Belinda Moore

I’ve been a member of Simple Savings for a few years now and it’s literally saved us thousands of dollars. It is $47 to join and $17 to renew, per year.

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Last week’s menu was great. The vegetable & chickpea stew was yummy and we froze some for another night (or lunch) too. Friday’s beans and rice wasn’t so great, but that was more my fault than the recipe I used for inspiration. I’ll try again another time, I think. We didn’t make the savoury biscuits, so will get to those this week. The carrot cake was delicious and I’ll use that recipe again!

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Last week’s menu was fine. We moved the soup to lunch the next day and had some vegie sausage sandwiches with coleslaw and salad because the children had a friend sleepover. The vegie sausages were half-price at the supermarket that afternoon.

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Last week went well. The burgers were a hit and we’ll do those again. The enchiladas ended up being a slow cooker enchilada-bake. The pasta ended up having tomato-based sauce because somehow we ran out of butter and that’s the only white sauce recipe I know!

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We had a couple of mix-ups last week. Moved the pasta to the next night, skipped the burgers, and missed out on the soup because I forgot to pack it - so had store-bought gnocchi with a jar of pasta sauce! Back home now and hoping this week runs more smoothly.

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For lunch we mainly have leftovers. Sometimes the leftovers are bulked-out with ordinary bread, flat bread (Mountain Bread), a salad, tin of beans etc. If there are no leftovers we will have any combination of:

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I’m in awe of those menu planners who can plan 3 meals a day plus snacks! I’ve only ever been good with planning our evening meal and more recently, our baking.

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We missed out on our roast vegie night again last week, because we went out to friends’ for tea. We took some roast vegies, salads and desserts though.

My April grocery budget challenge was a bit above what I aimed for, but much better than previous months. I have set myself another challenge for May, but with camping, visitors, two birthdays and Mother’s Day, I’m not sure… So far I’m over budget, but we’ll see what the coming weeks brings.

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We missed out on our roast vegie night last week, so I’ve moved it to this coming weekend. We had a BBQ with friends instead, so enjoyed fish, salads and vegetables. Good food, good company, good wine.

The Mountain Bread ‘chips’ were a popular treat and much cheaper than bought chips, so a winner all round!

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Last week’s menu went well. The pumpkin soup was delicious - half roasted pumpkin (and onion and garlic) blended into boiled pumpkin and potato (with stock). Very thick and tasty. We had some gluten free bread, toasted, to dip into it and dessert was dumplings in caramel sauce with custard - a total hit! We’re doing that again this week because it’s lovely in this cool weather. I did freeze a couple of containers last week, topping up the frozen meal supplies for quick dinners and lunches. There’s a nice variety in there now.

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Well, last week just flew by! We had lentil loaf for the first time - a sure hit. The sweet and sour was delish and luckily I made heaps as we had extras that night. The pumpkin soup was a scrumptious one with roasted pumpkin in it. We ate it al fresco which was delightful. The pasta meal was penne with white sauce instead of spaghetti - an ever-popular pasta meal.

Keeping it simple this week. Still trying to get that food budget down and use what we have. No new recipes to try this week and nothing fancy at all. I have heaps of zucchini from the organics box and still carrots from last week’s box to use up. I’m really inspired by the folk at Simple Savings who are keeping their grocery budgets tight even with the price rises we’re seeing lately.

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Last week’s menu was a success! The rice bake, chicken dish and homemade gnocchi were all firsts. The lentil loaf was moved to this week because I was painting an outside wall of the house until dusk, and so was a little disorganised on this very busy, sunny Sunday! Instead we had lentil/vege curry from the freezer with rice and steamed broccoli instead. And a slice of vanilla cake for dessert.

Gnocchi is so easy! I simply used 750g of mashed potato to 200g flour (doubled the recipe for the 8 of us). It was a perfect consistency. I used sebago potatoes and white flour (bought it especially as I didn’t think our wholemeal spelt flour would work so well). The kids all LOVE gnocchi, but even though we don’t like it so much my husband and I enjoyed this compared to store-bought gnocchi.

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This is fun!  Check out Mealopedia where you can plan a menu for as many days as you’re cooking, choose various cuisines to include, substitute other recipes, find recipes to use up certain ingredients and more!  Stuck for ideas with your menu planning?  Sticking to a budget?  Need to find vegetarian, low GI or other special recipes?

This free site was the hint of the week at Simple Savings, and I think it’s a winner too!

The post explaining my menu planning method is here.

Last week’s menu went really well! Everyone’s loving the variety as I’ve tried to implement some new meals over the past couple of months.

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The post explaining my menu planning method is here.

I didn’t make enough pasta sauce last Tuesday to freeze, but that’s okay because the freezer is overflowing with meals right now!

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