How to Make Ferrero Rocher-esque Chocolates

My boyfriend's mum LOVES Ferrero Rocher, but I feel like I haven't put any thought in when I present her with some on her birthday. They're also bloody expensive (although delicious!); the square box of 25 chocolates costs between £5.50 and £6.00.

So I got thinking about how I could make a more thoughtful gift for less. I adapted this recipe for a more frugal and easier approach to faking Ferrero Rocher. My recipe costs £4.30 for approximately 35 chocolates including cases, which makes each sweet almost half the price (12p per homemade chocolate compared to 27p each for true Ferreros). It's still not that cheap but it makes a lot more, so it might be worth splitting the chocolates into two gifts.

Fake Ferrero Rocher

- 75g ice cream wafers (1 pack of 48 Askeys ice cream wafers) - £0.70

- 100g chopped hazelnuts - £1.00 (you could make this cheaper by buying whole hazelnuts and chopping them up yourself after roasting them, but I would be missing fingers if I did!)

- 300g Nutella - £1.05 (£1.40 for 400g but you can use the rest elsewhere!)

- 200g milk or dark chocolate - £1.00

- Petit fours cases - £0.60 for 100 in Asda

1. Roast the hazelnuts on a baking tray for about 8 minutes at 180°C. Let them cool for about 5 minutes.
2. Crush the ice cream wafers by hand until the largest pieces are about 4mm in diameter. Add them to a bowl with the hazelnuts.
3. Mix in the Nutella (spoons don't work well so it's time to get your hands dirty!)
   
   
   
    
4. Put the mixture in the fridge for about 20 minutes to firm up.
5. Cool your hands in cold water, then roll the mixture into balls about 2cm in diameter. If the mixture starts sticking to your hands, dip them into cold water again before continuing.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in a glass bowl above a pan of boiling water. As soon as it's melted take it off the heat.
7. Dip a ball into the chocolate to completely coat it, then place it into a petit four case on a baking tray. When they have all been dunked leave them in a cool place to set.
   
   
   
   
   

To present them as a gift, I coated the outside of a box with crepe paper and lined the inside with tissue paper. Then I just placed the chocolates inside the box in an air-tight container and finished it with a bow. (Bonus points because my cat loved the box!)

The Good, the Bad and the New Job

Everything's up in the air at the moment. I'm supposed to be starting a research job but it's a new company and they're still in the process of sorting out funding so I have no confirmed start date. It could be next month or in several months! In the meantime I've been working in a hotel (chambermaiding) but the hours are starting to decline now that the summer's officially over.

So I decided to get an evening job! I am now working three or four evenings a week in the local Chinese (two villages over, but still closer than the hotel!). I had a trial shift last night and it was a nice place to work. It's bloody difficult from one respect though – you have to learn the numbers for each different item (there are ~85) AND how much it costs! Eeek! I kept having to turn the menu round so I could look it all up! Apparently you pick it up really quickly though.

My black trousers for work were getting a bit raggedy, so I thought I'd keep those for the hotel and get some new ones for waitressing. I took myself off to town with £15 in my pocket. I tried on a few different pairs but the ones I settled on (and fit best) were only £6!

Walking towards the checkout with my trousers I felt the strangest sensation though. It was a large shop with a lot of different clothes, all fairly cheap compared to the high street shops. As I was walking through, the voice in my head started up again.

You could treat yourself with the money you've saved.

I was tempted but resisted. It almost felt like I SHOULD spend it though, since I'd allocated it towards buying clothes. But then later I was given a £10 tip from work. This was too much for my fragile will to take. I blew it on an evening out with The Boyfriend. I felt so guilty even whilst I was spending it. Argh, I'm so frustrated now!

Earlier in the year I told myself that all money I earned from tips I would be allowed to spend outside of the budget, but I think I've been spending it without really thinking about what I'm doing. It's this sort of wasteful spending that was one of the problems that got me into this mess!

So, new rule: All tips must be saved in a jar as a temporary emergency fund. Whilst I'm paying off debt I can't really start saving properly, but this can be a basic back-up in case the car breaks down, the hours get reduced even further at work, or I lose my job completely.

Free Broadband Trial...

We live in a remote area with terrible broadband (think 0.5MB). So we were REALLY excited when offered the chance to participate in a trial for BT for 4G broadband in remote communities! The men came to install it today! (Two guys, two vans, one tiny router...)

Sliiight problem: the SIM inside the router is german, so several websites decide to helpfully change their language to German! This includes Blogger, which is currently telling me to "Post veroeffentlichen"! Luckily I have an A level in German so I can get the gist of it! :) I have no idea how to change the language settings back though!

Debt

An economist on the news the other day described the UK as a nation of borrowers. The average Brit has £4264 of debt (EXCLUDING mortgages and student loans) (source: the national money education charity Charity Action) and the average household debt including mortgages is a whopping £55,814! Whilst it's almost impossible to avoid getting a mortgage (unless you're rolling in it!), the other debt is potentially unavoidable. Why do we do it?

Luckily I don't owe £4264. (Well, if we're counting student loans then I'm waaayyy over. I think my four year course gave me a debt of ~£24,000, but that's another blog entry!) Now that I've paid off my £500 credit card I'm also lucky that my debt is interest free. My graduate account overdraft is 0%, as is the money I borrowed money from someone to help buy a car a couple weeks ago (apart from the guilty feeling knowing that I haven't repaid them yet).

My problem was partly frittering money away whilst living in London, partly a once-in-a-lifetime two week tropical ecology field course to Kenya (followed by two weeks travelling), and partly just not having an emergency fund. When I needed some expensive dental work I had nothing to fall back on except credit.

I have been at the point where you only have £10 to last the month. Now I'm trying to turn it around. I'm taking some responsibility.

I don't want to be a statistic.

Cheap meals: Tasty Lentil Salad (Vegetarian)

When I was about seven years old there was a sale on baked beans at our local supermarket. A can of beans cost just 3p with a maximum of 4 cans per customer. My parents took my (even younger) sister and I along so that in total we could buy 16 cans of beans for 48p. We were pretty poor and had beans for most meals in a variety of different ways. I got so sick of them that I hated baked beans for a good five years or so after that!

Whilst it is possible to live on the absolute cheapest food available, you can rapidly get bored of it. My object is to find a variety of meals that cost less than £1 per person (or portion) to cook, hopefully with leftovers that can be taken to work the next day.

My recipe for lentil salad comes in at £2.92 for four portions, or 73p each. It is a variation on this recipe using cheaper ingredients, no coriander (because I hate it) and increasing the garlic (because I love it).

I am also concerned about nutrition. According to Calorie Count's recipe analyser, one serving contains:

So it's pretty healthy. It's also easy to cook! Look:

Tasty Lentil Salad (serves four)

250g green lentils (aka Lentilles vertes) – 500g bag costs 92p

4 tomatoes – six cost 69p (Lidl)

1 red onion – 20p

100g salad cheese (if you're not worried about the high saturated fat and sodium you could add more) – 50p for 200g

Juice of 1 lemon – 35p

4 cloves of garlic – 26p

1.5 tsp oil (I used olive oil).

1. Rinse the lentils thoroughly before adding them to a pan of boiling water. They don't require much stirring but don't let the water boil down. Burned lentils smell SOOOO BAD! These need to simmer for 40 minutes.
2. Whilst the lentils are cooking, roughly chop the tomatoes and cut the cheese into cubes (approximately 1cm x 1cm). Put these to one side for later.
3. Chop the red onion in half and slice it. Crush the garlic cloves.
4. When the lentils have been cooking for about 25 minutes heat the oil in a frying pan on a medium heat. Fry the onion for approximately 5 minutes then add the garlic and fry for another 5, stirring regularly to prevent the garlic burning.
5. Drain the lentils once cooked and mix in the garlic, onions and lemon juice. Plate it up and then add the tomatoes and cheese to the top. 
   
   
   (Totally forgot to take a photo of the finished product! Blogging fail! :D)

Depending on how hungry you are, you could add some pita bread to the meal too. (55p for six wholemeal pita in Tesco, or 18p for six Tesco Value white pita breads).

Let me know what you think if you make this! :)

Frugal Evenings

Bored of sitting in watching the same old DVDs on repeat because you can't afford to have a good time? Why not try some of these cheap/free ideas to pass the time?

Next time I need some evening entertainment I'll try one of these;

Games night – Invite a few friends round, dust off the Scrabble and have a games night! My favourite game is Cranium, which you can play with 4+ people in teams. It's great to bring out everyone's competitive sides!

Go for a walk – Yes, in the evening. No, it's not that cold. It's really relaxing to go for a night-time stroll if you wrap up warm. I live in the middle of nowhere so I tend to take a handy bodyguard (in the form of The Boyfriend), but dog-walking in a well-lit, still-busy area could be an alternative. Remember to be safe.

Volunteer – Spend the early evening volunteering at a local residential home, chatting to the people there. Many are quite lonely and would appreciate your company, especially if you take the time to get to know them.

Baking – Make a friend or relative a batch of cookies for when you next visit. Blast out the radio and dance as you mix for added entertainment!

Reading – Thanks to my Uni workload I still have a small mountain of fiction from Christmas left to read! I need to keep a book by my bed to read each day!

Craft – I've begun making my Christmas presents but it's taking longer than I was expecting. Good job I'm starting early! Other things to make could include Christmas cards, a scarf for winter (if you can knit) or a new bag from scrap materials.

Then again if a film night is your thing, you could always make your own cinema snacks, dim the lights and watch with some friends for a more social experience.

Right, I'm off to do something even more productive – tidy away my crafting mess! :)

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Change!

There's a family in New York who pick up every coin they see discarded on the street. Would you feel strange bending down to pick up a penny? Perhaps you'd reconsider when you learn that in 5 years they've found $1087? Generally I only pick up a coin if it's silver and shiny, but for $200 a year I might be tempted to put more effort in!

And as for money that's already mine...

When cleaning out my old car for scrapping I found ~£6 in change. It made me wonder just how much change I have knocking around whilst I've been struggling to pay back my debts! I sling 1, 2 and 5p pieces into my flowery piggy banks (both gifts, it's not like I collect them!). I've never considered these coins to be worth my time as it takes sooo many of them to make a substantial amount. I'm slowly coming round to the frugal notion that every little really does help, especially when I can't justify spending 30p on a hot chocolate some weeks!

Well, it was time for me to look after the pennies and hopefully the pounds were about to look after me!

After opening up both piggies I was pleased to find a nice little pile of coins in each (although I felt that I was violating one of them whilst dragging the 2p coins out!). It looked like a fair amount of change but nothing to get too excited over. 

Sitting in my counting house counting out my money (wearing gloves because I really hate the smell of money!) I found I had accumulated £7.21 of coppers! 

The real excitement came from lining up stacks of 5p coins... I'd collected £14.50! This is over a few years, but hey, I can really use that money! :)

Altogether I'd been ignoring on £21.71 of “useless” change! That's a month of free phone contract with a fiver left over for a trip to the cinema (2-for-1 of course)!

Next time I see a penny, I'm picking it up!