Only 5 more days to go

So we made it another week on our crazy budget for food. I do have to confess that I did go shopping again because we have a friend staying with us and I can very well have him starve and think that we are nuts with nothing in the fridge.

I also found this really cool app called shopitize that gives you cash back on items that you buy from tesco, asda, morrison and the like.  For example one of the things that you could buy was milk and you would get a whole quid back.  Which basically means that the milk I bought was free.  I also stumbled upon a store called iceland.
Everything in there is basically frozen and very cheap. I haven't bought a lot of ice cream so I decided to buy jonas some ice cream since he loves it and it was only .89 pence.
Iceland had some really good discounts so I decided to buy a few things from Iceland to cook for this week for our extra guest.
I did go to tesco to buy a few things such as fresh veggies.  It was painful to buy those items considering how much cheaper they are at Aldi. I will try with all my might to not shop at tesco as long as there isn't a good discount such as the milk.
My neighbor and I will be going to Aldi again to use our awesome 5 quid off vouchers! I was so happy to see that Aldi was doing that again and it saves us a good amount in the long run.  At the end of this month I'll take a picture of our fridge and cupboards to show you how scare things have become.  It really looks like we have no food.
Tomorrow I'm making spaghetti and meatballs and this last weekend I made a beef stroganoff. Jonas loves this dish and I had to use the sour cream I bought the 1st of October.
My grocery bill including the food I bought for this week to account for the extra guest comes to 88 quid.  That's roughly 22 quid a month which was my estimate.  If it was just for Jonas and I, I think I could have kept it at around 65 quid.  I also learned from a few of my mistakes from before of things that I can buy that last for a long time and things that I shouldn't buy.  I also do allow myself certain luxury items such as chips and dips but in the next shopping drip I'll have to control myself.

In the home stretch! What a crazy experiment. Next month I'll be working with a 65 quid budget but breaking that up into two shopping trips.  So on this next shopping trip with my neighbor my goal is to buy only 40 quid worth of items. These items will feature a lot of frozen items, some fresh and lots of root type of vegetables.  I'll buy a few more things of flour as I'll be making lots of bread as well.

A very vegetarian week

Last week my husband and I ate only vegetarian food.  We did this for two reasons.  1) to save some of the meat in the freezer to last until the end of the month and 2) It's always good to eat less meat and try to focus more on greens.

It wasn't an easy week but we made it work.  Yesterday we had a roast chicken and it was marvellous.  I'm hoping to do this vegetarian week thing at least 7 days out of the month.

We had vegetarian pot pie, baked tomato pasta, vegetarian stir fry, broccoli creamy pasta, rice and cajun beans and some burritos.  It wasn't hard to think of vegetarian foods but it was hard making sure that the food had enough protein in it.  We didn't seem to miss any meat and it was easy to cook this way.  I was pretty happy with the way things turned out and hopefully we can do this again.

Only 10 more days until the next shopping trip. So far I've spent around 65 quid on groceries, just food including some flours, oils, butters, fresh potted herbs.  I thought about not including those items in my total food bill since those things last a long time but I thought it was probably better to include them.

We did eat out once so that did cut into our food bill but I think it will be okay.  Now that I have a few extra items I think I can buy some other types of food this time but it seems a bit hard to go shopping once a week.  I think it makes more sense to have a food budget of 60 quid a month and go twice a month.  But I like challenges and I'll try this time to last on 50 quid a month.  40 quid is a bit low and towards the end of the month we ran out of things like fruit so I'll allow myself a little bit more space to cook with and hopefully it will work out.

I'm still tweaking costs so hopefully I can find a good relatively low budget and stick to it.   Still have one frozen chicken in the freezer along with some ground meats.

We'll keep you updated.

Half way mark

I'm halfway there!! Only 15 more days to go and I can go on an actual shopping trip!

I'm starting to get a bit worried though.  My cupboards and pantry are starting to look scarce.  It's a strange feeling to think about using up all the food in the house before going shopping again.  As you know this week has been vegetarian week.  It was a good idea to go vegetarian this week which will help push me through the next two weeks.  I still have those chickens in the freezer and the ground beef.  I'm running low on bread but I did buy a bread mix at Aldi on October 1st so I'm going to try to make some bread.
This week so far I've made a tomato basil pasta bake, vegetarian pot pie, vegetarian and tofu stir fry, vegetarian pizza, pita bread and chips, hummus (bought chickpeas last friday) and nutritional yeast baked tofu.
Tomorrow I'm making spinach quiche and on Friday I'm making some chinese steamed buns. On Saturday I'll make a broccoli cream pasta.  I'm surprised that Jonas hasn't complained about the meat but it seems like we aren't missing it.  
Sunday I'm actually going to roast a chicken finally.  I have a good amount of potatoes, onions and garlic left with a little bit of rosemary so it should make for a really good chicken.
I do feel like I've cheated because I bought that flour on Friday and I've made a few good breakfast items with them.  I've made some muffins, scones and pizza.  If I hadn't bought that on Friday I don't know what we would be eating.  Well I tend to eat bran with milk and Jonas eats toast with peanut butter.  We are having nice breakfasts because we have a friend staying with us and I want her to have a good time.
Although I will say that its has been really fun to bake and make things from scratch. I'm still learning how to do it but practice makes for good scones eventually.  
We will see what kind of food I end up making towards the end. I'm sure it will be odds and ends of weird combinations.  Adventures adventures...makes for strange combinations.

got a pretty decent puff in my pita pocket. 

pita bread and soon to be pita chips (baked)

Baked hash brown eggs.  (way too much pepper because I shook a little too hard) 

Looks weird because I didn't want to throw away the extra crust but tasted great. 

Legit chow mein (I'm taiwanese)

Nutritional Yeast baked tofu

Pizza (two ingredient Pizza dough) Flour and greek yogurt.  Google it, its legit and super easy to make this pizza dough, tastes great!

Went shopping...Its not what you think!

Confession: Last Thursday I went shopping at ASDA.
My wonderful neighbour that I have been telling you guys about mentioned that she was going to go to ASDA that day and I really wanted to go.  I had made a simple list of things I wanted to buy.  I still hadn't bought any olive oil or flour and I just wanted to get these two things, oh and a swiffer to mop up the floors.

But as always, when you go to the store you end up buying more than you anticipated.  Although in my defence I bought more non-perishable items than perishable.
I bought loads of flour and some sauces.  I also bought yeast for breads and baking sheets.  I bought some spices and olive oil, things that are pantry essentials to food go from good to great! Oh and I had to buy some cleaning supplies.

I didn't buy that many things as my total bill came to 20 quid.  These things should last longer than necessary so I don't know if I would count it as shopping for found for the month.

So that makes my monthly total up to about 70 quid.  A little less but lets round up.
This week is vegetarian week and so far I've made rice and beans and tomato, basil baked pasta. Tomorrow I'm making a vegetarian pot pie.

Hope you guys can all forgive me.  Technically I am still cooking off of the 43 quid that I spent at Aldi on Oct 1st.

I still have half the month to go and I know for sure I can make it.  What do you guys think? Does this count as my monthly cost for food?  I'm really hoping that I can cook food for the two of us for 40-60 quid a month.  Lately we've been having some people visit so it's always costly to host dinner parties but so far it works.
I still have two frozen chickens in the freezer along with some ground beef and turkey.
Will post pictures of this weeks vegetarin adventures.

Crackling pork courtesy of Jamie Oliver

So on Wednesday night I made "crackling pork roast"  By Jamie Oliver.  Here is the link for the recipe: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork-recipes/6-hour-slow-roasted-pork-shoulder/

It wasn't hard but it took time.  I had to adjust the time since I only wanted to cook a 1 kg pork shoulder and his recipe calls for 2 kg.

The fun part of making this was seeing the skin puff up off the pork.  It took about 4 hours to make and came out really well.
My neighbor also came over to use my oven so it ended up not as crispy as I wanted it to be.  Her oven had broken and she wanted to roast a chicken and some potatoes.  It was fun to see how hard my oven was working with a pork roast, chicken roast and two types of potatoes inside.  The chicken ended up taking 4 hours to make as well because of the distribution of heat.  We even turned up the temperature to make up for the crowded space.  It's amazing how much food we ended up with after everything was done.  The chicken, pork, vegetables and potatoes came out well although nothing came out extremely crispy.

I didn't get a chance to take pictures but you get the idea.  The pork has lasted until Saturday.  We have a friend staying with us who is a vegetarian so you'll be seeing more vegetarian dishes in the next few days which is a good thing since I have so many bags of frozen vegetables that I need to use.

Buying too much mince meat. Day 6/30

When I went to Aldi I bought 1 kg of ground beef and 500 grams of ground turkey.

As I was thinking about what to make I realised that I probably bought to much ground beef and not enough actual meat chunks.  So my plan is to making spaghetti and meatballs, a meatloaf dish and chili with ground turkey.

On Monday I made spaghetti and meatballs.  As you know Sunday we had a bbq so there wasn't really any reason for me to cook that day but I did sneak home three bbq chickens and saved those for lunch on Monday.

Anyways back to the meatballs; I didn't have the usual suspects on hand.  With meatballs people usually want to make it with eggs, italian herb seasoning, breadcrumbs, cheese and ricotta or something creamy like that.  I didn't have any of that except eggs so I improvised.
I use 400 grams of ground beef and 250 grams of ground turkey.  I left out pieces of bread the night before to let it go stale and through that into the mix.  I didn't have any cheese so I used a mixture of creme fraiche and sour cream.  I put in some different seasonings, salt, pepper, garlic, and diced onions.  I mixed that all together and started forming meatballs.
While I waited for the meat to rest a little I put together the sauce.  I used 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 can of whole tomatoes, 1/2 cup water, hearty spaghetti seasoning from wild tree, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and 2 tablespoons of tomato paste.  I let that simmer for 30 minutes and threw six raw meatballs and the rest of the meatballs I cooked in the oven at 160 C.
Then I cooked some spaghetti and called it a day.
It was pretty good, moist and flavorful.  My husband really enjoyed it and for the next two days he had meatballs for lunches and dinner.  For lunches to go I didn't cook spaghetti and steamed some vegetables and poured the meatballs over it.
I made that on Monday and today (Wednesday Oct 8) I made crackling pork shoulder.
I'll share that with you tomorrow!  It was good but I have no frame of reference.

Stretching that dollar, quid, krone, whatever currency

Yesterday I calculated the cost of making the roast chicken and how much it cost for us to have dinner last night.  

Last night I made a Japanese curry with the leftover roast chicken I made on Thursday.

The roast chicken, with potatoes and boiled vegetables cost a total of 1.50 quid per serving, but the we didn't eat the whole chicken.  I used the same chicken that cost 2.99 quid to make the Japanese chicken curry.

The curry consisted of :

1/4 Chinese curry paste

1 zucchini

7 salad potatoes

6 mini portobello mushrooms

1 tomatoes

2 carrots

1/2 onions

1/2 block of tofu (cooked in soy sauce)

leftover chicken.

I made a huge pot of it on Friday for dinner and we had it again for dinner tonight Saturday. Jonas will also have it for lunch on Monday at school.  It made a total of 6 servings.  Each serving only cost .70 pence. 

For lunch we've had ham sandwiches with chips (crisps)  Very simple lunches and breakfast also consists of bran cereal, eggs, oatmeal, fruit and wholegrain toast.  Very simple and clean.

Aside from the crisps, everything we've eaten has been clean and cheap.  The curry was chock full of veggies, I only used half of the left over chicken and will use that to make a some chicken lettuce wraps for Jonas on Monday's lunch, including the rest of the curry.   I also didn't add any salt to the curry.  You could really taste the vegetables through the subtle curry notes.  I didn't take a picture of the curry but I will take pictures of the chicken lettuce wraps.  I'm really excited about that. 

Here is a picture of our breakfast spread breakfast. Looks good right??

I still have two frozen chickens, frozen vegetables, fresh vegetables, ground beef, ground turkey and pork shoulder loin with lots of potatoes and onions.  Only have 26 days to go!  I know I can make one grocery trip last the whole month.  

I"ll be making meat loaf, meat balls and chili with the ground beef/turkey.  Still thinking about what to do with the pork shoulder. 

With the left over chicken bones I plan to make my own chicken stock.  

Wherever you live in the world, stretch that money note in your hand!

Live well, give generously!

Love -

PS tomorrow we have church and a bbq.  Yay free food! I still have to make dinner.  Ha. maybe bbq leftovers. 

Million Dollar chicken- Day 2 of 30.

Today is the second day of my challenge of not stepping foot inside a grocery and I failed.  I actually did step foot inside a Tesco today but that was to compare prices from Aldi. A huge difference.  I did end up buying a few items at the asian food store though.  These are just things that I can't seem to find anywhere else.  I bought sesame seed oil and good black vinegar.  If you are asian you'll know what I mean.  Sometimes you just need to have it and I'll be cooking a good share of asian food and its hard to make those things taste like home when I don't have the right ingredients.

Anyway today I made "Million Dollar Chicken" by Chef John from Food wishes.  Have you heard of food wishes, I love this blog and if you get a chance you should check it out.  Here is a link: http://foodwishes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/million-dollar-chicken-of-course-it.html

I made simple cottage fries and some boiled vegetables.  My husband really likes gravy and sauce so I made some gravy as well, though we didn't even touch it.

The cottage fries came out okay.  I bought some coarse sea salt today because I had no salt since moving in last week and thought I should probably buy some.  This was my first time buying coarse sea salt as opposed to regular granulated sea salt.  Because I didn't know really how much to use, I ended up using a little bit too much and the cottage fries came out a bit salty.  My husband really likes salt so for him it was perfect, but for me it was too salty.  The big pieces tasted fine but the small pieces were just over the top.  Here are some pictures.

The hand in the picture is of my husband reaching to eat a piece.

The chicken on the other hand was really good, although I did have a small problem again with the coarse salt. I'm pretty sure without even googling it that I just don't need that much.  Just something I have to get use to.  The salt didn't make the chicken too salty but it did make some of the bread pieces a bit salty.
The chicken tasted just right, skin was crispy and the meat was moist.  It wasn't hard to make and regarding the crème fraiche I didn't have shallots so I used regular white onion and didn't have the apellepo pepper so I just ground black pepper.  It seemed to work fine and tasted great so I imagine if I had used the right ingredients it would have tasted even better but I guess we will never know. (for now) 
The chicken was a hit and my husband had a hard time not eating the whole thing but I reminded him that this chicken needed to last us at least 3 more days so he ate some more vegetables instead.  The chicken was paired with the cottage fries, boiled veggies and gravy. 
Here are some pictures of the results.  The final product of the chicken didn't look that great but trust me it tasted really good.  

 

You should give it a try.  I'm planning on making a chicken stock with the bones and for tomorrow lunch tomorrow I'll make a sandwich and for dinner I'll make a big pot of chicken curry that will be good for the next day as well.  From there I'll see what leftovers we have and make something for Sunday.  I'll update you on how many days we got out of the chicken on Saturday.  Until then, eat well and give generously.  :)

Going shopping yesterday

As you all know I went shopping for groceries that should last us the entire month. I ended up going yesterday October 1st instead of today October 2nd because I thought it would probably be better to go the first day of the month.

I ended up getting a lot of stuff and stayed pretty close to my budget.

Here is a picture of the receipt.

  The 5 quid off voucher really helped out. Although on the receipt it looks like I used 5 quid and then paid another 43 quid but the 5 quid was the voucher.  They pretty much treated it like cash.
My budget was 40 quid and I paid a total of 43.01 quid, not too bad.  There were some items I probably didn't need to buy but bought them anyway.  For example I bought three pints of greek yogurt.  I am crazy about greek yogurt and it was the first place that I've seen that actually carries it in large quantities and for a fair price.  Aldi is definitely way cheaper than all the other stores but I have yet to decide on the quality, so far it seems to be about the same but I've only made one meal so far. Check out Aldi's website here. : https://www.aldi.co.uk

I bought a good amount of meats but in retrospect I probably bought too many types of ground meat and not enough cuts.  I ended up getting ground beef and turkey to make different type of meatballs and burgers.  I bought a big cut of pork shoulder and three 1.25kg chickens.
I then bought a good amount of fruit and veggies.  I bought a lot of potatoes, probably more than I can eat in a month, a lot of mushrooms, tomatoes and a big bag of onions (my husband loves onions) and a pack of garlic.  I also bought a basil plant.  I think I"ll also buy rosemary and thyme next month but for now basil will have to do.  I also bought lots of dried and canned goods such as pasta, rice, beans etc.   Vegetable wise I ended up buying more frozen vegetables because I figured the veggies would go bad quickly in the fridge.  I did buy zucchini, broccoli, carrots and cabbage but I'll cook those soon and keep them in the fridge.  I bought a huge thing of Bran Cereal (gotta get my fiber) and loads of bread.  Here are a few pictures of my haul.

It was a pretty big haul and I'm really thankful for my neighbor who gave me a lift.  She was super nice about everything.  All in all I'm pretty happy with the amount of food I was able to buy for a reasonable cost.   Here's hoping I can make it a whole month without stepping into a grocery store.

Making leftovers new again

On Monday I made a poor version of eggplant lasagna.  The eggplant was still a bit raw and it just tasted funny.  My mouth itched, does raw eggplant do that to you?  Anyway, we eat most of what we could and saved the rest for left overs.
Today I was looking in the fridge and noticed that I had: two tablespoons of cottage cheese, left over eggplant lasagna, some pie dough, baby potatoes, three small portobello mushrooms and frozen spinach, frozen carrots and of course the usual suspects, onion and garlic.

I went online and searched for a website that would allow me to punch in all those items and give me a quick list of recipes.  I found one called Recipe Matcher. (recipematcher.com) I put in all the items I had on hand and it gave me a complete list of recipes I could make.  They were all useless because they all required me to go out and buy something new.  The whole idea was to make something right now and not have to buy anything.

So I put down the computer and just got to work.
I cut the baby potatoes in half and added it to a boiling pot of water.
While that was going, I minced garlic and onions and tossed them into a hot pan.  I also diced up the mushrooms and threw them on top of the garlic and onions.  I let them cook down for a while.
I took out the left over lasagna and pulled out the raw pieces of eggplant, chopped them up and threw them into the pan as well.

Once that looks like it was cooked through, I grabbed a bit of frozen spinach and frozen baby carrots and threw them in as well.

While I waited for the spinach and carrots to defrost, I drained the baby potatoes that were not soft and ready to be mashed.  I added butter, some seasonings, nutritional yeast, and cottage cheese run off.  Mashed it together with a fork and called it done.  I then took the left over eggplant lasagna which was now just ground beef, sauce (red and white) zucchini, broccoli, and mushroom and placed it in a loaf tin.  On top of that I put the mash potatoes and let it sit while I got everything else ready.

The spinach was melted by now but I wanted to wait for the water to cook out.  While I waited, I took the dough out of the fridge and started rolling pieces out to flatten into discs.
Once the water had cooked out, I added the cottage cheese and turned of the stove to cool.

I continued to flatten dough out like mini pizzas and set them aside.  Once the mixture was cool enough I took a tablespoon of the mixture and put it in the middle of the dough, the closed it up.  I put the dough filled balls seam side down onto a greased pan and kept going until I ran out of dough.  I was able to fit 14 dough balls in the pan before I ran out of dough.  With the leftover mixture I spooned it on top of the mash potatoes and placed everything in the oven. (carrot poking out of the middle one)

I had pre-heated the oven to 150 C and left it to bake for 30 minutes.  The results came out well and I didn't even get a chance to photograph it.  My husband ate seven of the dough balls and half of the "cottage pie."  He loved it and I have to say, it was pretty darn tasty.

And had no added salt at all with very little oil. Some butter for the mash and to grease the pan but thats for looks anyway.  I was pretty happy with it.  Next time you have leftover, try making something new and fun!  Its all going to the same place anyway, your stomach.