SN2N: Day 7

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....

In the Kitchen....

Today I made lunch with bits and pieces from the garden. It was totally delicious! How I did it HERE. 

Real food like that is so satisfying! It's like one's body sighs with satisfication and says "Ahhhhh, now I'm really fed!"

In the afternoon, I felt the desire for something chocolately and crunchy. Recalling the chocolate crunch slice my kids used to love, I wondered if I could make it gluten, egg and dairy free. So I experimented, substituting the flour for my own GF flour blend, switching butter for coconut oil (turns out it's NOT a 1:1 substitution!) etc. The results look great and taste pretty good, but not quite great enough for me to post the recipe just yet. So watch this space (or share your own GF, DF chocolate slice recipe! On the plus side, I used up the last of the icing sugar, castor sugar and ordinary cocoa here from back when my loves-to-bake daughter lived at home. So that's a bit more space in the pantry. :-) 

At dinner time, I decided to roast up the rest of the pumpkin in the fridge, so I can combine it with the half I roasted the other day, and make up some good foods tomorrow. I baked a chicken thigh at the same time for dinner, and then found I was still feeling quite satisfied for lunch, and didn't want more cooked veges, so sliced up some carrots and celery to have with chicken and pumpkin. In the end I couldn't eat it all. Though I did find room later on to try a piece of the above slice :-). 

In the Garden...

The storm blew some unripe apples off the trees, so I collected those. I'm going to make apple jelly with some, and apple cider vinegar with the rest. Recipes to come. 

The Tumbling Tom tomatoes in hanging baskets that have been sheltering in my bathtub for the past few nights because of the gales from the storm were hung back out on the deck today. All those flowers will soon be lovely little tomatoes! Did you know that tomatoes are self-pollinating and don't need bees or insects? The flowers hang downwards, with the pollen borne high inside the flower, and dropping down onto the stigma which collects the pollen, fertilising it and thus producing the fruit. A breeze or a shake of the plant can help encourage pollen drop, as can the buzz of a bumblebee flying past, but mostly no help is needed for the plants to produce fruit. That's why I can grow them under micromesh against the psyllid and other pests, and still get tomatoes. :-) 

This week's spending...

Today I purchased a bag of dog biscuits for my wee dog. I've finally found a brand he likes, having turned his nose up at the organic etc brands. It was on special at Countdown, so I paid $17.99 for the bag, which will probably last him about 4 months. 

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. 

Looking ahead...

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. 

Today's Thrifty Tips and Handy Hints...

Make your own nut meals and flours I find that purchased nut meals and flours often are somewhat rancid, or become rancid quickly. This is because the natural oils in the nuts are exposed to air when ground, and this can allow for fast deterioration. If you do buy ground nut products, keep them in the freezer to maintain freshness for longer. However, I never buy, for example, almond meal or flour these days - I buy whole raw almonds, and when I need flour or meal, I grind it myself. A simple food processor will turn almonds into meal easily. If I need a finer flour, then I transfer some meal to a coffee grinder and whizz it further. If I grind more of either than I need right away, I put the excess in bags and freeze. 

A coffee grinder is very useful I don't drink coffee, but I do have an electric grinder, which I keep specifically for grinding nuts and seeds. I used it on seseme seed and linseed before putting in my muselis (they are more digestable when ground), and for making almond flour as above, as well as any other time I need to grind such things. Very useful in a lot of raw "cooking" and making health foods from scratch. I got my coffee grinder free with Flybuys points. 

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!