Monthly Archives: January 2018

Weekend Cooking

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I’m trying to reduce food spending and waste so my plan is to check the fridge each weekend and cook for the week ahead. Food that needed to be used up included, carrots, celery, apples, broccoli, cauliflower, sausages & big block of cheese, baby tomatoes, sweet potatos and some bananas. I’m also trying to eat down whats in the freezer and the stockpile in the pantry:

So I made a batch of curried sausages using up a half a bag of carrots, celery, some slivered almonds & sultanas from the pantry. There was enough for 6 meals so I have some ready for this week.

 I also made a batch of savoury muffins using almond flour, bacon, cheese, baby tomatoes.

A loaf of banana bread with almond flour bananas, eggs, walnuts & cinnamon

and a batch of rock cakes for DH. I have celiacs and many allergies so my diet is a bit different to his.

For dinner tonight I found some minute steaks in the freezer and I’ll use up the rest of the vegetables. I also made a batch of yoghurt which costs me a $1.30 for 1 litre of yoghurt. 

I’m not someone who love to cook or follows recipes well. I can cook, I just find it a bit of a chore after 35+ years cooking for a family to be honest. But I do get satisfaction out of stretching a dollar and eating good healthy, simple food. I tend to make up recipes as I go and measure by handful or what feels right. I’m pleased with this weekends effort. We also ate 3 frozen meals from the freezer so thats a start!

Gas bill down and in credit.

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Our gas bill arrived yesterday and I was really pleased to see that our use is down and we are in credit on our bill. Last year I was using the credit card for all our purchases and bills to increase the amount of money left in the offset account which did help with reducing mortgage interest and did get us a lot of free groceries. But I found that I end up spending more, a bit here, a bit there – it doesn’t take long till it adds up! So I am in the process of changing back to paying my bills each week in advance.

Our bill for 3 months gas ( hot water and gas oven) was $151.07. Daily cost was $1.68; daily use was 25.98 MJ, this time last year our daily use was 30.55MJ. Our account has $154.59 credit so I have reduced the weekly payment by $10.

It will be interesting to see what our electricity bill is when the next one comes. We do everything to keep it as low as possible as electricity is expensive here but with the heatwaves this summer we’ve had to use the air conditioning more than I would have liked. We use fans as much as possible as it is much cheaper and quite effective, but temps have been 38-40C (100 – 104F) here so air conditioning needed some days.

My first week back at work was quiet. It was nice to catch up with people but I really am just focused on life outside of work and working towards our financial goals for retirement. I made a chart with 260 squares for every week till five years passes and I’ll colour one in each week. In the meantime I’m spending this weekend doing more decluttering & paper shredding and I need to do some cooking as well.

Back online & back to work.

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Well I finally was able to pick up my laptop this afternoon – I’ve missed it! The good news is that they cannot find anything wrong with it after running all the checks so the final cost was $132.

I’ve been really busy decluttering and shredding papers since my last post. I’ve made progress but gosh, there is still so much left to do!  Some days I feel like I’m doing well and other days it feels like it will take forever. So I just keep plodding along with it – slow and steady wins the race.

I’ve used several vouchers for my grocery shopping so that has helped keep the costs down – I’ll do a full grocery shopping post later. The last few days we’ve spent more than I would have liked at the corner shop.

We are both back at work and while its been lovely to catch up with some people its also been sad to hear of who lost their job and see those waiting to see if they get laid off or not. There is a chance I could get a redundancy but that won’t happen for a few years if it does. I feel even more motivated to save and retire right now.