Lightening Online

I actually feel like a bit of a fraud posting on reducing the grocery budget at this time of year. I tend to find myself a little tempted and waylaid by all the fancy goodies the stores have out. LOL. I get a bit *too* festive and out the window go all my good intentions.

Anyway, I will plow on with what we did in order to reduce our grocery budget and more than likely it’ll be a good reminder to myself of what needs to happen.

If you haven’t yet read the first 3 posts in this series or would like to refresh your memory, you can find them here:

Reducing the Grocery Budget - Part One
Reducing the Grocery Budget - Part Two
Reducing the Grocery Budget - Part Three

Now last week I think I promised to start giving you some actual suggestions on ways to reduce the grocery budget. What I want to write about today may not seem like a proper tip but in a way it’s a really BIG tip that covers many categories. I want to talk about needs vs wants and my experience has been that acknowledging the difference between the 2 can make quite a big difference to the bottom line at the checkout.

This can actually be quite a confronting topic. Partly because the definition of a “need” vs a “want” can be quite a subjective and controversial subject. But mostly because I believe in western societies we have lost touch with reality when it comes to what we really NEED. (My apologies to anyone reading that isn’t residing in a western society - I can’t comment on your situation so you’ll need to make up your own minds here).

Now don’t panic on me here. I am not suggesting here that you *SHOULD* reduce your grocery spending to bare bones physical needs. What I am suggesting though is that we all need to take a good hard look at WHAT we buy and WHY and begin to recognise more just how blessed we are.

As human beings, we really hate to think of ourselves as being deprived. If we’re feeling deprived, the temptation is to go out and spend more money in an effort to prove to ourselves that we’re not “deprived”. Then of course, we no longer have that money, something has to give somewhere else and in the end we become more “deprived” than when we first started. It’s one of those vicious cycles that we really want to avoid if at all possible.

So I found that I needed to reduce our grocery spending without us feeling deprived (to avoid an unecessary spending circle). And let’s face it, how many of us have really EVER been truly deprived? The great thing about understanding how blessed we truly are is that it can help with reducing spending across all of the budget categories (not simply food).

Understanding the difference between needs and wants was one major way that we accomplished reducing our grocery spending without feeling deprived. My current spending of $100 a week is not even close to being a “bare bones, only what we need” budget. I purchase PLENTY of wants as well. Like I said, I’m not necessarily asking you to not purchase ANY wants. Just identify them and be realistic about what you’re choosing to do. Be real about calling a want, a want.

Another way in which our family worked on this was to put up pictures of our sponsored children and some other projects we have supported on our family room wall. Every time we come in our back door, we have a visual reminder to us of how much we really do have. It has been a very effective strategy for us in increasing our thankfulness and awareness of how many things in our life are wants rather than needs. And how many people in our world struggle on a daily basis just to meet their basic needs.

Please don’t think this is about guilt. I don’t believe in giving out of guilt. To me that is the same as obligation (see my post yesterday for my feelings on giving out of obligation ). It’s about awareness. And it’s a great way to encourage contentment. Contentment is a hard emotion to grab hold of, but when you’re there - it truly is one of the most worthwhile feelings you could ever experience. I’m sure if you could bottle it, you’d make a small fortune. LOL.

So that’s my suggestion for the next stage in reducing your grocery budget. Go through your shopping trolley (or supermarket docket) and identify how much of what you are spending is on needs and how much is on wants. Start to identify how blessed you really are and see if it makes a difference in how you view your shopping trolley and what kinds of things you put in it.

Now on occasion I have mentioned in my posts a website called Simple Savings. You can join their free newsletter at their website. They also offer a paid section to their website. I mostly tend to avoid websites where you need to pay in order to get information. It seems almost counter productive to frugality to me. And there are plenty of websites that will offer great ideas for free. For some reason I decided to pay the membership fees for this particular one. I think because they have a money back guarantee with their membership. I’m actually really glad I did. It gives you access to a vault but the most valuable part of it I have discovered in recent years is the forum where members get to discuss ideas on how to save money and support one another in all kinds of ways. Membership fees are $47 for the first year and then $17 to renew each year after that. The reason I am mentioning them now is that they have a sale on until 11pm Sunday 18th (Australian time - I’m assuming EDST but not sure) for $35. So if you’ve been contemplating taking out a membership, now is a great time to do so. My apologies to those non-Australian readers. This is an Australian website and may not be of as much interest to you (I’m sure you’d be welcome to join though if you wanted to).

If you don’t wish to purchase a membership, I’d still recommend you sign yourself up for their free newsletters with great tips. After all, you can’t go wrong with free. Here is a link to the website:

(Disclaimer: This is an affiliate link. There is an explanation of how affiliate links work in my sidebar. My comments however, have no bearing on the fact that it is an affiliate link. If you are concerned about this, go directly to their website http://www.simplesavings.com.au/ rather than via the link above.)

Over the coming weeks I want to work my way through the categories I listed in my original post on this topic. Non Food, Fruit & Veg, Meat, General Groceries and Treats (have I covered them all?) Does anyone have a preference for which category you’d like me to start with?

A list of other Frugal Friday participants can be found at
Biblical Womanhood.

Given I list gardening as one of the things you might find on this blog, I thought it was about time I did a post about my garden. I seem to have finally graduated from only being able to grow lettuce in the garden. LOL. Which is nice.

I HAVE to start with a photo of my very first strawberry. And yes, I did get to eat this one myself. In fact, I ate both of the first 2 that were ripe. LOL. Don’t tell the rest of the family! I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve attempted to grow strawberries without success. At our last house the soil wasn’t great and we were still very much novice gardeners. I managed to get a few growing but nothing of much value. Last year I was determined to grow some but my chooks had other ideas and scratched them all up again!

Well, this year I seem to have finally had some success. These are growing in pots on the front verandah. Away from pecking chooks! I’m not sure how clear it will be in this photo but I counted 30 strawberries on 1 plant in this pot. This is my most successful plant and I bought it as a single, more mature plant. Those that I bought as smaller plants have struggled a lot more and while those that survived seem to be going better now, I think paying the extra for a more mature plant might be the way to go.

Here is the garden bed we set up at the beginning of August. It looks a bit different now to how it looked back then . It’s not easy to tell from the photo but a number of the “empty” sections have seeds in them which have sprouted. Unfortunately I was a bit slack when I planted the seeds and didn’t record what went where. So being a novice gardener we may have to wait until the “fruit” appears before we can tell which plants are where. LOL. Oh well, I don’t mind a bit of a surprise.

This is a view from the other angle. We have lettuces and silverbeet growing like crazy to the left and some beetroot plants to the right. Some of the beetroot is ready to be pulled and eaten. Fresh beetroot will be a new experience for the family. The yellow-ish colours you can see dotted around the plot are Marigolds I planted from seeds my Grandma collected. I’m hoping they’ll work well as companion plants amongst the tomato plants I’ve planted.

Here are some seedlings I purchased yesterday. I decided to just “go nuts” and buy a heap of seedlings. I am having some success growing things from seed but I do find with a lot of plants, it’s fighting an uphill battle with bugs to get them to a healthy seedling stage. Those I’ve started as seedlings have thrived a lot better in the garden. The store was kind enough to give me a seedling tray to hold my seedlings while I was choosing (and to take them home in too). I think that worked out in their favour because I ended up deciding I may as well fill it up so the seedlings would make the 2 hour trip home a little better.

I bought 3 punnets of sweetcorn. DH LOVES his fresh sweetcorn so crossing my fingers we can grow a bit for him to enjoy. Then 1 punnet each of celery, apple cucumber, jap pumpkin, heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, strawberries and zucchini. Now I just have to grow at least $35 worth of food from that lot to recoup my investment. Most of these will be planted in my first garden plot where the peas, lettuces and broccoli are just finishing.

I honestly never expected that I would *ever* grow much of a garden, especially a vegie garden. It just didn’t interest me at all. But now that my life has slowed down a little, I’m finding the time to potter in the garden and it is a wonderfully renewing experience. I’m afraid I may be well and truly addicted to growing our food now. LOL. It’s so exciting watching things grow and then being able to EAT them. The rest of the family seems to be enjoying the process as well.

Here lies the sad attempts of my slow cooker cake experiment. LOLOL. It actually tastes quite nice (other than being a little burnt around the edges). BUT, it stuck (even though I did spray oil in there first). Me thinks some greaseproof paper or alfoil lining the pot might be a good idea.

The good news is that I did indeed bake a cake in the slow cooker. I need to do some experimenting and fine tuning with the high and low settings to see if I can in fact bake it without burning the outsides. Otherwise, we can just trim those bits off.

I do have a reason for attempting this *other* than electricity cost (and being able to bake in summer without heating up the house). When we do our 3 month trip in the caravan, we are not likely to have an oven (oven’s aren’t common in caravans these days and we’d prefer the cupboard space). I would like to take my slow cooker with me anyway (since it provides such easy, fuss free meals) so this would be a bonus if I could bake in it.

Funnily enough, this reminds of some of my disasters when I was a new bride. My DH had a single mate who would drop in from time to time and I’m sure every time he came I would have some kind of disaster in the kitchen. One time I attempted an apple cake in the microwave (my 1 and only attempt to bake a cake in the microwave) and it was sitting on the bench looking a little like the photo above (only not brown) when he dropped in one afternoon. It’s a bit of a joke between us. I can cook….honest!!!! Just not everything I make turns out quite how I’d planned.

As for the above disaster. DH turned it into a masterpiece by making some chocolate sauce, heating it up and serving with chocolate sauce and cream. Waaaayyyyyy too yummy for my waistline! The kids don’t seem to mind eating up the rest of the *bits* either. So, not too much will go to waste (only to waist).

To tie this back in with my kitchen electricity usage audit posted earlier today - total cooking time in the slow cooker was around 2 hours so cost approximately 4c. To bake a cake in my oven would have cost around 30c (plus heating up the house).

IF I do better with my next attempt, I’ll be sure to proudly show off my efforts. If not, you may never hear me say another word about baking a cake in a slow cooker.

I find one of the most satisfying feelings in the world is knowing we have a fridge full of fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables. That can prove to be a challenge out here where fresh anything is hard to come by. Of course, the vegies in our garden rarely make it to the fridge. I prefer to harvest them right before cooking or eating. So I hope the time will come when a fridge full of fresh vegies is less of a satisfaction than a garden full of fresh vegies. But for now I’m very much a novice gardener so I have to settle for the next best thing - being able to actually buy fruit and veg that is reasonably fresh.

While we were away we were near some market gardens and I’ve found a little shop that seems to hold lovely fresh produce at reasonable prices. So I did quite a big spend up. Even bigger than last time when I spent almost $50 there. This time the total was closer to $60 but I did buy a few “treat” items so that would easily account for the extra $10 spent.

“Treat” items were:

* punnet of strawberries for $1.99
* a whole pineapple - this is the first time I’ve ever bought a whole fresh pineapple. I hope it is nice - it sure smells nice!
* seedless red grapes (price wasn’t cheap but was okay and the kids really love them)

My biggest bargains were:

20kg carrots for $3.80 - I usually pay nearly $2 per kg. These are “juicing” carrots but we often find they taste nicer (sweeter) and I don’t mind having the less “nice” looking carrots when they’re so much cheaper. Now to find ways to use up 20kg of carrots! LOL. I’m thinking I’ll grate a heap and freeze to add to spaghetti bolognese sauce etc.

Bananas for $2.20 per kg. Cheapest I’ve paid for bananas in years!

Apples - bought 8kg and they ranged from $1.50 for 2kg to $1.90 for 2kg. Here I pay $5-$6 for 2kg usually.

What else did I buy:

* 20kg desire potatoes. The lady at the shop tells me that these last longer than white potatoes
* 2 large sweet potatoes
* whole cauliflower
* 2 large zucchini
* 2 head broccoli
* 1kg bag tomatoes
* half a dozen lebanese cucumbers
* 4 lemons (at DS’s request - he eats them like they are!)
* 2 cobs sweetcorn

Think that is all. Anyway, it seemed like quite a lot of food for just under $60. Thankfully we had the camper trailer with us - couldn’t have fitted those large bags of carrots and potatoes in any other way!

Now I just need to make sure I use it so that it isn’t money wasted.

I’ve been busy making pies this morning. My 9 year old was wanting me to make *real* pies this time. My first attempt was chicken and vegetable pies (which were yum in my opinion but not so yum according to the kids) and my second attempt was steak and mushroom (which went down slightly better with the kids). So today I’ve been making *real* pies with mince and gravy.

Hopefully they won’t notice that I’ve added TVP and red lentils to the mixture. LOL. I actually made up the mix in the crockpot yesterday. Today was making the pastry and rolling it out and assembling the pies. It’s a bit time consuming but I don’t really mind. To me it’s worth it to know what has gone into my pies.

This time I used bought mince but from now on I’m thinking of making my own mince. I bought a large beef roast on sale recently and chopped it up and put it into my food processor and it made lovely looking mince. The smell almost put me off meat for life but it’s nice to be confident of what we’re eating. I do have a couple of packets of bought mince that need using though so one of those went in the pie filling.

Here’s a picture of my “pile of pies”:

Like all good bloggers, I hid the ones that didn’t look quite as good on the bottom of the pile. LOL. I don’t know why I get so hung up on perfection. After all, there is something so clinical about food that all looks *exactly* the same isn’t there. Here’s a slightly more close up view of my pies:

I’m trying to work out how much they cost to make. Most of my figures are approximate/guestimates.

For the filling:

2 cups TVP - 80c

1 cup red lentils - 30c

574g mince - 3.44

4 Tbsp gravy powder - 20c

2 Tbsp cornflour - 5c

hearty beef soup sachet (I didn’t have any beef stock) - 25c

1 Tbsp tomato paste - 20c

shallots - from the garden, cost negligible

salt & pepper - cost negligible

water - free

Total $4.99

I used just over half the mixture (froze the rest for another time) so approx $2.50 or slightly more.

Pastry:

250g butter - $1.10

2 3/4 cups plain flour - 30c

2 3/4 cups SR flour - 30c

Total for pastry: $1.70

Total cost for 20 pies: $4.20 so 21c each. Bargain!

If you want to make up the pastry you add 1 cup hot to butter and mix until butter dissolves. Then mix the lot together with the flour (I use a dough hook on my Kenwood). Then I shove it in the fridge to cool down a bit to make rolling out easier.

I made a discovery today with the pastry too. With using up the scraps, instead of trying to squish them together in a ball and then roll out again (which is hard as the pastry gets tough), I just overlapped all the rolled out bits and rolled them together. Was much quicker and easier and they seemed to stick together alright (just don’t use too much flour on your board the first time round).

I can’t vouch for how my filling recipe (if you can call it that) tastes as I haven’t tasted it yet. DH did a taste test last night and told me it tasted nice so fingers crossed it passes the family test at tea tonight. We’re having meat pies, chips and salad for tea tonight. It’s fake take away night tonight.

I think I must have been bitten by the cooking bug these past 2 days. Yesterday I made a big pot of tomato and vegetable soup (having some for lunch right now in fact). Also made an experimental batch of crumpets. Added more raising agents to try and get a lighter crumpet. I did succeed in a lighter crumpet but had very few holes so I’m still going to experiment with the recipe a little more. I also made the pie filling yesterday. Today I have made the pies and a batch of yoghurt as well as some spreadable butter (butter and olive oil whizzed together).

I’m looking forward to a nice quiet afternoon this afternoon!

Various circumstances have altered my week so that I haven’t yet done a grocery shop. I don’t have any other *need* to go into town other than to buy food so I’ve given myself the challenge to see if I can make it until next Tuesday without needing any groceries. Since I shopped Wednesday last week, that will be just under the fortnight between grocery shops.

Today is the kids last day of school for the term which gives me a little bit of breathing space in terms of finding suitable things for their lunchboxes. It does provide a little bit of an added challenge though in the sense that they tend to eat more during the holidays - particularly in between meals.

Here’s a bit of a run-down on potential problem areas:

FRUIT - Obviously this is something I would usually buy fresh each week. We have run out of bananas but do have 3 apples, 1 pear and about 2kg oranges in the fridge. Also some frozen stewed pear, a tin of pears and a tin of apples. So we *should* be able to manage on what we have left for the next 4 days. One thing I don’t want to do during this challenge is make compromises to our health.

VEGETABLES - I have almost enough potatoes for 3 main meals so should be able to stretch to that. Monday night on the menu is tuna patties and I have 1 meal left of Deb potato which I usually use for tuna patties (that way I don’t have to make the mashed potato in advanced). I have enough yellow veg with several kg’s of carrots, a whole butternut pumpkin and 1 sweet potato. Also have 1/2 red cabbage and about 3kg of frozen peas. So that should get us through until Tuesday. Of course, my next challenge will be that next week I’ll have to stock up fully rather than adding to what I have on hand - fingers crossed lots of fruit and veg is on special locally next week.

BREAKFAST - Could pose a challenge. We are nearly out of most cereals. I have just made up some more muesli so that will help for DH, DS and myself. The kids often have toast in the school holidays but there is only 3 loaves of bread left so not sure how we’ll go there. Was thinking I’d make up a batch of crumpets but flour is getting low so I may have to choose between baking snacks or making crumpets. Need to investigate a little further here.

BREAD - 3 loaves of white bread left in the freezer. Do have a batch of Soy & Linseed in the breadmaker now. Hoping DH will eat that and leave the white bread for the kids. We tend to go through about 1 loaf a day so just need to make that stretch out a little. If I can come up with lunches that don’t involve bread, that will help.

SNACKS - I had been planning a bit of a bake up for the school holidays as the kids are constantly looking for something to eat. Being low on flour is a bit of a challenge. Do have plenty of ingredients to make yoghurt so will need to make sure I’m on top of that given it takes about a day by the time it sets and then chills. Also have plenty of popping corn. It’s really only a few days so we should be able to get by.

There is definitely no shortage of food in this house. No danger of anyone going hungry. I think the biggest challenge will be making sure everyone still eats a fairly healthy diet and being a little more creative than usual where they are a few gaps in what we’re used to eating for particular meals.

Actually, I’m quite looking forward to it. Don’t mind a bit of a challenge. The best bit is going to be the head start we’ll get on the grocery spending challenge for the month!

Here’s a list of what we’re planning on eating this month. There’s a few days missing and I deliberately haven’t included dates this month as we’ll be away for a few days (and thought it best not to publicise the exact dates we’ll be away). The only meat item I need to buy for this plan is 1 meal of fish. I do like to be at least a month ahead in my meat supplies as that way I can just buy meat when it comes up at a good price.

I’ve decided to give up on using the menu planning sheet from www.cindysporch.net as I find it too frustrating having to wait until a few days into the month to do my plan. So I’ve made up a basic table in Word and that’s working quite well. Today I made some changes and it was so much easier to just make the changes on the computer and then print off another copy.

I was just looking at last month’s menu plan. Only 11 changes made for the month. LOL. But that’s okay as it’s meant to be a plan not a straight jacket.

Anyway, here is the list.

Pancakes
Corned Beef
Corned Beef Hash
Pumpkin Soup
Southern Fried Chicken
Sausages in Gravy
Quiche
Tuna Patties
Spaghetti Bolognese
Mince & Lentil Loaf
Macaroni Cheese
Pizza
Turkey Patties
Toasted Sandwiches
Snapper
Beef Pie
Tuna Mornay
Tuna Mornay
Lamb Chops
Pasta Bake
Chicken Kebabs
Fried Rice
Soup
Fish Fillets
Roast

I tried something today that I’ve not tried before (at least I don’t think I have - not sure how reliable my memory is at the moment). On Tuesday I cooked Roast Beef in the Slow Cooker. It’s one of our more “decadent” meals - costing a little more than some of our other meals. That’s not the bit that I haven’t tried before. Read on….

I left the juices in the slow cooker overnight to set and yesterday scraped off the fat from the top, added a kettle full of water, turned the slow cooker back on and …. ended up with beef stock. Don’t laugh. It might sound obvious to some of you but it’s something new for me (you’ll have to humour me here). I added some soup mix last night and cooked that for a while. Then this morning I added some chopped carrot, celery, onion, potato and sweet potato (basically put in what I had on hand). I did add a single serve sachet of hearty beef soup that was in the cupboard (what I bought it for I have no idea so using it up seemed like a good idea) and a spoonful of minced garlic for extra flavour.

Then today when I was chopping up the leftover meat to make into a shepherd’s pie, I threw in a few bits of the meat as well. Mmmmm…. I’ve just had some and it’s very nice (even if I do say so myself lol).

I’m feeling pretty happy about the outcome of this experiment (which is an improvement on the outcome of some of my other experiments of late). Out of one piece of roast beef I usually try to get 2 meals (3 if it’s a bigger piece). With the soup, I now have 3 meals plus some lunches. Plus 2 feeds of scraps for the cat.

Finding ways to stretch meat that little bit further and make use of as much as possible (minimising waste) is one of the most effective ways I’ve found to cut our food budget down.

My 9 year old DS has been asking for chocolate crackles for a few weeks now. This past week I finally bought some copha and suggested to him that he could make them. He was stoked at that idea (quite enjoys being handy in the kitchen - must train him up a bit more, might make my life a little easier :-)).

Of course the younger 2 wanted to get in on the action too. Ordinarily I let them help me when I cook but since this was DS’s project, they had to be content with just watching.

DD has a Barbie cooking book and was asking to make something from that. We found a really simple but effective idea that all the kids could get involved in (I wasn’t keen to start any project that involved too much effort - Sunday afternoon’s are usually a quiet time in this household).

APPLE AND CHEESE SAILBOATS

Cut apple into 8 sections. Remove the core from each section. Cut triangle shapes from any block cheese (we used matured cheddar as that’s what was in the fridge). Then you use a toothpick to attach the cheese “sail” to your apple “boat”.

They looked quite effective, the kids had fun putting the pieces together (and counting that they had 8 of each item). At the end they had a nice healthy snack to munch on.

I’ll have to remember that for during the school holidays when they just need a bit of a distraction.

And I still had enough energy (just) to make some sausage rolls for tea. I’ve been meaning to make them for a while now and it kept getting put off. I think resting yesterday has probably paid off in the energy stakes. I can smell them now - must be about ready to come out of the oven. Mmmmmm….gotta love homemade sausage rolls.

I did it! I did it! I did it! Okay, I should probably not get *too* excited just yet as I do have 1 more shopping day left before the end of the month.

Yesterday I spent a grand total of $133.85 which leaves me $19.31 to spend next week. I should only need apples and a couple of loaves of bread so we’ll see what happens. AND I bought everything on my list except for glad wrap (not sure how I missed that one but it wasn’t urgent - just replacing my spare one). I also managed to get a few extras that weren’t on my list.

I was really pleased with the amount of fruit and veg I was able to buy. Sometimes I do well at the fruit and veg place down there and sometimes the specials are not so good. I spent $23.75 and got 5kg carrots, 5kg potatoes, 2 kg apples, a whole butternut pumpkin, 2 sweet potatoes and just over 1kg bananas. That’s pretty good going for what we usually pay.

I think I have enough powdered milk now to last me until the end of the year. I usually only use it in cooking. Last month I bought 4 packets because Coles had a Bi-Lo brand for $1 cheaper than the Coles brand and I figured they were just using up Bi-Lo stock and wouldn’t always have it. This time when I went it was on a clearance sale and only $3.99 (Coles brand is $5.99) so I bought the last 4 packets on the shelf. We’re going through it quicker now that I’m using it to make up Easiyo yoghurt so the savings will be very nice. I had to make some up in a jug this week as we ran out of milk the day I went to town (none left for my breakfast!). I’ve decided I don’t really mind using it on my breakfast. I don’t have a huge amount of milk anyway as I have hot water as well. Because I prefer a little lower fat milk, I made it up a little weaker than recommended so got an extra little saving there (more litres per packet). I may even continue to use powdered milk for myself. We’ll see.

On the topic of milk, I noticed that Coles UHT milk has increased in price. Their fresh milk worked out cheaper per litre than the UHT milk. This is the first time I’ve seen this so I bought 6 Litres of fresh milk as well as a carton of UHT milk. Only thing is, I’m hoping having fresh for a week doesn’t put the kids off the UHT milk. Time will tell I guess.

Within that total I was able to get 18 rolls of toilet paper. We usually use Kleenex Cottonelle (we’re fussy about our toilet paper) but about 12 months ago I found an Autralian brand recycled paper that we didn’t mind and was quite cheaply priced. Haven’t seen it since though. I found a packet in Kmart that’s not the same (but is recycled and Australian) and figured it was worth giving a go - and it was on sale for nearly half price ($4.00 for 18 rolls).

I was also pleased to be able to get a Carpet Cleaner I saw advertised on TV the other day which I wanted to try. DH said he needed some anti-dandruff shampoo this shop and I thought that might have made things a bit tight (his bottles of shampoo are usually around $8-$10). He’s been using up various natural shampoos I’ve bought to try on my own hair but needs an anti-dandruff one every now and then. Fortunately he likes to switch around the brands he uses so this time I bought him a new brand to try (which was a little cheaper). If he doesn’t like it - no problems, I’ll buy the more expensive one next time. At least he’s the type of person that’s willing to give things a go. I also bought new toothbrushes for the kids (only needed 2 as I had 1 spare one in the cupboard) and toothpaste.

Probably the thing that *saved* my budget was a lack of meat on special. I did buy a roll of fritz but that was the only meat I bought. It wasn’t urgent as I’ve been able to get some meat throughout this month and our local specials can often be as cheap as I can get meat elsewhere (other than chancing upon super specials).

I think DH has a sheep that he wants to get killed in the next month or so which will boost our meat supply somewhat. It’s been over a year since I’ve had a sheep. We don’t tend to eat it all that often (think it’s on June’s menu once) because it does seem to have a higher fat content than other meats. It costs me less than $30 (butchering fees) to get a sheep so that does help with the budget a little. I had someone ask me recently if my $100 a week spending includes meat. Well it comes pretty close. We do get the occasional sheep for a discounted price but then some people have access to regular fruit and vegetable bargains or eat regularly at their parents place (I know my SIL and her family go to her inlaws every Sunday for instance). So I figure the bonus we get with the sheep is not really much different.

One thing I’m finding with Coles is that I need to be very alert when I’m shopping. They now have 2 ranges of generic brands and it’s not consistent which of the two are going to be the cheapest. I have to keep checking and comparing prices which is annoying and draining. I have learnt though to send DH off car shopping or whatever he feels like doing. When he comes shopping with me he likes to be *helpful* and then I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing. He still gets to be helpful though - by packing it all in the car!!! When I’ve done a big shop on my own I’ve really noticed the difference with having to pack it all away in the car myself. Now that we don’t have the dual cab ute I have to be more careful with how things are packed in the back of the car (we now have a Pajero) to get them to fit. Some of my big shops have been one of those double trolleys full as well as a single trolley overflowing. So we’re talking BIG shop. The joys of living in a rural area. With my regular dental treatment and having to take DS to an orthodontist, we’ve been finding lately that we’re in a regional centre more often so I haven’t had to do a *massive* shop for a while.

Anyway, all in all I’m really happy with how the grocery spending is going. This month I have bought 4 litres ice cream, 2 packets of corn chips, 4 packets of Tim Tams (um ah, no wonder I’m not losing weight at the moment) and some donuts so we’re not going without our treats either.

The thought of Once a Month Cooking (OAMC) is kind of terrifying to me. It just seems like hard work. But I don’t mind the idea of doing mini cook-ups. It’s nice to have some meals in the freezer that have been at least partially cooked and give me an easy meal when I’m busy or not feeling great. It saves on buying take away or prepackaged type meals as well.

Last week our local supermarket had roast beef on sale for $5.99 a kg. I’m always on the lookout for beef priced under $6 a kg so I grabbed 2 big ones. One of these I’ll cook in the slow cooker as a roast. The other I’ve diced up and cooked in the slow cooker with some of the cream of mushroom soup I made. Boy did the house smell good yesterday while it was cooking! Usually when I do something like this I have in mind to have some for tea the same night and then freeze the rest when it’s cooled. I knew it wouldn’t be ready in time for tea last night though so we had to put up with the smell without even getting to eat some of it. LOL.

This morning I divided it up into meal size portions. One of the benefits of cooking up a bulk lot of meat is the way I tend to get a “free” meal of meat from it. I usually work on around 500g of meat (without a bone) feeding us for a meal. I cooked up 2kg of beef and made enough for 5 meals instead of 4. I’m not inclined to put aside 100g per meal of meat but when I cook it up in bulk like that it just seems to stretch to the extra meal. This works out to around $2.50 (including the cost of the mushroom soup ingredients) per meal for our meat portion. Bargain!

Sometimes I add some beans to the meat to stretch it even further. I decided against that this time as I’ve been adding them to so many things lately and it’s nice to have a change every once and a while. They are cheap and very healthy though. And go quite nicely with the steak and gravy.

I tend to use this precooked meat in either a shepherd’s pie (with mashed potato on top) or in a pie plate with a single sheet of puff pastry on top. I think I’ll also make some individual pies as well. I’m sure they’ll go down well as a warm weekend treat.

I remembered something about cornflour as I was making this too. It doesn’t like being cooked twice. Next time I make cream of mushroom soup I think I’ll cook and freeze the mushrooms and just make up the cream of anything soup either at the time or as a dry mix in advance. It didn’t really turn out to be a problem as I usually need to add cornflour when I’m using the tinned variety anyway. It just didn’t stay thick once it had been cooking for a while. Not cooking the actual cream of anything soup in advance will actually turn out to be less effort for me anyway.

These past couple of months we have been making our first attempt at vegie gardening. Actually it’s technically not our first attempt. We did try to grow some tomatoes and herbs at our last place with very limited success. This is however, our first attempt here and our first attempt at “serious” vegie gardening.

It took him a little while but in April DH finally built and filled in a small vegie patch area for me. He’s built a frame for the second area but our soil here isn’t real good and so we plan to buy in some compost to fill the second plot. We do have our own compost heap but I think it might take me a decade to make enough compost. LOL. With chooks the compost is only growing very slowly - especially at this time of year when growth of lawn and weeds has slowed down considerably. I have started to fill in the bottom of the plot though. Started with some cardboard boxes (recycling) and have shifted a pile of grass clippings and some partly decomposed hay that I found around the place (outside of our house yard). When it’s done I actually want to try square foot gardening in that plot (rather than planting in rows).

I would love one day to be able to grow most of our own fruit and veg. That has to be a long term goal as we only have one struggling to survive orange tree at the moment. Babysteps, babysteps. No point in buying any more fruit trees until DH has the chance to dig up some of our clay and add gypsum or whatever he plans to do to give the soil better drainage. I also like the idea of using the chooks to help compost and fertilise sections of the garden. That will require some more building by DH though so I guess it’ll be a while before we get that happening.

So far I have discovered that I can grow lettuce!!! Well, it’s a start but we can’t exist on lettuce alone. LOL. We’ve been using on the lettuce for about a month now and it’s been lots of fun to actually eat something from the garden. I changed the menu plan tonight to have Tacos while we can still eat the lettuce from the garden. It was quite funny to have DH pop out in the middle of dinner to pick a bit more lettuce as we’d eaten all he picked before tea. Mmmm…freshly picked organic lettuce. Don’t think we can get much healthier than that. It’s so great the way you pick some leaves of lettuce and the plant just grows more. I’ve heard you can only do that a certain number of times before the leaves start to get bitter but so far so good. As soon as the frosts set in though I think that will be the end of the lettuces until the end of frost season. My lettuce seeds cost me a whole $1.10 to buy and so far we’ve saved ourselves buying at least 3 heads of lettuce at $3.50 each. So at least we’re well ahead there.

Unfortunately lettuce is the only thing we’ve managed to successfully grow so far. There’s no problem with getting the seeds to pop out of the ground. In fact, I’ve had a lot of satisfaction seeing those tiny seedlings emerge from the soil. I never imagined that gardening could provide such a buzz!!! But we are fighting a losing battle with BUGS - they keep eating my seedlings! I have found some organic methods for deterring bugs (and shhh - did use a bit of poison stuff we had on hand - so much for my organic gardening) but with all the drizzly weather it’s hard to keep up. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to keep fighting or give up for now. I know my grandmother (who was an avid gardener) used to say she couldn’t be bothered with winter vegies because of the amount of bugs around.

Our peas started off well and they haven’t been consumed by creepy crawly things. But they have developed some kind of disease that’s affecting them from the ground up and so they are growing very slowly. Some of them are flowering so *maybe* we’ll get a few peas yet. Whether we’ll get enough to make it worth our while remains to be seen.

Well, I’m not giving up yet. We’re new to this and we’re still learning. Gotta expect a few hiccups along the way. I must admit it’s been a lot more fun (despite our setbacks) than I ever thought it would be.

And I don’t mean the kind that NSW has just suffered through!!! How awful!

I’m talking about my big day in the kitchen on Saturday. Once upon a time I used to do a bit of a baking session once a fortnight and try to make enough to last the fortnight (that’s getting more of a challenge as the kids get older). But recently I’ve discovered the enjoyment of just doing one thing at a time and I’ve tended to extend that to my cooking. A big baking session often involved having several projects on the go at once and trying to co-ordinate all of that. Just making one thing (whether it be a cake or a batch of biscuits or whatever) seems so much more peaceful and pleasurable in comparison.

But for some reason Saturday I decided I was going to make a number of things. Back to my busy, multiple projects type session. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. Mostly I just worked on 1 thing at a time (other than the bread rolls which take a lot longer).

PROJECT 1: FILL UP THE CROCKPOT WITH VEGETABLE SOUP

My aim was to have this ready for lunch on Saturday but I slept in so things were a little crunchy still by lunchtime. LOL. Not to worry, it was mainly for lunches for this week. Had my first taste test today (we were out all day yesterday - Sunday) and mmmmm….yummo! I have never been a fan of homemade vegetable soup before. But using a tomato base for the “stock” seems to suit my tastes well. I never use a recipe so my soups never taste the same from one time to the next.

Here’s a rough outline of how I made it:

* put jar of passata into crockpot then fill jar with water, shake and add that to crockpot. Add beans (already soaked - I use about half a packet) and a couple handfuls of soup mix. I add whatever I tend to have in the way of pulses to the soup whether it be dried or tinned, beans, peas or lentils (or a combination of). Chuck in some diced onion and crushed garlic (I think I used about 1/4 onion and a healthy teaspoon of crushed garlic). You can add whatever seasonings you like really. We’re fairly basic eaters when it comes to seasonings. I usually let that cook for a little while to get the beans etc going. You wouldn’t need to do that if you were using canned (which are a little more expensive) or if you’ve precooked the beans/peas.

* chop up whatever vegies you happen to have - this time I used carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes plus cut up the smaller stems of the celery and the stems of the broccoli (sometimes I’ll chop and freeze celery and broccoli stems and throw in next time I’m making soup - it’s a good way to use up the bits most of the family don’t usually eat). I also added a couple of generous dollops of tomato paste and topped up with a bit more water. Then leave to simmer away for however long.

I love the way soup is so cheap to make, healthy to eat and hard to go wrong with. It’s such a yummy and comforting food to eat on cold wintery days (just like today!).

PROJECT NUMBER 2: CRUMPETS

You know, I didn’t even know it was possible to make your own crumpets until a couple of weeks ago. DH and the kids love crumpets (I’m not such a fan but will eat them). I tend to buy them occasionally as a treat when they’re on special. I find they work out a fairly expensive way to feed the family so we don’t have them all that often. So when I saw this recipe for crumpets posted on the simple savings forum by Paula (the legend) I thought it was well worth the try. I couldn’t believe how easy and cheap it was. They were a hit with the family (although I’m still experimenting to work out how to make them with holes like the bought ones). Even without holes, they still definitely taste like crumpets (in my opinion they’re nicer than bought crumpets). The most time consuming part of the recipe is cooking them but DH is going to try and make me some rings (by cutting up a fruit tin) so that I can cook more at once which will make things progress quicker.

Here’s the recipe:

Dissolve 1 Tbsp yeast into 3 cups warm water. Stir.

Combine: 4 cups plain flour, 2 Tbsp baking powder, 1.5 tsp salt, 1.5 tsp sugar in a bowl.

Add yeast mixture to dry ingredients and beat to a smooth batter.

Cook in greased egg rings in frypan (3/4 fill each one). Egg rings make them slightly smaller than regular round crumpets. I think the cut up tin will make a better size. If you’re not worried about having them perfectly round you can just add dollops of mixture to frypan.

The original recipe I have suggests cooking slowly for 10 minutes, adding the lid of the frypan for the last 2 minutes (which just finishes them cooking on top). I found using setting 5 on my electric frypan gave me the best number of holes in the top. I’m still experimenting with this so I’ll let you know how I go next time I give them a try.

This made enough for our family for 2 meals (about 24 crumpets in total) served with soup.

* Just a note - you still need to toast these, just as you would with bought crumpets.

PROJECT 3: CUPCAKES

Well I’m sure you don’t really need a recipe for these. The kids did have a great time scooping them into the patty pans. For some reason my kids will eat a cupcake whereas they won’t eat a slice of regular cake. So they make a great lunchbox filler (if any make it until tomorrow to go in the lunchboxes). I can’t believe how cheap they are to make - between 5 and 10c each. There aren’t too many things I can find (except popcorn) that work out quite this cheap as a lunchbox treat.

PROJECT 4: BREAD ROLLS

I use my breadmaker to make the kids bread rolls for school. They give them a nice break from sandwiches and work out quite a bit cheaper than 2 slices of bread. One lot of dough in the breadmaker gives me 12 rolls which works out to around 10c each (might be a little higher now that everything seems to have gone up). The cheapest loaf of bread I can buy here works out to around 30c per sandwich (just under).

PROJECT 5: PITA BREAD SNACKS

My DS has decided that these are the best thing since sliced bread! They’re pretty easy to make and don’t work out all that expensive. I buy the pita bread when it’s on sale for $1.99. I know in the city it’s sometimes possible to pick up a pack for as little as 99c which would make this recipe even cheaper to make! The main thing I like about it is that it’s a lot healthier for the kids to crunch on than chips. You just cut the pita bread up into pieces (whatever size and shape you like) then separate each slice in half and place on an oven tray with the cooked side down. Spray the whole tray with some cooking spray and then sprinkle on seasoning of choice (I use a chicken seasoning). Cook in the oven until crisp. One packet of pita bread makes quite a large container full.

PROJECT 6: CREAM OF MUSHROOM SOUP

Well I wore myself out completely on Saturday so project 6 had to wait until today. DH has been picking quite a few mushrooms from the paddock. Just recently I’d seen a recipe for “Cream of Anything Soup” (thanks to the same Paula who provided the crumpet recipe). With free mushrooms (and DH had already eaten some so I knew they were safe) I decided to try my hand at making cream of mushroom soup. I use the tinned variety when cooking steak in the crockpot as a kind of gravy and it comes out yummy, yummy. Again I couldn’t believe how quick and easy this recipe turned out to be. I now have what I’d estimate to be 10 tins of cream of mushroom soup (which I will freeze when it has cooled) for the cost of around 2 cans (on special).

CREAM OF ANYTHING SOUP
4 cups powdered milk
1.5 cups cornflour
0.5 cups chicken stock
4 tsp onion flakes
2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp pepper

Mix together and store in an airtight jar. To make up soup use 1/3 cup of mixture in 1 mug hot water.

As I tend to do with recipes I just adapted the above idea to suit what I had on hand and what I wanted to do. I used 1/4 fresh onion chopped up since I bought some cheap recently (and it didn’t matter as I didn’t need the recipe to stay dry as is the intention with this recipe). Then I shook in some mixed herbs as that’s what I happened to have in the cupboard. I added 12 cups water and chopped up some mushrooms and threw them in. Then cooked on the stovetop until it thickened. I’ll freeze it in margarine containers ready to be thrown in the crockpot whenever I need it. With not having to pay anything for the mushrooms, I’m estimating that each “tin” of this soup has cost me around 25-30c to make.

Thus endeth my big cook up. After having DH’s grandfather and 2 aunties visit this morning (which was lovely I might add) and being out all day yesterday, I’m a bit on the tired side. So this afternoon is “take it easy” time.

DH tells me that this morning when he packed the kids off to school they were most excited about their lunchboxes. It’s funny isn’t it how at times we can go to a lot of cost or effort in wanting to keep our children happy. Some days it feels like it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t keep them happy. Well this morning my kids were happy. What were they so happy about? Popcorn in their lunchbox!!!! LOL.

Popcorn is one of those things that has a cycle in this house. I make it for a while then stop and forget all about it. It’s not like it’s all that hard to make. I have a popcorn maker that DH bought me for my birthday many years ago. It’s not like it’s all that expensive either. Quite the opposite in fact. I can feed all 3 kids a snack for around 20c. It’s just something I don’t always think about.

My 9 year old DS had complained a couple of weeks ago that the youngest was getting popcorn while they were at school and “how come we never get any”. I think it might have something to do with the fact that the 3 year will ask for popcorn whereas with my 9 year old it can very much be out of sight, out of mind. My memory is about the same at the moment. So with the popcorn maker and popping corn tucked away in the cupboard - it doesn’t always get thought about.

So finally yesterday, when the 3 year old asked for popcorn, I made a full batch with a sprinkle of icing sugar on it and then when it was cool I packed up half a dozen snap lock bags (which we do reuse in this house - further to my rubbish challenge) for the kids lunch boxes.

Their reaction this morning just goes to show me that often it really is the simple things in life that are the best! LOL.

It’s been a tough week this week so I haven’t quite made it back to talk about how the Vegetable Lentil Loaf went on Saturday. Sorry about that.

I served it with brown gravy in an attempt to “disguise” the lack of meat. It went down okay with DH and I although we’re still struggling to get used to the texture (a bit like the chickpea patties). The kids were a little bit less than impressed. My 9 year old’s comment during the dinner conversation was “I’m going to be the healthiest kid in my class”. It was said in a way that suggested being healthy wasn’t his most favourite thing in the world. LOL. I told him I’d be quite happy for him to be the healthiest kid in his class. As I’ve been introducing new foods I’ve been talking to the kids about the importance of eating healthily and having a wider variety of foods in our diet.

DH has suggested that I use some mince in it next time to kind of disguise the texture a bit. While it will then no longer be vegetarian, we both feel it’s more important to increase our intake of beans and legumes and reduce our intake of meat, rather than strictly try to eat vegetarian meals. So we need to find ways to do this that we’re all going to enjoy, rather than “suffer” through. Personally I think it’s just a matter of adjusting our taste buds. But slowly, slowly is the way to go here so I don’t have a revolt on my hands. LOL.

There was a little bit left over and I had a couple of slices cold for lunch the next day. It was delicious cold!!!! DH tried it cold but wasn’t quite so impressed. He did heat up a couple of slices and had it with a plate of salad for lunch though - so obviously he didn’t really mind it. There was one thin slice left so today I diced it up and chucked it into a pot of soup I’m making.

In case anyone is interested, here is the recipe. It is my own adaptation of a recipe that was posted on one of my yahoo groups. I seem to have this problem with making a recipe exactly as written - always have to change it a little bit to make it “mine” (or to suit our tastes).

VEGETABLE LENTIL LOAF

3 cups green lentils (the original recipe says brown but I couldn’t find any)
2 carrots, grated
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 cup breadcrumbs
200g tomato paste
1/2 onion, grated (if you like chunks of onion you can dice it)
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 180C
Grease loaf pan
Process/blend half lentils until smooth (I just stuck my stab mixer into the whole lot a few times so they were partially blended)
Mix ingredients together
Press into tin and bake 30-35 minutes
Leave to stand in tin for 5 minutes before turning out

This week I also cooked up some diced steak in the crockpot. I added a tin of beef and vegetable soup I had in the cupboard plus some gravy mix and cornflour. The first night we had a steak pie (by adding a sheet of puff pastry). I then added some red kidney beans (some that I’d prepared earlier lol) from the freezer to stretch it a bit and made some of that into shepherds pie. The kids didn’t bat an eyelid at the beans in the shepherd’s pie. DH proclaimed that one a success! I really quite enjoyed it. So we’ll do that one again.

Today I’ve been making up a big batch of vegetable soup in the crockpot. I started with some yellow split peas and added a tin of pureed tomatoes that I had in the cupboard as well as some onion, garlic and mixed herbs. Later I added some chopped carrot, potato and sweet potato which were the vegies I happened to have on hand. I added another frozen container of red kidney beans and also wanted to add a can of chickpeas. When I grabbed the can of chickpeas and opened it, I discovered it was a can of cannelinni beans. So they went in as well as the can of chickpeas. Taste tested some this afternoon. It is delicious!!!! Such a comforting thing to have for lunch on a cold day. And is filled with lots of goodies. The crockpot is almost full so that’s about 6 litres of soup. Will freeze some I think. Haven’t worked out how much it cost me to make but I’m guessing not very much.

Can you tell I’m having lots of fun finding ways to add beans, peas and legumes to our daily diet? I’ve almost used up all that I bought last shop so will have to stock up again soon.

I have discovered a great combination of foods for a dessert that I LOVE and is fairly healthy too. Cut up apple (green apples work best but it’s still nice with whatever apples you have), several dollops of natural yoghurt and a drizzle of honey. It’s such a great mixture of flavours and textures. I’ve never really been a big fan of honey but have been using it more in my attempts to reduce the amount of white sugar we consume. I think it’s kind of growing on me as a “sweet treat” and because it really is very sweet, you don’t need to use very much.

My other favourite food at the moment is celery pieces with cheese. No idea why I’m craving celery but at least it’s a real food. It actually seems to be quite a good substitute for my chipaholic cravings.

With Easter having just past, I can’t say my attempts to keep white sugar out of my diet are going all that well. Chocolate chip hot cross buns - way too yummy for my waistline!!! LOL. But I figure the most important thing with improving our health through diet is to keep learning and trying new things.

My next experiment will be to find a bean or legume that I like cold to have on my lunch time salad. That will be interesting as I’m a fairly new convert to eating legumes and beans much at all, let alone eating them cold. Coming into winter we’ll probably eat more soups for lunch and they’re much easier for including beans and legumes. If I get game enough to try them cold, I’ll let you know how it goes.