Decluttering

I am massively trying to declutter. The decluttering is definitely a work in progress, but I've had a few mindset shifts over the past months.

Anything is better than nothing
As far as decluttering or deep cleaning goes, I'm usually happy enough to sit down with a big chunk of uninterrupted time when I'm in the mood to tackle a big project. Take everything out, sort through it, clean it, take the good stuff to the op shop, store all the stuff that can be used again neatly then sit back and admire my handiwork.

A great theory, except for the two conditions - the big chunk of uninterrupted time, and then in the mood bit. While this is probably the most effective, efficient and rewarding way to declutter, it's also very rare. Like, I have bags of stuff to sort through which I shoved out of the way when I was pregnant. Three pregnancies ago. Because I haven't had a big chunk of uninterrupted time which correlated with the desire to do a clear out in four years.

So instead, I do nothing. Which is as effective as one would expect. I have a great system, it just doesn't get implemented and the resultant actual outcome is much crappier than the theoretical effective one.

So, my new reformed (ok, reforming) perfectionist approach is to just do something. If I only put three random things away from the table, rather than clearing the whole table (which won't actually happen, because REASONS), that's still better than actually doing nothing. A big clear out, 30 minutes on something, five minutes, two pieces of rubbish. Anything is better than nothing, and nothing is usually what happens. This applies to housework too. It doesn't matter if I don't have the time and/or energy to clean the whole kitchen - some work is better than no work.

Fill a bag
In the quest for gold stars, I've been keeping a tally of how many bags I can give away or donate. This morning I had nine, so I grabbed a bag and filled it. It was haphazard and inefficient - a few books, a toy, some shoes which I hadn't worn in years (actually, two pairs were even the wrong size and I had NEVER EVER worn) and I had another bag to drop off. There's no way that I would have gone into the wardrobe to clean it out this morning, but those shoes have gone now as I tried to fill a bag. It's inefficient, it's not systematic but it's a hell of a lot more effective because it ACTUALLY gets stuff done.

When in doubt, throw it out
...or pass it on/ donate it. Even if - especially if - it still has use. I have always tried to be conservative, not wasteful, careful, thrifty, frugal. Don't throw something out if it still has use in it. Except - we have too much stuff. So much stuff that I can't find the stuff that I need. For example, when I was grabbing the shoes mentioned above, I found two passport carriers. One was from ten years ago when I took my first overseas trip and was still in very good condition. The other I have no idea where it came from, but I've had it for ages and it's never been used - I know this because it's still in its original packaging. The 'best' part of this story - Chubs and I just went overseas last month, and I purchased a new passport carrier for that trip because I didn't know that I still had these other two, let alone where they were. I had kept my high quality passport holder from my first trip for ten years because it may be useful in the future, and then I went and bought a two dollar cheapie on the very rare occasion when it would have been useful. So today, I dropped all three passport holders in the donation bin. Someone else can use them in the meantime and I'll buy a new one when I need it again, which is probably what would have happened anyway.

This is a big mindshift for me. It seems extravagant and wasteful, but I have to remind myself that it's actually more efficient than the theoretical, but unachievable, alternative.

Slow cooker Moroccan chicken

Well, in short, it was a success!

I used this recipe with some modifications

- 380g of chicken breast instead of 600g of chicken thighs
- 1/2 capsicum
- Half a 400g tin of butter bean instead of lentils
- A slightly different tin of soup, although that's probably a branding thing
- Brown rice instead of couscous
- no coriander

I did sear the chicken in the pan but probably won't bother next time. Hubby thinks that some mixed herbs would help, and I think I could just use one cup of chicken stock. I put in on for five hours on high and it was probably a bit overcooked. I tried to skip the flour because we didn't have any but it really was runny so I went to the shop and got some to thicken it up a bit.

Not sure how it will go if I double it and freeze. We got more than we needed - hubby went back for very rare seconds and there was still a serve left, so if I increased it by 50% we would probably have the prefect size for two servings for our family.

The neighbour even commented on how amazing the smell was which was the first time ever something like that has happened!

Stay tuned as I tweak further...

Monday Menu Plan

After a long break from both blogging and menu planning, I'm back again.

Monday: Pizza (take away)
Tuesday: Shepherd's Pie (from my awesome mum)
Wednesday: Moroccan Chicken Casserole (slow cooker) We haven't had this one before so I'm going to give it a try. I think I will serve with rice rather than couscous, because couscous scares me. UPDATE - it went well!
Thursday: Burritos
Friday: Stir fry (Hubby) Family BBQ
Saturday: Spaghetti Bolognese Family BBQ
Sunday: Scavenge

Edited to add: Half a day later and I'm already making changes! I forgot about one family dinner on Friday and just found out about another on Saturday, so a few changes to make.

Menu Plan Monday linky here

Freezer lasagnes

A dead easy, easy scale up-able, freezeable basic.

I'm pretty much cheating here. There is no bechamel sauce and it uses frozen veggies, but it's simple and it works. 

Ingredients: 

(Makes six medium lasagnes: 2 generous adult serves each) 

- 1 kg lean beef mince

-  750g frozen veggies (I used peas, carrots and corn )

- 4 jars pasta sauce

- 3 tins tomatoes

- 1 tin kidney beans (washed and drained) 

- 1-2 boxes lasagne sheets (we use whole meal) 

- grated cheese as per taste - 500g is generous

Brown the mince in portions. Combine the sauce, tomatoes, veggies and washed/ drained beans in a big big pot. Add the browned mince and simmer for 30 mins ish. 

Layer the meat sauce (which should be runnier than normal bolognese sauce) then pasta sheet, then cheese. Repeat two or three times depending on the size of your container/ hunger of your family. If desired you can sprinkle breadcrumbs on top of the top later if you like a crispy top. 

Freezes very well and easy to make up in bulk and in stages. Defrost in the fridge for 24 hours then cook in the over for 30 mins ish on 180 deg until brown on top and hot throughout. Serve with salad and or garlic bread. 

Decluttering - freezer

One thing on the decluttering list was the freezer. With the craziness of the last cope of months it had reached crisis point. Too much crap in there, so no room for useable food. No room for usable food, so I couldn't make sandwiches etc ahead of time. Couldn't freeze sandwiches, so getting out of the house in the morning was a disaster, so that caused stress. Stress that I knew how to fix - get the freezer sorted - but didn't have the time or energy to do. 

We had a 40 deg C day here in Saturday, so the idea of having a legitimate reason to stick my head in the freezer for an extended period seemed awesome. I pulled everything out of the freezer, and the overloaded crap/ waste wasn't actually as bad as I thought. 

Soaking up the icy slush.

Chucks of ice (and stray veggies) 

All I had to chuck was a whole heap of almost finished old loaves of bread, and a massive expressed milk stash that was unusable - more on that to come. Thankfully nothing else was too old or ruined, 

The reorganised and defrosted freezer. I'm using reusable grocery bags to try to keep it organised - I'll know how I go! It actually hasn't been too bad - it's been about two years since a clean out/ defrost and it's only been the past couple of months that it's been in crisis mode. 

As well as the grocery bags, I'll keep doing my usual freezer organising things which generally work well.

- when meals go in, put new meals on the bottom so the oldest are at the top

- small containers of sandwiches/ Chub's lunch go in the basket

- uncooked meat generally goes in the separate fride freezer (the chest freezer is mostly for pre cooked meals and large things like bread )

- I no longer pump milk so no need to worry about storing that. 

One more thing ticked off the list! 

Meal plan

Time to get back on it. Whenever I skip meal planning for a time, I really miss it. It's hard when I'm on my own because it doesn't seem worth it to cook for Chubs and me so I try to freeze ahead, but I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. 

Monday: steak and veg (Dear Husband) 

Tuesday: slow cooker something (me) 

Wednesday: dinner out with visiting friends

Thursday: stir fry (DH) 

Friday: chilli con carne (make big batch for freezer - me) 

Saturday: scavenge 

Sunday: burritos (me) 

Decluttering

Decluttering I the new year - nothing special about that but I'm being ruthless. So far I've had one box of toys and these three bags full of mostly my clothes. Most of these clothes just plain and simple don't fit any more. They are still in good condition, but for someone two sizes smaller than me, so out they go. 

The clutter is driving me nuts at the moment. I'm not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination, but when I can't get into drawers because there are boxes and baskets on the floor in front of them - and some of those baskets have been there since I was pregnant with Chubs - then it's time to get brutal. 

One of the reasons that I hang on to things is that I try not to be wasteful, therefore I don't want to give something to the second hand shop or toss it in the rubbish if it can be mended or still have some use in it. However, the fact still remains that if something has not been used in years, then it's probably not worth the storage space and I should pass it on to someone else. 

So, I'm trying to be brutal and pretty much just purge. The rubbish bin has been overflowing with crap and will continue to do so. I'm trying to do just some each day.

We're also trying to get back into a bit of a routine. Christmas, family visiting and a beach holiday in the back of flying solo for five weeks while hubby was away during a crazy time at work for me has meant that routine has gone out the window and we're all craving a return. Hopefully the decluttering, organising and cleaning will help to get back on track. 

How I do menu planning - Part 1 Dinner

How I do menu planning - Part 1 Dinner

I do menu planning almost every week. There are a few reasons for this:

- I'm not a good cook. There are some complicated things that I can do easily, but cooking is not one of those. I can't make cooking 'just happen'. I need to give it conscious, specific attention. For many years Dear Husband did practically all of the cooking. Dinner magically appeared in the evening as far as I was concerned. I realised this when Dear now-Husband was away with work. I would be sitting on the couch at 9:30pm trying to work out what this strange hunger feeling was.
- It saves time and money, and cuts down on waste.
- It means that usually, we avoid dinner time chaos.
- It almost eliminates emergency runs to the supermarket for  a missing ingredient. That said, I cook very simple meals and many of the ingredients are interchangable. This is partly laziness and partly planning.
- Some days I think I'm superwoman if can defrost something.
- It makes it easier to use planned leftovers for other meals.

I used to plan once a week, but I'm now planning fortnightly. Here's the process. It sounds quite long but I don't go through the whole thing each time.

Preliminaries:

Love your freezer.
We have no room for a chest freezer. We still have one - it's in the living room. I would recommend a freezer as useful baby equipment ahead of a cot. That's how much I love it. Freezer cooking is a whole other section, but for us it's a crucial part of meal planning.

Know your routine
After conscious experimenting, we have a routine that generally works.
Sunday night: plan meas for week/ fortnight. Blog it (see bwlow)
Monday: Grocery shopping in the day, freezer cooking and weekly prep in the evening after bedtime.
Tuesday: A work day for me, so often we aren't home until about 5:30 and there's hunger and crankiness. Then there's the toddler. Needs to be a very easy meal, almost always a freezer one.
Wednesday and Thursday: I'm home these days. I still want easy meals that are quick for me, but I can do something like crumbed chicken and roast veggies where I prep or cook it all earlier in the day and then toss in in the oven (now that we have one). I often need to take a plate to playgroup on Thursday, so I will try to have an oven meal on Wednesday if I'm making cupcakes or something so the oven only needs to be on once.

A menu plan is a tool for you; you are not a slave to it
I do try to stick to the plan, but if it's not working or we do something else then I don't worry at all. The whole point of the plan is SUPPOSED to be a reduction in stress, not an increase.

Know your meals
As I said above, I'm not a good cook. I'm someone who needs to practise a simple meal many times before I can do it reliably enough to be edible. Generally, I do meals that I'm familiar with. When we introduce a new meal I try it out a few times when it's a day when Dear Husband can chase Chubs wo I can concentrate, I do it in small quantities to see if we like it and how it freezes etc. Generally after four or five days I'll know how the meal 'works' and where it will fit best into routines.

I like to pair meals together - eg we will have chicken noodle soup the day after a takeaway hot chook. A roast is followed by a salad with meat or another 'post roast' meal.

A meal with salad is best at the start of the week before it gets wilted, and the potatoes and carrots are relegated to the tail end of the week.

We plan for meals out, leftovers, or 'scavenge' nights. I freeze leftovers if they are unexpected, so I plan to use then every now and again.

The actual process:

This, like everything on this blog, is what we do which works for our family at this time. It's certainly not a MUST DO list, but a What We Do list.

On Sunday night:
1. I see what we have. What freezer meals, meat in the freezer, veggies to be used up, things in the pantry. What needs to be used up in a few days? In a week? If needed?

2. I look at what we have on for the next fortnight. Some things (like work, playgroup) are the same every week. We live fairly boring predictable lives so it doesn't change much - generally Tuesdays are freezer Bolognese and Fridays are a takeaway hot chook. Still, sometimes there's a family dinner, a parent teacher night or something else to consider so these get popped in. I'm old school so I write these on a piece of paper - I have a booklet of weekly planning sheets that I was given - but I hear there are lots of apps and fancyschmancy things.

3. I actually plan the meals for the next fortnight and write them in. I like lots of wiggle room, so I rarely plan to use up everything. I go into 'siege' mentality sometimes...

This is the point where I try to match meals up , plan leftovers for the next meal and so on.

4. Make shopping list
I list how many of each thing I need to make the meals for the next fortnight for dinner. It's not an inclusive list - it's pretty much just dinner and anything else which can't be forgotten. I don' include things like cows' milk and eggs which we buy all the time. If there's something like bread which we usually buy but don't need that week, then I write a note saying not to buy it.

I also write a small shopping list for the next Monday when we will do a little shop with anything fresh that we will need.

5. Blog it. I do a recap of the previous week and then write my plan for the next fortnight. I link to orgjunkie.com along with literally hundreds of others. Many people list special diet plans and are great for ideas. I do find when I don't blog I get slack with the planning.

On Monday:
6. Do shopping
We shop on Mondays and somedays it goes wonderfully well. Some days - not so much. I do ind having a list helps with not forgetting things, since my brain does not work well when Chubs is screaming in it. It took me a while to work out that cranky baby almost always needed to eat food. MOTY there...

7. Do freezer cooking
Monday night after Chubs is in bed is my prep night. I will usually cut and crumb chicken and make a triple batch of Bolognese or chilli con carne. I also do sandwiches for lunches, cut up fruit etc. For our family it works well to invest Monday night doing this for the benefits of having everything ready later in the week.

Throughout the week:
8. Change as needed. We rarely stick to the plan as you can see - actually I don't think we've ever done it! I scribble over the sheet on the fridge as we go (which also makes blogging the next week easier.)

Next Sunday night
9. Look at the plan for the following week. Change as needed (and it's always needed). Update mini shopping list. Blog.

Next Monday
10. Do a little shop, and then any freezer cooking, sandwiches etc that night.


This is by no means a perfect system. We don't always go shopping every Monday, sometimes we don't need to. I still go to the shops during the week for more cows' milk and fruit. As I said above, we rarely stick to the plan totally. We still have scavenge nights. We still have breakfast for dinner occasionally - sometimes planned, sometimes not. I much prefer to spend my energy planning in the evening when I want to, when it's calm and before things go pear shaped than I spending energy at 5 o'clock with a screaming toddler clawing at me. Either way meal planning is going to take time and energy - I prefer to do it on my terms.

There's plenty of wiggle room built in and I do like to have quite a stash so I rotate long storage food. We still have the occasional 'what about a pizza?' nights, and Chubs still loves the prepackaged baby food pouches (six months + still counts at 24, right?)

Do you meal plan? What your approach?

Coming soon - breakfast and lunch meal planning.

Chore chart for Chubs

With the arrival of Chubs' second birthday, we also heralded the arrival of her first chore chart!

Now - honestly - it's pretty much a chart for the sake of having a chart. Quite a few of the 'jobs' she would be doing anyway - 'eat breakfast' and 'go to the potty' need to happen chore chart or not!

Some jobs are about establishing routines - eg shoes away. Some other things will hopefully pay off in the long run, but I tell you, it's a pain. Getting Chubs to 'make' her bed? Ugh - the 4.5 seconds that it would take me to just pull her sheet and doona up would be much faster. Not making it at all would be even faster again.

I have noticed a difference in actually having the chart. I printed out the lists below with pictures (either of Chubs doing that job, or a clip art picture), put them in plastic slips and taped them to the pantry doors at two year old height. So far Chubs has responded well to 'what's next on your list?' when 'it's time to do **' isn't working.

The plan is that over the next few years we can add 'real' chores on, and hopefully some that she can do on her own. Everything on the list she either needs to be told to do or needs close supervision, but then again - she is only just two!

Chubs’ Morning Jobs

May 2013

Go to the potty

Eat breakfast

Help to make bed

Put clothes on

Get hair brushed

Put shoes on

 

Chubs' Evening Jobs

May 2013

Put shoes in purple tub

Eat dinner

Put clothes in dirty clothes basket

Have a shower

Put pyjamas on

Get hair combed

Brush teeth

She is very happy to stand in front of the pantry and 'read' the list to whoever will listen. Hopefully the novelty and the excitement will last for a while!

Menu plan

Last week's recap:

As per usual the plan didn't work out. The spanner in the works was Dear Husband getting quite ill and needing a lot of emergency dental work. It appears he's had a number of tooth infections for quite some time (which we didn't know about). Two flared up last week and have been removed, with more work to come. He was quite sick with both the infection, and then the recovery so things went out the window this week. Mother in law has also been visiting so everything is a bit out of routine.

Monday 27/5 Crumbed chicken and roast veg (also do daycare cupcakes) All good
Tuesday 28/5 Bolognese All good
Wednesday 29/5 Chilli con carne (make large batch to freeze, eat one serve each tonight) Didn't happen, we scavenged that night.
Thursday 30/5 Stir fry Soup and scavenge
Friday 31/5 Bolognese Hot chook 
Saturday 1/6 Slow cooker chicken curry I knew that it would be a busy day - I had a book club meeting Saturday afternoon, picking up MIL etc. I put the slow cooker on at lunch time, and it was a great to walk in to a hot dinner ready to go at dinner time!
Sunday 2/6 Scavenge After a massive day and feeling under the weather, take away pizza won the day.
The plan for this week:

Monday 3/6 Chilli con carne with rice, corn chips and salad I'm posting this Monday night, and so far do good! I also made three lots of Bolognese for the freezer
Tuesday 4/6 Asian chicken noodle soup MIL wants to make silverside, and I'm totally letting her!
Wednesday 5/6 Parmesan chicken with roast veg Heading out to dinner - a rare treat!
Thursday 6/6 Stir fry Parmesan chicken with roast veg - I'll bring this over from Wednesday
Friday 7/6 Hot chook with chips and steamed veggies Bolognese (We can't go all week without it!)
Saturday 8/6 Stir fry
Sunday 9/6 Scavenge

Linked

Menu plan

Well, plans have a habit of not quite working out that way... :)

Here's the updated version of what we were supposed to eat last week:

Monday 20/5: I've changed this to chilli con carne with rice, corn chips and salad since we didn't have the hot chook last night (was Asian chicken noodle soup ) All good
Tuesday 21/5: Spaghetti and rice Bolognese (freezer) I've started putting red kidney beans in the Bolognese too. All good
Wednesday 22/5: Stir fry Silly me - I was trying to be prepared and got the frozen Bolognese for Tuesday night out of the freezer on Monday night and put it in the fridge to defrost. Totally forgot about this on Tuesday, and got a new one out of the freezer. So, we needed to use up the one in the fridge so we had Bolognese again.
Thursday 23/5: Crumbed chicken with roast veggies (instead of parmesan)
I was coming down with a cold on Thursday (which is still hanging on) and the idea of doing a roast just didn't happen. Freezer Bolognese again.
Friday 24/ 5: Spaghetti and rice Bolognese (freezer) After Bolognese three nights in a row, we were getting a little over it so we got a takeaway hot chook which is a bit of a Friday night favourite.
Saturday 25/5: Stir fry Since we had the hot chook on Friday, we did Asian chicken noodle soup. It hadn't been planned so I bought some fresh pak choy on Saturday morning but forgot the chicken stock. We usually use the liquid tetra stuff, but I had to run up to the corner store which only had stock cubes. There were an acceptabel substitute, but we do like the liquid tetra packs better.
Sunday 26/5: Scavenge A last minute invitation from my mum for early dinner was accepted with much enthusiasm! 


Plan for the next fortnight:

Monday 27/5 Crumbed chicken and roast veg (also do daycare cupcakes)
Tuesday 28/5 Bolognese
Wednesday 29/5 Chilli con carne (make large batch to freeze, eat one serve each tonight)
Thursday 30/5 Stir fry
Friday 31/5 Bolognese
Saturday 1/6 Slow cooker chicken curry
Sunday 2/6 Scavenge

Monday 3/6 Chilli con carne with rice, corn chips and salad
Tuesday 4/6 Asian chicken noodle soup
Wednesday 5/6 Parmesan chicken with roast veg
Thursday 6/6 Stir fry
Friday 7/6 Hot chook with chips and steamed veggies
Saturday 8/6 Bolognese
Sunday 9/6 Scavenge

Chicken freezer hint

Since we got our new oven, I've been doing roast chicken pieces a lot. Since I like to do pretty much everything in bulk, I'll cut up the breasts into strips and cover with the crumb or otherwise prepapre it.

 

 

Freeze in meal sized portions (and labelled) and I toss it all in the freezer. The day before we are going to eat it I pop it in the fridge to defrost and then into the oven for dinner time.

 

I would much rather get my hands messy and crumby once, and then be good for a few weeks. It also means that i can do the time consuming crumbing bit at a convenient time, not at disaster whyisn'tdinnerreadyyet!!!! time. 

 

I only ever do this with fresh chicken, so it only gets frozen once.

Crumbed chicken

 

 

This faily simple meal is on frequent rotation at our house.

 

 

Chicken

 

Ingredients: (to serve four)

- two large chicken breasts

- 1 egg and a small amount of milk whisked together

- 1 - 2 cups of breadcrumbs

- 1/2 cup of flour

 

Roughly slice chicken breasts into large strips

Put the flour, egg and milk, and breadcrumbs into three separate bowls.

Make an 'assembly line' - coat each piece of chicken in flour, then the egg mixture, then the bread crumbs.

*If freezing, then put in the freezer at this step*

 

Put some olive oil in the bottom of a roasting pan. Place the chicken strips in the pan. Bake in the oven for approximately 25 minutes. Check that the chicken is well cook all the way through by cutting a strip at the widest point. There should be no pink at all.

 

Serve with roast veggies and some steamed green beans and carrot. Lemon juice is yummy on the chicken :)

Guest posting: feeding your family when flying solo

I've been guest posting! If you want to read my post about Feeding your family when flying solo, head over to Double Blessing Boutique.

Kitchen tip

To avoid the bin smellies, we toss the chicken carcass into the freezer until bin day. Great idea, until bin day comes and I forget. Then, before you know it, there's more meat scraps in the freezer than edible meat.

Solution: Write on the bag. Ground breaking stuff, I know. No more opening a bag to work out if I'm throwing out a meal. Win.

Yes, I do feel the need to point out the massive luxuries assumed in this post. If we skip over electricity, internet access and abundant food in general, we can move on to enough freezer space to 'lose' something in there, meat 'scraps' being tossed without a second thought, a hot chook shop a five minute drive away, a car to drive in and enough money to run the car and pay for the chook and the elecricity for the freezer and the internet, and of course the magic rubbish truck which comes weekly to take rubbish 'away'.

 

Easy dinner

Some days, easy is what you need.

A very easy go-to meal for us is a roast chook from the shop with veggies. Simple, dead easy, and then I use the leftover chicken for Asian chicken noodle soup the following night.

Between $10.50 and $13 for a roast chicken doesn't make this the most frugal meal, however it does provide meat for the next night as well. It's only a few dollars more to purchase a roasted, seasoned and stuffed chook as it is to buy a raw one, and about a million times easier than prepping and cooking it myself. By the time I factor in the electricity for the oven (and ignoring my time) then the purchased roast chook is the way to go. It's also much cheaper than most take away meals, and much healthier.

I probably plan this meal half the time (with soup the next day), and we also have it either on a disaster day or just a 'let's take the easy option tonight'. Nothing fancy or Earth-shattering by any means, but easy, healthy, a kinda-frugal = win.

 

Gluten free, dairly free, fructose malabsorption and awesome-full.

Dear Husband and I are quite lucky that we have very few dietary issues to negotiate. The most taxing thing that we have to deal with is that fact that - apparently, everyone needs to eat every day. Several times a day, apparently. Sigh.

(Let's ignore the day last week where Chubs' behaviour was stinkingly awful all afternoon, and at four o'clock I realised that I hadn't given her lunch. Let's ignore that, bit time.)

We try to eat fairly healthly and fairly frugally. We mostly eat at home and kind-of from scratch. I'm happy to open a jar or a tin, but we try to stay away from preprepared meals. We try to keep our sugar, fat and preservatives low and minimise processed foods.

But - and it's a really big but - we don't HAVE to. We can have a sneaky take away meal without too much carnage. We can treat ourselves with junk every now and again, and we have no trouble finding something to eat from a menu on the rare occasions when we do eat out.

This luxury which we enjoy - food of plenty - is not extended to many. To quote my aunt on the weekend, 'I really can't think of many things that would be worse than being unable to feed your family.'

Our family is doubly fortunate - not only do we have an abundance of  available food (and over abundance actually, as I just tossed some slimy lettuce and mouldy tomatoes into the bin) but when push comes to shove, we can pretty much eat whatever we want. We like to eat a certain way and vertainly notice a difference in our health and functioning, but we have a multitude of healthy, available and affordable options.

No so for everyone. I'm sure I'm not telling anyone anything new that others diets are restricted, in some cases quite significantly. Two friends of mine, Penni and Gemma, both have to negotiate different complex and demanding restrictions.

Penni blogs her adventures in dairy free and gluten free meals at pennicooks . Her meals are healthy, frugal and kid friendly. Gemma blogs at Glimpsing Gembles about Hashimoto's disease, fructose malabsorption and other dietry constrains. Head on over and have a look.

Monday menu plan

** The conclusion to Operation ReClaim Our Bed is here**

I've been a bit slack with meal planning, but hoping to get back into it for the next little while. I'm also going to start planning fortnightly as we're going to change the way we do shopping. I'm also planning a lot more specifically (including writing two shopping lists). We'll try this for a little while and see how it goes - stay tuned.

Monday 13/5 : Hot chook (from the supermarket) with steamed carrot and beans
Tuesday 14/ 5: Asian chicken noodle soup (with Monday's leftover chicken)
Wednesday 15/ 5: Crumbed roast chicken with roast veggies and steamed green beans and carrots.
Thursday 16/ 5: Beef stir fry (Dear Husband)
Friday 17/5: Spaghetti and rice Bolognese (freezer)
Saturday 18/5: scavenge
Sunday 19/ 5: Hot chook

Monday 20/5:  Asian chicken noodle soup (with Sunday's leftover chicken)
Tuesday 21/5: Chilli con carne (the same as what we made on our bulk cooking day) with rice, corn chips and salad.
Wednesday 22/5: Stir fry
Thursday 23/5: Roast parmesan chicken with road veggies
Friday 24/ 5: Spaghetti and rice Bolognese (freezer)
Saturday 25/5: Stir fry
Sunday 26/5: Roast beef with roast veggies


Linked

Bulk cooking day - with a friend!

Two toddlers, 20 serves of dinner, some yummy treats - what a day! A friend of mine teamed up with me to dip our toe into the world of joint cooking, and ultimately it was a success! We decided to start small, since we weren't sure howmuch we would be able to get through.

 

How we did it:

- We decided what meals to make ahead of time. She was buying and making food for chili con carne and some banana bread, and I was in charge of the Bolognese. We kept track of how much we spent and fixed up the difference at the end.

 

This became ten small family meals of Bolognese

- She brought all her ingredients and her beautiful almost one-year-old to my place. The girls had lots of 'practise' at sharing toys. Both are eldest/ only children and are both used to having the run of the joint. To have to share toys was a good learning experience for them! They had a lovely time together and Chubs was talking about her little friend all evening after they left.

- One of us was on cooking duty and then other was chasing the girls, and then we switched.

 

I'm suprised that any of the banana bread made it to the freezer -it was sooooooooooo yummy



 

We started small, since we didn't want to have a massive cooking day with half finished meals and screaming children. Now that we have a good idea of what we can do and what meals our families like, we'll probably scale up next time.



Chilli con carne - some for last night's dinner, some for the freezer.

We made just the main part of the meals, not complete meals. This is a very effective way to take the fuss out of dinner and just put on some spaghett, rice, potatoes or similar to go with the meat. (Dear Husband and I had sneaky corn chips with our chilli last night as well.)

What we made: (a 'dinner' is a dinner for our families - two parents and one toddler)
- Two dinners of crumbed chicken strips (just me)
- Six dinners of Bolognese (three each)
- Four dinners of chilli con carne (two each)
- Two loaves of banana bread (one each)

As well as making all that, we cleaned it up (well, the dishwasher did most of it!), chased little girls, cleaned up spills and wet pants, changed nappies, fed and ate lunch, played with blocks and toys and books and generally dealt with usual play date madness. The best part is, we got to take five dinners home and yummy banana bread too!

Freezing baby bolognese

When I do a bulk cook up, I make sure to put a small amount in several small containers for the freezer. These are perfect for dinner for Chubs if she's not eating with us - quickly reheated and easily eaten. Yum!