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mince the Dog and make dog-burgers!
:lol I think she might be a bit stringy, though (and the zoics would never forgive me if they found out!)

I love everything-in-the-fridge bake (or stew), Asy - especially with cheese on top, and chili sauce for me. Someone else around here actually does recipes, though, and fortunately for all of us is a far better cook than I am!
what a wonderful topic, full of good stuff :D  we should Pin this one to the top for more use as we all get poorer.  At least hard-facts is free (for you anyway) so you can continue to use it as much as you like.

Not really a tip, but I buy Value items from Tesco wherever I can - some things, like their Value beans are just too 'economy' and a bit watery, others, like their Value marmalade, vinegar, dried spaghetti, is fine and even Good.  I buy their Value bio-powder too at under £2 a large packet and for the last three months have been using expensive Persil instead (had to buy three huge packets to get the *cough* 'free' Mr Men) and now I'm back to the Tesco stuff there is no appreciable diff in our washing.

I also like their Value washing-up liquid.  It's about 15p a bottle - now some people will say it doesn't lather enough, but I actually detest over-lathery water and much prefer the more controllable latheriness of this.

The girls drink TV water at 19p a 2L bottle, sparkling or still.  It isn't pretentious or pretend to come from a mountain spring but the girls claim it tastes much better than tap water, which they won't drink, because it 'tastes of chlorine' :(

OK so that's it.  Give the value stuff from your local supermarket a go, don't be snobbish :D  Some won't be good but some will be fine and you can shave lots off your bill over time.
I grew up on Beanz Meanz Heinz and can't eat the value brand ones as they are like a different product, I have tried other kinds like Cross and Blackwell which weren't too bad. The price of Heinz Beanz is shocking. I expect 4 tins for a pound.

Save up a fighting fund and then when something you know and like and won't go off is on special offer, buy it up. I haven't bought any washing up liquid for years as I bought a lot of fairy liquid when it was on offer at the turn of the century.

There was a TV show where they recommended going down a brand level and if you do this you could buy a car, but the example family were rich posh people with kids. I suppose I could buy a bike.
I suppose I could buy a bike.

:lol

Roller skates for me. I've already sold my bike.
Have you seen the price of roller skates these days, they are dearer than bkes.

On the brand level program, they mentioned pain killers like ibuprofen and paracetemol and aspirin. The brand names contain exactly the same ingredients as the much cheaper unbranded ones and this is enforced by law. People just think the brand names help them more as they are used to the copyright colours and shapes and they believe it so it is so.

You can get 96 pink ibuprofen for 4.00 and this is better than 12 white names for 2.00.
I always buy generics, but friend in England swears that Advil works better for her arthritis than non-branded ibuprofen (so her request to US visitors is always a maximum size package).

I suppose there could be something in the formula that happens to work better for her, but I always cringe at the thought of that extra cost!
Several of the local shops do cheap packs of past-their-prime veg. Tomatoes and peppers are fine for cooking, and often in good enough shape to salvage bits for salad.

I'm much more fussy about fruit, though.
When I was studying pharmacology, the professor told us the generic drugs sometimes had somewhat larger ranges than the name brand: eg, if each Sudafed tablet has 30 mg, with a quality control range of 29.5 mg to 30.25 mg per tablet, the generic brand of pseudoephedrine might have a range of 27 to 30.0 and still be legally acceptable. [I'm just making up the numbers for an illustration of the principle, I don't know what range is actually acceptable.] If the generic's manufacturing company is slightly less demanding in it's range, it will try to err on the lower side, to avoid overdose issues. So the generic may be slightly less effective, if a person is needing a slightly larger dose. For most over-the-counter products, doseage is suboptimal anyway, again to avoid overdose problems, so you can see where some patients may find generics less effective than name brands.

I buy generic drugs; for most instances these are quite effective.
You do always need to exceed the stated dose to get any noticeable effect. I hadn't realised the chemical reasons for it.  Interesting.

The program said that there is no magic ingredient in the brands, they are forbidden by law to put any other drugs in them secretly.  

In the UK you can only buy 12 at a time now from supermarkets to prevent suicides. This is even on Xmas eve when shops won't be open for 4 days or if you can only get to the shops once a week.  

In a chemist you can buy 96 but have to be interviewed and say yes you had them before and no you are not allergic and no you are not suicidal and then they sell them.

If you need to buy at supermarkets , just buy a packet every week then when you need them you have a stash available.
Interesting re the quality control ranges differing, Asy, I had no idea about that. The differences seem quite small, though, in proportion to the total amount of active ingredient - is it the extra little bit of ingredient or the placebo effect of the Name that makes them work better for patients, I wonder - what do you reckon? We always get generics (can't be without a stash of paracetamol suspension or ibuprofen suspension to hand in case of a zoics emergency!).

I do hang on to any prescription analgesics (like the lovely pills I was prescribed for having wisdom teeth out) for future use, though - I am such a wimp about actual pain - but the wisdom teeth affair showed me something curious about pain which I had heard of but never quite believed would work for me: the first side - when I was a bit nervous, never having had a wisdom tooth removed before and not knowing what to expect - needed one night's worth of pills; the second side - which actually needed more digging and hauling, but for which I was not nervous having experienced side one - required none at all.  :huh
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