Week 1 food budget overhaul

Earlier this week I wrote lamenting about how the budget had blown out over the last year and how I was determined to rein it back in.  Well here's some of the meals I prepared and the final costing was that I only spent $75 for the whole week to feed the family of six (three adults, three children)

I made chickpea soup for dinner tonight with fresh baked bread.


1 onion
3 cloves garlic chop and fry in tmx 3 min
add 5 diced baby potatoes
3 diced carrots
2 tbls tmx vegie stock
1 ltr water

cook 25 minutes, temp 100 degrees soft speed reverse
add 2 handfuls of finely shredded kale from my own garden and a can of chickpeas (69cents at supermarket this week)



The bread costs me 60 cents to make, the soup ummm $4.00 ?
So dinner for 6 cost $4.60 plus the cost of butter for the bread.
Breakfast all week has been homemade bread or oatmeal flavoured with yoghourt and grated apple
Lunches have been cheese/lettuce from my own garden/ tomatoes in homemade bread.

I bought 10kg's of apple 'seconds' for $2.00 which the kids have been eating. Bananas on sale for 90 cents a kg. Made banana cake for lunch snacks. Tinned fruit was on sale at the supermarket so I made snack cups for lunch boxes. Yoghourt is homemade and flavoured with my own lemon butter, apple jam etc.

Pumpkin soup another night. Pumpkin was $1.15 in total
Spinach and fetta pie ($1.50 feta, kale from garden is free, ricotta $3.50 for 500grams, filo pastry was $3.00, some toasted almonds, 2 eggs, cinnamon and sumac)
Mushroom pasta (angel hair pasta with sauted mushrooms ($5.99 kg from supermarket) garlic and a splash of cream
chicken snitzel ($2 each from supermarket. bought 3 and bashed the buggery out of them, then recoated and cut into pack of card sized pieces, deep fried) boiled baby potatoes $2.00 for 4kg's sad bench in supermarket. Sauted kale free from garden

One night we had toad in the hole with some nice low fat sausages which were marked down to $3.50 for six.  Add to that the yorkshired pudding batter (2 eggs, milk flour etc)  gravy, mashed potatoes and kale.

There is no shortage of fresh apples (see above) and bananas.  We also had some plums which were on sale for 99 cents a kg and I bought about 3kg's.

Oh I also made pikelets and muffins for snacks as well.
 
All in all, we're very full, had leftovers and saving money again :)

On the hunt for more frugal ideas

I'm trying to get our food costs back down to the $100 per week mark for our family of six.  Over the last few months it has steadily increased and I want to get back into our previously frugal lifestyle to pay off the mortgage ASAP.

So far I've pulled together the following list;

Only using fresh herbs which have been grown in my garden - reading Sara's blog made me realise that there is no excuse not to have all of my herbal needs provided from the garden.

All greens to come from my garden.  Currently growing enough kale for our family and some to spare each week for others.  Lettuces are coming up like mad. 

Shopping at the end of the day twice a week for the 'get rid of it' specials.

Look at what things I like to eat, can I make a substitute cheaper?  Well here's one I want to try

From Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.


Tupperware Chorizo

750g pork mince

1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika


2 tsp hot smoked paprika


2 garlic cloves, finely chopped


1 tbsp sea salt


1½ tsp fennel seeds, lightly toasted

¼ tsp cayenne pepper


50ml red wine


Freshly ground black pepper.

Bung the lot in a tupperware container and mix well.  Leave for 24 hours then make into meatballs and use in place of chorizo.

Return to making all my own bread and pasta.  I get four loaves of bread from $2.50 worth of flour.  If I add seeds and grains it costs a bit more.  Four loaves of nice bread from the shops would easily cost me $10 or more.

Cook double the amount of food and freeze half for the days like today when I'm not feeling well (sniffle, sniffle, sneeze all the time being very aware of my pelvic flaw)

Think about dumpster diving.  Can I do it?  Anyone interested?  I got thinking about this after reading a post on the Down to Earth forum.  I do have the mental image though of  being chased by the law and them yelling

"Quick, quick, follow that person who keeps stopping to sneeze!"

Frugal, miserly or just plain canny?

The Husband and I have always been very careful with our pennies. It was born out of necessity when we were first married and on Austudy with two children to support. I had the huge sum of $50 per week to feed our family of (then) four. We also ate meat at that time so it was interesting making the dollars stretch.

Now with me being a SAHM and our family of four kids sprouting like weeds (The Son doesn't live at home anymore) it has become even more important for me to be creative with the budget than ever. I want The Husband to be able to choose what he wants to do in the future. I don't want him to be yoked to his job. If he wants time off to study the mating habits of gnats then I want him to have that financial freedom.

So I have spent the last few weeks going through our finances with a fine tooth comb (God, I use a few cliches don't I!)

In any given week we spend between $70-100 Aus. That is to buy everything for our family of six. I make our own bread, yoghourt, yoghourt cheese and baked goods including tortillas. Most of our foods are cooked from scratch and are always based on real and whole foods.

I also try to buy local as much as possible; the exceptions to this are The Husband's asian groceries. Please if anyone knows where to source Australian soy sauce, pickled turnips, fermented jars of smelly stuff (can you tell I won't eat these?) let me know!

So what sort of things do we eat? Vegetarian foods obviously. Fruit and vegetables which are in season and locally grown.

We bought this house last year and the first thing I did was start planting my fruit trees and organising my vegie garden. My trees are;

2 lemons, 1 orange, 1 mandarin, 1 lime, 2 apples,1 pinkybelle apple, 1 chocolate sapote, 2 macadamias, 1 avocado, 1 fig, 1 mango, 1 white mulberry, 1 guava, 1 dragon fruit,2 bananas,2 cape gooseberries,1 passionfruit,raspberries

My vegetables include the usual onions, garlic, spinach, silverbeet, beetroot, carrots, strawberries, cabbages (asian and regular), tomatoes, lettuces, kale and herbs. I lost all of my pumpkins, rockmelons and watermelons last week to the intense sun. My herbs are all doing very well at the moment and I have been seed saving and scattering.

The purpose of all this garden activity is to be able to shop at home in the future and further reduce our dependance on outside factors. It is also so much healthier for us to eat alive foods. I hope that one day I will only have to buy rice and wheat.

The peanuts are still alive and well and in a few months I will be experimenting growing my own chickpeas.

What's Cooking:

Large pot of pasta sauce ($4 for a huge box of tomatoes at the greengrocers today)
Banana Bread (I have a fridge full of bananas from stocking up last week when they were $0.99 a kilo!)

Tonight's dinner: Pesto Genovese with green beans and potatoes; fusilli pasta, green beans, potatoes and stirred through with fresh basil pesto.