Thursday, March 1, 2007

Groceries

Well I was quite happy with our grocery spend of $398.93 for February, even if it is a shorter month. January's groceries came to $441.27 so that was good too. I feel like we've made a reasonable start to the spending for the year.

Today I made a spaghetti type sauce in the crockpot:

600g mince (cost $4.00)
large tin tomatoes (approx $1.00)
2 tins beans (usually used dried beans but didn't have any soaked or cooked and I've started keeping a few tins on hand for convenience sake - costs a little more than dried but still a cheap way to bulk out meat) ($1.60)
grated zucchini from freezer
2 large spoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons minced garlic
couple of handfuls of oats to thicken it a bit

This will do us for 3 meals so works out pretty economically. Tonight was Taco's and the kids couldn't gobble them down quick enough. I'll probably use 1 lot with spaghetti. I tend to use wholemeal spiral pasta rather than spaghetti as it's easier for the kids to eat - they love it. The 3rd meal with either be lasagna or a repeat of one of the other meals depending.

I love it when I can cook 2 or 3 meals of meat at the same time. Makes for an easier workload down the track. :-)

It will be interesting to see what March's grocery bill ends up like.

2 comments:

Kin said...

Hmmm, beans in tomato/mince sauce. I'll have to try that in June (next shopping month). I use 2kg on mince and get 4 meals out of it. I do two spaghetti bolognaise (I use wiggly fettuchine - we call it "Wiggles Spaghetti"), Shepherds pie and lasagne with it.

Taco's - that's another one! Awesome. Do you make you make your own Taco's or buy them? I've finally got salsa down thank goodness.

lightening said...

I tend to do tacos as an easy meal so just buy the shells. We like the "crunchy" ones too. I did see a recipe for making your own soft tortillas though and thought one day I'd like to try that. One day.... :-)