Lost, completely and utterly lost.

{Project Food Budget} Week 24

It's official, I have no idea what has happened since my last {Project Food Budget} post. Not only did I lose track of just about everything but I had completely forgotten to factor in a wee trip to the countryside for a music festival. Oh, and my birthday, so I'll blame that too. Then there was the study, trying to get my other project - Fox and Kitten - sorted and other commitments including a stint volunteering at the awesomest of all awesome festivals, WOMADelaide. Better stop there before I run out of future excuses for being useless down the track too...

So all of these lame excuses have left me with no time to get my head around this budgeting stuff. Really this is completely ridiculous as I need to keep on top of it all but I think rather than tear my hair out trying to work it all out (that would involve going through bank statements and adding it all up which is way too scary) I will just vow to start again, right now. I do know that I've kept within the $150 per week budget for the past four weeks though so we'll leave it at that.

So this week I'm going to go back to my original family budget of $150, just until I can get myself together enough to try to keep it down again. Should be easy enough except for the fact that we went out for dinner last night which came in at just under $40, so I guess that leaves me with $110 to get me through until next Wednesday. I shouldn't speak too soon, but hopefully this shouldn't be too hard as I already have a fair amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in the kitchen. I'll let you know how I go.

Until the next time make sure you check out everyone else's blogs to see how they're doing with the challenge:

• Emily Levenson
• Dairy-Free Cooking
• Test Kitchen Tuesday
• Red Pen Mama
• Acquired Tastes
• Fit Flexitarian
• Warm As Pie 
• Katy Rank Lev
• My Inner Healthy
• Little Blue Hen
• xox, b
• Project Food Budget 2.0
• Fresh...A New Chapter
• Two Eggs Over Easy 
• That's Just Me
• Eat Whole Be Vital
• Four Happy Violets
• Naturally {Un}refined
• Pgh Dad 
• yogabeautylife
• Charmingly Modern
• naMAMAste
• Six Dollars a Day
• The Gluten-Free Vegan
• What da Health?
• Twice the Twinsanity
• Brandon and on...

Katy xx


My Mum's super-easy Kai Si Ming

500g mince
2 onions, diced
2 carrots, sliced
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 cup rice
1/2 cabbage, shredded
1 pkt chicken noodle soup mix
6 cups boiling water

In a large pot or electric fry pan heat some oil and fry the onion until soft. Add the mince and brown, breaking up any large chunks. Add Worcestershire sauce, carrots, rice and soup mix and stir. Stir in cabbage before adding around 6 cups of boiling water. Bring to a slow simmer and leave to cook for around 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure the mixture doesn't stick to the pan. If it gets too thick add a little more water.

What's in a name?

The year that my girls were born, one of the most important decisions we had to make was deciding on their names. As we all know, this is a decision most people don’t take lightly, after all the names we choose for our children today are those they’ll be stuck with for the rest of their lives, or at least until they’re old enough to change them by deed poll!

David and I decided early on that we wanted classic names and knowing that we were expecting girls from the 20 week scan meant we had plenty of time to agree on four names for both their first and middle names. Our first obstacle was needing to consider something that would flow with their surname. David and I aren’t married, and until we spoke about it he assumed they would take my name, but I put an end to that idea as soon as it was mentioned, after all, when we do get finally bother to get married I will change my name, so it only makes sense for the children to have his too. So everyone else in my household has the surname Gardner, which automatically cut out any vaguely botanical names. No Lily, Jasmine, or Iris, no Rose, Daisy, or Violet, no Ivy, no Poppy, no Holly and for that matter no Therese or Apple either!

We would lie in bed at night and throw names around and in the end both Emily and Chloe were names that David suggested, but as I liked them too they were settled fairly quickly, although there did of course continue to be new suggestions here and there. As for their middle names we decided on Charlotte, my maternal great-grandmother’s name and Anne, not so much because we love the name but because it is my, David’s mother’s and my mother’s middle name. So we ended up with Emily Charlotte and Chloe Anne for no other reason than liking the sound of them that way around. Although we’re still happy with the names we chose I was interested to learn that in 2009, the year they were born, Emily and Chloe were the equal second most popular names in South Australia. Oh well, at least they were equal and one wasn’t more popular than the other.

So this year, things are different and as mentioned in a previous post, one of the most important decisions I have made is to go back to full time study. I haven’t studied since 1999 and with this and life in mind I really wanted to go back part time but due to factors beyond my control I’ve been given no choice but to throw myself head-first into it. The good thing about taking the full time option is that I will come out with a Bachelor of Business majoring in Tourism Management at the end of this year as opposed to the end of next year. I’m pleased that it will be done and dusted quickly but terrified at the same time of how I am going to fit two full days of classes then additional study time on top of my already busy life. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

As for the girls, they’re heading into a whole new phase of asking constant questions. So far we’ve avoided the question “why?”, but I am instead now being bombarded with “What’s that?”, “What’s it for?” or “What are you doing?”… I wouldn’t mind so much if I wasn’t being asked what I’m up to as I hang out the washing for example and it’s hard not to ask in return “What does it look like I’m doing?” One question however that I do find rather endearing is “Are you okay?” which is often asked by one and directed at the other after there have been tears or if one has been a little under the weather. It’s very sweet to see the girls really caring for one another and I can’t help but wonder if it would be the same if they were different ages rather than twins.

Thinking of endless questions, here's an interesting one we had to deal with last week. As we left the pool after the girls' swimming lesson and wound our way through the back streets I saw the car about 50m ahead of us throw a small plastic bag out of the car window, before pulling into a driveway and entering their garage about 100m further down the road. Never one to keep his opinions about people littering to himself, David insisted that I turn around so that we could return the bag to its rightful owner, which I did, as neither of us could believe that someone would actually throw a bag of muck out of their car on their own street and that perhaps it really was an accident or at the hands of a child. As I pulled up and he picked up the bag we discovered it was in fact full of raw meat scraps which really left us wondering why the woman seen checking her letterbox in front of the house as we’d gone back for the bag couldn’t just use the household bin. So we pulled up out the front the offender's house (she’d disappeared inside and closed the garage door by then) and the bag was launched over their fence. 


Now I’m not really one to be involved in such vigilante justice but I couldn’t help feeling a little pleased with having done a community service to the neighbourhood we were in (that and the fact that the bag lost it's contents and spread them out over the nicely manicured front lawn of the house mid-flight). I was however a little unprepared when it came to knowing how to respond to the barrage of questions that followed from the back seat. When asked, “What you doing?” and not really wanting to glorify our behaviour I found myself telling the girls that the silly lady had dropped her bag on the road and we were just giving it back by leaving it in her yard...

On that note, I'd better go before I get myself into any more trouble,

Katy xx


Easy Cheesy Scones
(From The $21 Challenge book)

2 cups self raising flour
2 cups grated cheese
1 1/4 cups milk

Preheat oven to 200C.
Combine flour and cheese and mix well. Add the milk - the dough will be quite wet. Shape into approximately eight balls, sprinkle with extra cheese and bake for 10 minutes or until risen and crusty.

Success! Or not? You be the judge.

I know you're just dying to know how I went with the $21 challenge and {Project Food Budget}. Well I did really well, sort of. Let me explain...


Going into this challenge I made sure that I did it wholeheartedly, so rather than giving myself the opportunity to cheat by doing even a vague stock up at the supermarket I decided on impulse to kick it all off Sunday night last week. Needing to be more aligned with the Project and also with our pay days I've kind of carried on until Wednesday, with the thought of going back to the supermarket for a little top up yesterday afternoon. It's now Friday morning and still haven't been, so maybe today?


So back to the challenge. I did a stock take of the pantry and decided on a few things to cook for the week's dinners including a couple of things mentioned in last week's posts:

• Chicken mornay
• Beef Lasagne
• Corned Beef
• Lamb Rogan Josh with red lentil daal and rice
• Bangers and mash
• Spaghetti with a tomato and vegetable sauce

I also whipped up a zucchini slice and a huge batch of vegetable risotto for the girls' lunches and dinners, and froze various portions of curry and lasagne for future meals.


As for the spending side of things I did fairly well:

• $4 spent on some watermelon, a cucumber and a packet of corn chips (when I received a call requesting these I was about to say no but was advised they were required for a salad being made to go with our dinner, so how could I resist?)
• $3.65 for some bananas, capsicum and corriander
• $10.67 on more bananas, nectarines, mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, olives and 500g of seafood marinara mix marked down by over 50% (which turned the vegetable spaghetti into a much more exciting marinara)
• $6 on 6L of milk

Total for the week $24.32, so not quite within the $21, but I am happy with that as it's really been over 11 days instead of just seven.


But, and it's a big 'BUT', I have to confess that I ended up spending an additional $80.78 on six 1kg blocks of cheese, 1kg of rump steak, around 2kg of chicken breasts and 3 pieces of Atlantic salmon. After trawling through the junk mail on the very Sunday night that I decided to start the $21 challenge I had noticed all of these items on special, at much lower than the regular or even normally expected special prices so I decided to stock up. Then there was the cat food. All $47.52 of it.


I have justified it all to myself by only doing this extra shop on the day before the specials ended (Saturday) and by deciding that these items will instead come out of this new week's budget. I also popped everything in the freezer, or right to the back of the fridge and am yet to use any of it. Cheating, or not? You be the judge.


So this week, I set my budget to a somewhat higher $110, which is $40 less than usual and leaves me as of right now, with less than $30, but this doesn't include the cat food. I'll let you know how I go! 


Until the next time, don't forget to check out the other blogs:

• Emily Levenson
• Dairy-Free Cooking
• Test Kitchen Tuesday
• Red Pen Mama
• Acquired Tastes
• Fit Flexitarian
• Warm As Pie 
• Katy Rank Lev
• My Inner Healthy
• Little Blue Hen
• xox, b
• Project Food Budget 2.0
• Fresh...A New Chapter
• Two Eggs Over Easy
• That's Just Me
• Eat Whole Be Vital
• Four Happy Violets
• Naturally {Un}refined
• Pgh Dad
• yogabeautylife
• Charmingly Modern
• naMAMAste
• Six Dollars a Day
• The Gluten-Free Vegan
• What da Health?
• Twice the Twinsanity

Katy x




Banana Pancakes (given that it was Shrove Tuesday earlier in the week)
2 cups of milk
dash of vanilla essence
1 egg
2 cups self raising flour
1/4 tsp bi-carb soda
1/4 cup sugar
cinnamon to taste
2 bananas mashed well
butter for flying


Whisk milk, vanilla and egg together. In a separate bowl mix flour, bi-carb, cinnamon and sugar. Make a well in the centre and add the wet ingredients, whisking until just combined. Add mashed banana and stir through.
Heat a large non-stick flying pan over medium heat, melt a little butter and add around 1/4 cup mix. Cook for a few minutes until bubbles appear before flipping and cooking for a further couple of minutes or until cooked through. brush pan with butter between each batch. 
Makes approximately 14 medium pancakes, best served with maple syrup.

{Project Food Budget} Week 20

So this week after getting a tinsy bit of light-hearted grief about my recent $21 challenge book purchase from a fellow blogger on the list (no names!) I was pointed in the direction of {Project Food Budget} and after thinking "what have I got to lose?" here I am. This is week 20 of the project, but only week 1 for me and to top it off, I don't actually have a clue what I'm doing. I'm sure that things will start falling into place soon enough but if I'm right in understanding it all the idea is to make a budget and try to stick to it. Sounds simple enough. 


My family's weekly budget for the supermarket is $150. My first failing is that this includes both food and household items, but I will inspect this over the coming weeks and see if I can nut the food part down and come up with a better number. 


Our household comprises of my partner, a sparky who has an enormous appetite and always has his head in the fridge whether dinner is five hours or five minutes away, me and our two year old twins who also seem to be able to consume their body weight in food. Weighing in at 11 and 12kg respectively I have no idea where these girls put everything they eat and I dread the thought of how much they will consume in ten years time. 


So my personal challenge this week as per my last post is to survive the week on a food budget of just $21. So far so good. I decided to start this on Sunday night, but given that the shops were already closed by then it really came into effect on Monday. With today being Thursday I think we're tracking fairly well with a total spend so far of $4, but there is definitely a visit to the supermarket on the cards for tomorrow.


Part of the deal with Project Food Budget is to share links to the other participants, so don't forget to check out their blogs for more inspiration.

• Emily Levenson
• Dairy-Free Cooking
• Test Kitchen Tuesday
• Red Pen Mama
• Acquired Tastes
• Fit Flexitarian
• Warm As Pie 
• Katy Rank Lev
• My Inner Healthy
• Little Blue Hen
• xox, b
• Project Food Budget 2.0
• Fresh...A New Chapter
• Two Eggs Over Easy 
• That's Just Me
• Eat Whole Be Vital
• Four Happy Violets
• Naturally {Un}refined
• Pgh Dad 
• yogabeautylife
• Charmingly Modern
• naMAMAste
• Six Dollars a Day
• The Gluten-Free Vegan
• What da Health?
• Twice the Twinsanity

Until the next time,


Katy x

Corned beef for the slow cooker

I am still trying to get the cooking time right for this recipe. I absolutely love the flavour (although the other half turns up his nose with a distasteful comment letting me know all about his dislike of 'boiled meat' but surely one is only entitled to an opinion when they do more of the cooking), but always tend to overcook it to the point of falling apart. This week I cooked it for almost nine hours, which was still too long. Next time I will drop it back an hour or so.

a decent piece of corned beef (1-1.5kg)

5 cloves

1 onion, quartered

2 tbs brown sugar

50ml brown vinegar

1 tsp mixed spice

Rinse the corned beef under cold water. Mix the rest of the ingredients in the slow cooker with a little water, add the corned beef and fill with water until the beef is covered. Cook on auto until ready to eat.

The $21 Challenge

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, right around the time I discovered I was pregnant I decided to write a blog. Unfortunately though, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry and I never really got there.

Firstly I discovered I was not only pregnant, but pregnant with twins, and then there was moving interstate, dealing with a partner that suffered from post natal depression (on top of his then undiagnosed severe depression), worrying about the health of one of my babies, and coming to terms with my own little demons. The list goes on.

So here I am more than three years later, about to embark on a yet another new challenge. To write my blog regularly, start full time study and get this household back on track financially.

So here goes, but, true to the way of my life these days, before I start I just need to go and clean up the headless mouse that was just brought to me being swung by its tail and the puddle of pee from the kitchen floor...

Right then, here we go again.

This week I have been doing some serious soul searching (aka budgeting) and in all of this I have determined that our family food budget is around $150 per week.

I should also explain that until this recently I had never done a proper budget but without boring you with the details I have needed to take a long, hard look at where our money goes, both necessarily and wastefully. I have also handed over my credit cards for safe-keeping meaning that we are for the first time ever being forced to live within our means, and I have to say, I'm terrified!

So this week I have decided to undertake The $21 Challenge, something I first read about on the Simple Savings website and with only one day down I'm pretty pleased with where I'm at. Essentially the challenge has you take an inventory of what you already have and gets you to think about menu planning in reverse, so instead of planning your meals, checking out your pantry stocks and heading to the supermarket, you are instead encouraged to look at what you have and plan from there, only heading to the shops if you absolutely have to.

I know, I know, we all know that we should do this every time we think about menu planning, but how many of us actually do? And how many of us actually look at the ingredients that are on their last legs and hiding out in the back of the fridge every week and incorporate them into the week's menu? I know that I fail on this almost every week and invariably end up wasting money on food that I will eventually chuck out. But not this week!

Today I had a quiet day which only involved needing to leave the house for one appointment (which should have taken half an hour tops but actually resulted in over two hours waiting time, but that's another story) so I thought I'd put it to good use before my week gets hectic.

By 10am I had made chicken mornay with the leftover roast chicken from last week, slopped it into individual ramekin dishes and topped it with mashed potato, had the carcass on the stove making stock and was halfway through a mince sauce for a lasagne. Yay for me.

Once home from our not-so-fun outing I found my way back to the kitchen and finished off the lasagne before moving on and whipping up a zucchini slice, getting some home-made yoghurt on the go and finishing off with a beetroot dip. Phew.

So that was tonight and tomorrow night's dinners for all, lunch for the girls (leftovers or sandwiches for the grown ups) and snacks. I also took some corned beef out of the freezer to be popped in the slow cooker either tomorrow or the next day if it's not defrosted enough in the morning to be used for lunches and that's of course another dinner done. All from stuff I already had in the fridge, freezer or pantry.

Spend for the week so far: $0. As I said before, yay for me.

Now I know that there is no way that I will be able to get away with a $0 spend for the entire week as we're going to need milk and some fruit and vegetables in a couple of days, but for now, so far so good and if all goes to plan I should make it through the week with only $21, and if I'm lucky, maybe I'll even get to keep the change.


Until the next time,


Katy x




Zucchini Slice

I am very loose with measurements when making this recipe and it always turns out fine and if I don’t have enough zucchini I usually beef things up with other vegies and add a packet of two-minute noodles (pre-cooked without flavourings), and during winter when zucchinis are expensive pumpkin makes a good alternative.

Ingredients

400g zucchini (3-4 medium)

1 onion

100g bacon pieces

25g butter

100g grated cheese (I tend to use a mix of whatever’s in the fridge – fetta, pecorino, parmesan, cheddar, ricotta – just about any variety will do)

4 eggs

¾ cup SR flour

Method

Preheat oven to 180C

Finely chop the onion, melt the butter and gently fry onion then add the bacon and cook for a couple of minutes. Remove from heat and cool in the fridge.

Grate the zucchini and place in a large mixing bowl.

Lightly beat the eggs.

Add cooled onion and bacon mix to the bowl with the zucchini and mix with the flour and cheese.

Add the eggs and combine well.

Pour mix into a shallow baking tin greased or lined with baking paper and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until the top has browned.

We'll sleep when we're dead

It feels a little strange to write about Christmas so long after the event but I wanted to share some of our celebrations as things were certainly a little different for us this time around. David started a new job a couple of months ago and his work week is now Friday to Monday. Although we are still getting our heads around the change it actually works quite well for us to have our extended ‘weekend’ in the middle of the week but unfortunately it also means that as part of his contract he has to work public holidays, including Christmas and New Year’s days if they happen fall on a work day. Also given that he leaves at 7am and doesn’t get home until 7pm (the very same times the girls get up and go to bed) we didn’t have much choice but to treat it like any other morning, with plans to have our own special family celebrations a few days behind schedule.

It began to look a lot more like Christmas as the girls and I drove to Normanville to spend the day and night with my family, and when it was time to unwrap gifts my uncle disappeared for a few minutes only to return dressed as Father Christmas, much to the delight of the girls who also were chatting about his fire truck long after he had departed to deliver the rest of his gifts (at the SAMBA Christmas Carnival, Father Christmas arrived on a fire truck).


We went on to have our second Christmas which drew out the celebrations and resulted in a week long food and gift fest! To top it all off, it really was an absolute delight to see the girls so excited about Christmas and they are still talking about it now with comments along the lines of “Father Christmas gave that to me while I was sleeping” and despite having been a little eclectic, I’m already looking forward to this year’s festivities!

One thing that has certainly changed over the break is the girls’ sleep habits. For the past couple of months, in fact pretty much since they reached two and a half years of age things have changed and in my opinion not for the better! It’s as if someone has kidnapped my perfect little people that were in bed at 7pm and asleep within about 15 minutes every night and replaced them with a pair of monsters that spend up to two hours joyfully bouncing around, chatting, taking off nappies, peeling off the wall stickers, stripping beds and throwing toys to each other. I think my one saving grace is that they still sleep in cots as they are yet to climb out of them with or without sleeping bags, and if I have my way they will be sleeping in them until they’re 18!

Interestingly up until the very end of last year when it was just too hot overnight to use them, the girls slept in sleeping bags which had to be pinned on with super-duper safety pins that we had a hard time removing ourselves as one particular Houdini had learned to undo childproof safety pins. I probably would have blamed their crazy bed time behaviour on this transition but for the fact that the night time antics started before we got rid of the sleeping bags!

Anyway I thought I would share a few words of wisdom from Tizzie Hall, author of Save Our Sleep and Save Our Sleep Toddler, two books I have found to be invaluable on our multiple journey. I contacted Tizzie just a few weeks ago after I found myself getting more and more frustrated at bedtime and in our online chat she told me not to worry too much as their behaviour is very typical of any toddler that age. There I was thinking this was a multiple thing, suddenly realising that you have a friend to party the night away with, but apparently it’s at around two and a half that toddlers sleep needs change and they no longer necessarily need a day sleep. For anyone that has been through this already, or even if you have younger ones and haven’t, you will no doubt agree that thought of dropping the last day sleep is terrifying. After all how will I get all of those things that need doing done with a pair of monkeys demanding my time all day and how will I cope without some of my own down time etc etc?

So essentially the answer is not to let the party that is happening at the other end of the hall get to me. I can choose to drop the day sleep (not yet, not on my life!) and have them in bed asleep at 7pm or even earlier or I can simply walk away and ignore it. So that’s what I’ve done. Gone are the nights where I head into their bedroom and tell them to lie down and go to sleep two, three or more times, and instead I have walked away safe in the knowledge that they will go to sleep when they’re tired, and that I can go in and put any nappies that have been removed back on once they are asleep. It’s exhausting just thinking about coping with them without a day sleep so for now I am prepared to cope with the nightly party and keep my sanity. At least until the next challenge of transitioning to beds happens, but as I said, that might be a few years off yet!

Anyway here’s to 2012 and a very happy, healthy and fantastic year full of love and surprises

Katy x

Google for toddlers

So it’s already nearly half way through December which means that not only is it almost Christmas but in just a few short weeks it will be 2012. Before that happens though, can someone please tell me where 2011 has gone?! Surely there are another few months before it’s over and we get to start another year?

Although this is their third Christmas this has really been the first year that the girls have taken note of everything. It was probably back in October sometime, or whenever it is that Christmas decorations tend to appear that I was in a shopping centre somewhere when one proclaimed “Look Mummy, Christmas”. I have absolutely no idea how toddlers know the things they do or where they get their information and if I didn’t know better I would think they spent many an hour Googling important things that all toddlers should know. Things such as, what happens on your birthday or at Christmas time (ie presents) or who all of the popular cartoon characters are (how on earth my kids know who Dora is, when their TV watching starts and finishes with Playschool I will never know?).

This has also been the first year that we have been to the Christmas Pageant. I have a friend whose Dad stakes out a spot opposite the Fire Station in the city every year at 4.30am(!!), so we thought we’d take advantage of that and get in on the pageant action. Somehow I managed to find some rock-star parking all of about 300m from where we sat and of course we had prime position in the gutter.

At two and a half and not exactly having the longest of attention spans I wasn’t sure how Emily and Chloe would go but I needn’t have worried as they were transfixed by every float, musician, dancer and clown that marched by and they had a wonderful time. The same friend’s father also video records the whole thing, starting in the dark at 4.30am, so within 24 hours we had an edited DVD of the day, complete with Christmas carol backing tracks and the girls have insisted on watching parts of it over and over.

When we arrived home from the pageant I thought we’d also follow the traditions of many an Adelaide household by putting up our Christmas tree and although the girls were wonderful helpers when it came to putting the decorations and tinsel on the tree, after they went to bed that night I had to wander around and find the decorations from all corners of the house and redecorate it! It took a few days of this happening over and over but thankfully they seem to have stopped needing to undecorated the tree every day and now it gets left alone.

Emily has also made me giggle a few times as she keeps pointing to the stockings hanging in the window and telling me she ‘needs’ to wear them. Mind you, I don’t know why I’m surprised, after all this is the same child that seems to be allergic to mosquito bites and after being offered a freezer block to help numb the itching one day she has since insisted numerous times on taking her ‘blue freezie’ to bed. Even if it’s frozen. Okay, strange child, if you must.

Until the next time, have a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy start to 2012.

Katy x


Apricot Balls
250g milk coffee biscuits, crushed
200g dried apricots, chopped
1 can condensed milk
110g packet of flaked almonds, further chopped
1 cup desiccated coconut
Extra coconut for rolling

Mix all ingredients together before rolling mixture into small balls with damp hands. Roll balls in extra coconut and refrigerate.

We made these as our thank you gifts this year and gave them to everyone that made a difference in the girls’ lives.