More Bulk Purchases

 

The local Halal butcher sells 3kg tins of tomato paste, how could I not buy one? I originally thought it'd be enough to last us forever but I've started making our own lacto-fermented tomato sauce so it may not last as long as I originally thought!

I froze one big batch for sauce making and the rest went in ice cube trays ready to be popped into soups, pasta sauces, chilli, casseroles, wherever tomato paste is needed!

Organic Homemade Ricotta

The day before its 'sell by' date the organic milk at our local grocery gets reduced to a ridiculously cheap price. Being the food hoarder that I am I buy every bottle that is reduced (sometimes three or four 2l bottles) and use it straight away for cooking or freeze it to use later.

Making ricotta is a great way to use up a large quantity of milk to give a different product that is so versatile. A sweet dip for fruit when mixed with honey, a topping on pizza, a filling in filo pastries, the uses are endless!

Here's my recipe using just milk and vinegar. Too easy!

2l organic, non-homogenised milk
3 tbls white vinegar or lemon juice

Heat milk slowly to 97C or just below boiling point if you don't have a jam thermometer.
Remover from heat and stir through vinegar or lemon juice.
Sit, without stirring for 15 minutes
Strain through a muslin cloth for 30 minutes or until it's as firm as you desire.

I don't salt my ricotta as I like to have the option to use it for sweet or savoury.

Meal Plan Monday

So here is our plan for this week, subject of course to flood waters and what's in the shops.

Because of my food hoarding ways we're actually ok with most foods except fresh fruit and veg and eggs, which the boys eat at an alarming rate that is difficult to keep up with at the best of times. We have 20kg of wholemeal flour in the shed so we can make as much bread, pasta, muffins, biscuits or baked goods as we need. I also keep a fully stocked pantry of tinned lentils (as well as dried), tomatoes, chickpeas, tuna, kidney beans etc plus a chest freezer full of nuts, seeds, oats, different flours and small amounts of homemade stock and meat. The house freezer is full of frozen homecooked meals, frozen berries, butter, frozen peas (from the shops) and a few bits and pieces of who knows what hiding at the back! That is actually the first time I've typed all that out and really, I think we'll be fine! Especially because we can still get into town and the shops!


Monday:
Chicken curry with brown rice and steamed veg

Tuesday:
Fried rice

Wednesday:
No idea yet, will so how the mood takes me!

Thursday:
Prawn laksa (if I can get prawns)

Friday:
veg and noodle stirfry with boiled eggs

Saturday:
Pork sausages with mashed potato and steamed veg

Sunday:
Broccoli casserole

Don't forget to sign up for this year's game of Pay it Forward. I'd love to send some handmade gifts out there!

Kenny Gets His First Workout

Now that we're all (mostly) settled and I'm back to getting the good, bulk wholemeal flour I've started making our bread again. And boy, how I missed homemade bread! I'm sure my waistline hasn't missed it though!

Elliot loves Kenny too! And yes, my benches are normally this cluttered!

I'm not using the breadmaker anymore, I now much prefer to use Kenny to mix and knead the dough and then shape by hand. For our everyday loaf (which I make about every second day) I get two loaves from the following recipe. I've also been making raisin/fruit bread too so I'll post that recipe once I've perfected it.

The verandah is a great, sunny place for the bread to prove. Especially when Matt is out mowing the grass!

The original recipe that I used was from the Kenwood recipe book that came with Kenny but I've tweaked it a bit.

Everyday Wholemeal Bread

Makes two 700ish gram loaves

750g wholemeal flour

150g white flour

3tsp dried yeast

1 tbls salt

1 tbls bread improver

2 tbls honey

500-600 ml warm water

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix through water until it forms a dough. 

Mix on minimum speed setting for 1 minute and then turn speed up to 1 and knead for 4 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic.

Let rise for 1 hour.

Knock down dough with hook on minimum speed and then slowly knead for another minute or so.

Remove from bowl and shape into two loaves. 

Place in oiled bread tins and let rise for at least 30 minutes.

Bake in preheated 230C oven for 10 minutes then reduce 

temperature to 200C and bake for another 15-20 minutes. 

Remove from tins and cool on wire rack.

A Box of Goodness

For more Wordless Wednesday photographs visit Faith, Hope & a Whole lotta Love. Enjoy!

Reducing the Waste

After reading this post about how little rubbish we had in our wheelie bin a friend sent me a text message asking me to share some tips on reducing the amount of rubbish.

So over the past few days I've been making a list lof what we do. Here goes!!

We:

# make as much food from scratch as possible. I make all our stock, bread, bread rolls, pasta, pastry, pizza dough, pasta and pizza sauce, cakes, muffins, desserts, sweet biscuits, ice cream, grated cheese, dried apple, dried banana, hommus etc

# buy in bulk. Every couple of months I go to a bulk whole foods store in the next town and get big lots of nuts, seeds, rolled oats (5kg at a time), and I order in 20kg bags of organic wholemeal flour. I then store this (except flour) in our chest freezer. I put the bag of flour into the freezer for a couple of days but then decant it into a big storage container to save room in the freezer. I also buy 1kg blocks of cheese, 1kg tubs of yoghurt, the biggest packets of sugar etc from the grocery store.

# don't buy prepacked, individual or convenience foods. My one regular exception to this is a treat for the boys, the individual Babybell cheeses. They absolutely love them and are fairly healthy too. We go through 1-2 packs every fortnightly shop depending on how much we go out. They are only for snacks when we go out, not at home.

# try and buy foods with as little packaging as possible. I hate that some foods come in a package within a package (the rice cakes I buy from Aldi do and it drives me bananas) or like cereal in a bag in a box!

# try and avoid putting fruit and veg in those plastic bags they have for you to use. It probably drives the checkout people crazy when I put my big pile of bananas or 5 loose avocados on the belt, but it saves a bag! The bags I do get I reuse later.

# buy meat in bulk from the butcher. They use the same bag for 500g of mince as 1-2kgs so I get more and then freeze it, generally in a reused fruit or veg bag. If we don't have any of them I use a reuseable plastic container.

# shop for fruit and veg at the farmers markets. I take our reuseable bags and just load up the pram. It's not unusual for Elliot to be holding a pumpkin or two or a watermelon in season! He refuses to hold pineapples though, they're too spikey!! I also don't get things indiviually bagged unless they're fragile or I'm buying a lot of something ie 2-3kg of apples. I'm also mindful that many people I buy from are farmers local to the area and that every bag I use, they have to pay for it. It saves me rubbish and them money if I don't get a bag!

# buy things in reuseable packaging ie glass. Then we wash it well and put it in a box in the laundry to be reused to store something (cable ties, loose screws etc) or bottle something (jam, chutney etc). Moccona coffee jars are great for storing food in the kitchen (sugar, dried fruit, nuts etc) because they seal so well! It is an expensive brand of coffee, but whenever it's on sale I get a couple of bottles. Also an op shop in town quite often has the jars for sale for a dollar or two.

# reuse other packaging eg storing homemade washing liquid and spray & wipe in old vinegar bottles

# make some of our cleaning products, or use general household/kitchen items for cleaning eg vinegar, bi-carb. Then I just top up spray bottles or shakers in the bathroom, kitchen and laundry.

# compost all of our fruit and veg scraps

# feed most of our food scraps that can't be composted to our dog. She is very tiny and doesn't eat a lot though so we do chuck some out, especially bread crusts!

# give our egg cartons to friends with chickens. We are often gifted yummy free range eggs too! Yum!

# use boxes for craft activities

# collect newspapers to use as weed control in the garden or tear them up into the compost

# use paper on both sides for shopping lists etc

# recycle envelopes (mostly for when we go to the dairy and leave money in the box)

# use cloth nappies and cloth wipes. We do use some disposables too, very few through the day 2-3 a week and one every night.

# use face washers to wipe the boys hands and faces after meals

# put leftovers or things to store in the fridge in a container with a lid instead of glad wrap or alfoil

Most of our rubbish is tins from tomatoes, chickpeas, beans etc and milk and cream bottles that I don't like to reuse. It doesn't matter how much I wash them they still smell like sour milk! We also get junk mail delivered. My days of devouring the catalogues for bargains is over but I still haven't gotten around to putting up a "No Junk Mail" sign. We'll have to wait and see if the junk mail gets delivered to our new house out of town. Lots of my friends that live out of town don't get junk mail, and I'm sure it is one thing we won't miss!!!

I hope this list helps give people one or two new ideas on how to reduce their rubbish. If we all do a little (or big) bit, it can only help our precious planet Earth.

If you do other things to reduce your rubbish, please let me know in a comment below. I'd love to get a few new ideas!!

Smug Satisfaction

In our house the rubbish is Matt's job. Pretty much everything to do with rubbish is all him, taking out the bag, putting the bins on the curb, bringing them in, you know the drill. Everything except putting a new bag in, why is that? (for what it's worth, we reuse plastic shopping bags to line the bin. I think we probably use 2-3 a week. We are always walking a fine line between having no plastic bags for the bin because I absolutely refuse to buy bin liners and most of the time take reuseable bags to do the groceries.) Anyway, I have little to do with the rubbish and that is the way I like it!

This morning however I made a mad dash out to the wheelie bin that was already on the curb, with the last bag from the kitchen. Monday is our rubbish day and Matt normally puts the bins out the evening before. He had done this, but hadn't taken out the last bag from the kitchen because we were up all night with a certain 15 month old who thinks sleep is an optional extra.

As I hurled that last bag in I had to double check that the bin hadn't already been collected. I looked across the road, bin full to overflowing. Same next door. And down the street a bit. The truck had definitely not come, but our bin was less than 1/5 full! The bottom was lucky to be covered! I knew we didn't make much rubbish, but until this morning I hadn't actually seen how little our family of four actually produces! I asked Matt later if today's bin was a 'normal' amount for us, his response "I don't know, the bin is always really light though".

Today was such a validation of one of the reasons why we choose to do what we do. Why making as much of our own food from scratch is a good choice. Why making many of our own cleaning products is a good choice. Why using reuseable products over disposable is a good choice. Why buying in bulk and choosing products with as little packaging as possible is a good choice. Good choices for our health, the environment, our budget, the education of our boys.

I couldn't help but feel proud, and a teeny bit smug! :)

Planning the week

One of my favourite 'jobs' for the week is planning our menu. I sit down with a couple of cook books (I try to alternate) and my notebook and pen. I generally plan the week on Sunday evening when we're having dinner, or if I'm not so organised, on Monday morning over breakfast. Everyone gets to choose a meal or two (Elliot always suggests sausages or pizza), I choose a couple of things from the books, plus a few things from our regular list that I know the boys will eat. Luckily for me both the boys are big vegetable eaters but this means that we can't have too many meals where the vegies are hidden ie pasta sauce, quiche, soup etc. We've even had a few tantrums and tears because Elliot couldn't see his vegies! Because of this I normally do a few steamed veg to have on the side, just to keep the peace!


I write everything down in a notebook that I then take to the shops. We also have a blackboard in the kitchen that I write the menu on for the week. On the left-hand side of the page I list the days and what meal we'll have, on the right-hand side is the shopping list taking into account what we'll need for all the different meals and general grocery items. I also have an 'extras' section for all the baking, and extra things that need to be done, ice cream, stock, any cheese or yoghurt etc. Below the general grocery list I have two other sections, one for what we'll get from the dairy and one for the butcher. I normally get enough fruit and veg to tide us over until we go to the town markets on Thursday morning.

Elliot helping with the shopping. He loves to hold the list, count out what we need, choose the fruit and veg, help push trolley and pack the bags when we're finished. He's a great helper!

I absolutely feel lost without my menu plan, I get to 4 o'clock and freak out cause there is nothing out for dinner. I also wander aimlessly around the grocery and get a thousand things we don't need and forget the important things like cheese and chocolate!

Cooler Weather, Warmer Lunches and 30 cobs of Corn!

I've been thinking a lot lately about our lunches at home and have come to the conclusion that they could be a lot more exciting! Normally it's just a sandwich on our homemade wholemeal bread. Elliot is going through a ham, cheese, lettuce and avocado phase while Archie is addicted to cheese in any form! With the weather cooling down I'm going to try and be organised enough to have a hot lunch at least a couple of days through the week. Elliot loves helping in the kitchen and as most recipes I cook can freeze well I'm hoping to not have to cook everyday, but maybe just reheat something I've prepared earlier or defrost something from the freezer. I'm hoping as well that Matt will be inspired to take lunch to work instead of buying something everyday. Something that I'm sure our budget will be thankful for!

Right about the corn in the title! When I did our grocery shop this week I picked up a packet of three cobs of corn without really looking at it. We normally get a pack or two a week so I didn't take much notice until El told me that the pack had an extra sticker on it. When I looked I saw that it had been marked down to 59c! So I went back to the fruit and veg section and got all the rest of the marked down packets, 10 in total! I'm sure the checkout boy thought I was a bit crazy!

So what will we do with all this corn? Freeze it of course! I've previously blanched and frozen our home grown corn and it steamed from frozen really well. I'm doing a bit of an experiment and have cut the kernels off a few cobs and frozen them without blanching and will see if there is any difference. If there's no difference in the end product between blanching and not-blanching before freezing I'm sure you can guess which one I'll be doing!

For our lunch today I thought we'd use some of our corn to make some Polenta and Corn Fritters from this great book. I substituted the canned corn for the same weight of fresh (unfortunately it was only one cob, I was hoping to use more!) and also added some homemade ricotta cheese. They turned out really well, the boys ate a few each and there are enough for lunch tomorrow too!

Elliot learning how to grate cheese, he did a really good job apart from eating a fair bit!

I thought Archie was just sitting on El's step while I was at the stove with the fritters but then I turned around and saw this! Cheeky little man reaching for a banana!

Fritters on to cook, I think next time we'll add some grated onion and zucchini for a bit more zing. The polenta added a really crunchy texture, very yummy!