Eating well on $150/week

Not just eating well. Eating delicious, wholesome, organic, fresh food on just $150 a week for a family of three and a half (myself, dearly beloved, Miss Four and bubs). Sound alright?? Well if you want to know more, then you've come to the right place. I've had a small break from my blog, but I'm back, with more food ideas, more budgeting tips, and more yummy recipes to help you along your eating and health journey. Glad to have your company. I was originally posting everything we ate for each day, but I have had a reality check, and now I'm just going to do what I can, most likely one meal/recipe a day, whatever I enjoyed cooking or eating the most. Cos that's what life's all about isn't it? Keeping it fun...short, simple, sweet!

Budget cuts

We eat for $150 a week. We eat healthy, quality, gourmet, organic food, on $150 a week. That's a family of 2 adults and 2 littlies. One of the secrets to eating well on a budget, is eating the cheaper cuts of meat. And stay with me here, I'm talking organ meats. Along with the fat, they are the most nutritious part of the animal. And yet our modern society shuns them! Gives them to the pets! Our ancestors would shudder. They used to eat the fat and organ meats first, they revered them. Then the muscle meat last, if they ate it at all (they would sometimes feed the muscle meat to their pets).

So, dinner last night was lamb's fry (liver). I know what you're thinking. The yucky stuff your mother used to feed you once a week. But it doesn't have to be that way. It CAN be delicious. What you do, is first, buy organic. The stuff's cheap as chips. It costs about $2.50 to feed a family for one meal. Buy a bunch of it and store it in the freezer. Once thawed, peel the thin membrane off the liver, cut off the vein-y bits, slice it as thinly as you can, and soak it in lemon juice for a few hours. Then pat dry, dredge in flour/salt/pepper, heat your fry pan to high, and only just cook through (or leave a bit of pink). Eat immediately. We had ours with roasted veges. Total meal cost probably $6. And our chickens (meat eaters too) had a feast on the offcuts.

Lunch was very yummy. Had heaps of veges in the fridge, so stirfried brocolli, snow peas, cauliflower, onion, pumpkin, with some pepita and sunflower seeds in ghee and coconut oil. Added sweet chilli sauce at the end, and feasted. Delicious and very quick. Might have cost $5.

The porridge (soaked the previous night) got burned (we were distracted by kids) so we had eggs on toast for breakfast - always a favourite anyway. Not just eggs either, but we also had fried tomatos, fermented ginger carrots, and parsley and chives from the garden.

Snacks - Our mulberry tree is laden with fruit at the moment. So any chance we get we pick a big bowl full and gorge out with mulberries and cream. Our little person just loves them. She has a huge red mulberry smile afterwards. Just about free, cream maybe 20 cents.

Delicious food on a budget

Delish Fish pie. It was exactly what I felt like for dinner. And my darling beloved cooked it beautifully. I was putting the kids to bed while he was cooking, so this is what he told me that he did - boiled a few eggs then quartered them, fried some onions and leeks, steamed some carrots and potatoes, put it all together in a baking dish with cream, salt and pepper, mustard, and a sprinkling of flour and breadcrumbs to thicken it slightly. Then a handful of cheese on top. Baked to perfection in about 45 mins. I tell you, it was divine. I really need to let him cook more often...

...oh, and about the budget side of it. You know, good food really doesn't need to be expensive. The fish was local caught, sustainable species (we hope) and cost $7. Eggs were $5 a dozen from the local organic markets, plus veges from there too (similar price to supermarket). Cream from the farm for $1.50 a litre. My estimate for the pie is $12 - and we have enough leftovers for another meal, so that makes it $6 a meal. Lots of good fats in there too, so very satisfying.

Lunch was a Thai vege curry. Fried an onion and Thai green curry paste, add a tin of coconut milk, lots of veges, some rapadura sugar, fish sauce, and lemon juice. Then cooked some rice to go with it. Would have been very budget. All organic. Probably cost a few bucks.

Pancakes for breakfast, with a difference. I soaked the flour overnight in yoghurt (predisgests it, very good for you), then in the morning added two eggs, pinch of salt, pinch of baking soda, and water to thin it, then fried them in coconut oil. Ok, nothing different about that. But this morning I grated a carrot and a green apple, and panfried them in butter. Yum. So my pancake stack had that carrot/apple/butter on top, with lashings of cream. Very yum. We buy the grain in bulk, and yoghurt is home-made, apples in a bulk box, and all organic or local spray-free. So I'm thinking that this meal only cost about $1-$2.

Real food. Budget prices. You can't beat it.

Not the hips, nor the hip pocket

Money. Ahhh yes. We all have some sort of emotional reaction to that word. Kind of like food. So I'm going to combine these two emotionally charged topics in my blog. I'll not only write about what we are eating, but also how we eat on a tight budget. Perfect fodder for the financial crisis. If you can eat well in a crisis, well, it's not such a crisis is it!! Read on.