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Entertainment on a budget

A lot of my hubby’s family are in to ‘board’ games – yahtzee, monopoly, tri-ominoes, rummy-o etc. An afternoon can often be happily whiled away playing various games. Last Saturday was our turn for putting on an afternoon – five of us for an afternoon of triominos and monopoly. Visitors bring extra food along which is never organized ahead of time but always seems to turn out just right. We decided to see if the food we provided for the visitors could come from our cupboards – no extra shopping allowed – chicken wings, turkish bread, pizza, anzac biscuits. I baked the anzac biscuits about 45 minutes before the guests arrived so the house had a lovely baking aroma, mother-in-law loved the biscuits so much she has gone off to try the recipe. Our food was created for easily less than $20 (including the non-alcoholic drinks) – not bad for an afternoon of visitors. As an extra plus we ended up with left over food offerings from the visitors including lemons which can now be used (amongst other things) to make more lemon curd (see my recipe section) and Alison Holst’s Crunchy Lemon Muffins Radio New Zealand Content by Genre : Recipes : Afternoons : Crunchy Lemon Muffins

Crunchy Lemon Muffins.

For 12 regular muffins or 24 mini-muffins:
Turn the oven to 200 F with a rack in the middle of the oven

Ingredients

Mix together in a bowl, big enough to hold all the ingredients
2 cups self-raising flour
3/4 cup sugar

Measure the next four ingredients into a small bowl, then mix them together.
75g butter, melted (or 50g butter + 2 Tbsp canola oil, or 5 Tbsp oil)
1 cup milk
1 egg, preferably size 7
grated rind of 2 lemons or 1 lemon and 1 other citrus fruit.

Method

Tip the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and fold them together, preferably with a flat bladed stirrer. Mix just until the flour is dampened but NOT until the mixture is smooth. Using two spoons, put spoons of mixture into 12 regular muffin pans or 24 mini-muffin pans coated with non-stick spray or rubbed with soft butter.

Bake for about 10 minutes, until lightly browned. While muffins cook, put about 1/4 cup lemon juice (or lemon and other juice) in a small bowl. Have 1/4 cup of sugar ready to add to the juice after the muffins come out of the oven.

If the muffins do not come out of the tins easily while they are very hot, leave them to stand for a minute of two, then twist gently and lift them out. Dip the top half of each muffin into the juice and sugar mixture, and turn it slightly before lifting it onto a rack. If there is still some juice left, re-dip the muffins or brush the mixture onto the muffins.

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Job Lists

With money tight it’s easy to convince yourself that you can’t do anything to improve things around the house. To help us we’ve made a big job list that lives on the fridge. Down the side of the list is a column indicating whether the job needs money to complete or not. While a number of jobs do need money we have found there are a considerable number that are free or use resources we already have and just need time and effort. This kind of list could be good to do with kids but an activity list – types of activities that can be done with an indication of costs involved. If you are stuck for ideas for activities with the children try this site School Holiday Activities – for New Zealand Parents

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Herb update

I used my home grown parsley in a recipe last weekJ. I tried for the first time growing chives and flat leaf parsley inside the bifold windows this winter as we get bad frosts and so far it’s going pretty successfully. (Apart of course from my first attempt when one of the cats peed on my parsley pot thinking it looked like some sort of litter tray!)

Brie Tart

Pre-prepare a puff pastry case (or any other type of suitable pastry for a savoury tart) – bake blind for 15 minutes at 200oC, then 5 minutes ‘unblind’

Filling:

-125g Brie (watch for it on special. Pak n Save sell Waimata Brie for $2.48 every few weeks when the due by dates get to 1-2 weeks away)

-¼ cup cream

-½ cup milk

-2 eggs

-1 Tbsp chopped parsley

-2tsp grated fresh ginger or 1 tsp dried (can keep fresh ginger in the freezer)

– Good pinch of pepper

Blend all the ingredients in a food processor. Spoon the filling into the pastry case. Bake at 180oC for 30-35 minutes until filling is cooked.

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Big Wednesday Blues

Sometimes when you see someone win a lot of money like $39 million (!) it can be a little depressing. It can be hard looking at your bills and thinking how much easier it would be with a windfall. This week I’ve reminded myself of the 10 basic principles of financial independence (Noel Whittaker and Roger Moses – Making Money Made Simple, 1992, p 282-285) to motivate myself to keep going, that the changes hubby and I have been making over the last 6 months will make a difference eventually.

q       You have far more control over your life than you think and far more abilities than you know about. Resolve to start to ‘make it happen’ rather than ‘let it happen’.

q       Much of the glamour of wealth and fame is an illusion.

q       Discipline is the key to success in everything. Most people complain about problems and never try to solve them.

q       Life is about a lot of little things that add up. If you start to use all those tiny chunks of time and money you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.

q       You must live within your means. This is a habit you must acquire, it is not optional.

q       Everything worthwhile takes time. Success in every field comes from hard work over a long time, financial independence is no different.

q       Never compare yourself to others. It is pointless.

q       Find yourself a competent financial adviser.

q       Never stop learning. Lack of knowledge holds us back; keep learning about financial planning, goal setting, money management and personal investment.  

q       Start today – but slowly. A successful life is merely a succession of a lot of little things done properly. Don’t try to make massive changes all at once – you probably won’t stick to it and will get disillusioned.  

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Unit pricing

I popped into Woolworths yesterday for 5 mins to pick up a few items on special – Earth care toilet paper at 39c a roll and 2 x 6 burritos for $6 (cost me $4.74 the week before at Pak n Save for 6). It was so lovely to have unit pricing to check the best deals. At Pak n Save it’s the comparison that takes us the longest when shopping, even with a calculator. The Consumer Institute has been asking Foodstuffs to introduce unit pricing and they have agreed to introduce it in mid 2010 Foodstuffs introduce unit pricing – consumer.org.nz so am looking forward to that – might be able to get our weekly shop down to 20 mins!

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Slow cookers

I was given a slow cooker last year as a present but hadn’t got around to using it. I decided last weekend that it was about time it got trialled. I’m not into recipes that take a lot of ingredients so found this one for beer beef stew on the internet. The house smelt amazing all afternoon…..mmm. Hubby doesn’t like any meat stewed, reckons it’s a waste of meat but he kindly donated one of his beers. I used about 650g of stewing steak for about $6 and adjusted the recipe slightly. Tasted yum, then went into the freezer for dinners later on.

Beer Beef Stew

1 tsp salt
2 cups beer
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup butter
1 onion sliced
1/8 tsp pepper
2 lb Stewing Steak cut in 1 inch cubes

Coat beef cubes with the 1/2 cup flour then brown in melted butter and drain off excess fat. In crock pot combine browned meat with onion, salt, pepper and beer. Cover and cook on low 5 to 7 hours until meat is tender. Turn control to high. Dissolve remaining 1/4 cup flour in small amount of water and stir into meat mixture then cook on high 30 to 40 minutes. Serve with rice.

A good info site for making sure you are using your slow cooker safely in terms of food hygiene Cooking safely with slow cookers and crock pots

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The Tax man

Sorting out my paperwork recently I came across some donation receipts from three and four years ago. I only started claiming my donation rebate two years ago. So for a few minutes of downloading forms and filling them in I got $180 from Inland Revenue last week – much better than having to give them money. The form is very basic, takes 30 seconds – can be found at Tax credit (formerly rebate) claim form IR526

While you’re doing that you can check if you have left money in any old bank accounts – Unclaimed money

You can now also check your IRD account on line – follow this link for the registration process. It’s easy with our online services

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Sign On

Sign On The world needs us | Sign On is a Green Peace campaign encouraging people to sign up to send John Keys a message. The message is that in December when he goes to Copenhagen to decide on a new global treaty to reduce emissions we want him to support a reduction target of 40% by 2020. Green Peace wants to get the message out there to sign on and get your friends to sign on.

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Foreign Frozen Veges

Having just read this article Pot luck on frozen veges – Consumer information – NZ Herald News I have to admit I don’t think I’ve ever looked at where my frozen veges come from. I suppose I naively thought that exporting frozen veges from thousands of miles away made no sense! Just checked my freezer – McCain Corn is grown and produced in NZ as are my Pam’s peas. My Watties chopped frozen spinach is a different story. Packaged for Watties NZ, distributed by Auric Pacifc Marketing in Singapore, Lucky Frozen in Kuala Lumpur, product of USA. Not quite sure how that works? Grown in USA, shipped to Kuala Lumpur and frozen, transported to Singapore (or just distributed by a Singapore owned company), sent to NZ? It was sort of a one off purchase, I bought it because I felt like Spanakopita My Greek Kitchen – Spanakopita. Feeling a bit guilty now over so many carbon miles for one meal!!

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$21 Challenge Competition – June 2009

When I first read this site last year Simple Savings – $21 Challenge I thought there was no way a city person could meet this challenge of spending only $21 for food for the week as we don’t have as much access to free food. I’ve realized over the last few months though that it’s more about slowly building your cupboards/freezer up until one week you find that you actually don’t need to shop that much. We got it down to $30 a few weeks ago (not counting cat food!) and cleared almost the whole freezer out which was great as it needed a good clean out. Hubby moaned a little but I pointed out to him that we ate pretty much the same as we did most weeks – it was mostly in his brain that we needed to go out and BUY.

You can pay to access this site, they are having a sale at the moment! I just read Penny’s blog for the weeks where there is free access or the monthly newsletters. I can’t say I have got my spending down to $21 yet!