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.

How to make tap water taste good

I was blogging this week for The Guardian about soft drinks - mainly from the point of view of what to drink when you don't drink alcohol. One of the points that came up, however, is how expensive many soft drinks are - volume for volume, often as much as wine.

It prompted me to point out (in the unlikely event that you're not already aware of it) how good basic tap water can taste if you tart it up a bit. Step one obviously being to chill it and add some extra ice cubes then to add some extra ingredients as they did in this hotel I stayed in in Chile (above) where they flavoured it with peaches, melon and strawberries.

Coils of cucumber also look cool: simply halve a cucumber, peel it and trim off the end then cut it in fine slices with a mandolin or vegetable peeler and drop them in. Lemon and lime obviously taste good too: so much better - and cheaper - than those artificially flavoured waters.

Serving it in a water jug or decanter - easily picked up from a charity shop - makes it look swish too.

If you prefer your water fizzy - which I sometimes do - it's worth shopping around. Sainsbury's own brand sparkling water for example is just 40p for 2 litres compared to 69p for the same amount in the Co-op and £1.01 for a 750ml bottle of San Pellegrino, which is over five times as expensive. If you give it the same treatment (added citrus or other fruits) you really won't notice the difference unless you're a mineral water geek.

Making your own drinks

In all the time I've been writing about frugal food I've never thought of making my own drinks. Actually, I lie. I did post this idea for an apple lemonade a couple of years ago and very delicious it was too which makes my lack of interest in the subject even more lame.

If I'd had Susy Atkins new book 'How to make your own drinks' before now I might have been better motivated because it's full of brilliant ideas for cheap healthy, mainly non-alcoholic drinks you can make from seasonal gluts of fruit and vegetables. Or even - and as a townie without a garden this appeals to me - by bartering with others who have gardens or allotments in return for bottles of your finished potion. (You may get the better deal out of this.)

For those of you who feel nervous about the idea - and frankly I was a little too - the book is packed with clear and reassuring instructions about sterilising and sealing bottles and troubleshooting tips. Maybe start with drinks that can be made and drunk almost immediately like lavender lemonade (lovely for this time of year) and fruity ginger ale then progress to ones that need a bit more skill and patience like nettle beer, plum wine and mead.

Many drinks can be made for free from hedgerow ingredients - sloe and damson gin being the obvious examples - but I also love the sound of Susy's Crème de Mure (blackberry liqueur) and homemade rosehip syrup which apparently has higher levels of vitamin C than citrus fruit. ('Kids adore it' she says.) You can also make perfectly good drinks from frozen fruit which can sometimes be cheaper than fresh.

All in all this book a is good investment - with the added bonus of being a fun way to create your own delicious drinks. A great diversion, I'd have thought, for the forthcoming school holidays . . .

Have you ever made your own drinks and if so which ones?

Hot toddy bargain!

Just a quickie to let you know that according to mysupermarket.co.uk both Sainsbury's and Tesco have got Stone's ginger wine on offer at £3.99 at the moment. Full report - and recipes - on Credit Crunch Drinking (and no, I'm not on a retainer from Stone's ;-)

Is this the best value coffee in London?

I had three quarters of an hour to kill in London's Borough Market this week and spent it happily wandering around some of the fantastic food shops. Konditor and Cook for yummy cakes. Neal's Yard for the best of British cheeses and Monmouth Coffee for what must surely be the best value coffee in London - just £1 for a double macchiato (espresso with a shot of frothed milk)

Unlike many espressos it wasn't remotely bitter or over-extracted, just a pure, fragrant coffee flavour.

Eat your heart out, Starbucks . . .

Fresh peach yoghurt

The peaches are so luscious here in France, so ripe they literally fall apart in your hands. And so cheap! I'm using them every which way I can. My favourite start to the day is a peeled peach, roughly cut up and mixed with plain yoghurt.

You're lucky if you can get peaches that ripe at home of course but you do occasionally find them. And if you can't you can easily substitute less ripe fruit, cooked with a little sugar or honey until soft. Apricots, mangoes and plums are good this way or you can mash up some strawberries or bananas and fold them into the yoghurt.

I always buy plain yoghurt (cheapest in big tubs) rather than fruit flavoured ones in which the fruit content is generally negligible. I remember checking out childrens' yoghurts for a book I was writing (The Healthy Lunchbox) and finding that some contained as little as 1% real fruit. And loads of sugar.

You can also whizz up ripe peaches with milk to make a fabulous topping for cereal my friend and fellow blogger Signe of Scandilicious told me the other day. For two servings she says you should whizz up four ripe peaches (peeled and cut up) in a blender with about 350-400ml of milk and a pinch of cinnamon or ground cardamom. Use it straightaway or it will separate. If you whizz it with ice cubes it also makes a brilliantly refreshing drink.

Toast water: the new green tea?

I’ve just been experimenting with what must be the most frugal drink of all: toast water which is, exactly as described, water infused with a slice of toast. It’s actually rather nicer than it sounds - it has a faint caramelly flavour which I think I’d want to accentuate by infusing two slices of toast in the recommended amount of water but that would obviously be rather less thrifty.

I found out about it from my son Will's business partner Huw Gott who masterminds the menus at their four bars and restaurants which include Hawksmoor, The Marquess Tavern and Green and Red (quick opportunity for a family plug!) They’ve just acted as consultants to a new restaurant opening, The Vyse Room at Stoke Place in Stoke Poges, which features toast water as a sorbet.

Huw is a great one for scouring old cookery books and discovered the recipe in Mrs Black's 'Household Cookery and Laundry Work' from the late 1880s (Mrs Black being a teacher at the 'West-End Training School of Cookery' in Glasgow).

Here’s the recipes with my comments in italics.

"Toast the quarter of a slice of bread (wasn’t sure how big a slice so used a whole slice from a small white loaf) till it is quite brown in every part wthout being in the least burned.
Have a jug, with three breakfast-cupfuls of cold water in it (I reckoned this was about 450ml in total) in which put the bread, and allow it to stand for a few hours.
Hot water is frequently used instead of cold, but the water is scarcely so clear and nice. In this case it must cool before being used.
The water is put in the jug first and the bread put in, otherwise the bread gets crumbled.
It is a most refreshing drink."(Huw says, and I agree, that it needs to be served well chilled).

Apparently the recipe was designed for invalids and in the proportions given I can imagine it being just the thing if you had a virulent attack of gastro-enteritis and couldn’t keep anything down. But I think if you tweaked it, possibly using wholemeal bread, a second slice and a spoonful of honey to sweeten it it would be the perfect drink for a sweltering summer afternoon. Non-alcoholic drinks are apparently the Next Big Thing. Perhaps it will take off as the new green tea ;-)