Now Credit Crunch Drinking posts will appear on this blog too

I've come to the conclusion I have too many blogs. Five, at the current count which is ridiculous.

The logical step is to drop Credit Crunch Drinking as a separate blog and incorporate it here. Regular readers will remember I did this once before then rather weakly resuscitated it.

I should have stuck to the original decision. After all if you're interested in keeping down the cost of your food shopping, chances are the same applies to wine and other drinks. And if you're a fan of the Credit Crunch Drinking blog you may appreciate a few frugal recipes too.

So win/win, I hope. There will continue to be posts like this under £6 selection of bargain buys from M & S which ends on September 4th and this well-priced cider from the Co-op. Let me know if there are any drinks you'd particularly like me to cover.

A pie that isn't a pie

No let-up in the weather in the West Country today. I'm not sure my brain isn't iced up. Finding it incredibly hard to concentrate - and write in real sentences. Or maybe it's my new Twitter* habit.

Tomorrow I'm actually going to venture out of the house provided we don't find another six centimetres of snow on our doorstep and go and buy some proper food. Since we got back from France on Wednesday (thank goodness. Ryanair cancelled our flight AGAIN today) we've been living off various permutations of bacon and eggs. Or that's what it feels like.

I'm planning to make a a really good dish that the chef at my son Will's former pub The Marquess Tavern used to put on the menu and which we put in our beer and food book An Appetite for Ale. The top pie-like layer is made from slices of day (or two day) old bread which is dipped in the gravy created by the stew and baked until it's crisp. I could have waited until I'd made it before posting the recipe so that you had a pic to inspire you but thought you might want to try it this weekend.

Shearers’ stew
Serves 6

4-5 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil
3 white onions, peeled and roughly chopped
A few sprigs of thyme
1.5kg lamb fillet or shoulder
3 tbsp seasoned plain flour
500g carrots, peeled or scrubbed and thickly sliced
350ml lamb or beef stock
350ml strong ale
Salt and white or black pepper
6 thick slices sourdough or similar country bread

Heat 3 tbsp of the oil in a large frying pan over a moderate heat, add the onions and thyme and cook for about 10 minutes until soft, stirring occasionally. Remove the onions from the pan with a slotted spoon and transfer to a casserole.

Trim any excess (but not all) fat off the lamb and cut into cubes and toss in the seasoned flour. Add a little more oil to the frying pan and fry the lamb in batches until brown, adding it to the onions as you finish. Deglaze the pan with 300ml of the stock and pour over the lamb and onions then add the ale. Bring to the boil, stir then simmer over a low heat for 1 1/2 hours. Add the carrots and more stock if needed then simmer for a further 30 minutes until the carrots are cooked. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Heat the oven to 225°C/425°F/Gas 7. Dip the bread slices in the gravy. Divide the remaining stew between individual pie dishes and top with a slice of the gravy-soaked bread. Bake the dishes in the oven until the bread is nicely browned and crunchy. (You could, of course, make this is a single dish, arranging the bread slices over the top).

Any other good suggestions to keep out the cold? What have you all been cooking this week?

*If you're on Twitter you can follow me as frugalcook

And now for frugal drinking!

I've been thinking for a while of starting a frugal drinking blog including beer, cider and other drinks as well as wine. It's actually the other part of my working life (I used to write a regular column for the Daily Mail!) but it never seemed to quite fit in with this blog.

It struck me though that it would be pretty useful, particularly in the current economic climate. We like to drink well but we don't spend a lot of money on doing so. I happen to think that drinks like beer and cider are underrated and that there are a lot of bargains out there that people don't know about or are unsure whether it's OK to buy because they don't know that much about wine.

So I've kicked it off, it's called Credit Crunch Drinking and you can find it here!

I hope you enjoy it. Do write and let me know how you get on if you follow my suggestions and share any tips or brilliant special offers you've spotted. (If you feel self-conscious about asking questions about wine, as I know many people do, you can always email me at fibeckett@live.com)

All about offal

"You will include lots of offal, won't you?" said my publisher. "You've got to use every part of the animal"

"Hmmmm". I said, thinking of tongues, trotters and tripe, none of them great favourites. "I don't think people are that much into offal these days"

"But this book is called The Frugal Cook"

"Tell you what" I said rashly. I'll go down the road and look in my local butcher. "If they sell them, I'll include them."

Good news and bad news. They don't appear to sell tripe but they do sell trotters, hearts and tongues. And kidneys and liver, of course.

I decided to postpone the tongue challenge and make a batch of stewed steak and kidney with portobello mushrooms. Ox kidney is unbelievably cheap - just over £2 a pound (450g) so I bought more than usual, cutting down the braising steak. It made the steak and kidney pie filling pretty gamey but with a fantastically good, rich gravy, I have to say, much helped by the addition of half a bottle of winter ale I happened to have had left over from Christmas.

I decided not to put it in a pie as there wasn't time to cool it first (if you put pastry over a hot filling it goes soggy). And it makes the dish more flexible - you can either serve it with floating lids (see below) or with baked potatoes or a root vegetable purée.

In the end we stayed too long chatting with the neighbours downstairs (my husbands ex-wife and her partner. True) and I ran out of time. So we ate it with boiled parsnips and stir fried kale. (Another great frugal buy - 32p for a large head, big enough for four). There are enough parsnips left over for a soup tomorrow lunchtime which is good. And leftover stew for tomorrow night.

* To make floating pastry lids, take a pack of ready-rolled pastry out of the fridge, let it warm up a bit then unroll it. (If you try to unroll it straight from the fridge it cracks) Cut it in half lengthways then divide each piece into three equal sized rectangles. Transfer to a baking tray(s), brush lightly with milk or beaten egg then prick all over with a fork to stop the pastry ballooning up. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 220°C/425°F/Gas 7 for about 5-6 minutes then turn the heat down to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5 for another 6-8 minutes until well risen and nicely browned.