The $1,000 Plan: Day Thirty-Eight

It's Day Thirty-Eight of The $1,000 Plan and I spent time cooking up several items to go into the freezer. I am pleased with the resulting outcome and it will certainly be nice to have things ready onhand in the freezer, that can simply be defrosted and then put straight into the oven (minus the plastic lid).

I plan to do further bulk cooking tomorrow, if time allows and hopefully then we will have a good stock of items onhand for the weeks ahead. It is so much nicer to be able to take a prepared meal out from the freezer the night before, and not have to do all the preparations from scratch each and every time.

There are some days when it is just so busy, and when the day proves to be also tiring, having a prepared freezer meal helps to lessen the load. I have also grocery shopped this evening, so I am hoping that alongside the soups and fruit crumbles I prepared today, I will also be able to put together several bulk pasta and rice dishes. These will all be good to have sorted out and ready onhand as well, and it will add a bit more of a selection into the mix also.

Our grocery bills have lessened over the past month, and I am a lot more conscious of where the grocery budget has been going. Menu planning really is advantageous on so many levels I am finding. I am planning to fine tune it even a little more over the coming weeks, and then I am aiming to recruit another household member (one at a time) to come onboard and learn how to do a bulk menu plan for a month also.

Until then however, I am personally being kept quite busy. Some days, (like yesterday and today, when there is a bit of a 'soup-fest' occurring at the stovetop alongside homeschooling the children), are proving to feel quite like longer and more tiring days at present. Yet, they are also days where there is an extra sense of accomplishment occurring because they are so productive on the food planning and budgeting front.

Rome was most certainly not built in a day, and each step IS proving to be very conducive to positive change. Step by step, day by day, the good habits needed to achieve The $1,000 Plan's hoped for outcome are all gradually being literally worked out. Yay! Yippee! Yay!

The $1,000 Plan: Day Six

It is Day Six of The $1,000 Plan to save $1,000 over the next 4 - 6 weeks. As part of the plan I have embraced to endeavour to achieve this goal, I have also been making homemade bread, rather than purchasing store bought bread.

Looking through the fridge and pantry it was clear if I was going to make bread from scratch, I was going to have to do so without the aid of yeast; we simply did not have any.

As part of our homeschooling programme so far this past year, we have been studying how people celebrate festivals and special occasions. Included in our study, we looked at the history and celebration of St. Patrick's Day and hence learnt how to make Irish Soda Bread.

In order to have bread to this past week, I had to get out the very same recipe and look at whether I had the required ingredients available to me. Sure enough, by shopping the pantry I discovered I could in fact supply our household with bread, be it in the form of a loaf or as buns, and it was going to be via the Irish Soda Bread Recipe we had copied out all those months ago.

Here is the recipe I used, for those who also may be interested in making the change to baking bread from scratch, and from basic ingredients found quite commonly in one's food pantry:

Irish Soda Bread 

This recipe makes 2 loaves.

Ingredients:

680gm of Organic Flour
680gm of Organic Self-raising Wholemeal Flour
1 litre of Organic Milk* 
4 Tbspn of Lemon Juice
4 tspn of Baking Soda

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius. 
2. Stir the lemon juice into the milk to make it curdle.
3. Sift both flours and the baking soda into a large bowl. Tip in the bran from the sieve.
4. Add the milk and mix everything together quickly to form a soft dough.
5. Place the dough onto a floured surface and knead it lightly for a few minutes to form two loaves.
6. Place the prepared loaves onto a greased baking tray. You can garnish the top of each loaf with seeds of your choice, or you can choose to simply score a cross on the top with the use of a knife.
7. Carefully place the prepared loaves in to the hot oven.
8. Bake the bread for approximately 30 minutes, until risen and golden brown.
9. Remove loaves from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

* Please note: I chose to use Rice Milk, so it did not naturally curdle.

The $1,000 Plan: Day Two

What does it take to save $1,000 within 4 - 6 weeks, as a single income family? As we launch out into trying to do things differently as a household, in order to achieve this very goal, a shift is taking place in relation to how people start the day at breakfast time.

Up until this weekend, breakfast was more often than not all based around cereal and dairy products. With the emphasis on making changes that could prove to be financially beneficial (yet would still allow for dietary requirements to be met), it was what is consumed for this particular meal that was first on the list to be reassessed and changed.

With each grocery shop, I was previously purchasing up to 3 - 4 different cereals to cater for dietary needs and in some cases, just people's preferences. This was taking a considerable portion of our fortnightly food budget. Breakfast was proving to become more and more a daily meal that was costly, as bowl upon laiden bowl of cereal was being consumed, as previous months consumption habits proved to show. 

I had started to see a pattern of behaviour develop that certain sugary branded cereals were increasingly being consumed in greater quantities by some individuals. It was becoming habitual for more & more boxes to be requested and purchased, before often the next payday was anywhere in sight.

It had become quite typical to be told by family members that their cereal had run out and we needed to get more on the way home from picking up Daddy at the train station. Sugary cereals were being more and more favoured over healthier muesli, and cereal was also being indulged in often as a snack food.

Breakfast needed a makeover, and it was the first area of menu planning expenditure that needed redressing for sure! 

For the financial saving goal of The $1,000 Plan to have any chance of being reached, the cereals being favoured and consumed needed to go and alternatives put in place instead.

As I have stepped out these past few days towards planning a more savings friendly menu, I have contemplated and started to look at alternatives. I spent several hours over the weekend cooking up several batches of muffins. I determined what I thought would be reasonable quantities to make, in order to look at having muffins available for breakfast for everyone (that is, one portion per person) over a month long period.

It was quite a muffin-fest, by the end of the weekend! With close to 100 muffins all accounted for, prepared and then frozen in labelled freezer bags, all ready to be able to be selected and put out in the pantry to defrost overnight as they were required each day.

The feedback so far, over the two days we have so far trialled having muffins, a piece of fruit and herbal tea for breakfast, has been positive. Yes, there are those that have told me they do rather like the chocolate chip muffins over the fruit coconut bran muffins..... but hey! It was a big step for some more than others, to try doing breakfast in a way that felt less breakfasty to them.

I chose to do four batches of each muffin recipe made. With each recipes original quantities allegedly allowing for a batch of 12, and having achieved 48 muffins per batch made, I was pleased with the overall results of the busy baking time had in the weekend.

I will share the muffin recipes we are currently trialling in my next blogpost, if you are interested in also trying them. I will share them with the adjustments I made, to allow for what ingredients I did have onhand in the freezer and pantry..... I am afterall endeavouring at present to 'shop' from these, to achieve the hoped for results of The $1,000 Plan. The $1,000 Plan is unfolding, step by step, with each new day.

The $1,000 Plan: Day One

As we embark on our journey to aim to save $1,000 within 4 - 6 weeks, one of the biggest changes that has to occur, from the outset, is in relation to mindset.

Over the weekend, as I introduced to my family a new menu plan, there were habits that proved to be up for challenge. There were some household members who clearly found it took a bit of adjusting to get their heads around it.

One of those habits requiring adjustment straight up was what people habitually have for breakfast. There ARE alternatives to laiden bowls of cereal.

Watch out for my next blogpost, on Day Two of The $1,000 Plan, which is about what shift is taking place in relation to how people start the day at breakfast time.

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