How We Save Money With Our $100 Food Shop - Lunch

The most common lunch we have is sandwiches. Partly because of a dear friend we can get free bread. But also because it's great travel food for kids going to school and DH going to work.

• We have the basic sandwich spreads like Peanut Butter, Marmite/Vegemite(whatever is cheapest at the time), Honey and homemade Jam.
• We use leftover meat from dinner for a sandwich filling. Like chicken, beef or bacon.
• Leftover salads like coleslaw, green salad or tomato and red onion salad.
• Fresh veggies from the garden, like tomatoes and lettuce when in season. Or sliverbeet finely sliced.
• DH makes great Aioli with our chickens eggs, that can go on our salad sandwiches. I make chutneys, pickles and relish form our garden produce.
• We make our own humus, and egg salad.
• Having a little grated cheese can make a sandwich tasty too.

Our family doesn't always have sandwiches though. Sometimes we are home and can make cooked lunches. Have something more filling so dinner can be more simple at night.

• Sometimes DH, DS14 and DS13 take leftovers from dinner in little containers they can microwave for lunch.
• Homemade hot chips with Aioli and tomato sauce.
• Toasted sandwiches with a fillings of cheese, baked beans, sweet corn, or leftover mince.
• Salads like potato salad with some bacon
• Homemade mini pizzas
• Homemade hamburgers
• Homemade soup with bread
• Roast chicken, and mayonnaise on buns. Leftover chicken is used for dinner and stock.

For us its about using what we have first before buying extra for lunch. Using up leftovers, making our own condiments. There is more I would like to learn how to make our own of. I will be making our own peanut butter, to see if I can make it cheaper. Even want to try making some of our own cheese.

• We buy cheese on sale 1kg blocks (last time time I got them for $6.50). And cut them up into 250g blocks, grate them in my food processor and bag them in zip lock bags for the freezer. They defrost faster, and ready to use for meals. That gives me about 8 weeks worth of cheese (that worked out about $1.63per bag) . I was also able to do this for Parmesan cheese, with a very good special on blocks of that cheese. Came to around $2 a bag of 200g Parmesan cheese (yummy in risotto).

How We Save Money With Our $100 Food Shop - Snacks

Snacks are usually morning tea, afternoon tea and sometimes after dinner. They can be taken to school or work, and on trips. They help us to have a break or sustain us until a main meal.

The easiest and cheapest snack we have is popcorn. We always have popcorn on hand in the pantry, and with our popcorn maker (a birthday gift) it only takes a couple of minutes to make.

And thanks to The Food Truck we can make our own potato chips, it's not hard. It's easier with our mandolin slicer (another birthday gift) to slice our potatoes into thin slices. Season the potato and lay out on baking paper on a baking tray, spray tops with a little oil. Place in a preheated oven 150'C for 20-25 minutes or until golden and crunchy. I like these with garlic salt. Kids like chicken salt.

Fruit and veggies yummy, even better when they are homegrown. Sliced apples, scooping out fresh feijoa, kiwifruit with our free fruit spoons. Peeling mandarins, squeezing juice from oranges, lemons and grapefruit. Popping berries just picked, straight into your mouth in Summer. Carrot and celery sticks, though my kids will just eat a carrot as is most of the time. Eating seasonal helps to keep the costs down.

Home Baking is a good way to have a yummy snack that doesn't have to cost a lot.

• You don't always need eggs. Like in ANZAC, and gingerbread biscuits.
• You can make sure a cake lasts longer if you make it into cupcakes and then kids can have 1 cupcake instead of 1 slice of cake
• You don't always need butter. Like in Carrot cake, Pikelets, Lemonade Scones, ABC muffins and even a Chocolate Mud cake.
• Buy butter on sale for under $3, and store in freezer for when you do need butter for baking.
• Limit how many biscuits you are aloud to have at one time. For our family it is 2 biscuits at one time.
• I buy plain flour and white sugar in bulk. So I don't have to buy every week. Last week I brought 5kg white sugar for $7.99 (so $1.60 per kg). Because we use less then 1kg per week (unless I'm preserving). I shouldn't need to buy for another 5 weeks. Next week I need to buy plain flour.
• You don't always need white sugar. Like Fried scones and Honey cake uses honey and dates, no sugar. Or some recipes ask for brown sugar instead. Like Gingerbread biscuits and muffins, Date loaf, and ABC muffins.
• If you are out of icing sugar for icing your cake, you can make your own. Add white sugar to a food processor, mix until you have icing sugar.
• Sometimes you have to make do with what you have. One time I was making ANZAC biscuits and realised I was out of rolled oats (last had been put into our muesli). Was able to use our muesli instead, and it was yummy. Didn't have walnuts for a recipe, but did have cashew nuts, so used instead. Ran out of chocolate chips for chocolate chip cookies. But had some leftover chocolate from a present, chopped it up and used instead. Just didn't have enough plain flour for a cake, used some wholemeal to top up (could have also used some self raising flour I had in pantry too)
• ABC muffins are a wonderful way to use up bruised (or half eaten) apples and bananas, that the kids won't eat into a muffin they all will have.
• I also have some bananas that I was able to buy cheap, in the freezer. Waiting to become Banana cake or Banana Walnut Golden Syrup loaf :)
• Freezers are also a great place to store baking. At the moment we have a Carrot cake in ours. Great to have on hand when you not in the mood to bake. All I have to do is defrost and ice the cake and  it's really for school lunches. This cake was half of a large cake I had made. We have also stored in the freezer before Banana cake, ABC muffins, even some biscuit mix that was ready to cut into slices and bake.
• We use our lemons (from our tree) for making lemon cupcakes, and Wholemeal Lemon and Poppy Seed cake and Lemon slice. Don't see the point in buying them. And when we have so many that we can't use them fast enough, we freeze the juice for the times when we don't have lemons. We uses our oranges and grapefruit also as a flavour for cakes.

Sometimes it nice to have a drink with our snacks. It can be a hot drink like coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, or cold drink like water, milk, milkshake, and juice.

• Milkshakes are usually made when we have leftover ice cream that is not enough for dessert. Add it to some milk and mix (we have two options a hand powered blender or powered one). It can make a small amount of ice cream become 4 cups of milkshake that the kids can have with their 2 biscuits.
• Juice we usually make form our own fruit, it just to expensive to buy. Sometimes when I can get a box of cheap fruit from the fruit shop there will be some in there that can be made into juice.
• In Summer I make Ginger beer, Welsh Nectar (like lemonade), and Winter I make Lemon & Barley Cordial

Lastly sometimes if I make it we have yogurt. Served in cups, since kids will take to much if in bowls.

How We Save Money With Our $100 Food Shop - Breakfast

I was asked how do I keep our Food shop so low? And I hope I can answer that question over the next few days.
Firstly we have that limit of $100 (sometimes we spend less) because we want to pay off our debt. We have a goal and focus that helps us not to get caught up with the wants we can have when we walk around a supermarket. I can stand in line waiting to pay and not pick up that yummy looking chocolate bar, because I don't want that to mean we have use money we need to pay bills.

For those who don't know we are a family of 6 = Me DH, DS14, DS13, DD11, and DS8 (DH= Dear Husband, DS= Dear Son, and DD= Dear Daughter). DH works, and I'm a stay at home mum who is homeschooling our youngest. We have 6 chickens, a bunny, a cat (who is a great mouser), and fish with snails. We live in a little home in the city, with a veggie garden and 12 fruit trees, berry plants and herbs dotted around.

Today I'm going to look at BREAKFAST FOODS

For breakfast we mostly have porridge in Winter and muesli in Summer. I can buy a bay of 1.5kg rolled oats for $3.99 and have it last for a couple of weeks. The muesli costs more, I get a bag of 650g for $3.99. I bulk the muesli up with a couple of cups of rolled oats and coconut. And if I can get dried fruit and nuts on special I add them too. It makes the muesli last longer. We also have weet-bix in our pantry as a back up. DH and DS14 like to have it as a snack to tie them over between meals. For the younger kids we sometime buy a packed of Homebrand Honey Puffs 425g or Budget Coco Pops 600g for about $3.99.
But breakfast doesn't always have to be cereal. In the weekends or holidays we can have meals like Toast and a Hot Drink, Bacon and Eggs (our chickens eggs), Pancakes (great with our lemons), French Toast (great way to use stale bread), English Muffins (homemade), and Fried Scones with Golden Syrup.

• Our Chickens don't cost us a lot to look after and feed. They love to have fresh grass and sliver beet. They eat our leftovers (like rice, bread). I even keep them crumbs and seeds from our grainy bread. But a big help is my mum and dad give us large bags of chicken food for the eggs we give them each week. At the moment we have been getting 4 eggs a day, but sometimes goes up to 6 or down to 2. When we have a lot to use, having bacon and eggs for breakfast is a good way to use up eggs.

DH makes the best pancakes, I try to take turns making them but they don't turn out the same. Jamie Oliver has a cheap and easy recipe for Pancakes, called ONE-CUP PANCAKES.
Using one cup or mug measure 1 cup/mug of self-raising flour, and 1 cup/mug of milk into a bowl. Add 1 egg and whisk together. and there is your pancake batter. you can serve pancakes so many ways but our favorite and cheapest is icing sugar sprinkled on with the juice of our lemon picked fresh from the tree.

• I make up milk powder for baking in a glass jar (about 1 litre), it is keep in the fridge for the week ahead. It saves money buying fresh milk all the time. This milk is great to use with making pancakes.

 DS14 like making French Toast, it simple and can be served savory or sweet. Sweet can have with golden syrup or jam. Savory can be with bacon or a pickle. It's a good way to use bread at the end of the week before you get fresh bread for the next week.
The English Muffin recipe I have I'm sure is from the Destitute Gourmet website. And is like my Fried Scones, so which one we make is based on what ingredients we have on hand at the time.

FRIED SCONES

4 1/2 C plain flour

4 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 Tsp butter

1 1/2 C milk

oil for shallow frying (I like to add a bit of butter for taste)

Shift together flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Add butter and rub in with your finger tips. Stir in milk, until a soft dough is formed. Knead lightly and roll on a floured board.

Cut into rounds 2-3cms thick with a cookie cutter (or a small tuna can that has both lid and bottom off works). Heat oil (butter) in fry pan and fry the scones gently on both sides until golden.

These are great with golden syrup.

• Another good thing to have with breakfast is fruit. It doesn't have to be fresh fruit on muesli. Sometimes the kids don't eat their fruit for lunch, or there is some fruit in the fruit bowl that has a soft spot. Even going in the garden you can find some fruit fallen off the tree, but not enough to fill preserving jars. Or you have been to a fruit shop and they have had a box of fruit for $2 but you can't eat it all before it goes off. Cook it up, add some sugar and keep in a jar in the fridge for breakfast. We have done feijoa and apple, pear and peach even a berry mix, so no fruit goes to waste, and breakfast is filling.

Lastly DH and I like to have a coffee every morning, and sometimes the kids like to have a cup of tea or hot chocolate. It doesn't have to use a lot of milk, and tea, coffee, and hot chocolate doesn't have to cost alot. The last time I brought tea bags it was a 100 bags of Bell tea for $2 (reduced to clear). We are still going through it as we either share a tea bag or add 2 bags to our tea pot and fill. Hot Chocolate we use Homebrand drinking Chocolate 400g for $3.79. At first the kids went through that very fast. But since I don't buy it often, they have gotten better at making it last.

• Coffee beans can be brought cheaply if you buy green beans and roast them yourself. DH likes making a good coffee. He buys the beans from the Green Bean House, the price can change with what they get (and you can choose). It can range between $15-$26 including delivery with the beans we get. That's for 1kg of green beans that swell a bit when roasted. DH batch roasts them in a cast iron fry pan. It doesn't take long, and we grind them while reading the news or talking together. These beans last us over a month and I like it better then brought coffee from cafes :)



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 Two $100 Food Shop

Made it through week one of the $100 Food Shop. And spent less then $100! Long may that continue. A lot has to do with our veggie garden, and well stocked pantry and freezer.

Started with $100

Spent $79.70

Have $20.30 left

 

Will keep that $20.30 in another envelope for just in case. Just in case there is a sale on item (like butter that I can freeze), or just in case I go over $100 (hopefully not this 2nd week).
 

Menu plan for this 2nd week of $100 Food Shop is:

Breakfast is cereal, Lunch is sandwiches, Snacks is fruit and baking. This is for everyday.

Tuesday Dinner - is minced stuffed marrow with crusty top, salad on the side.

Wednesday Dinner - is Roast chicken with roast veggies.

Thursday Dinner - is Creamy chicken pasta with veggies.

Friday Dinner - is Chicken rice risotto.

Saturday Dinner - is Silver beet Quiche with salad.

Sunday Dinner - is American Hot Dogs and homemade potato chips.

Monday Dinner - is Pasta dinner from freezer bulked up with our veggies.

Baking that I need to do is biscuits and cupcakes.

Shopping that I need to get is

milk

fruit (what is in season and cheap, our peaches and fejoias are not ready yet)

oil

cereal - kids cereal and muesli

onions

garlic

That's about if for food items, have just a few non food items to get (toilet paper and light bulbs)





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 Planner - DONE!

Went with the wipe board menu planner. I had the paper for it, and it didn't take long to make.

Here is my menu planner. Not very clear but those butterflies are cut out paper with their wings lifted up.

Up on my kitchen wall, already being used.

This is one way to save on printing out menu plans.
Made 2 with my nieces today for their mums. The girls helped choose the paper and frames. Then they also helped with gluing and stickers. Shows how easy it is to make a 2 and 3 year olds can make them (with help of course).

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?

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 :)

Red Beans and Rice and Other Poorman's Meals

Last night I finally made Red Beans and Rice. I have been wanting to make for awhile, looking over lots of American recipes and reading up on the history of the recipes.
This is what I came up with - It's a poorman's meal that was usually done on Monday. Sunday they would have a dinner of Ham or pork, and the leftovers would go into the pot with the red beans red bell peppers and celery to slow cook for the day. For an easy meal served with rice, after a day of washing.
There were lots of different types, "Mum ma's" always have their own way to cook for their family. But the basics were always about the same.
Yesterday I was able to pick up some pork bones for $2, and slow cooked them in chicken stock. I did add some red wine vinegar, chili powder and garlic salt. The red beans were in a can so already soaked, and cooked. In a large pot I added chopped onion, garlic, celery and bell peppers. Then a can of red beans, and a can of chopped tomatoes (found a few recipes used tomatoes). As I didn't have a lot of chili powder used some cumin powder, which worked for my family anyway. Finally added the liquid from cooking the pork bones, and sliced the meat of the pork bones (more like it fell off the bones). And after a bit more cooking (including the rice in another pot), dinner was ready.
And was well liked by my family, it was all eaten and bowls licked.
So well worth trying :)

This is not the only Poorman's Meals our family has tried.

• Pizza, that takes little amount of ingredients go a long way.
• Clara's Poorman Meal with hot dogs and potatoes, very yummy and filling.
• Waste Not Want Not Soup, which helps clean out the fridge.
• Slow Cooked Irish Stew, which takes cheap meat into a good meal.
• DH's Tomato and Bacon Pasta, makes alot.
• 3 Day Chicken, makes chicken cheap. Day 1 Roast chicken, Day 2 leftover chicken, Day 3 chicken soup. (can also do with leg of lamb)
• Bean and Sausage Casserole, served with mashed potato, wonderful comfort food.
• Corn and Tuna Fritters, a great way to have fish.

And then there are others I want to try

• Scots Potato Pies, where a large potato is used to hollow to make the pies.
• French Onion Soup, great way to use cheap onions.
• Clara's - Drunken Chuck's Minestrone, looks like an interesting recipe.

And I'm sure there are others I have missed, that would be great to try.

Busy Easter Monday

With DH home for a short holiday, I made use of his help. And was able to have a very productive day.
Started on Sunday night with making overnight Easter Cookies with the whole family. I found this recipe in Sophie Gray's "Destitute Gourmet more stunning food from small change" book.
They are called the Easter Story Cookies, and are a great way to share the Easter Story with children.

The end result we enjoyed on Monday morning. Yummy Easter Story Cookies

 We made the cookies as we shared the story, and then placed in a hot oven to cook overnight (the oven turned off though). And in the morning woke to these yummy treats, alot cheaper then buying the kids Easter Eggs.
After breakfast and a quick clean of the kitchen, I got ready for a day in the kitchen.
Made a Coffee Cake with Coffee icing, to use up the last of the old coffee beans.
Then I made Raspberry Jam. It's my favorite jam, and last year had been buying it at the supermarket. And around $3 it had been adding up. I wanted to see if I could make it cheaper. First I picked up some jam making sugar (it has jam setting mix in it already), brought 1kg for $3.60. Then 1kg of frozen raspberries for $4.

Ingredients ready, and the jars from last year.

Made more then expected, thankfully had some extra little jars. These 2 little jars are in the fridge ready to use.

Fresh Raspberry Jam on fresh bread. Perfect treat :) 

Conclusion with the Raspberry Jam, it was well worth making. Made about 5 jars (the 2 small jars together is the same as 1 jam jar), so $1.52 per jar bets buying from the supermarket.
While making jam I started on dinner in the crockpot. Beef stew with some of the last tomatoes, and courgettes from our garden. Later added dumplings to the stew to make it more filling (as we had an extra person for dinner).
I also did some extra baking, being school holidays, with the children inviting extra friends over, helps to have extra baking.
Made Chocolate Chunk Cookies and Gingerbread Biscuits.
Lastly made more stewed feijoas for breakfast, and from the leftover feijoa juices made a feijoa jelly for dessert.
At the same time was keeping the kitchen clean, dishes washed. And was able to wake up today with my kitchen ready for breakfast.
Now that my DH is back at work, I can have time now with my children.

Monday - Washing Day

Love my washing machine.

But no so happy with my clothes line. Mainly because it needs a tidy up around it. That wood is from the old deck, some of it we hope to reuse. The grass needs to be cut and I'm sure it is covering some of the concrete under the washing line.

The biggest job near the washing line is the fence. we have 2 types by the washing line and one of them take a bit of our land, and is mostly covered with jasmine. It's on the one day list to put one type of fence in place and recover some of our land and have less jasmine to prune. But for now I don't use most of this washing line, as I should.
Today I need to catch up on washing, and bed making. With lots to catch up on (thanks dear children for cleaning your rooms), I better get started. But first today's dinner.

Something fast and easy for today, pasta with corned beef, carrots and courgettes. Will grate some extra cheese on top, and serve with silver beet.

Marmite Rationing in New Zealand

Our good old Marmite is in short supply and we are being asked to ration it until they can start production again.
As the news says
Marmite panic-buying empties shelves
Does get you thinking about what if we had to ration more then just Marmite?
What if we went back to the 1940's and rationed our sugar, butter etc?
I love reading The 1940's Experiment blog, and seeing how she is living on a rationing diet. There have been others who have tried as well, but Carolyn has lasted longer then a week or a month.
I have also been reading up on some helpful rationing books.

The Food Facts for the Kitchen Front has some great rationing recipes. It's reproduced from the original 1941 edition.

Another great book is Eating for Victory. Which is reproductions of official second world war instruction leaflets, put into a book.

But I will share more tomorrow as I going to have some quality time with my DH.

A Walk in my Garden

Our new deck is half finished, and looking alot better then old deck.

A friend passed on this box of free plants to us, I'm having fun finding out what they all are.

Got right on to planting 2 of our free plants. An eggplant (can't wait to see what type) and a chili plant.

Our feijoas are almost ready.

Was able to do a garden harvest. Did find some feijoas on the ground, so will cook those soon. The cucumber I picked because the weight of it had the top into the ground and was starting to rot. The lovely yellow courgettes ready for dinner.

Dinner tonight is Bean and Sausage Casserole surprise. The surprise is that there are lots of extra veggies in there then the recipe says. Including our yellow courgettes.

I had to pop this in as part of my walk was to the letterbox. And this is what I found, some free tea thanks to itry .
Prefect for afternoon tea today.

Deck be Gone

Our old deck is roting away

This weekend hopefully we are getting our new (secondhand) deck, to replace the old non-treated wood deck. Can't wait for a safe place for kids to play and and a new place for some pots (more plants).  Also have started on the chicken run. But have found some hidden surprises, bit old wood dug into the ground, concret blocks. So it's slowing our progress cleaning those out. Also slow progress in filling up the raised garden bed with soil.
Sometimes I would love to hire a gardener or a handyman to help get it done faster.
Because the weather is lovely will be out in the garden tonight. So dinner will be cold cuts of meat with salads. A roast veggie salad and a garden fresh salad.

Sick Kids can be so Expensive

Yep blown the budget with medicine, ice cream and jelly. DS12, DD10, and DS6 have been having a very difficult time with the chicken pox.
We have tried honey, baking soda, oats as cheap alternatives but they have not helped the same as the more costly Pinetarsol, and Calamine Lotion. We have been going through a bottle a day of them both since the poor three started getting the pox. Also have Zyrtec tablets which is helping too, and Panadol, eye drops and all the goodies of lemonade, ice cream and jelly.
But "This to shall pass"
And when it does I will be back on board saving us money to have our budget looking better again.

One thing we have 6 eggs from our dear 'Momma' hen now and I haven't had the heart or time to bake while looking after our dear children. Maybe dinner tonight will be eggs :) scrabbled eggs would be perfect for all of us.

Our Own Eggs for Breakfast, and Work has Begun on New Garden Bed

Dear 'Momma' Hen is keeping us well supplied with eggs

That today we were able to have Scrambled Eggs, and bacon on toast for breakfast. So good, and look at the beautiful colour of those scrambled eggs.

 Hopefully we will not need to buy any eggs while our hen is laying. And for $6 for 12 of the cheapest free range eggs, that is a saving at the moment. I have alot of food still for them (including 10kg of scratch and lay that I got for $7) that will get us through the month of February no problem.
Now after a hardy meal we got started on building our new raised garden bed for behind the garage.

Before we moved in this is the space from our kitchen back to behind our garage. It has a lovely grapefruit tree, and a handy clothesline, but not much else.

Today looking back into the same area we have a worm farm that is going really well, Shadow our dear bunny and now a new garden bed that's in the works.
(please excuse the hose, the kids had just used it to wash the car)

I'm so excited about this new addition to that space. Means we will be planting our colourful Swiss Chard there. And it only cost $80 for this new garden bed :)
Will show you the finish garden when we are done.

Dinner tonight is including some of our garden free veggies - yellow courgettes and Roma tomatoes. We are having steak and pasta, (the pasta has a vegetable sauce).

Family Celebration of 14 years

The date night with dear hubby was awesome :) We had $12 curry combo and a sweet little place with beautiful atmosphere. It was mainly just hubby and I in the restaurant. Sadly we missed the free coffee due to time, but great news we can do it another time. But we did go watch a free movie.
"The Descendants" was an awesome movie for us both. Had us laughing, crying and all round good feeling movie, if you can handle the occasional swearing. We were house parents for a girls home (did it for about 4-5 years total) so could relate to the daughters in the movie. We loved the views of Hawaii. So we came out of the theatre like 2 teens chatting away, at 11pm at night.
The next day we were very tired, but did make the effort to have a special dinner with the children to celebrate 14 years.

Made a family favorite Jamie Oliver's roast lamb dinner. Having the leftovers tonight for dinner, as a soup. Even making the meal is fun and special, and the gravy is soooooo yummy.

Ingredients for the roast lamb. The lamb was in our freezer but was defrosted the day before.

The rosemary is fresh from our garden. The vegetables make a trivet for the lamb to go on. But they are not wasted.

Ingrediants for make the roast vegetables.

Boiling them before roasting really helps to have them cooked just right.

Ingrediants for making the gravy.

The Lamb is cooked and now taken off the vegetable trivet and set aside to rest.

Look at those yummy juices, this is going to be used to make the gravy.

straining through a sieve to get the best bits yum.

Yummy roast veggies almost done.

Dinner time, with a cup of sparkling grape juice.

We all had a great time together, love family time.
Now it's all on with back to school time.

Eating From Our Garden

Vegetables from our garden used to make Ratatouille

Love NZ grown garlic, the freshness and the colour.

A Ratatouille stack (Ok I call it that) its layers of sliced egg plant and courgettes that are salted and lying between paper towels and plates. I found this from a french cookbook, it helps take away the bitter funny taste from both egg plants and courgettes.

Our de-skinned Roma tomatoes ready to make the sauce.

Our Ratatouille with some fried mushrooms to the side.

Free unwanted Marrows, that we used to make Stuffed Marrow with. This yummy meal uses the marrows like a boat to hold a tomato, garlic and mince filling. And topped of with cheese was a hit with my kids.

Yesterdays wander in the garden provided us with these sunny treats. We used the courgettes and carrots in our fried rice dinner. The egg is saved for today's bake off. And the tomatoes are for today's sandwiches.

Our dear garden is blessing us with so much yummy food. I went out yesterday to bless it back with some Worm Wee from our worm farm. And to fill up the container I have for our guava seedling I added some of our compost, which is coming on so well. Won't be long and we will be ready to plant the seedling. It was a gift for DS13 from his Poppa, he loves a good munch on guavas :)