Category Archives: food

Extra mortgage payment & decluttering

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Our holiday is all now all paid for. I made the last payment yesterday. The only costs now will be anything we spend when we are there and we don’t usually spend much at all. So now I can get back to paying every spare cent off the mortgage.

I made an extra mortgage payment of $800 yesterday with a new mortgage balance of $152,264. Feels good to be back on track with extra payments.

Made a big batch of cauliflower rice which tasted fantastic! Just cauliflower chopped finely with onion, bacon, leftover lamb, carrots, peas and egg cooked in a little olive oil. DD took this lovely photo of it for me – she’s much better at food photos than me.

Today I’m still working on decluttering in the lounge room. I’ve sorted a couple of boxes already this morning. I still have several cupboards to go that are filled with old games, CD’s and old newspapers/ family papers. My plan is to fill some more bags for Vinnies over the coming week from the lounge and bedroom and do a trip to the op shop next weekend.


Grocery spending

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 This week I made a batch of soup in the crockpot. I make up recipes as I go so every one is different depending on what I have in the fridge. This one has sweet potato, red lentils, carrots, onion, spinach, vegetable stock, ginger, chili and cumin. Once it cooled I froze it in meal sized portions.

I use purple containers and zip lock bags for food that is OK for me to eat and DH & DD use plain containers. That makes it much easier in the freezer to identify ‘safe’ foods without having to label everything.

This morning I stopped first at IGA-B shop for my veggies. I bought:

IGA -B

1.8kg potatos – $7.29
1.25 kgs butternut pumpkin – .74c
3 lemons .93c
1 punnet raspberries  $5.90
2 punnets strawberris  $11.98
500g zucchinni  $1.86
750g sweet potato  $1.49
1kg carrots .99

Total spend $33.18


then to Coles where I needed to spend $50 minimum to get maximum points.
I spent $85.72 and saved $$16.40.

Total grocery spend:  $118.90. Total value of $135.30.

The berries are expensive, but after all the Hepatitis scares with frozen berries I’d rather not risk it so I buy fresh ones. I bought a nice leg of lamb that I’ll cook tonight and have for meals during the week.

I want to try and reduce my food waste as well my food expenses so I’m going to blog my meals for the next few weeks and see if that helps me keep on track better.

Food & weight loss success.

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The last few weeks I’ve been flat out at work and working two days a week after my day job doing the extra work I took on. So not as much time for blogging unfortunately.

I’ve been doing really well with eating lots more veggies and fruit and less processed food.  I made a lovely soup yesterday using up all the veggies that had seen better days and added a couple of tins of beans, some turmeric, cumin, herbs, rocket and celery leaves. It cooked away all day in the crockpot and tasted really good. I froze it in single serves.

I always chop the leaves off the celery and freeze them, then I use them up in soups.  I also do that with any herbs that might be starting to wilt. I never use salt in cooking (history of kidney problems) and I find celery is a good replacement.
I’ve been eating lots of salads for lunch with pumpkin or sweet potato, no cheese, dairy or oil, so eating two avocados a week as well as a handful of nuts & seeds each day.

I cooked up a big pan of zucchinis, tomato and onion- just cooked them in a little stock, no oil and then put them in a tray in the oven for a while. So I just add some pumpkin or sweet potato or other veggies for an evening meal

I made a big batch of chickpea and veggie curry and froze it in single serving sizes so I can grab a meal easily when I get home from work.
My basic meal plan this month is no meat, dairy, oil or sugar. I have had a few things ‘off-plan’ but I’m 95% on plan.  I feel much better, achey joints have stopped, concentration is better and I could not resist jumping on the scales this morning – I have lost 3.6kgs / 8 lbs since the start of the month!!
So I’ll keep on eating this way and I’m back to walking now daylight savings is over. I get my blood tests done at the end of the month and hopefully I’ve got  the insulin resistance down.