Apple Butter update

I forgot to let you know in the last post how it worked out.

The first lot wasn't so good. I added half the amount of sugar recommended in an American recipe figuring I could add more to taste and it ended up so flippin' sweet that I will have to make pies with it with rhubarb or something else that's tart to balance it out.

The second lot was a lot better. I've only added a little sugar and some spices. I have still more apples to go but it's honestly a good way to use them up. Cut off the bad bits and peel and core them. Shove them in the slow cooker at night and in the morning sterilise the jars (30 minutes at 150° ) mouli out the lumps and pour it in. Easy.

I also was given some lemons in the last delivery so I turned it into lemon honey and gave a jar back to the apple donors in thanks.

Maybe I should keep my own cattle

Another grocery shop today. Yes I know! Already!

I would love to say that it was cheap but actually it was just over $200. BUT we did come home with a lot.

For example, we didn't need any meat but there were 4 mince packs on clearance. Down from $7/pack to $2.70. Since we have a freezer I grabbed them. There was also a bbq sausage and steak pack and a couple of packs of sausages also heavily reduced. So in they went too. Our freezer hasn't ever looked so healthy.

And then there was the toothbrushes (haven't figured out how to make my own ones of those) and there was a great special on cheese this week. Have you checked the best before dates on cheese before? This one was marked with a best before Sept 2011. I'm pretty sure I can eat it before then :) So in short, I stockpiled on things that were cheap.

So I felt a little smug as I unpacked our stacks of groceries into our pantry, fridge and freezer. Unfortunately that was short lived as I realised we had run out of nappies. Doh!

Also I looked at the price of powdered vs. fresh milk. Supermarket brand trim milk that makes 10 litres sells at a regular price of $9.99. So $1/litre instead of $1.77/litre for supermarket brand ready made stuff. I'm going to keep checking to see if that brand, or trusty Anchor brand goes on special and then buy that. I have the time to make up milk as we use it and really there is no difference at all.

One Bad Apple

I've spent the last hour peeling, coring and chopping cooking apples while in constant fear of what may crawl out of them. I'm feeling very much like a domestic goddess though because the apples are now in my slow cooker with a cinnamon quill and hopefully beginning their transformation into Apple Butter.

Apple Butter is something I've come across a few times on American websites. Apparently it's a very gooey mixture of well cooked apples with spices that you can then use as a sweet topping. It appealed (excuse the pun) because it can be preserved in jars and because having 2 young children I'm ready for a change from garden variety apple sauce.

I've googled Slow Cooker Apple Butter and found several recipes and what is in my slow cooker is going to be a hybrid of all of them. Sorry Martha Stewart but I don't have Apple Brandy. Sorry Annabel Langbein but I don't want to go and buy 750ml of Port just for this recipe.

So I'll let you know how it goes. If it's horrid and beyond rescue I can just bin it. The apples were donated by a friend and apparently 'there's plenty more where those came from'.

Shopping Day

Last night and today we did the big shop. We had no meat left in the house, one frozen meal, and were out of most of the basics including flour and toilet paper so it was a BIG shop.

The results:

Foodbox $33

Foodtown for non-perishables (and some venison meatballs on clearance) $190

Mad Butcher $102

But let me expand a bit on this. Firstly the Foodtown shop. Ok so it wasn't cheap. We had to buy night nappies for the eldest (Husband is not keen for us to brave the whole night just yet) and many many bits and pieces. But one thing I did notice was how many times I looked at things on special and thought ' what a rip! I could easily make that much more cheaply'. So no I didn't buy the Betty Crocker cake mix on special for around $5 and no, I didn't buy the burrito wraps on special for about $4 (seriously? They're just flour, baking powder, oil and water - go and see Bridie's blog for the recipe).

And the Mad Butcher? - Well this is the list of what I bought:

600gm Blade Steak (Left over from first meal can be frozen for a second one)

9 Chicken Breasts - 9 meals

12 Drumsticks - 2 meals there

18 Chicken Sausages - 3 meals there

750gm premium mince

4 Sirloin steaks - 2 - 3 meals depending on how it's used

1.2kg Pork Spare ribs - 1 meal (a treat because I loooove my spare ribs marinade recipe)

So I figure that while I'm nowhere near my weekly target of $150 if you add it all up for this week, I actually might not be that far off given that I should have enough food (apart from produce) to last for the better part of a month. Anyway we'll see how we go.

Also I thought I'd post a really lovely hummus recipe a friend of mine gave me. It's a nice departure from normal hummus - which you should make yourself at least once (and once you realise how easy it is I'm sure you'll never buy premade stuff again)

Hummus:

1 tin chickpeas

1 clove garlic

1 tsp ground cumin

1 TBSP sweet chilli sauce

1 TBSP lemon juice

A little salt and pepper

1 tsp honey

1 TBSP Tahini (optional but I prefer it)

1/8 cup olive oil - add more if you need to improve spread-ability.

Throw it all in a blender or what have you and blend together.

Done :)

Sickness and Slackness

Both my girls have had bad colds. I KNOW! In summer? What's that about?

Anyway the result is very bad nights' sleep for all of us. The flow on effect is that last night we had KFC for dinner.

Hardly a great idea when you're trying to be thrifty. The worst thing was I actually had chicken defrosted in the fridge but I couldn't summon the will power to cook it. I was bloody hot, I was bloody tired and I was over being a mum to whingy sick kids.

So what can we take away from this? Well being thrifty does take preparation and effort and when you're unprepared and tired it all goes out the window. So my aim now is to get to sleep earlier so I'm more productive in the early mornings before it gets too hot. Also this weekend I'm going to start stockpiling pre-cooked meals into the chest freezer so next time I can't be bothered cooking I can just re-heat something in the microwave.

In other news all the sales are on in the kids' clothing shops so the other day I went out and bought all the winter and next summer kindy outfits I need for my eldest. Everything was at least 40% discounted. Some much much more.

Out of control

Right now I'm breaking the cardinal rule of being thrifty - doing heaps of little shops. It's partly because we live within walking distance of the local supermarket and partly because our food is coming from several different sources (garden, foodbox, supermarket, butcher). But the end result is at the moment I don't have a good idea of what our weekly shop is costing. Not knowing is making me quite unsettled and it's something we're going to have to keep tabs on. After all how can I get to the end goal if I don't even know where the starting line is?

On the plus side I'm also breaking the rules when it comes to cooking. Recipes are getting new additions depending on what is in the pantry and fridge. Tonight's dinner for example is a tuna and sweetcorn quiche but it also has mushrooms and capsicum added. It's pretty tame in comparison to some of the experiments. Luckily my family loves me enough to try things (and my kids are picky anyway).

We're seriously considering switching from fresh milk to powdered milk. The savings will be quite a bit. My friend Bridie (see the link to her blog on the right) has been doing this for a long time and I know it makes sense. It's not the taste putting me off - it's making up the milk all the time. Curse my family of tea and milo drinkers!

Baking Day

Last night was horrid. We were home late anyway because of the dinner (which was lovely) and then youngest child was up 3 times culminating in a spew over her bed at 5am. :(

So today armed with a very strong coffee I am going to stay home and bake/cook. I've decided that if I'm going to make things from scratch as often as possible then I need to pre-make things when-ever possible. This hopefully will eliminate the temptation of fast food as a quick solution rather than a treat.

Over the long weekend I made pizza bases which are now in the freezer. Although all the recipes I've seen for making your own pizza don't tell you to pre-cook the bases, I've found that giving them 7 or so minutes at 180° before you freeze them means that you don't end up with chewy undercooked dough in the end result.

Today's undertaking is fairly simple; bread in the breadmaker - I'm using the last of a pre-mix we got on special, fruit muffins to use up the overripe fruit in the freezer/fruit bowl, and dinner for tonight. I can't do any bulk meals at the moment as I left my slow cooker bowl behind last night.

A word about bread pre-mixes while I think about it. If you are making your own bread for financial gain make sure you do the maths on the pre-mixes. Often when they are at their standard retail price they don't work out cheaper than buying ready made loaves. But on a good special I find whole-grain pre-mix does work out cheaper than whole grain breads such as Molenberg.

Finally in a brilliant boost to the savings plan my eldest daughter is finally toilet trained! I can't help but smile as I think of all the savings we're making by not buying as many nappies. :)

Birthdays and South East Asia

Today is my best friend's birthday and the celebration at her house tonight is a potluck dinner with a South East Asian theme.

Happily my bestie is also doing her level best to live cheaply (aren't we all) which seems to be a fundamental requirement when you work in Hospitality like she does. So the South East Asian potluck was her way of getting a Thai dinner party without the Thai restaurant price tag.

Amazingly I had all the ingredients for the dish I decided to make apart from the kumara so currently my slow cooker is busy cooking curried coconut chickpeas and kumara. (thanks Alison).

Unfortunately I do have to go out to the shops later to get her birthday present but I'm determined to get my retail fixes from 'must buys'. Plus I've already decided what I'm going to get her online so I won't be tempted to get anything else - well that's the theory anyway.

Now off to place my Foodbox order. We get the singles fruit and vege and at $33 it does our small family well and works out the same or cheaper than the local supermarkets with the added benefit of the quality being top notch.