Four weeks down on the Spend Next To Nothing Challenge, and I feel like I could continue for quite some time yet! I *almost* didn't spend anything at all this week - but at the last minute decided to get some extra veges I needed for the preserving I wanted to get done. Updates below.....

This week I carried out a number of successful experiments in the kitchen, as well as doing some old-favourite preserving etc. 

I made up a batch of coconut milk, as well as some more almond milk. Both are easy-as and taste good! I especially like to combine them in cuppas or on porridge/cereal. For smoothies, I use straight coconut milk. For baking I often use almond milk. 

This week has been super busy in the office, so the garden has been mostly about some harvesting, a little watering, and a bit of admiring :-). I really need to get cracking tomorrow night and sow some seeds for the next batch of vegetables!

I picked a 3.5 kg cabbage, my first two kohl rabi, and some broccoli (all of which were used as shown above). I also pulled out a cauliflower plant that was completely covered in aphids - normally aphids attack only weakened plants, and so I decided this one could just go. Another cauli is hearting up nicely, so I bent some of the leaves over it to protect if from sunburn. 

The lemon bergamot (pink flowers below) at the front of my watermelon patch is flowering. Another first for me. The bees love this stuff. In fact, both the bergamot and the watermelon flowers are attracting lots of bumble bees, honey bees, wool carder bees, and drone flies currently. All great pollinators. 

And I've been steadily picking plums, blueberries and strawberries. The first of my purple climbing beans are ready. I suspect some of them will be a challenge to pick, as they're climbing up the sunflowers, the tallest of which topped out at 3.85m!

Balance forward:            $56.52
This week's allowance: +$50.00
This week's spend:        -$14.22
Balance:                          $92.30

Clothing pegs: Keep a small jar of spring pegs in the kitchen - they are a quick and easy way to seal up opened packs of food. 

Easy to see, clean recipes: I keep my personal recipes in sheet protectors in a binder. When I want to use one, I take it out and hang it using two pegs onto a stretchy wire such as is used for net curtains, which stretches across my kitchen window at eye level. The recipe is right where I can see it while working, and it doesn't get any splatter, or is easily wiped clean if it does. 

Best ever drying rack: If you have high ceilings, suspend a rack or the side of a child's cot on pulleys from the ceiling. It's the perfect place to dry laundry in winter, or hang up herbs, seed heads etc to dry in summer. Easily lowered into reach to load, and then pulled up out of the way to hang in the warmest part of the room - near the ceiling. 

The end of the third week. It's been interesting to reflect on how much NOT going shopping affects spending in other areas of life too! 

I managed to do some preserving this week, and try out some new recipes, but didn't get as much done in the kitchen as I had hoped. 

A leg of venison that has been languishing in my freezer since my son got it probably 2 years ago was turned into a delicious slow-cooked balsamic shredded roast dish. I'm looking forward to trying it again using a mutton roast. Beef would be excellent too. The first day I served it on rice with broccoli. My husband had some leftovers for lunches. And then I finished off the rest tonight, reheated together with left over cabbage and cashews, served on cauli rice made with cauliflower from the garden. YUUUUM! 

Quite often dinner is just something simple, like a chicken thigh or some lamb chops roasted in the oven together with whatever veges are handy - potatoes, pumpkin, kumara, yacon, beetroot etc, and served with greens or a salad. You'd probably get sick of seeing the various permutations of that, so I am mostly just posting different meals that I make with recipes I want to post. Some nights I can't be bothered cooking at all, so we eat left overs, or soup from the freezer, or just a collection of chopped fresh veges with maybe some crackers and hummus or toast or whatever is handy that we feel like.

I also made some almond milk - next will be coconut milk. And a friend who was visiting gave us some of his wife's green tea kombucha. It was very, very yummy, and different than mine. So I got all the details, am brewing some up now. In a couple of weeks when I get to try it, I will post all the details if it works out right. 

It's getting hard to keep on top of picking and using things as they're ready! Lots of growth at this time of year, and we finally have had some rain, which has really helped. 

My pumpkin and squash patch in the front yard has exploded! The plants have filled the space, and are now climbing trees, clambering over rose bushes, trying to run into the driveway, and escaping into the paddock. I will probable have to cut back some parts of it. I don't mind how rampant they are (except over the driveway) - just hoping for lots of squash when all is said and done. 

My tallest sunflower, now over 3.5m tall (I can't reach to measure it now), is finally opening. The climbing beans planted on the trellis and up the sunflowers are starting to flower, so there will be fresh, sweet beans soon. I would really like to find some sunflowers that bear multiple heads and don't grow over about 2m, so I can easily support and net them and save the seed from the birds. It's fun to grow super tall ones, but not terribly practical.

The lemon bergamot, watermelons and zucchini have put on enormous growth since the recent rain. Watering with tap water just isn't the same! Nasty chemicals in town water aside, rain water has dissolved nitrogen from the atmosphere in it, and this causes lots of growth in plants. 

This week I bought some items specifically for preserving, as well as a bottle of milk for my husband, and some toilet rolls because they were on a really good special when I went in for the other things. The ginger, raisins, cardamon, dill tips, mustard seeds and chillis are all for preserving recipes. The yoghurt is to make into cream cheese and whey (the whey to be used in natural pickles). These cost $36.14

I also bought a 2 litre bottle of sunflower oil (to make vegan "butter" spread) for $6, and a pair of nail clippers $4.25 when ours broke. 

On Friday we had a date night, and I bought the first junk food/treat items of the past three weeks - a bottle of coke and a small bag of M&M's each. These came to the ridiculous total of $15 (I wasn't paying attention at the time). I wasn't going to count them in these figures, as they're not part of our normal grocery budget, but then I decided I would, after the fact, for the simple reason that they have to be paid for from somewhere, and usually such things would end up coming out of the housekeeping one way or another. Note to self: make a more conscious decision ahead of time in the future and don't get ripped off!

We were in town today much longer than expected, and I hadn't taken any water with us - it was very hot, so we bought 2x $1 bottles of water from the Warehouse.

So total spend for the week: $63.39

Kitty total brought forward: $69.91
This weeks allowance:     +$50.00
This week's spend:           -$63.39
Balance:                             $56.52

One of the things I've really noticed about the last three weeks is how little I've spent in other areas as a result of not spending on groceries. Because I'm not popping in and out of the local grocery store during the week, nor going to the bigger stores in the other towns for my regular shopping, I've spent waaay less on petrol than I usually would. I also haven't spent money on the things other than groceries I normally go shopping for while I'm there. When I usually go shopping, it's once a fortnight or so, and I usually have a long list of errands to do, so it takes most of the day. Which means I usually end up buying lunch as well. So that's another savings.

When I DO go to the supermarket, I've now gotten into the habit of taking my reusuable bags with me. That 5c/bag credit New World is giving on reusable bags really helped me get around to finally making it a habit. Now I do what I meant to do all along - keep a selection of bags tucked inside another one right by the door, and some extras in the car. I've been using reusable bags for my main shopping for a long time (as I generally shop at Pak'n Save), but it's remembering them for those shorter or impromptu visits locally that has been more of an issue up until now. 

Side note - my supply of plastic grocery bags, which I reuse at home to package veges in the frige or to line bins is now running extremely low. Will have to get used to other ways of doing things! It's important though - those grocery bags are a major environmental hazard and do need to go. It's just hard to change our collective habits - though harder in our heads than in reality.

I have so many ideas and so little time - to do them, or to talk about them. I really want to write posts on menu planning, the $21 Challenge, the best books for savings ideas and motivation, and lots, lots more recipes, articles about growing various foods etc. I have a lot more pickling and preserving I need to do, and lots of jobs I need to get done in the garden. Ah well, each day is new, and one can only do what one can do. I'm not into messing with humanity, but if I were, a few clones of myself would be very tempting about now!

I've also noticed that a lot of those things that I've been posting about as handy hints and thrifty tips are things I do without thinking about it. I have to notice myself doing them, write myself a note right then, or I forget when it comes time to writing the post. Like now. I know I've noticed several share-worthy things this week, but right now I can't think of a single one! Next time! 

I hope you all have a wonderful, thrifty week!

I've already posted some recipes and about yesterday's luncheon. I have more recipes to come, but right now just a quick update on spending so far in this Spend Next To Nothing Challenge. 

I have set aside $50 a week to use for essentials or those ingredients that enable me to make something of what is on hand, if necessary. In the first week, I spent $17.99 on dog food, leaving $32.01 in the kitty. Here's what this week looked like:

Balance forward:                            $32.01
Sold a dozen fertile eggs:             +$10.00
Found change around the house: + $3.20
This week's allowance:                 +$50.00
This week's spending:                  -$25.30
Balance:                                        $69.91

What I bought this week:
5 cobs sweetcorn (on special, and just yummy, so a treat - my own corn is still very small) $5
7 onions $1.96
2.5kg flour $2.89
Dry active yeast $3.99
Icing sugar $1.39
2 litres milk $3.72
2kg fresh carrots $5.49
Castor sugar $1.89
​

It could be noted that the flour, yeast, icing and castor sugars were bought basically because we were having guests, and I wanted to make some extra things with them in mind. We could have done without them. Old habits die hard! Ah well - upward and onward! They will all be used for other dishes in the future, as I only used a very little of each on the weekend. 

It's been super hot, and I'm very tired, so will sign off there....a new week starts tomorrow! 

We invited some guests for lunch on Saturday, and I decided I wanted to make a really nice summer meal with a variety of dishes. I thought I'd share them to inspire your own creativity :-). Everything was homemade, and the majority of the ingredients were homegrown. 

Many of the recipes are linked in the menu above. 

Kombucha: My current kombucha is made with green tea, which tends to yield a sweeter result than with black tea. My husband and one of our visitors enjoyed it served hot (mixed with hot water), while I had a cold glass of it. 

Other: Slices of fresh cucumber and tomato rounded out the meal nicely. I could have served various pickles too, but we had more than enough food. It was all greatly enjoyed!

​So nice to share our blessings and bounty with others, and to enjoy fellowship over a meal of good, real food. 

It's been a busy week so far, juggling various jobs about the homestead, office work, preserving, and housework. Let's look at what I've been cooking, how I cleared my shower drain easily and almost for free, what's coming up, and some more hints and tips.

Those who have been checking out the recipes I've posted this week will know that I have made an easy pumpkin soup that will scare away any bugs, a yummy stew which also used up some left overs from the fridge, and I posted a delicious chocolate slice recipe made without gluten, diary or eggs. My 18 yo daughter couldn't tell the difference, and my husband says it tastes just as good as the original. 

Other dinners this week so far have been fairly simple: 
​Spaghetti bologanise on Monday, when I was super grateful I had some left over meat sauce in the fridge and could whip this up quick and still make it to an evening event I had forgotten about, where I got to hear a speaker from Germany describing his low-till, deep mulch horticultural system - very interesting. 
Baked chicken thigh and kumara on Wednesday, along with this totally delicious, incredibly simple dish I made up. It was so good, the chicken and kumara I'd been looking forward to paled in comparision!
And tonight, some roast yacon and new potatoes, both straight out of the garden, a fresh corn on the cob, and a fried chicken breast. Yum! 

I've also done some bottling of applesauce, apple jelly, and pectin, all made from windfall unripe apples, as well as some blackberry jam from berries in the freezer. 

We're having guests for a meal this weekend - folk who haven't been here before. It will be fun to prepare a variety of dishes for them, mainly from the garden/homestead. 

I am going to be building some new compost bins as I need to make lots and lots of compost for the garden. 

I need to preserve some cucumbers, and am thinking about making some kimchi. I also want to make a batch of tomato sauce soon, and more beef stock. 

I've got some beautiful pink chive vinegar I made to show you all, and will use it to make some salad dressings. I also need to decant the red clover flower tincture I've had brewing. 

It's also time to review the basic materials for homemade natural cleaners, and start making up some batches. 

And I'm going to clean my oven using three simple ingredients. 

Pictures, recipes and more on all this coming soon! 

Baking soda is the number one useful product for naturally cleaning your home (and body). It's also stupidly expensive if you buy it in little 400g containers from the supermarket. ($7.48/kg) Fortunately it's easy to buy cheap in bulk. Just get it from your local RD1 farm store - 20kg sacks are around $20 - or $1/kg. They may need to order them in for you, so call or plan ahead. A sack will probably last you a year - and you can use it for all kinds of cleaning. Note, this is NOT food grade baking soda (as it's sold for use with stock), so don't use it in your cooking; I do use supermarket b.s for that. You will also want a suitable big bin to store your bulk baking soda in, ideally one that is airtight. 

The end of the first week! Today I made a yummy lunch from the garden, experimented with a chocolate crunch slice, and gathered storm fallen unripe apples which I will make into a couple of things. I also look ahead to the coming weeks and how I will be blogging about it, and total up how much I spent this week....

And that's all I spent in the past week! Leaving a kitty balance of $32.01 out of the $50 for the week. 

Of course, this is only week one, and I didn't expect to have much difficulty not buying any groceries. The coming weeks will be more interesting. 

Tomorrow I'm back to work in my role as advocate and advisor for home educators. This is about a 30+ hour a week job from home, though it varies from week to week. However, between that, housework, animals, gardening, cooking etc, I won't have a lot of spare time. Therefore I plan to post recipes as I can, and do blog updates about twice a week rather than daily. At the very least, there will be weekly updates on this challenge. 

Write labels on jars in your pantry with a permanent marker - it will wash off with hot soapy water and a brush or cloth, leaving no sticky label residue to worry about. I label all my preserving as well as jars of products in my pantry this way. Works great! 

I had to spend 4.5 hours on the road today, collecting my daughter from the airport in Wellington. This provided the opportunity to face down temptation! See what else I got up to....

​A couple of days ago, I was somewhat more strongly tempted, since that time I didn't anticipate it: suffering a time-of-the-month migraine, the idea of some coke and chocolate (strangely, that combo being the ONLY thing that helps those migraines) was tempting, as was not cooking dinner and buying Chinese. I didn't though. It helped to remind myself that "this too will pass" and that I only had a migraine because I had eaten things I shouldn't in the proceeding couple of weeks (over Christmas), so next month, if I behave, it won't happen. And probably the fact that I'm writing this blog also bolstered my resolve. :-) 

I'm pleased to say that my garden has weathered two nights of howling gales relatively unscathed, though somewhat battered. I feel for all those up north whose gardens saw great destruction, and by comparision have nothing to complain about. 

This evening I popped out and picked a few things - some broccoli sprouts, a few cucumbers, sugar snap peas, and luscious strawberries. Will use these over the next couple of days. (Some strawberries and peas were the perfect follow up to dinner!)

Day 5 of my Spend Next To Nothing Challenge - stormy, wet weather outside all day, so worked on various things indoors, and such things as making chicken stock, rearranging the freezer, a Price Book, making rice milk, turning pumpkin seeds straight from the pumpkin into a yummy snack, and a delicious vege dish.

Breakfast was my usual smoothie. For lunch I had baked beans on toast - a couple of cans were hidden in back of the pantry from the last time I bought them on a super good special back when there were still kids at home to eat them! I finished up the last couple of slices of the GF bread my son (who recently stayed) likes. Speaking of baked beans, they're really easy to make from scratch. I have a really nice recipe that my mum gave me that she had from way back when she was a farmer's wife living on an isolated island; I used to make it in bulk regularly and bottle it. I must make some up soon and share the recipe. 

A Price Book is a very handy tool that lets you know what the usuall prices are of the items you regularly buy, helps you recognise good prices and become familiar with periodic specials, and is invaluable if you want to tot up how much your grocery list will cost you before you leave home, so you can make adjustments. Having a price book helps you beat the supermarket at their own game - preventing you being hoodwinked into buying so-called "specials" that really aren't, and enabling you to stock up on things at a really good price, saving money. Read all about how to make your own price book and use it HERE. 

Today I revisited my own price book - it's been a while since I kept one, so I decided on a fresh start with a spiral bound address book I picked up from a $2 shop a year or so ago, and haven't really used (I have a much better system for addresses and telephone numbers!). I pulled out all the receipts I could find, and began writing in recent prices of regularly purchased items. I know that getting back into the habit of using a price book to advantage is one way to keep our grocery spending down in future! It helped me a great deal in the past.

Defrost foods without worrying about flies in a hanging mesh food safe, such as the one pictured. I have one just like it hanging on a hook under the eaves of my verandah. It's the perfect place to put packages of meat (sitting in a dish to catch any drips) to defrost, and flies can't get to them. This is terrific in winter when the house is too cold for anything to defrost, but it's sunny or breezy outside, and in summer it keeps bugs away until the meat is defrosted and I transfer it to the fridge until I'm ready to cook the evening meal. It can also be used for drying harvested nuts, drying herbs, and other such things. I found mine at a Salvation Army family store for $8

Today I focussed on preparing for the coming storm, rest, and posting an update on my garden, which I haven't done in a while. And got some other things done too...

A tropical storm is working it's way down the country, predicted to bring  lot of rain and strong gales. The first is sorely needed, the second of concern! So today I added extra support to my sunflowers, moved some pots, put away any loose items, and closed up the greenhouse this evening. 

​I also did a photo tour of my garden, and posted it HERE. 

I also found a hypothermic, sodden duckling in the chicken's water bucket when I went to feed them - it had managed to climb in but couldn't get out. Ducklings swim well of course, but also need time to warm up and don't spend long in the water at this stage. I brought it in, dried it off, and kept it inside my t-shirt for an hour or so until it warmed up, stopped shivering, and became feisty, then returned it to it's mum and siblings.

Save vege cooking water: Don't salt veges until after they've been cooked, and save the water they were cooked in and steamed over to either make soups, or to pour on the garden (cooled of course). The water contains nutrients very useful in either situation. 

​Prevent smelly trash bags getting ripped open by animals on collection day: Place all bones and such into a bag in the freezer, and pull out frozen bag on trash day and put straight in the rubbish bag. Animals won't be attracted to it, and you won't have ripped open bags spreading trash around. Also make sure you rinse bags and trays that have contained meat very well before putting in trash, or consider freezing them too.

It was way too hot outside to do much except some watering, so today was spent mostly pottering in the kitchen....

Make instant gluten-free breadcrumbs: whiz a cup of cornflakes, a cup of ricies, and 1/2 cup quick cook rolled oats in a food processor. I used these recently to crumb weiner schnitzel (after dipping in rice flour, followed by beaten egg, then crumbs). Everyone raved about how good they tasted. Optional - add some chopped herbs and salt. 

Toilet roll tubes make great firestarters: Flatten three tubes and fold in half. Stack together, then slide them inside another tube. This saves space, and creates something with the right density (and air pockets) to burn well when starting a fire. I used to use toilet tubes for starting large seeds, but stopped after it seemed the manufacturers have included something in the cardboard that inhibits plant growth - they would germinate ok, then the seedlings would sit dormant and turn yellow. 

Eggshells: Eggshells are a great source of calcium, and useful in the garden, worm farm, compost, or fed back to chickens. However, they don't break down well when fresh, due to a natural protective coating. To overcome this, and make them easy to crush, dry in the oven. Spread shells on baking paper on a tray and bake for 10 mins at 100C. I discovered that if you recycle an empty dog biscuit pack, which are made from thick plastic, then this makes it super easy to do the crushing without hurting your hands - simply put the shells in the bag, then roll and squeeze it until they are all crushed. Sprinkle crushed eggshell in the worm farm, put some in a bowl for the chickens, add some to the planting hole before planting tomatoes, or sprinkle it around the garden - a thick layer is supposed to keep slugs and snails away from plants, but mine obviously have tough feet because they laugh at it!