Frugal Friday

I don't know about you but whenever we get blessed with more fruit than we can eat and freeze all I can think about are puddings and cobblers. We recently got given a bunch of peaches in syrup and I came across the yummiest frugal "cobbler" (it's more like a light pudding to me) that we had for dessert tonight and had to share!

Amish Peach Cobbler (serves 4-6)

1 c self-raising flour (or 1 c flour & 1 1/4 tsp baking powder)
1 c white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2-3 tbs butter, softened
1 tbs mixed spice (cinnamon, nutmeg & allspice)
6-8 large peaches, sliced and peeled (or 1-2 large cans of peaches in syrup)
1/2 c brown sugar

(if not using peaches in syrup, also make a syrup using 1 tsp almond essence, 1 c boiling water and mix with peaches)

Preheat oven to 350F/180C.
In a med bowl mix the flour, 1/2 c of the white sugar, mixed spice, salt and butter until crumbly. Set aside.
Grease a square pan and place half of the peaches and syrup in the bottom of the pan.
Top with half of the flour mixture. On top of that add the rest of the peaches and then the rest of the flour mixture.
Mix together the left over white sugar and 1/2 c brown sugar and pour over the top flour layer.
Bake in the oven for 30-45 minutes until golden and bubbly. We served ours with hot custard - YUM! :)

One thing I always try to do when I am baking cookies is to keep any of the crumbly mixture that can be left over in the bowl. There's always just that little bit left over that won't stick - it used to drive me nuts! Now I keep the mix left over in a small container in the fridge to add to anything like a crumble or cobbler or pie. It lasts aaaages. Waste not want not as they say. :)

Frugal Friday!

I do a lot of crafts and like many crafty people out there know - all of the bits and pieces can really add up! One thing I've learned to do is to SAVE THE SCRAPS!

I keep a small tupperware container at my side when crafting to throw all of my too-small-to-use scraps of fabric, thread, wool, cotton etc in. These scraps are great for using in the myriad of small projects that need stuffing. You won't need half as much material as you would toy stuffing and with the usual amount of squishing you won't be able to tell the difference!

It is astounding the amount of possible stuffing material that we throw away. Think of those too-short-to-use cotton threads and wool at the end of a project or those bitsy off-cut corners when cutting pieces for a quilt or pattern, or even the extra "bits"of thread from the start and end of a sewn line when you're using a sewing machine!

** and on a side note, last week I spoke about using your heater for drying clothes and humidity in winter - apparently my cats think that the rail also makes a great makeshift heated cat bed! lol

Two for one!

Oh how I love reading everyone's frugal advice! The one bad thing about living here in Australia is that we can't actually follow the coupons or the shopping stores advice the majority of the time. :( However, I have a couple of frugal tips: one for us Aussie's and one for women everywhere!

Aussies: Have you ever been to Simple Savings? I, unfortunately, don't have the money to join the Vault right now, but even for free there are tons of great tips and saving solutions! There are backlog monthly newsletter with great savings, and I get an email with a weekly tip for saving money, how great is that?

One other tip, that I'm sure many women before me have mentioned and done, but it was a wakeup for myself, is using the heater to dry clothes and humidify the air! So simple! We have one of those big gas and electric wall heaters in our lounge/dining/everyday room which is so costly to run, but essential in the middle of winter, even with blankets. (Did I mention that we live in a brick wall interior home?)
I use to fret when I couldn't do laundry because it was raining and would have wet clothes hanging around the house everywhere. We bought a folding clothes dryer, place the wet clothes on that side on in front of the heater (leave a little distance, though!) and the clothes dry in next to no time and the air humidifies to help with chesty coughs and colds that are so common in winter! Of course, it also heats up the room at the same time. Three jobs in one! :)