Category Archives: frugal

Jul 31

Awakening!

Hi Regular readers!

Gosh it’s been a while, but never fear – I have not gone forever! There’s been lots of exciting stuff going on around here, and all of my energies have been going into relationship stuff. So, all of my blogs stalled… and do you know how many blogs I have?? LOL

I have had my short story published! Yes, I write fiction too! The story is called ‘Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl’ and is part of an anthology about karma being a bitch and Jack getting cut by a whole pile of girls!

I am in the middle of mealplanning August. I am getting back on track with some of my diet, keeping the wheat and packets to a minimum. I’m pretty excited that my weight has maintained over the last 3 – 4 months, since I haven’t been dieting and I kind of stopped going to the gym! Regardless, food is very much on my mind, so expect some more photos soon!

Here’s scallops and slowcooked pork belly with apple puree and a balsamic jus.. and yes it was as good as it sounded! Enjoy!

Image

May 30

Back Up Box!

Starting a Backup Box
I hate shopping. Let me just say that up front and get it out there. I resent the fact I need o spend time buying similar items every two weeks for my entire life. I like to daydream ways to minimise the time I spend shopping!

Today’s post is about a backup box. It’s for when my re-ordering systems fail me for whatever reason, and I find myself genuinely without an item and I don’t want to go to the  shop for a few more days yet. 
Things that mean my household grinds to a halt and I have to go to the shop…

Dishwasher pellets

Milk

Bread

Sandwich fillings

Toilet paper
I think everything else I can put off. So in my backup box I should have…
Dishwasher powder

Powdered milk

Flour and yeast

Vegemite

Toilet paper
 If I am serious about this, then I should be able to make my fortnightly shop last a proper fourteen days despite minor emergencies. If I really wanted to be hard about this, I would include stock cubes and a packet of dried soup mix so we always have tasty emergency soup too! 
What would you have in your Backup Box? Would you include a main meal backup?

Sarah P

Jan 3

Secret Project!

I am working on a secret project!

Ssssshhhhhh!

As any one who follows this know, I love to play with numbers. Income, outgoings, spending, ROI, costs, budgets…. FRUGALITY!

Frugality is no longer ‘making do’ as we’re now in a WORLD OF PLENTY!  Now, frugality making CONSCIOUS CHOICES ABOUT YOUR TIME, FINANCES AND LIFE.

What does this mean??

It means making informed choices based around YOUR LIFE CHOICES before you even spend a cent!

I have a new motto and new plans.

My plan is to provide you, my awesome and lovely readers, with PLANS and SYSTEMS to help you get your home life under control! And in the extra time you save, with the extra money you save, and with the extra LIFE you save, I want YOU to provide JOY!

I will help make your life EASY if you provide the JOY in doing so!

I am so excited! Sarah P’s New Secret Project is in the formative stages. Stay tuned for more exciting new snippets and hints to come!

–
Sarah P

May 29

Forays into Morrocco – Orange Blossom Carrots

I have been getting random vegetable boxes from Coles for some time now, so I have also been trying out their random fruit boxes. This means an influx of things I am much less likely to know what to do with!

I have never been a huge orange eater. I’ve never been so in love with the taste or flesh that I have bypassed the inherent messiness and sheer annoyance of having to peel and then segment the damned things. However, with four of the blighters arriving on my doorstep every other week, I had to find ways to cope!

Meet the Moroccan Orange and Carrot salad.


This is actually a pic of the left overs, since we ate it too fast to take a picture. This was lovely, and a fantastic way to use oranges! Yum!

Strangely enough, I don’t mind prepping oranges to make salad out of it. I just resent it when I intend to eat it. Yes, I am a bit weird sometimes.

–
Sarah P

Sep 22

Five Minute Artisan Bread – Recipe Three

Bread!

I have been working on my soups this year, and I have learnt a lot. I like to make the bread to go with soups too, and enjoy a lovely chewy artisan style by preference with soup. I find that sandwich bread tends towards mush, whereas artisan soup adds texture and flavour of it’s own to an otherwise mushy (or pureed) dish.

I really like this dough for the simple reason that I can pull off as much or as little as I need, and let it rise and cook. There’s not much wastage, and if I felt enthused I could make buns or sticks or anything. One day I could even make bowls out of bread for a good solid stoo.

I’m afraid this is the last post on *this* batch of dough. I did not finish the dough, there’s still a good chunk left to use, but this is now past the 2 week limit. My diet has changed somewhat, and there’s a lot less wheat at present! But when I start wheat again, I’ll cover some of the other recipes.

–
Sarah P

Sep 4

Strawberry Surprise!

Yesterday I went to my local veggie shop looking particularly for cheap produce that I could buy in bulk for cooking, pureeing and freezing and that sort of thing. I came home with, among other things, a case of local strawberries. All up there are 15 punnets, which equals 3.75kg of strawberries, at a total cost of $6.90–considering I paid nearly this much for 2 punnets last week I snapped the box up right away. I think they were cheap because they are the small variety, which for me is a bonus rather than a negative because smaller = tastier.

I have put a few punnets aside for eating as is, and de-leaved and washed a few punnets for freezing and making into ice cream (we have one of those niffty juicers that you put frozen fruit into and it comes out as ice cream). I am thinking there will be some frozen fruit kebabs happening in our near future and maybe some choc dipped strawberries.

That leaves about 2kg to play with. Most will probably be frozen for later use, but I’d love to hear peoples best strawberry ideas–the easier the better!