Country Drive = Cheap Food

Our family driving through the Karangahake Gorge. Love our country :)

 DS13 and DS14 have been on a christian kids camp as junior leaders. The camp is at Waihi Beach, a lovely place (beautiful beach). It means having a country drive to and from, but well worth it. The boys had a great time, and we got to pick up some cheap fresh food.

The results from a night of cracking walnut shells.

There was a couple of cute kids selling walnuts on the side of the road. We had to stop and buy a bag. It cost a $10, but well worth it when we almost filled to jars with them. To buy them from the shops and fill the same jars would cost over $28. So plans are to use them for carrot cake and yummy dinners of Bacon and Walnut Gnocchi. Also should make a batch of Afghan biscuits with walnuts on top :)
But that was not all we got. At a fruit and veggie shop heading home (before the city) , we picked up some carrots and onions. 20kg onions for $6.99 and 15kg carrots for $7.99.
At another shop brought 500g of garlic for $5, we love our garlic.
Now I need to prepare some of our carrots for the freezer, to make them last like our broccoli we did. With this type of buying I might be able to get our grocery budget lower than $100 per week. That would be helpful.

Waihi Beach on the day I dropped the boys off to their camp. Could of stayed there for the week myself :)

Week Four $100 Food Shop

Was able to keep to the $100 last week. I was under until thought why not stock up on on canned chopped tomatoes. At .73c each they are worth it and are great to add to casseroles or making pasta sauce. So we now have 9 cans at the bottom of our pantry. Then I saw baked beans also at a good price of .85c each these are great to stretch mince out or a quick meal on toast. So we now have 9 cans of them too.
This week I aim to get cans of chickpeas to build up our pantry stockpile.

Week Four $100 Food Shop

Menu Plan
Breakfast: cereal or toast
Lunch: leftovers, sandwiches or fritters and chips
Snacks: Chocolate cake, cookies
Tuesday: Chicken Buns
Wednesday: Mince dish (with rice, baked beans, chopped tomatoes and veggies)
Thursday: Salmon and kale quiche
Friday: Corned Beef with mashed potato and mustard sauce
Saturday: Cold Corn beef with salad
Sunday: Homemade Hamburgers
Monday: Beef or Chicken Stir fry (uses up veggies)

Shopping List
Kids cereal (whatever is on sale)
Muesli (bulk up with rolled oats)
White sugar
Plain Flour
Icing sugar (if our food processor was better would make it ourselves)
Pasta (good to have on hand)
Mayo (used for the chicken buns, DH would make some but is doing more at work while his workmate has his holiday, so comes home tired)
Fruit - apricots are on sale
Milk
Cream
Cheese
Cocoa
Buy bulk canned chickpeas

Week Three $100 Food Shop

Last week (week two) we spent the whole $100 on food. The main reason being the heat wave we had. The children started drinking more milk because it was chilled in the fridge. So we had a talk with them and filled a large 2 litre bottle with water, that they could have instead. But I also crumbled with the heat and brought a box of ice blocks and a tub of ice cream. So this week I need to get on to making our own ice blocks. We were given some fruit juice which would be perfect for that. I'm still very happy we made it through the week not spending more then our $100 budget.

Now ready for Week Three $100 Food Shop

Menu Plan

Breakfast is cereal or toast
Lunch sandwiches or fritters
Snacks we have chocolate cake (DS13 made for us), 100s & 1000s biscuits, and fruit (apples at the moment)
Dinner
Tuesday: Ratatouille (using our courgettes, and my mum's green pepper) with toast.
Wednesday: Pasta Dinner from our freezer (when we had leftovers from a large pasta dinner)
Thursday: Tray Baked Lamb with Cous cous (another dinner using our courgettes)
Friday: Pumpkin Curry with rice
Saturday: BBQ sausages with salad
Sunday: Chicken Stir fry with rice
Monday: Corned Beef with veggies

Shopping

We are out of white sugar so need to get for making Courgette Jam (yes another thing to use up more courgettes) and our ginger beer. Will also get some flour for baking. Happy to see butter on sale this week 2 for $6, so will stock up our freezer with more. Great for baking :)
Don't need to get milk yet, after talking with kids we are stretching it out again. I will make up some powder milk for baking, have been lapse in that. Need to get more kids cereal, sometime the kids will have 2 bowls for breakfast. I also have to get DS7 pasta, he is hard to feed and this is one thing I don't mind getting. We are working with him to try more but it's slow work. Also on list is cinnamon (baking), eggplant (ours not grown yet), can tomatoes, and chicken breast for stir fry.

I'm excited because of doing this challenge we will have a $671.10 debt paid off next week YAY!
That motivates me to keep going.
We are also using up what we need to from our pantry, fridge and freezer :)

Week One $100 Food Shop

Making a good start to our $100 Food Shop Challenge (long may it continue)



Our Budget Envelope for our $100 Food Shop. Having only a $100 placed in the envelope helps us not to over spend.

Part of what is helping us this week is using what we already have in our garden and pantry.



The plums we were given are now turned into......

Plum preserves ready for winter.

All the plums are cooked up, but some are for summer desserts. Plums and ice cream yum :)

We are having a courgette glut. So coming up with ways to use them.

 

 



With the help of our eggs, flour, baking powder and some milk. We were able to make fritters.

Courgette Fritters ready for lunch.

For dinner we had roasted scallopini with roasted potatoes and cold sliced ham.
I'm going to be making courgette chutney, which will help to use more of our courgettes. Then use that for our homemade hamburgers.
There are also recipes for making cakes with courgettes, we should try as well.

Starting the $100 Food Shop Challenge Again

Time to get back to our $100 Food shop. With our garden providing alot of fresh food and finding a great new shop called Reduced to Clear (sells cheap groceries), this shouldn't be to hard.
Just a reminder this $100 is just for food, not for non food items like toothpaste, toilet paper etc. And is per week (so $5200 for the year).
With menu planning, sticking to the shopping list and shopping once a week we hopefully should stick to the budget. Will shop with cash (and our homemade envelope system will help with that).
Also we are making our own products that we would normally buy like ginger beer, basil pesto, tomato pasta sauce etc that will help to keep costs down.
Finally the recipes, not having flashy expensive dinners. Not always having meat. Also times when we are using up leftovers.

Look forward to seeing what we can achieve this new year :)

Menu Plan Last Week of September

Finally finish this week menu plan. To many choices didn't make it easy.

MONDAY: My mum had cooked us a yummy casserole (was lamb or beef?) which we had with our boiled potatoes, and steamed garlic silverbeet.

TUESDAY: Using up the gravy and leftover beef making Beef Soup served with buttered buns

WEDNESDAY: Having a bit of fun with Tray Baked Lamb Chops with Cous Cous. It's a one tray dish that is so yummy and filling.

THURSDAY: Basil Pesto Chicken Pasta. A quick easy dish, great for a very busy day with hospital trips, and school production etc

FRIDAY: I had trouble thinking what to do for dinner? To may choices :) But decided on Red Beans and Rice.

SATURDAY: We are having dinner with friends :)

SUNDAY: A good ole Roast Chicken with Roast Vegetables and homemade gravy mmmmmm.

These are all what we are having for dinner. Because breakfast is pretty much the same porridge or cereal (Sunday we might have pancakes). And lunch is normally sandwiches, snacks is home baking and fruit.

Now I have been looking at another project for our menu planning. Have found two interesting ideas that I would like to try.
I found a list of ideas here http://tipnut.com/meal-organizer/
and from the list I found the wipe off board and the DIY board to be the ones I would love to do.
I like the wipe off board because it is simple and I think I can do very cheap. Would also make a fun gift to give others. Can have it hang on the wall or stick to the fridge.
I like the DIY board because it is going that bit further into menu planning having all the meals already written and recipes on hand too. But it involves more work and costs more to make.

What do you think?

Wednesday - Errand Day

For Errand Day my planner, to look upcoming events we need to prepare for. Need to look at our budget. Also my Bible to prepare for women's study.

First thing this morning I have abit of time to do some planning for the coming days. Then I have women's study. A lovely time with some dear ladies from my Church. An encouraging time, with friends who are also mum's and Nana's :)
I have to get back to this being the day I do my shopping. But today will be spent catching up on the cleaning I was meant to do yesterday.
As well as a look over at our budget.
But right now better get children to school.