Hungry Savers Series with Joleisa

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Welcome to my Hungry Savers Series, every single week I’m going to be bringing you another fantastic blogger, one whos as passionate about food and saving money in the kitchen as I am! I’ve asked them a series of questions that they’ve answered honestly. You can check out the 7 responses below and if you fancy checking them out click here! If you’re a blogger and want to take part in the Hungry Savers Series, then please get in touch. This weeks instalment is from Joleisa.

These are the questions asked:

Tell us about your blog

Joleisa.com is a frugal lifestyle blog. It is for the average person who wants to live a good quality life without paying too much for it. We feature articles that show just how we, as well as others, do it. When I say we, I am talking about Jo and Leisa. We are identical twin sisters based in Birmingham in the West Midlands.

What supermarket do you prefer and why?

For years we used to frequent Asda and Tesco. About three years ago, we checked out the Aldi closest to us and found that our grocery shopping costs were drastically reduced. The only problem we have here is that they don’t sell large packs of rice. Why rice? We are from Jamaica in the Caribbean where rice is a staple food and we would love to continue to buy it in bulk as we did at the other supermarkets. Also, there is less of a range of products in Aldi. However, that helps because we spend less time looking at the different brands. Aldi does the job of sourcing the good quality brands at a reduced cost to its customers.

3 money saving tips for the kitchen

Firstly, always check to see what you have in your cupboards and fridge/freezer before you go shopping. This way, you don’t end up just adding more of what you already have because if you don’t use them up in time, they may go past their use by date.
Secondly, and this is from personal experience, do some meal planning. Decide, maybe a week in advance, what you’d like to eat as a family for the coming week. After you create that list, make a list for the ingredients you’ll need and shop for those.
Lastly, reduce your food wastage by dishing up any leftover portions of food and then freezing or refrigerating it to be used at a later day for lunch or for a meal later in the week. Come of your kitchen waste can also be placed into a compost bin outside. You’ll have good quality compost for your garden from things such as raw vegetable peelings, egg shells, newspapers and tea bags.

An expensive item you can’t live without in the kitchen and why?

We haven’t got any really expensive kitchen items. However, we don’t see ourselves doing without our little freezer. It stores meat bought in bulk, bread- homemade or bought on sale, meals that we batch cook and freeze for later, Fruits bought when they are yellow stickered, then washed and prepared in batches to make fruit smoothies, and even fruit cakes which can last for years when properly prepared for freezing. We love this freezer because it has saved us a whole lot of cash.

What is your favourite recipe?

We have many. If we had to choose, it would be this Jerk Marinade as it can be made as the basis for any meat and vegetables for a barbecue. You can make it as spicy or as mild as you want, and it can also be bottled and refrigerated until you are ready to use it. Man, it will make you feel like you’re sitting on the beach in Jamaica, listening to the sounds of the Reggae beat.

What is your favourite kitchen gadget?

It Is the food processor as it has different attachments and can handle different jobs from blending, mixing, chopping and grating. I even use it to cream butter and sugar as the basis for some of my cake making exploits

Who or what inspired you to cook?

In the Caribbean, we learnt to cook by being in the kitchen with our mom and watching her do meals. Little by little she would ask us to help to prepare some of the vegetables or herbs. When we showed enough maturity, she would allow us to use a grater or even to fry chicken! At one point, during school holidays, my mom would give us each a small cup of rice and we could each cook it any way we chose. I laugh now to think of some yukky rice porridge and even curried rice dishes we made back then. We also had Home Economics lessons in schools where we learnt to cook ‘real’ food.

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Come back soon and check out the next instalment of the Hungry Savers Series.

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