Tag Archives: eating

$70 challenge, update 2

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Last week, our first week, we spent $67.41.  This week we’ve spent $12.25 so far (it’s Tuesday).  I will need to pick up Spinach tomorrow (for the bird) and we do need veges.  This week we’ve spent $8 on a chook from Coles and $4.25 on a loaf of bread and 1l milk. The chook has fed us for 3 meals.  2 lots of chicken sandwiches and tonight I’m making chicken soup.  That’s $2.66 per meal.

As we had chook for lunch yesterday we had roasted vegetables, Jaipur Vegetables and rice last night. Jaipur Vegetables are by the brand Tasty Bite and can be found in Woolworths with the Indian foods (they are in a sachet and are microwaved for 1.5mins).  When they are half price they are $1.50.

We’ve definitely been eating what we normally eat but we’re paying a little more attention to what things cost and how many serves each food is, especially meat. A few weeks ago we started doing salad sandwiches for lunch.  My partner doesn’t like salad sandwiches without ham so we have bought those Bertocchi ham pieces that are shrink wrapped. They last about a week and provide us both with plenty of ham across the week for sandwiches as well as we used the last piece of it in a pasta carbonara.   I do think the ham is a little pricey but I’m interested in seeing how they price out across the 4 weeks.

I’ve been using the eatforhealth.com.au website to get nutritional info to make sure we’re getting the right foods each day.  In fact since we started eating the daily salad sandwich I’ve been feeling very contentedly full most of the afternoon and usually just want something small for afternoon tea.  So far my afternoon tea’s are my normal Weetbix (yes I have Weetbix for afternoon tea and I love them!)

In the next post I’ll post a bit more about our day to day eating habits.

$70 challenge update

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It’s Friday and we’ve spent $61.41.  I don’t think we need to buy anything else this week. If we do it’ll be a visit to the fruit shop.

We’ve been to Aldi twice to pick up general groceries.  Cheese, bread, milk, muesli, etc. We even bought a brownie mix from Aldi and I made that yesterday.  Aldi brownie mix is $2.99 and is really yummy for a packet mix. Making brownies from scratch is actually quite costly as it has so much sugar, eggs and chocolate in it.  We bought beef mince at Coles which for the 2 of us is 2 meals, 2 left overs.  It’s $7 a pack for the 4 star stuff.  I made Taco’s last night and we’re having the left over’s tonight.  I chucked 75g of red lentils into the Taco mix (as well as lots of veg).  Adding lentils adds protein and is also part of a serve of fruit/veg and a meat substitute.  I think it’s something I’ll be doing a lot more.

For the taco meal we used an Old El Paso box, I only ever buy these when they are half price.  I can’t remember the exact price but its around $3.25.  This has the soft taco’s, seasoning and salsa.  Of course you need mince, or a meat substitute& some veg (onions, grated carrots, grated zucchini).  I made a tomato salsa mix to add to the Taco’s.  We grow tomatoes so I had heaps to use.  I also love picking green tomatoes for salsa.

Salsa
Tomatoes cut into little bits, mix of red and green if possible
Capsicum
Salt
Sugar
Splash of Apple cider vinegar
Pepper

We recently tried the Lyttos Greek Yog from Aldi and it’s really yummy, and cheap!  We used the yogurt as a sour cream substitute as we always throw out sour cream left overs.  It was pretty yummy.  I think this yogurt will be really versatile for sweet and savoury meals.  We don’t eat yogurt by the bowl full but usually have it in smoothies or a spoonful here and there.

Andrew, my partner, has made some notes of what we’ve eaten and thinks that between us we’re having $8-$12 of food between us a day.  I’ll later do some posts telling you what kinda things we’re eating and what we’re buying. This is already long enough!