due to the purchase of a car (I will get to that later), I chose chicken thighs for the soup. Not only is the meat better value but it has much more flavour and it gives the soup an amazing depth of flavour. Into my soup pot went 2 Chicken thighs, 3 carrots, 2 small sweet potatoes, some shredded savoy cabbage, a leek and 2 chicken stock cubes. Normally, I would use home made chicken stock from the freezer but I've run out and will have to get boiling and making some more. Add water and cook on a gentle simmer for about an hour until all the flavours have cooked together to make a big pot of deliciousness. Then simply take out the chicken thighs and remove the meat from the bones and pop it back into the soup and hey-presto ..... instant comfort and at a total cost of £1.85 for a whole pot of lovliness. 

I then whipped up something sweet. Sometimes you just need something sweet when you're feeling under the weather and along with my shortbread recipe, my toffee chocolate crispy bars are my go-to recipes. They're quick, simple, cheap to make and totally yummy. I have posted about these before on my blog but basically, it's just Mars bars, or a cheaper equivalent ... actually, I use the Aldi equivalent which are much cheaper and work just as well as the more expensive ones.  I use a whole packet of 6 but they are only 59p per packet they are perfect for this. Some rice crispies or, again, an equivalent cheaper brand. The ones I use are 69p per box, again from Aldi and they are perfect for this recipe. Melt the chocolate bars with a knob of butter, stir in some rice crispies, press into a tin and chill until set. Then melt some cooking chocolate and spread over the top, chill again until the chocolate is set and enjoy. Cost - about 90p to make. 

It's weird, this is my 230th post and it's getting to the stage where I'm having to check if I have posted things like recipes before. Possibly because I lead a very boring, ordinary life. I'm either going to have to go and do some exciting things to blog about .... difficult without money but not impossible or I'm going to have to check each post to make sure that I'm not repeating myself. I must be getting old :-)

Finally, I managed to sort out my lack of transport situation. After 2 weeks without a car I managed to get a cheap little run-around from a lady who lives in the village not far from me. It's not pretty or glamorous or smart or trendy but it works, it has a full MOT on it and ..... fingers crossed ....... it will get me to the shops and back for a while.

 Unfortunately though, it wiped out all my meagre savings so I'm back to square one again.

Hey ho...... nothing new there :-)

Time to Get Thrifty

Well, things have been a bit stressful this week. I visited my doctor last week and was told that I probably have ligament damage on my knee and that I need an ultrasound scan to see what's going on When I asked if I should rest my leg, he told me that light exercise is fine but if my knee is painful to just do what I can. Not helpful really when I have animals to feed and stuff to sort and a very painful swollen knee. I then got a letter from my doctor yesterday saying that he had changed his mind and referred me to an orthopaedic surgeon so I can then be referred for an MRI scan, something that, as a GP, he isn't allowed to ask for without a consultant referral. Even with copious amounts of pain killers, my knee is just not getting any better so yesterday, I made the decision to give up my stall at the market. Hopefully, it will only be for a while until I get my knee fixed but, the cold and the stress from standing all day hasn't done it any good. This means that there is no extra income coming in and that I'm going to have to get very creative with my food if I'm going to make ends meet. 

I'm not one to run from a challenge and I am very fortunate in that I do have a regular amount of money coming in each month but with no potential for any extra income, all things thrifty is about to become my new motto. So, this week, I have been shopping around for the best bargains and I have been dividing my money up into weekly segments so I know what I have to spend each week. I have also tried to put a little aside for emergencies, although this month, living might have to take precedent over saving. I managed to bag a couple of bargains on Saturday. I was in my local supermarket at 7.30pm-ish and there were lots of lovely people trotting around the shop reducing things. The lady on the bread counter was bagging up delicious crusty rolls into bags of 6 which are usually £1.25 and pricing them at 5p!!! I managed to get 5 bags and a mini baguette which was also 5p. I was thrilled to bits, I never get such decent bargains. The bread lady was encouraging me to take all the bags of bread because she said they had been so quiet that day that they had had to reduce them to 5p to get rid of them but my darned Britishness got in the way and I left 5 bags for other people. They went straight in the freezer when I got home along with some fish that I picked up for £1.00. I also bought one of their cooked chickens for £2.50 which I got a nice Sunday lunch from and yesterday, I boiled up the bones with half of a leek that had seen better days and some carrots, to make some amazingly delicious chicken stock to make some soup with.

Chicken stock bubbling away

I then removed the chicken carcass and all the icky bits of bones and chicken, added some cauliflower, broccoli and more carrots and turned it into .....

Chicken stock turned into chicken soup ...... Yummy :-)

The weather has turned bitterly cold down here in Cornwall and I have actually turned up my heating a notch from 10 degrees to 12. I don't usually turn up the heating but the cold makes my knee stiff so I have turned it up for a couple of days til things thaw out. We had a flurry of snow last night and I was hoping to wake up to a blanket of snow this morning but all I got was crunchy, icy grass and bright sunshine which has already started to melt the snow.