Thrifty | à la française

The economic news in the UK over the past week or two hasn’t been too good and so there is even more reason to be thrifty and frugal. I have found bargains as usual at Aldi and Lidl.  Aldi has a lot of French goodies from wine to instant soups and Lidl is also doing ‘A Taste of France’ promotion starting on the 3rd of May. Both stores have things for the garden like compost, grow bags and seeds. If you can only grow a few herbs on the windowsill or a few lettuces in a tub, it all helps to cut food bills a little.

Don’t forget all your potato peelings and kitchen waste can be  composted into very rich organic compost that is better than the stuff you buy. There is even a mini walk-in greenhouse at Aldi for 29.99. I had minced beef from there on Tuesday and made shepherds pie yesterday. I would prefer lamb, but that wasn’t on offer! If you are making shepherd’s pie, it’s easy. Fry your mince (or minced lamb) with finely chopped red onion, then add a Bovril or other stock cube and a little water to make gravy. The meat, onion, gravy mixture is poured into a foil tray and then topped with a layer of mashed potato. The resulting pie can be frozen until needed. When you heat it up, put it in the oven for 30 minutes until the top’s brown. You can also put grated cheese on the top. I added some frozen peas to the meat, onion and gravy mix too. Foil trays were from Poundland.

At George at Asda, they have men’s Tee shirts for £4.00 or 2 for £6.00 and they are good quality.  The ladies tee shirts are £3.00 and so worth looking at and there is also a lot half price in the sale. I have a Asda Superstore not too far away, but you can buy online too.

Matalan have a ‘Spring Event’ with up to 30% off.  They also have a sale and they have lots of accessories on sale. I’m not sure who would want 2 hats or 2 pairs of sunglasses, but those straw hats that are 2 for £8.00 are being worn by both men and women.  Accessories are essential to street style fashionistas and take a look at those. They also have tee shirts on offer and the really big sizes like XXL are often really cheap. I’m told women buy those to wear as night shirts and even on the beach! Why not?

Curry’s still have a sale on and I thought this hard drive was good, it’s portable, but not too big at 120 Gb; it would be OK for backing up just data for most people. That’s £32 on the internet, a little more (£34.99) in store.

Be careful when looking for bargains. My camera is a Fujifilm S5600 and I used it to take the photo above. It cost around £200 in 2008 and that was for the camera, case and a 2Gb XD card. The camera alone with a 32Mb card was just £100 on offer new. I have just seen one for £120 plus postage second-hand on EBay. Make sure you shop around for the more expensive items.  There are other models of camera that are better and have a bigger screen like the S2950 that has a 3 inch screen, better resolution and better zoom; on offer brand new at Amazon for £109.69. It also takes an SDHC card rather than the less popular XD card, which is an advantage. There is also a newer version of that camera, the S2980 and it’s a bit cheaper at £109!  I also like these cameras because they work on rechargeable AA batteries and I can buy those for a few quid in Lidl. I have a few sets in my camera case and just change them if a set gives out when I’m out take pictures. These cameras are fine for taking pictures meant for the internet. For photographs that need a higher definition; such as promotional and wedding photographs, then a DSLR is better .

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