Lavosh, Good Nosh, and Budget Posh

Have you visited www.pigstitsandparsleysauce.co.nz?  The story of a NZ woman who challenged herself to a weekly grocery bill of $100 for her family (dogs included) to save at least $12 000 in a year to invest in a rental property.  Long story short she exceeded her savings goal and now writes and shares about how she achieved this.  I found it all very exciting.  So I am giving it a crack.  Will let you know how it goes!



One of Lyn's tips is too shop at Bin Inn (or the like), your local butchery and produce stores. She says avoid supermarkets and if you must go there have a list and stick to it.  Well I have been doing that for the last fortnight.  Our local Bin Inn type shop is Simplifood in Mount Maunganui.  I spent quite a bit of our budget, with most of the cost going toward supplies for Wendyl's cleaning products.  I was very excited to see that they stock her range including the liquid soap she recommends - Dr Bronner's castile soap!! Wonderful!  My next cleaning product will be the peppermint paste as my bloggy friends are raving about it as a jiff equivalent.  My stove stop is hideously dirty so wanted to see if the peppermint paste can work its charm there.

I stayed mostly to our list in the supermarket managing to forget one item - K's corn thins.  This inspired me to dig to the back of my pantry and memory banks and  create Annabel Lanbein's Lavash.  Mmmmmmmm, low in salt, filled with yummy sesame seeds - I am liking this option for K's savoury snacking.  It is so easy to make.  Takes a while to roll.  I love the taste and the rustic, odd shapes.  I am looking forward to Dad and K's reviews as they took it too the park for afternoon tea.

On this particular weekend morning I was up before the family and whipped up soup for dinner and some delish home made bread - thanks to the Edmond's Cook book wholemeal bread recipe - we are really feeling like we eat well with the seasonal food focus, homemade goodness and budget attempts.

This week I will use the last of our tomatoes to make more tomato sauce, and try some pear and date chutney from my gorgeous recipe book "Ripe" pictured above.  These will hopefully become birthday gifts.

What's cooking in your seasonal kitchen?

My Monthly Moves Closer to Eco-Living: March

This has been a "back of my mind" project for sometime. Now it's time to be a little more transparent about it.  So here goes...my first month of five steps toward eco-living:

1.  Homemade Cleaning and Anti-bacterial Products
     Inspired by Megan @ Mousehouse and Wendyl the Green Goddess.  So far we have made the cleaning spray and antibacterial spray.  Enjoying them both.


2.   Frege bags
      I try to use reusable shopping bags as often as possible.  I love my frege bags given to me by my sister.  She sells these as a little business.  You could also make them if you were super skilled with your     sewing machine.  Or see this link to make your own grocery tote.

3.   Old Tea Towels - New Cleaning Cloths
      Now that I am sifting out my shop brought cleaners and very excitedly using my homemade ones I am also trying to cut down on using paper towels for cleaning and using old tea towels.  Use, wash, reuse!

4.  Hot steam mop
     We bought a hot steam mop over summer.  Love, love, love it.  Steaming hot water to wash our tiles.         No product just water.  Uses power, but leaves us with a natural clean.

5.  Seasonal Harvesting and Sowing
     I have started really putting an effort into seasonal produce shopping and I am back into our vege garden.  Delish!  Loving my weekly inspiration from Lynda Hallinan of NZ Gardener.

Borrowed from the NZ Gardener Magazine website.  Well worth a visit.

Roll on April to see where my moves toward eco-living take me.  I would love to hear any of the small but significant moves toward eco-living which you are making.

Backyard Jungle Harvest

We love our vege garden.  However since the news before Xmas of our second treasure on the way the garden has become a jungle.  It is amazing to see what has continued to grow in our garden jungle - mostly due to the rich compost our poppa made for us.  Which also provided us with a self seeding garden!

Dad and K had a great time digging up treasures from the deep and harvesting ruby jewels from the gangly vines!!

K wasn't convinced about picking the green tomatoes but I assured her they would ripen.  Hopefully we can make another batch of "Mummy's Real Tomatoe Sauce".

Oat Dear it's Autumn!

Autumn brings many gorgeous seasonal changes.  Sadly, I have learned over the years that my body doesn't like autumn and I seem to suffer from Seasonal Affect Disorder.  May be not this year as I am pregnant and SAD passed me over when I was pregnant with K.  Nevertheless,  oat recipes and doses of oats are added to everything - with their nutty flavour, iron giving properties and SAD combatting, nourishing goodness.

K and I tucked into porridge with honey and almonds. Yum.

Then we whipped up a batch of Blueberry, Oat and Chocolate Chip cookies. This recipe was an adapted version of this apricot and oat recipe from the Australian Taste website.  Super yum.

And then because our weather is rainy and dreary, and we had friends and their moving house team to nourish we made bagels with an oat and seed topping!

Our friends have successfully moved in and while they unwrap and unpack we will head back into the kitchen to make them some casserole love!

I would love to know your favourite oat recipe x

Personal note - must work on my photography!!