Week 2- Weekly Wrap Up.

Wow  what a week... Than you so much for all your comments and  encouragement.

This week saw a lot more variety and some red meat.   Looking deeper into the supermarkets, I can see it is difficult to incorporate red meat into a stand alone $25 per week budget  :(   
I know I am particularly blessed to live in an area where we have lots of quality bulk butchers around us.  Consequently we eat lots of red meat at a budget price... we are most definitely carnivores here :)

For those of you following who may be near the Sunshine Coast, we actually travel down to Morayfield once every 3 months or so to Meat City and stock our freezer.
We are due to go possibly next weekend, so I will do a post showing what we buy.


I have had some questions that I will answer..

I can't buy the items at my supermarket for the prices you list. How can I stick to $25?
I have priced all items from Woolworths Currimundi on the Sunshine Coast in Qld.
I realise that some items will be priced differently in other areas.  In many cases you may be able to get items (especially fresh items) even cheaper that I have done from Woolworths.
Even if your area is more expensive, the shopping list should still be a budget shop.  Don't be to concerned if my $25 basket costs you even $30.  These plans are not meant to be followed religiously.  If you get the basics from my plans and can now afford add some ice-cream, chocolate and luxury items,,GREAT!!!! 

You have not listed snacks or drinks, what are you having?
I am a tea drinker and have 5 or 6 cups of tea with milk but no sugar everyday.
This amount of tea means I go through a full 2 litres of milk every week. I also drink 2 liters of water most days.  I have an old 2L cordial bottle on my desk at work and do try to get through it each day.
I am not normally a snacker, but I have bought the 57c packet of wafer biscuits each week and have had one or two with a cup of tea after dinner.  There are 14 in the pack and I can recommend them as a really nice little snack.

Are you really having that many eggs?
Eggs have been my "go to" breakfast since I was a child.  I really don't like cereal and find if I do not have a protein breakfast, I will feel headachy and hungry by 10:00 or so.
I do often have baked beans as well and will often make a pot of beans and add chopped onion and bacon to the beans.    Eggs to me are breakfast though and I don't usually have them as a quick dinner like a lot of people do.  Generally the only time eggs show up outside of breakfast is in a burger or maybe a ceaser salad.

You don't have any fruit.
I am not normally a fruit eater. I do not have much of a sweet tooth.  We do eat a lot of vegetables and rarely have dessert.  I was quite surprised to see the prices of fruit while shopping and realise that fruit is a luxury item for many :(


So what is next??
I have devised 3 more stand alone $25 per week menus that will be in the resources section on the right hand side of this blog.

I may do some more stand alone menus in time, but now I will concentrate on fortnightly menus at under $50.  Why?  It has mentioned by many that Centrelink pays fortnightly so it makes sense to have a fortnightly shopping list.  This will allow for a stockpile of ingredients to begin as well.  

These $50 menus will be in 6-8 week blocks which should allow for ingredients to be used up.    

I think this style of shopping is closer to real life, while still aiming for my goal of proving that you CAN feed yourself on just $25 per week.

So, please, keep following me and we will see how we go :)

Week 2 - Friday

YAY!!!   Friday....

Easier day today meal wise as a lot of the prep has been done earlier in the week.

Breakfast
Poached Eggs on Toast

Lunch
Leftover Chicken and Rice from earlier in the week.
I had this in the freezer and just took to work and microwaved until hot.

Dinner
Meat Pie
Back on Wednesday, I cooked up the last of the mince.
That night I made the rissoles for dinner, the meat patty for Thursday's Burger and
the mince mixture for my pie for tonight.
I figured it was easier to just chop the last of my onion and use up the tomato and have everything ready to go.
It proved a good thing as I had tonight's pie on the table in about 15 minutes.

I had originally planned on doing some chips, but decided to mash all the potato last night and used half under the chicken casserole yesterday and topped my pie with the other half today.

Here is the pie step by step.
Make the mice mixture.  Lay a piece of buttered bread in a pie dish,  fill,  top with mashed potato, top with a bit of butter, bake until the mash is golden and the pie is hot through.
Serve with gravy.  Enjoy!!  Yummm

Week 2 - Thursday.

Sorry people...  Life and work got in the way.  
Anyway...some new posts coming up for you..  :)

Breakfast:
Baked Beans on Toast and Tea

Lunch:
Burger
Meat patty on toast  spread with a tablespoon of tomato from
your tinned tomato, add grated carrot, salad leaves and an egg.


Dinner:
Chicken Casserole.
In a pan seal some chicken pieces in butter along with carrot and onion
Add in 1/4 can of tinned tomato and simmer until the chicken is cooked
through and the carrot tender.  In the last few minutes, add in some broccoli
pieces.  You don't want them to go to mush :)
Serve on a bed of mashed potato.

Week 2 - Wednesday

Check back tomorrow for next week's meal plan.  Also, did you know we are on Facebook?
click here to go to our facebook page and like the page to get updates in your feed.

Menu Plan for the day...

Breakfast
Scrambled Eggs on Toast

Lunch
Cheese Salad Sandwich

Dinner
Beef Rissoles with  Vege with Gravy
I have used the last of the mince today.  (I also cooked up the mince for my pie for later in the week, but more about that in the coming days)
After adding a chopped onion and a tablespoon of tinned tomato to the mince, I formed 3 rissoles.
Two of the rissoles I had for dinner and I flattened the 3rd one to make a hamburger patty for my lunch tomorrow.  I put the small potato in the bottom of my steamer, and in the steamer basket went broccoli and carrot.  Serve the meal up with a drizzle of gravy.

Week 2 - Tuesday

Nice meals today :)  I am liking this way of eating.  Simple, clean food without too much fuss.  Cooking is a breeze, with any meal taking no more than 15- 20 minutes to serve up. Creative thinking has seen me have more variety that I thought I would.  I have a couple of good ideas to come in the coming weeks, so stay tuned :)

Today saw me feasting on:  
Breakfast
Baked beans on buttered toast
Cup of tea and milk

Lunch
Egg and Salad sandwich
Cup of tea and milk

Dinner
Diced chicken and onion browned off in butter, before adding a packet of "Chicken and Vege Rice" and cooking as per instructions. I also added some diced carrot and some broccoli florets as the rice was cooking.
I was, again, impressed with the taste of these packets.  I am looking forward to having the leftover half of this meal for lunch in a few days.

Week 2 - Monday

Arrrgh!!!   Disaster.. Well no not really.
I went to look for the picture of the really delicious filled potato that I had for dinner last night and my phone has eaten it.  sigh..the price of technology.  

Menu today..

Breakfast
Poached eggs on toast

Lunch
Leftover Stroganoff

Dinner
Baked Spud 
Cut a large potato in half and bake or microwave it until tender.
While the potato is cooking, fry off mince and diced onion in a pan over medium heat.
When the mince is cooked, add a good tablespoon of baked beans and a few shredded spinach leaves.
allow the spinach to wilt .

Hollow out the potato with a spoon ad add the inner potato flesh to the mince mixture.  Mix everything together gently so the beans don't break up.  Spoon the mince mixture back into the potato shell.  I use a ring of alfoil to hold the shell steady.

Top with cheese ( I used a 1/2 slice) and return to the oven until the cheese melts.  Serve with a salad and a spoon of tinned tomato as a dressing/sauce

Note the photo of the spud is a copied photo not my actual spud

Week 2 - Sunday

I have a confession to make today.  It is Fathers Day and we are going to visit the family for lunch today.  I had  baked beans for breakfast, then baked the quiche with dinner and will have the quiche for breakfast tomorrow.  I will show the menu plan as having quiche for lunch though.  Does that make sense?  :-)

Breakfast:
Baked Beans on Toast

Lunch:
Vegetable Quiche
In a single serve pie dish, place one piece of bread buttered on both sides.
Dice onion, carrot and broccoli into very small pieces and either steam. boil or microwave until just tender.
Break one egg into a cup and add enough milk to bring the volume to 1/2 cup, mix well.
In a jug, stir well to combine the vegetables, egg mix and 1 slice of cheese ( crumbled ).
Pour over the bread and bake in a 180 degree oven for 15-20 minutes or until set. 

Dinner:
Roast Chicken Dinner
Who would have guessed a roast dinner on just $25.00 food budget?  
Chicken pieces roast well and are cheap so why not.

In a small ovenproof dish place a piece of chicken (I have a thigh) on top of  a quartered carrot,
add a small potato which has been cut in half ( or quarters if you have a larger potato)  Place a few dobs of butter on the chicken and potatoes. Roast in a 180 degree oven for around 30 mins until the chicken is cooked through and the potato tender.   
While the chicken is roasting, dice 1/4 of an onion and fry off in a bit of butter, when the onions start changing colour and go translucent, add a dessert spoon of gravy powder and enough water to make a gravy to whatever constituency you fancy.
Serve up your roast chicken, carrot and potato along with a couple of steamed broccoli florets and spoon over the gravy.  Enjoy!!

Week 2 - Saturday

Here we are again for a new week.  I do appreciate the positive feedback I am receiving for this challenge.  It is certainly making me look at the supermarket shelves in a whole new way.  Some of the aisles are ones I have not really ventured up for years.

One comment I received was the the packet pasta and rice was a very expensive way to buy a cheap item.  I agreed, but then thought about it for a while and priced out stroganoff made form scratch vs the packet mix.

Pasta 1 cup (1/5 65c packet) 13c
Onion I small 10c ( if buying at $1 kg)
Mushroom. 30c. ($10kg)
Butter, garlic, parsley, cornflour. Approx 30c
400g of milk 40c

Total $1.13

So all up the $1.49 (which was actually only $1 as they were 3 for $3 this week ) plus 25c for a cup of milk plus 3/4 cup of water to make it up is not too bad. 
It is even cheaper than my usual way which uses half milk and half cream

When husband and I looked at this we have decided to look at these sachets more often when we travel. It was very tasty BTW

On the menu today we have...
Breakfast:
A souffle omelette made with 2 eggs, about a tablespoon of chopped onion and 1/2 slice of cheese.  Once cooked up in a bit of butter, I served it up with a couple of tablespoons of tinned tomato and a few salad leaves.  A very satisfying start to a weekend :)

Lunch:
"Pizza"
A piece of toast spread with tinned tomato, about 50g of mince and onion fried up in butter and topped with 1/2 slice of cheese.  Note that I have had to "crumble" the cheese slice rather than having grated cheese.  Under the grill to melt the cheese and heat it through.

Dinner:
Meatball Stroganoff
100g of mince was mixed with a tablespoon of onion and a tablespoon of tinned tomato (try not to get too much juice, you really want pulp only) and worked into tiny little meatballs about the size of a marble (roughly 10-15mm across).
These were fried off in butter.  Once cooked, remove them from the pan and set aside to rest.  In the same pan make up the pasta mix as instructed.  As the sachet I have is Chicken, Mushroom and Garlic, I added a good heaped teaspoon of gravy mix to make it a bit "beefier"  Stirring until the sauce thickens, add back the meatballs and continue to simmer until the meatballs are heated through.   Serve with a few salad leaves.  Note this makes 2 full serves, so keep half for lunch in a few days.

I have also bought another packet of the wafer biscuits for a snack with a cup of tea at either afternoon tea or after dinner.

Week 2 - Shopping

Imagine for a moment you have nothing in the kitchen,

no pantry staples, no extras…nothing.  Could you feed 

yourself a varied and healthy(ish) diet for one week with 

just $25.00 ?  Follow my trials to see how I do.

The shopping list for this weeks menu plan came in at $24.98

There is no plain dried pasta this week!!  I have managed to buy some fresh vegetables.  I took advantage of the "odd bunch" of carrots and bought a full kilogram of carrots for just 98c.  Sadly, though iceberg lettuce had jumped in price from $1.50 last week to $2.00 this week :( so instead of being able to have a full lettuce, I was again only able to buy a handful of mixed leaves. A couple of potatoes, onions and a head of broccoli will see me eating fresh vegetables this week.  I have also bought a tin of tomatoes that is basically being used as a sauce this week.

In the rice and pasta aisle, I spotted these meal bases and thought they would be a nice change from plain pasta and will provide some tasty herb/spice flavours.  I have a Chicken Rice and a Mushroom and Garlic Pasta.  As these serve 4 as a side dish , I am anticipating dinners and lunch leftovers.    A 99c sachet of gravy mix will also help to add some extra flavouring.

I was determined to include some beef mince this week. Woolworths has their regular mince for $5.99 per kilo,  I was able to buy a tray for $2.59.  I have been creative and will use this mince in a number of ways to create different dishes.

A tin of baked beans will mean an alternative to eggs every morning, and will also be used as an ingredient in my Baked Potato later in the week.

To trim the budget by a few cents, I have chosen UHT milk at 95c a litre. When the budget is this slim, those 10c make a difference :)    I could have trimmed the budget even further by choosing 85c white bread over the $1.50 multi grain, but I think the nutritional value of the multigrain is worth the extra.    I have also chosen to buy just 3 slices of "real" cheese rather than the processed cheese from last week.  This was expensive at $15.99/kg, but I think the flavour will be worth it.

Tea	$             1.99
Eggs	$             2.79
Milk	$             1.90
Bread	$             1.50
Baked Beans	$             0.65
Potato	$             1.34
Carrot	$             0.98
Onion	$             0.47
Lettuce Mix	$             1.05
Broccoli	$             0.96
Mince	$             2.59
Chicken Thighs	$             1.39
Wafer Biscuits	$             0.57
Rice/Pasta	$             2.98
Cheese	$             0.85
Gravy	$             0.99
Tinned Tomato	$             0.59
Butter	$             1.39
Total	$           24.98

This blog is not intended to be a serious food plan. It is for entertainment purposes.       No responsibility is taken for any issues caused if you choose to follow the listed meal plans.