Handy tips for quick meals for the time poor

How fast is 'fast food'? You go out of your way on the way home, wait in a queue to be served, hand over your hard-earned money, wait for your meal, wait at the traffic lights while your dinner gets cold on the front seat of the car and go home to eat a luke warm, bland tasting meal in a box with soggy chips? The only thing fast about fast food is how quick you eat it when you get home. Here are my tips for preparing truly fast meals at home. 1. Plan ahead. Last night I made butter chicken and rice. Tonight I am planning to make Fried Rice out of Poh's Kitchen cookbook, so when I made the rice for last night, I cooked double the amount I needed and put half of it in the fridge for tonight's dinner. I'm already half prepared for tonight's meal, which is handy as I am going out tonight and need something quick to make and eat before I go. 2. Have a cooking day. Chose a day when you aren't too busy and set aside some time to cook up meals for the week. If you want to use your ingredients while they are still fresh, have your cooking day after you have done your grocery shopping. Yesterday I did my food shopping, came home and put soup in the slow cooker for meals later this week. I have a busy week ahead, so it's nice to know that some meals are already made and just need to be pulled out of the freezer. 3. Freeze your leftovers. When cooking meals, make a bit extra than what is needed and pop them in the freezer for those nights when you don't feel like cooking or are running short on time. When freezing meals or left overs, use containers that seal properly to avoid any leaking of the contents but also to stop any airborne bugs getting in (such as listeria if putting the containers in the fridge). Label the container with what is in it. There is nothing worse than pulling something out of the freezer and not knowing what it is, as often frozen meals are hard to identify what they are. When labelling the meal, also write the date, as a general rule, meals shouldn't be left in the freezer any longer than 3 months. Writing the number of serves on it can be handy if you need to feed more than one person. In the photo at the top of this article, I have used a container that can go straight from the freezer to the microwave, has a vent to let the steam out, and have written on it with a whiteboard marker 'mince and veg, 5/3/12, x 2'. When reheating meals, only ever use your microwave on 50% or medium. The food is already dead, so no need to kill it again. Avoid just hitting the start button, as this will give you 100% power. Do you know if your container can go straight from the freezer to the microwave? Check the bottom of the container for the icons that show it is freezer and microwave safe. Also check the instructions on the packaging when you buy it from the shop or with the demonstrator if you buy it from a party plan demonstration. Microwave containers may warp if used on high instead of medium. This will affect how well the seals work on it, and may make the plastic porous, allowing it to absorb stains and odours from the food. You may find you void any guarantee on the product if it shows signs of having been used on high. To top it off, it tastes much better than the stuff from the fast food outlet. Still not convinced? Here is a story of what happened to my husband and I... One day we were out much later than we expected. On the way home we realised we didn't have anything organised for dinner. Although we live in a city, the particular roads we were travelling along didn't have any fast food outlets along them (and my husband and I are not big fans of fast food anyway, but I would settle for Indian or Chinese). We worked out that to get Chinese for dinner, we would have to go out of our way. Being tired, we just wanted to go home. We had a think about what was in the fridge and realised we could make Fried Rice ourselves. When we got home, I chucked the rice in a bowl of water, into the microwave (takes about 14 minutes). I chopped vegies and quickly fried them in the wok with a bit of soy sauce, mixed the cooked rice in and we had a delicious meal. My husband commented how much cheaper it was to make it ourselves than go to the Chinese restaurant. I pointed out that it took about 15 minutes to prepare and cook this meal...if we had have gone out of our way to the Chinese restaurant on the way home, we wouldn't even be in the door yet. While I was cooking he was getting our son bathed and into his pj's for the evening. It tasted great, was cheap to make and we got to eat it while it was still hot!

Top Tips for reducing your shopping bill, without changing where you shop or what you buy.

Tired of wasting money on fuel and time chasing the cheapest price on groceries? Have a favourite shop or prefer to support your local supermarket? Here's how you can reduce your shopping bill and and still shop where you like. Here's the surprise factor. Reducing your shopping bill has very little to do with the actual supermarket, it has a lot to do with what happens at home. Tip 1: Organise your pantry. Is your pantry a mess? Are the items in your pantry tied up with rubber bands? Are your cracker biscuits stale when you go to eat them? Or are the mice getting to eat them before you do? Do you have two packets of icing sugar, both open? Putting your food in clear, plastic containers, that seal air tight and are stackable can help to avoid these problems. Clear containers that are labelled make it easier to find what is in your pantry. Look at the photo of the Rice Bubbles. By looking at the box you can't tell how much is left, not to mention that the bag doesn't seal to keep the contents fresh. The plastic container shows how much is left, and the contents stay fresher for longer.

This is a photo of my pantry. It is easy for me to find what I want and see what needs replacing.

When writing your shopping list this will help you to keep an eye on what is on special and buy it before you run out. It will also mean you don't waste money doubling up unnecessarily. Air tight containers also stop ants, mice and weavils (unless they are in the food when you buy it). Tip 2: Use a whiteboard marker to write the use by date on your plastic containers. You will then know when something is past its due date, saving extra trips to the shop to replace items that are no longer fresh. The marker washes off easily. Tip 3: How's your soup drawer? What's that, you ask? It's your vegie crisper in your fridge. Many new fridges have humidity controlled vegie crispers so you can adjust how much humidity your fruits and vegies are getting. I have one of those fridges. Great idea, unfortunately doesn't really work. Different vegies (and fruits) require different levels of humidity. For example, broccoli is a 'heavy breather', so requires a lot of ventilation and humidity to stay fresh. Carrots don't require as much, so why would you put them in the same drawer? Placing your goods in clear plastic containers with humidity control tabs and corregated bases will prolong the life of your vegies and fruit. You can place items that have the same breathing rate in together, and separate those that don't. The corregations allow the juices to drain to the bottom, but keep the produce up out of it. Consequently, no more soupy mess in the bottom of your vegie crisper (hence 'soup drawer'). You won't be throwing out and replacing your produce as often. You can always use the vegie crisper to store your alcohol, or remove it altogether to make more room in your fridge. Tip 4: Check out the specials in your junk mail and on-line. Many supermarkets are on-line these days, so you can check out what's on special before you leave home. Beware that the prices on their shop-at-home service may be higher than what's in the shop. Junk mail only shows some of the specials. On my shopping list I note any items that I will buy if they are on special. These are items that I am running low on, but don't necessarily need to buy that week. By following these tips I saved $22 on my last trip to the supermarket (total shopping was $169). My favourite supermarket prints how much you have saved by buying items on special on the bottom of the docket, which is a handy feature. These tips will help you save money on your shopping bill by helping you to plan your shopping list, reducing the number of trips you make to the shop each week to top-up purchases and can reduce how much food you throw out.

April Garden update

It has now been 4 months since I started my vegie garden. Things have slowed down a bit, so I took the opportunity last weekend to rip out what was dying off, mix some compost and manure into the soil, and get ready to plant my winter crop. The planting will take place this weekend, so I have allowed the week for the soil to 'settle'. Going through my little note pad, as at todays date, it has produced 41.39kg of food! It is interesting to see what has waxed or waned during that time. Zucchinis are still going strong, despite several bouts of powdery mildew. I have ripped out two of the three plants, and now just have one big plant. Strawberries stopped producing and came back again. Capsicums are still going berzerk. Tomatoes have dropped right off as they are nearly at the end of their season. Spinach and basil are still going strong. Lettuce went to seed, germinated and now producing again. Oranges, lemons and olives are starting to change colour and ripening. Honeydews have died off but there is still one hiding behind the tomato bushes. Eggplant is now getting big seeing that the tomato bushes are thinning out and has plenty of flowers and little eggplants on it. I have noticed that the price of Zucchinis in the shops has gone up to $5.99/kg. I picked one earlier this week that was 630g...so that would have cost me about $3.77 to buy at the shop. That one zucchini has recouped the cost of buying the zucchini seedlings all those months ago. If you have one square metre of garden available, go ahead and plant a vegie patch. If I took the average price of the fruits and vegetables to be valued at $4.99/kg in the shops, my garden has saved me $206 in four months! Fantastic value, as I am sure I have recouped the cost of my garden, so anything after this is a real saving!

Cheap and Cheerful: Cappucino biscuits

I just went down to the local church trading post (to drop off some Tupperware fundraising information) and came across these little gems. They look really intricate, but on closer inspection, they are really quite simple. What you need to make these Cappucino biscuits are: 1 packet Tic Toc biscuits (the ones with the face on them, or any other round biscuit would do, or home made round butter biscuits) 1 packet musk Life Savers 1 packet marshmallows 1 packet Freckles (small) small quantity of icing. To assemble: Cut Life Savers in half. Using some icing, attach a Life Saver half to a marshmallow to make a cup. Use icing to attach a Freckle to the top of the cup. Place Tic Toc biscuits with clock face down, using icing to attach 'cup' to the biscuit. Leave to set. These are absolutely gorgeous, and would look fancy at any get together or 'high tea'.