Time For A Food Challenge

The Monthly Shopping has been a big help with less time at supermarkets. Especially as the past 2 months have been very busy. But this month is the time to a stocktake and cleaning, where we store our food. As well as prepare for the coming busy months.

So $21 Challenge here we come :)

Have just finished a stocktake and with a bit of filling we have almost enough for next months dinners. Almost enough meat for each day, OH BOY!
Might need some flour and sugar for baking. With our chickens provide us with eggs and a freezer with 7 butters, we don't need much else.
We have lots of potatoes, silverbeet and oranges
So now to menu plan.
Will come back to share how that goes :)

Last Day of Ham

We are finally coming to the end of our ham.

6 days of Ham

It has been great and I would do again. We have had Honey Glazed Ham with 2 salads, Cold ham and Lemon, Ginger, Turmeric rice, Creamy ham and mushroom pasta, as well as

Sliverbeet and Ham Quiche we had for our 4th Ham dinner.

Potato Rosti we had with our ham for our 5th Ham dinner.

Our 5th Ham dinner with lettuce and tomatoes from our vegetable garden.

And tonight for our 6th Ham dinner we are having Ham and pea soup with fresh bread.

Pea and Ham soup, yummy.

We also had a dessert for out last night of ham. 3 flavours of Instant Pudding layered in a ramekin. Cost $3 for the 6 of us.

This $30 ham has been real value for our family. Not just with dinners but also with ham sandwiches and a couple of breakfast meals. We still have lots of meat in our freezer, to last us not only to the end of the month but even a few weeks of February.
When getting the milk for the week this morning, I noticed ham was again on special. So I might pick up one at the end of the week for our freezer again.
But we are looking forward to no more ham for awhile. :)

3rd day of Ham for Dinner

This time it was Creamy Ham and Mushroom Pasta.
Which was very fast and easy, though I did find I was missing one ingredient - Evaporated Milk.
So instead of going and buying a can for about $2 I looked up online how to make it myself at home. This is what I found and it worked really well.
Evaporated Milk

And the Creamy Ham and Mushroom Pasta was yummy.

Creamy Ham and Mushroom Pasta

I think we are now at halfway with the ham, But DH (Dear Husband) is thinking of using some for ham and eggs for breakfast. I will also be making a Sliverbeet and Ham Quiche for the 4th dinner.

As a side note I have finished 2 more cards for my card box.

I love sunflowers

A simple card

Now DD10 is making cards too. lovely to watch her get creative. And with her help we are saving another $7. Total card saving to $19 now. Next we will be making envelopes for all our cards. But I need some practise with those.

Ham Dinner Number 2

Day 2 of using our Ham up for dinner. Had Ham with Lemon Ginger Turmeric Rice.
The rice is a recipe from Jamie's Ministry of Food cook book. Takes plain rice and gives it a new life.

Cooking the lemon, ginger and turmeric into a paste. Smells good!

Plain basic rice.

Becomes yummy, colourful happy rice.

And served up with the ham. Happy Family

We still have lots of ham to eat, and more recipes to try.

Our Basic Weekly Grocery Shop

Went grocery shopping yesterday, just for the basics. To get us through till next week. Here my shopping list.

• 3L milk
• 1.5kg plain flour
• 1.5kg white sugar
• 12 eggs
• a loaf of bread
• 250g cheese
• 2kg bag of onions
• 1,5kg bag of carrots
• 4kg bag of potatoes

TOTAL came to $30.35

To stretch to milk out we have to add powder milk.  To stretch the bread out will have to make some of our own if we can't get some free bread.
We have plenty of meat in the freezer, and lots of greens in the garden. We are not starving, instead we are filling up on creative ideas to use up what we have.

Like my Leftover Triffle
First found in the pantry 2 jars of homemade mixed berry jam, with mold on top. Very upset with the jar seals. So took off top and poured the uninfected parts into a pot. Heated up jam, and poured into dish. Then added triffle sponge that was just passed it's used by date. Broke that all up over the jam. Finally used up the last of our custard powder to make custard to go on top. Have no cream so served it without. Everyone enjoyed the dessert after a meal of Tray-baked Lamb and Couscous.

Now if our dear 'Mumma' hen would just start to lay again, then we wouldn't have to buy eggs.

Stocktake with photos

Thought instead of sharing a list of our stocktake, what about a photo stocktake instead.

Top part of our pantry. Hard to take photos as pantry is in a walkway to our kitchen.

Bottom part of our pantry, cans are behind the large plastic containers.

a corner cupboard where we store extra flour, sugar, rice, oil and tomato sauce.

Another cupboard where we store potatoes, kumara, drinks and chips.

Fridge door we have some milk, yogurt, jams, mustard's etc

Fridge inside. See those green lid containers they are great for storing veggies like carrots, broccoli, capsicum.

Small freezer under fridge, this is top drawer with abit of butter, fish and ham burger buns.

Small freezer under fridge 2nd drawer, has ham, butter, peas, pizza bases, cheese and ice blocks (they were a Christmas gift).

Big freezer in our garage, top drawer has milk and bread, there is also some pastry and Bacon above the drawer.

Big freezer 2nd drawer with sponge cake and mixed veggies

Big freezer 3rd drawer with mainly beef meat, but also has some chicken kebabs and pizza cheese.

Big freezer 4th drawer with mainly chicken meat, but there are a couple packs of pork sausages.

Big freezer bottom drawer with lamb meat

Have just realise have to other areas with food too.  Under our sink we keep our onions and garlic. A cupboard with our cups also has our home baking. and a small high cupboard has our home preserves.
Then there is also the garden.

Doing a $21 Challenge

The $21 Challenge is from Simple Savings. Its a great way to use up food in your Freezers, Pantry, garden etc.

This is the book that is very helpful with the challenge.

The challenge is for a week. But because our freezer and pantry is so full from the Christmas season, we will be doing this for about a month. The $21 is for a family of 4, so we have $31.50per week. For our family it doesn't include milk, which is $21.95 for a weeks worth of milk. So our true total is $53.45 including milk per week. Also the $31.50 is only for food, not non-food items. Not that we need to get any non-food items, laundry full with what we need.

So I have taken a stocktake of all our food we have.
Then have made a weekly menu plan, based around the food we have.
From that menu plan was able to see if there was anything we needed to get for the week.

Wont share with you the stocktake because it is very long a quite amazing how much food we have. But here is my menu plan for this week.
Breakfast: put together in one container rolled oats, toasted muesli and honey puffs. That has made one full container to last us the week as a crazy muesli :) also have weet-bix, and lots of bread that can be toasted up.
Lunch and snacks: have lots of bread that we can use. As well as fruit, and baking (have to finish of my birthday cake, my sister brought me)
Dinner is more planned
Monday: Beef stir fry with veggies and noodles
Tuesday: Roast chicken with roast veggies and broccoli
Wednesday: Chicken rice risotto (with peas)
Thursday: Chicken pot pies with potatoes and mixed veggies
Friday: homemade Pizza and chips (Hawaiian and Chicken)
Saturday: BBQ sausages and salads (green and either pasta or potato salad)
Sunday: Tray-baked Lamb with cous cous

We don't always have dessert but do have some jelly and instant pudding that we can have sometimes.

Have already brought milk $21.95 and with my $31.50 have only spent $18.70 for kumara 500g, onions 1.5kg, Apples 1.5kg, and 12 pack of eggs, ice cream 2L and a extra milk 3L for kids milkshakes.
So have $12.80 for the rest of the week.

And yes I believe we can make it through the week and not go over budget.