Food

Imagine a life without food, wouldn’t we save a lot of time and money if we didn’t have to:

*     Plan our meals

*     Shop for food

*     Prepare food

*     Eat food

*     Clean up afterwards

Food is a necessary evil, like sleep; if you don't get enough of it, your body will start to deteriorate. Eventually, it will break down and will end up costing you more than ever in medical fees in repairing your body. Just as well we enjoy eating!!

So how do we save money with food? One of the things I am always insisting at home is to eat all that is in the fridge. Many Australians are guilty of throwing out 10 – 15% of the food that they have bought. That is like throwing 10% to 15% of the cash used for your grocery straight into the bin!

To save some money, we are doing a few things.

1. Eat what is in the fridge or pantry. Otherwise, it just gets past its use-by date and gets thrown out to the chooks  (in my case, so not really wasted as it is recycled into eggs).
2. Plan your meals weekly and stick to it. This will help you decide what to buy at the next grocery trip and reduce impulse on buying.  Always check what you already have and design your menu from that. Then you only need to buy a small amount to make up the meals.
3. Don't buy so much at the next grocery trip. This reduces the amount of the food just sitting around going bad.
4. Grow as many fruit and vegetables as possible. It doesn’t take much effort to grow vegies using old polystyrene boxes if you are short on land.
5. Buy seasonally and freeze. For example, during winter, oranges were plentiful, gorgeous and cheap. I froze them as complete oranges in their skin. The other day I took them out and made several bottles of my DH's favourite, orange cordial.  Here is the recipe: 
6. It works out well.  The planning of meals also gives a better choice of meals as well. Delicious for the taste buds as we only choose meals that are appealing and more spare money for us!
   
   ORANGE CORDIAL -
   8 oranges thawed if frozen and mushed complete with skin in a food processor add Sugar syrup made from 2 litre water to 2 kilo sugar - sugar syrup boiled until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in 1 teaspoon each of citric acid and epsom salts.
   Mix in orange pulp and strain then bottle while hot and the lids should pop in when cool. This will store for months. Serve diluted with water and a lot of ice. 

Deb
Lesson 4:  Plan your meals so there is NO food wastage.