I Just Drove A Truck!!!

Now there's something I never thought I would do. DH got his truck bogged in the paddock (nice and wet after nearly an inch of rain on Monday night - hooray!). At first he thought I'd just need to steer it for him but when that didn't work he needed me to actually drive it. Driving it entailed the same process as moving forward in a manual vehicle (holding clutch in then accelerating as you let the clutch out). DH was able to start it and get it all in gear for me. So it wasn't *really* driving it. LOL. And I only had to go all of 10-20 metres. But it sure gave me a buzz sitting way up there in the drivers seat feeling like I was driving the truck. I'm also glad I've been building up my leg muscles as holding the clutch took quite a bit of strength to push down and hold down!

So there's number 1 for my "101 experiences in life I thought I'd never have"!

Vegetable Lentil Loaf

It's been a tough week this week so I haven't quite made it back to talk about how the Vegetable Lentil Loaf went on Saturday. Sorry about that.

I served it with brown gravy in an attempt to "disguise" the lack of meat. It went down okay with DH and I although we're still struggling to get used to the texture (a bit like the chickpea patties). The kids were a little bit less than impressed. My 9 year old's comment during the dinner conversation was "I'm going to be the healthiest kid in my class". It was said in a way that suggested being healthy wasn't his most favourite thing in the world. LOL. I told him I'd be quite happy for him to be the healthiest kid in his class. :-) As I've been introducing new foods I've been talking to the kids about the importance of eating healthily and having a wider variety of foods in our diet.

DH has suggested that I use some mince in it next time to kind of disguise the texture a bit. While it will then no longer be vegetarian, we both feel it's more important to increase our intake of beans and legumes and reduce our intake of meat, rather than strictly try to eat vegetarian meals. So we need to find ways to do this that we're all going to enjoy, rather than "suffer" through. Personally I think it's just a matter of adjusting our taste buds. But slowly, slowly is the way to go here so I don't have a revolt on my hands. LOL.

There was a little bit left over and I had a couple of slices cold for lunch the next day. It was delicious cold!!!! DH tried it cold but wasn't quite so impressed. He did heat up a couple of slices and had it with a plate of salad for lunch though - so obviously he didn't really mind it. There was one thin slice left so today I diced it up and chucked it into a pot of soup I'm making.

In case anyone is interested, here is the recipe. It is my own adaptation of a recipe that was posted on one of my yahoo groups. I seem to have this problem with making a recipe exactly as written - always have to change it a little bit to make it "mine" (or to suit our tastes). :-)

VEGETABLE LENTIL LOAF

3 cups green lentils (the original recipe says brown but I couldn't find any)
2 carrots, grated
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 cup breadcrumbs
200g tomato paste
1/2 onion, grated (if you like chunks of onion you can dice it)
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 180C
Grease loaf pan
Process/blend half lentils until smooth (I just stuck my stab mixer into the whole lot a few times so they were partially blended)
Mix ingredients together
Press into tin and bake 30-35 minutes
Leave to stand in tin for 5 minutes before turning out


This week I also cooked up some diced steak in the crockpot. I added a tin of beef and vegetable soup I had in the cupboard plus some gravy mix and cornflour. The first night we had a steak pie (by adding a sheet of puff pastry). I then added some red kidney beans (some that I'd prepared earlier lol) from the freezer to stretch it a bit and made some of that into shepherds pie. The kids didn't bat an eyelid at the beans in the shepherd's pie. DH proclaimed that one a success! :-) I really quite enjoyed it. So we'll do that one again.

Today I've been making up a big batch of vegetable soup in the crockpot. I started with some yellow split peas and added a tin of pureed tomatoes that I had in the cupboard as well as some onion, garlic and mixed herbs. Later I added some chopped carrot, potato and sweet potato which were the vegies I happened to have on hand. I added another frozen container of red kidney beans and also wanted to add a can of chickpeas. When I grabbed the can of chickpeas and opened it, I discovered it was a can of cannelinni beans. So they went in as well as the can of chickpeas. Taste tested some this afternoon. It is delicious!!!! Such a comforting thing to have for lunch on a cold day. And is filled with lots of goodies. The crockpot is almost full so that's about 6 litres of soup. Will freeze some I think. Haven't worked out how much it cost me to make but I'm guessing not very much.

Can you tell I'm having lots of fun finding ways to add beans, peas and legumes to our daily diet? :-) I've almost used up all that I bought last shop so will have to stock up again soon.

Pottering in the Kitchen

I've done quite a bit of pottering in the kitchen this week. Trying out a few new recipes and generally having fun. :-)

I made custard from scratch for the first time and that was a great hit with the family. I'm gradually trying to decrease the number of colours and additives in our diet so this is one more step along the road. For anyone wanting a recipe, here it is:

CUSTARD

heat 300ml milk (around 2 min on high in the microwave)

combine:
1 beaten egg
1 Tbsp cornflour
2 Tbsp sugar
few drops vanilla

Use a small amount of milk to mix it together.

Pour hot milk into this mixture and stir well.

Heat on high for 2-4 minutes, stirring every minute.

Next time I need to remember to double the recipe as this wasn't quite enough for our family of 5.

I also made a chocolate custard recipe this week. We found it a little bit strong and a little bit firm in comparison to the yogo's that the whole family loves. So I'm going to play around with the recips a bit more and I'll keep you posted on how that turns out.

YOGHURT

I love finding new ways to create the same things for less money. Of course, that has to be balanced up against time and hassle factor as well so I've never been real keen to make my own yoghurt from scratch (even though it is definitely the cheapest way to make yoghurt).

A few years ago I bought myself an Easiyo yoghurt making kit. It's almost foolproof as you just add water to the Easiyo sachet, shake and then pop the whole thing into the provided thermos with boiling water added. It works out cheaper than store bought yoghurt. I usually have to pay anywhere from $3.50-$5.50 for yoghurt here (depending on sales). With the Easiyo I can make yoghurt whenever we want it for just under $3.00 a kg.

I have tried a few suggestions for ways to make the Easiyo yoghurt a little cheaper but so far haven't had much success and had returned to making it with the full sachet and putting up with the cost.

This week I came across a new recipe for the Easiyo and decided to try again. This time it seems to have worked much better and has gone down really well with the family.

If you have an Easiyo maker here's the recipe:

1 1/3 cups powdered milk
1/3 cup sugar
tsp vanilla (make sure it's imitation with no alcohol in it as the alcohol will kill your bacteria)
2 Tbsp Easiyo sachet as a starter (shake pkt first to make sure the yoghurt culture is evenly mixed through the pack before you start or you could get it all in the one batch and none left for the next one)


BISCUITS

Made a variation on plain biscuits by adding plum jam to the mix. They certainly smelt good while they were baking! I love how versatile basic biscuits are when it comes to using up bits and pieces you have in the fridge/cupboard. It's amazing how much cheaper this basic biscuit mix is even compared to plain generic brand biscuits. Of course, it does then depend on what you add to the mix as to the final cost. I think I might use up the last of my custard powder mix in my next batch.

TURKEY DRUMSTICKS

I bought my first ever turkey drumsticks this week while they were on special. They were just under $3 each and weighed about 1kg. That's some drumstick! I'm trying to add some turkey to our diet as it's supposed to contain tryptophan. Not necessarily a real frugal meat so it's a bit of a new challenge. I cooked the 2 legs in the crockpot then chopped all the meat up fine and made up 3 meals worth of turkey patties (similar to chicken patties). We haven't eaten any yet so the proof will be in the tasting. I also made a container of stock. So that will give us 4 meals for $6. Can't complain about the frugality of that figure.

CHICKEN KEBABS

The kids really love these but at $1+ each they're a bit on the expensive side for us to have very often. This week I bought some chicken thighs on special so I've made up a meal (which is 13 kebabs for our family). Cost to me was around $5 which is quite a bit cheaper than $13+ and we're less likely to come across any horrible bits that haven't been cut out of the chicken like we do with the bought ones. I was working out an hourly savings rate for this. It took me around 15 minutes to cut up the chicken, thread it onto skewers and marinate. At a saving of $8 for the meal that's around $32 an hour post tax money. Well worth the effort for me.


UPDATE ON MY BEANS & LENTILS CHALLENGE

I tried using the leftover Cannellini Beans in my lunch time salads the other week and really liked that. I think so far the Cannellini Beans are my favourite for adding to my salad. :-)

Tonight we're having Vegetable Lentil Loaf for tea. This is my first experience with green lentils (they're cooking in the crockpot right now) so I'll let you know what we think of it. Fingers crossed it'll be a new dish we can add to our reportoire.

GROCERY SPENDING UPDATE

My final grocery spending figure for April was $419.83 so I was really happy with that. I did some calculations and so far my average for the year is $100.17 per week. This is down slightly on an earlier average calculation of $102.80. My challenge now is to see if I can bring that average weekly spend figure down to under the $100 mark.

May has 5 shopping weeks (I usually shop Wednesdays) so my goal is to see if I can spend under $450 with 5 shops. I'm not expecting that to be real easy so we'll see how we go. First shop for May I spent $57.75 - so far so good. I will have an opportunity to do a pantry stock up later in the month so there's where my biggest challenge is going to lie.

Beans, Lentils and Chickpeas Oh My!

Yes I do realise that Chickpeas are actually beans but was having trouble coming up with a title for this post. LOL. Thank you all for your great suggestions for adding beans to my lunchtime salad.

I started off with chickpeas as I had 2 cans of them in the pantry. The first day they went down okay. I think they'll take a little bit of getting used to. :-) I think it's more the unfamiliar texture than anything. I put the remainder of the chickpeas in a container with some apple cider vinegar (using what I had on hand). I'm not sure whether I was getting used to the texture or whether the vinegar gave them that extra bit of zing but I quite enjoyed them in my salad on the second day.

I didn't have a salad for lunch the next day but when I got the munchies mid afternoon I pulled out the container of remaining chickpeas and ate them all by themselves. One at a time with a fork. I really quite enjoyed that. :-) How's that for a transformation? LOL.

I am now keen to try some of the other suggestions although it will have to wait until I have a chance to purchase those particular items.

I've also been experimenting with increasing pulses in our evening meals. Twice I've tried to make a chickpea patty (basically the patties made for falafel). The first time I served them with vegies as I would a regular meat patty. They went down okay but not brilliantly. The second time I used them in hamburgers with salad etc etc. Again they went down okay but not brilliantly. So, it's back to the drawing board with that one. I figure by the time I've finished experimenting we'll at least have consumed quite a number of meals. Hopefully by then we'll have found something we can enjoy. I'm all for healthy eating but I also think it needs to be enjoyable so I will keep persisting until I find the right combination that we can all enjoy.

I was quite proud of my success last night though. Friday nights are our "fake take away" nights and quite often I'll make homemade pizzas. The last few times I've made them I've gotten quite experimental with the toppings with quite a lot of succes. My pizza experiments are probably a topic for another post but I did want to post this particular success here given it's relevance to this topic. Last night I made a vegeatarian pizza and put Cannellini Beans on it. That went down surprisingly well (with DH and I - the kids aren't really keen on my pizza experiments yet lol). So, I will continue to experiment with adding beans to our pizzas in future and let you know the results. :-)

For some time now I've been adding beans to our spaghetti bolognese sauce and that is going down quite well. The kids baulked at them to begin with but they're getting uesd to them now. I love it as now I'm getting 3 meals out of 500g of mince. Very frugal as well as lowering fat and adding quite a bit of nutrition.

All in all I'm quite happy with the progress I'm making with adding beans, lentils and chickpeas to our diet. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this topic in the future. :-)

A Brand New Window

On this day 5 months ago our bathroom window mysteriously cracked and shattered into a lot of tiny pieces. Living in a rural area we weren't sure who we could get to come and fix it. DH discovered that the plumber does them so he arranged with him to order the glass and come and fix it. In February (a little over 2 months after it broke) he finally got here only to discover that the glass he'd been sent was too small. Back to order some more and after a LOT of phone calls from my DH to him, he finally made it back today and fitted the right piece of glass. Phew!!! I was beginning to think we were never going to get it fixed. The joys of living in the middle of nowhere! Now to wait for the bill.....

Favourite Foods

I have discovered a great combination of foods for a dessert that I LOVE and is fairly healthy too. Cut up apple (green apples work best but it's still nice with whatever apples you have), several dollops of natural yoghurt and a drizzle of honey. It's such a great mixture of flavours and textures. I've never really been a big fan of honey but have been using it more in my attempts to reduce the amount of white sugar we consume. I think it's kind of growing on me as a "sweet treat" and because it really is very sweet, you don't need to use very much.

My other favourite food at the moment is celery pieces with cheese. No idea why I'm craving celery but at least it's a real food. It actually seems to be quite a good substitute for my chipaholic cravings.

With Easter having just past, I can't say my attempts to keep white sugar out of my diet are going all that well. :-) Chocolate chip hot cross buns - way too yummy for my waistline!!! LOL. But I figure the most important thing with improving our health through diet is to keep learning and trying new things.

My next experiment will be to find a bean or legume that I like cold to have on my lunch time salad. That will be interesting as I'm a fairly new convert to eating legumes and beans much at all, let alone eating them cold. Coming into winter we'll probably eat more soups for lunch and they're much easier for including beans and legumes. If I get game enough to try them cold, I'll let you know how it goes. :-)

Stuff!!!!

Some days I just feel like I'm drowing in stuff. I think it has more to do with my mood on any given day than anything. However, it's always a good time for me to declutter. I tend to be more ruthless when I'm feeling claustrophic about how much stuff we have. So, today I have decluttered 4 grocery bags of stuff! It's only gotten as far as the laundry so far but hopefully will get to either the rubbish or the Vinnie's bin in the next couple of days.

*deep contented sigh* I always feel like I can breathe so much easier when I've done some decluttering. :-) Now I'm all enthused to do some more and really make a dent in it. Although I think decluttering is one of those jobs you almost need to be doing constantly, especially with kids bringing home piles of paperwork from school. I'm not opposed to keeping some of their work but the amount that comes home is just unreal!

I also got my 6 year old daughter's room a little under control. She loves to pull everything out when she's playing but isn't so great at putting it all back again. She's very creative too. When she's playing with her dollshouse or her Baby Annabell she loves to cut up bits of paper to make "food" and all kinds of "extras" to add to her game. We gave her a box of making things for her birthday in January which she absolutely loves but it sure does creative a large mess on the bedroom floor. LOL. It makes me feel so much better when it's tidy, even if it doesn't worry her one way or the other. It's not that she doesn't tidy it up herself but every few weeks I need to go in there and just do those extra bits of sorting out and decluttering that keep it from becoming a complete disaster zone.

The other areas I tamed today were the fridge and part of the pantry cupboard. I do have *homes* for most things but the rest of the family can't seem to remember where things go (DH in particular LOL) so it's a regular resorting job to keep things in some semblence of order. The fridge makes me smile when I open it now. DH reckoned it blinded him when he opened the door. LOL. I did wipe it out while I was about it but it wasn't really all that dirty. Perhaps now that it's back to an organised state, you can see more of the white interior.

Despite being tired, I must have been in a "go for it" mood today as I pulled the vents out of the rangehood while I was doing my weekly clean of the stovetop, pulled out and washed the racks for the oven while I was wiping out the oven and cleaned the microwave trays and turntable as well. Now everything in my kitchen makes me smile again.

Tea tonight: Thursday night's I try to menu plan a low or no meat meal. Tonight we had fried rice. Yummo!!!! Goes down well with the whole family. It's one of the only meals we have where the kids will ask for seconds.