Hello friends, welcome back.

Everything is fine here and I'm lucky to not have any big bills lately. The cost of living crisis seems to be hitting hard in suburbia and everyone I know is trying to cut back. If you've never had to cut back before you might not be aware of the many ways to save money so I thought it might be a good idea to go over a few of them. Before I continue, I want to tell you that I find it fairly easy to save money on a wide variety of household expenses. The reason for that is I live alone so I only have to adjust my own behaviour. I'm sure you know how difficult it is to get everyone in the family onboard to reduce their spending. But the main focus at this time should be to pay all the regular bills, put food on the table and buy fuel. After those things have been paid for, hopefully you have money left over to pay all your bills, save or put towards something special like birthday or Christmas presents.

Remember that almost all the savings you make will be small ones. Adding up all the savings over the space of a month will show what they are: the difference between being in debt or remaining debt-free. So it doesn't matter if you save $2, $50 or $200, it all goes into the pot to keep you out of trouble.  I hope you aren't under too much pressure with your mortgage repayments. Gone are the days when you could knuckle down like Hanno and I did and pay off our mortgage in eight years; repayments on many loans have doubled in the past few years. If you're having trouble with your mortgage, or think you'll have trouble in the near future, please go to your mortgage broker or bank loan officer and talk to them about it. Don't ignore it. I'm going to leave the mortgage info there because I'm not qualified to give advice and if you're struggling, you need the right advice immediately.

All the other areas of household economy are a bit easier to work with because the stakes aren't as high and when it comes to things like food, fuel, phone, internet and insurances, usually you can cut back or move your account to another provider. When I'm working on reducing costs and you may remember that I recently reduced my electricity usage to see how low I could get it (two posts back) - work out what you want to focus on and one by one, make an action plan to reduce your costs.  For instance, if it's insurance, internet or phone costs, do some research  and then ring your prover to see what deal they can do for you but make sure you've done research online beforehand so you know what the competition is offering for the same product.

We're learning hard lessons lately. The ongoing drought and coronavirus have taught me that to be resilient enough to bounce back time and time again, I need to strengthen my systems, learn as much as I can about what I want to do here and then put in the work to make it all happen. We have recently gone from a very productive vegetable, herb and fruit garden to a much smaller setup of flowers, herbs, fruit and a couple of vegetables. When I work through this season and my new systems start to evolve, those hard lessons might save me in the future.

One of the lessons I stumbled across years ago was to only grow the fruit and vegetables we eat. Even though it's enjoyable and rewarding, gardening is time-consuming and can be difficult at times, even for experienced gardeners. Growing vegetables that look different but are harder to grow isn't worth the extra work when you can get the result you want with something easier.  For instance, a few weeks ago I found a few vines I hadn't planted starting to colonise a large area around one of the roses. I thought it was a cucumber and left it to see if we could use it.  When it started to flower, the flowers were smaller than the cucumbers we usually grow but I let it mature to see what it really was.  This is it below - an African horned cucumber. The seeds were probably dropped in our garden by visiting birds.

Apparently, the skin goes yellow when it's mature and it's FULL of seeds.  It tastes like cucumber but the horns are spikey and there are very fine prickles along the stems.  It's very difficult handling it in the garden so all the vines were pulled out.  Good riddance to bad rubbish. In a few weeks time, when I'm ready to plant cucumbers, I'll choose a delicious apple variety, either Crystal Apple or Richmond Green. Both are well worth growing.

Potato pancakes AKA kartoffle puffer, Hanno's favourite.

Judi asked the following question on Monday so I've racked my brain to come up with this. I hope it helps Judi and many, many others.  Readers, if you can think of other Australian food ideas that fit this frugal category, please add your thoughts in the comments.

"I am now 63 and living on my own, I have been wife, mother, stay at home Mum, and now a carer, my income is now very low and after having been used to raising all our own meat and vegetables and really eating quite well, I am struggling to feed myself. Having to purchase food is one of my biggest expenses and I am wondering if you could please put your thinking cap on and give those of us struggling financially with a good weeks menu plan please. I have all your books and I do love the menu plan in the Down To Earth book but I can not afford to eat that well anymore. Help, please.

"I am in Australia, I have noticed over the last month a big increase in the cost of fresh produce here, thanks to the drought and bushfires, I really like to eat fresh but have given up having things like avocado on my salad as they are $4 each, I am looking for ideas from the 1950s when we ate a little bit more simply but most of the information you find on the internet is American and we eat differently to them. It is quite frustrating and I am struggling with brain fog, that does not help."

January, week 2 in The Simple Home

This is another of those topics where there will be vast differences in the way all of us do things. I know people who shop everyday for their fresh food, I know others who, like Hanno and I, shop weekly and grow some of their food. I know quite a few people who grow most of what they eat and just buy beans, pulses, dried food and occasional fish or dairy. All of us are living simple, all of us organise our food in a different way.  I wonder what you do.

It's easy enough to wander down supermarket aisles and put products into a trolley. But to shop well and to get value for money, the food shopping we all do should be part of a plan that has been thought through. Hopefully, this week you'll be able to do that. Think about how you intend to shop, cook and store food. Our moderns times have given us a lot of choices. It's your job as a homekeeper to work out which choices work for you.

Most of our food conversations will take place in March.  This is to set us up with good habits and techniques until then, so it's mainly thinking about how we organise our food shopping, getting value for money, buying as much seasonal and local food as we can and involving children in the family food choices. Recipes and how to cook will come later.

When I go to my cupboard and choose a jar of jam, sauce, cordial or pickles, or place a home made meal on the table, I know what's in it. I know our food stockpile will see us through most family or community emergencies and that even if the worse were to happen, I could still provide food for my family and not go out to the shops to do it. It is the quiet knowledge of what we get from them that keep my patterns of work going year after year.

At this point of my life, instead of working for a living, I work at providing a healthy framework in which to live. Every day a choice is made to keep to the rhythm of this domestic life; every day is the same and different. Working to provide a clean and organised home with good food on the table every day makes sense to me. The small, never-ending tasks that make up my days may look basic and mundane but the true significance of this type of work is evident in what it produces. And that, my friends, is a never-ending stream of good food and the easy self-confidence that comes from being able to produce it. I wish everyone knew how to cook but all we can do is to make sure the children in our own homes are taught to cook as they grow up. If we do that we're giving them comfort and pleasure, an ability to express culture, kindness and generosity, a way to celebrate important events and the potential to provide nourishment for themselves, family and friends that will last a life time. 

Serving good food from your own kitchen isn't just one thing, it's many. And it doesn't happen once, it's part of your ordinary days for most of your life. There is food budgeting and shopping, correct storage, meal planning, cooking, baking, preserving, maintenance of your stove, oven, fridge, dishwasher, crockery, cutlery, pantry and stockpile. All of us need to think about food security and some of us think about food production and go on to work in our own backyard gardens. No matter how you go about it, how much money you have for it, how much time you spend on it, food is important and it needs to be organised and managed.

Many readers tell me they're a bit haphazard with their food. They don't plan, budget or work to minimise waste. And that's fine, none of us are born with that knowledge, it's one of the many things we learn to make life easier. As we grow older, we need to make sure we learn what we need to know about food - and that's a lot more than just recipes - and to adjust and refine our food knowledge as we progress through life.

If you're not sure about how to start organising yourself, start with a list of the meals and food you already make regularly. Just making that list will probably start clarifying things for you and then you can go on to develop the skills you need. Slowly, you'll start seeing your patterns emerging and it will all start making sense. I included my list of meals in yesterday's post so if you need a little help, check that out. Don't try to do everything at once. Concentrate on one skill or idea at a time, work on that, and when you feel competent, start on the next one.

Don't think you have to do everything the way I do it, I am just one small example. If you're new to all this, remember it's something that will help you every day for as long as you're responsible for your family food. Take it slow, make sure all your systems work the way you need them to and I promise you it will make the work you do in the kitchen easier and more pleasant. 

When you produce your list, work out if you have enough main meals to serve for about a month. If you do, you'll have variety as well as nutrition. Then start building up the various categories of food you need - look for snack foods, lunches for work and school, morning or afternoon tea foods, drinks, preserves, a vegetarian selection, celebration foods or foods for any dietary requirements in your family. If you need to add to your list, do some research, test your new finds and add them to the list if they're suitable. That will take a long time, so don't rush it.

It's a good idea to use fruit and vegetables that are in season. They'll be at their best and cheaper because there'll be a lot of them available. When you grow your own, it's a simple matter of preserving or freezing excess vegetables as pickles, relish or chutney or your sweeter fruits as jam or cordial. But you can also do that when you don't grow your own. Just look around for a roadside stall or small green grocer because they may have cartons of oranges, lemons, tomatoes, peaches, or cheap pineapples, mangoes and passionfruit at the height of the season. You usually have to ask for a price on a carton because the shop won't have them on display. It's handy to have a freezer because if you have a big harvest when you don't have the time to preserve, you can freeze the fruit and use it later. That's what I've done with our elderberries, I've been freezing them as they ripen on the tree. When I have enough berries, I make either elderberry cordial or flu tonic. I also have a few plastic bottles of pure lemon juice ready to be made into cordial in summer. It takes a bit of organising, and you do need a freezer to help you store your produce but it's a simple exercise that will help you manage your food stores effectively.

Simple rissole (meatball) recipe
Meatloaf may be made using this recipe. Just form it into a loaf and bake it in the oven.

• 250 grams pork mince
• 250 grams beef mince
• 3 slices stale bread
• ½ cup milk
• 1 large egg
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 medium carrot, grated
• 1 stick celery, finely diced
• salt and pepper
• ½ cup parsley, finely chopped

One hour before you want to cook, add stale bread to milk and allow it to stand for 30 minutes.

Add meat to a bowl, break up the milk-soaked bread with your hands and add it to the meat.

Add all other ingredients and mix with your clean hands. When thoroughly mixed, form into balls of the size and shape you require. If you're making rissoles, the shape is like a large ball that you squash down slightly before cooking. If you're making meatballs for pasta, they're much smaller, a little smaller than a golf ball. For meatloaf, simply form into a loaf, either in a loaf tin or baking tray.

Put the rissoles on a plate and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes. That will allow them to firm up a bit and make cooking easier.

Cook the rissoles/meat balls in a frying pan with a small amount of olive oil added, turn every five minutes and brown on all sides.  When they're brown, put the lid on, turn the heat down and let them cook for an extra five minutes.  You can use the pan juices to make gravy. Click here to go to my gravy mix post. You can pre-make your own gravy mix so you don't have to buy one with preservatives in it.

Salmon fish cakes/patties

Make these up at least an hour before you want to cook them. They will firm up in the fridge and be much easier to cook and flip over.

• large can of red salmon
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed
• 1 large egg
• chilli, finely diced (optional)
• coriander or parsley, finely chopped
• salt and pepper
• breadcrumbs for coating

Drain all the water from the can of salmon, remove the skin and place salmon in a bowl. Leave the bones in. They're soft and you can easily mash them to incorporate into the flesh. The bones contain an extra boost of calcium.

Add all the ingredients to the fish, mix well and form into patties. Coat with dry breadcrumbs, if desired. Fry in hot oil till both sides are golden brown - about 15 minutes.

Tuna loaf

This can be eaten hot or cold. It's good served warm with mashed potato, green beans and tomato and it's also good served cold with potato salad and fresh garden salad.

Drain all the water from the tuna before starting.

Prepare a loaf tin by spraying it with olive oil and place a piece of baking paper, about 6 inches wide, over the middle of the loaf tin to help remove the loaf when it's cooked. The paper should come up the sides of the tin to be used as handles.

• Large can tuna in water
• 1 cup breadcrumbs made from stale bread
• 1 large onion
• ½ capsicum, diced
• ½ cup corn
• 1 stick celery finely diced
• ½ cup parsley or chives, finely chopped
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 level tablespoon curry powder, chilli powder or paprika (optional)
• salt and pepper
• halved cherry tomatoes or tomato slices may be added to the top for decoration

Add all the ingredients to a large bowl and mix thoroughly. This is best done with clean hands. Pack the mixture into a loaf tin, firm it down and allow it to sit in the fridge for an hour to firm before baking. 

Bake in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

Additional reading

After a while, cooking, food preparation and planning become second nature but we all have to start somewhere. I hope these posts will assist you either by adding to your recipe collection or by helping you manage your food and build your skills. Remember it's a long process so don't rush, and what you do doesn't have to be what everyone else does, it has to serve you and your family.

When I was growing up we rarely went out to eat. I remember dad taking a saucepan to the local newly opened Chinese restaurant once. The saucepan was filled with Chinese food to be brought home to eat. That would have been in the mid-50s; there were no take away containers in those days. I also remember one exciting day in the 1950s when mum took Tricia and I "to town" (the city of Sydney) to look at the department store Christmas windows and, for the first time, we had lunch at a restaurant. There weren't many restaurants around then but this one was called Cahills Family Restaurant and I think it was in the Strand Arcade. I forget what Tricia and mum had but I ordered spaghetti Bolognese, which I thought was extremely sophisticated. That was the first time I had pasta. Australia was still living in the meat and three veg era then. Back then you could eat at bistros, cafes and milk bars. Most country pubs had food, many city ones didn't but if you wanted really good food everyone knew where to go, you ate at home.

We grew up in a time when meat and left overs played a big part in contemporary cooking. Fish was often served on Friday and we were able to tell what day it was by what was on the dinner plate. Cook books were unusual then. Many cooks wrote down their own recipes, had a scrapbook of recipes cut from magazines and pasted into a book or they may have had one cook book which would have been a CWA or church recipe book. Most people cooked meals they'd grown up eating and had been taught to cook as a child. That was the experience in our family so when I was learning to cook, I modified my mother or father's cooking and added things like spaghetti bolognese along the way.

I had an email from a reader recently asking for help with old fashioned recipes. This lady is about my age, has collected over 1000 cook books but feels overloaded and has trouble sorting the information. She and her husband like old style meals and don't like 'new' ingredients. I think she came to the right place because although I do cook the occasional new style meal and experiment with new ingredients, the older I get the more I rely on the foods I grew up with. I like the familiarity of them; they're my comfort foods.

The following list is made up of the meals I make over and over again. Occasionally there will be a stir fry or a new recipe to try and more frequently lately, there are vegetarian meals. Even when we do eat meat, it's far less than we used to eat. We've probably reduced our meat intake by about 50 percent to what it was 10 years ago. What I do focus on in my cooking is to serve real food as fresh as possible. The ingredients are nutritious and thrifty, are often home grown and sit well in our low income lifestyle. You'll often notice ingredients such as potatoes/sweet potatoes in my cooking. I make no apologies for that. We are a family with German, Irish, Swedish, English heritage and potatoes feature in all those cuisines. I hope when you select your list of frequently cooks meals it will reflect your family heritage too. Food traditions link us to our culture and reinforce a feeling of being connected and loved. It's one of the many complex roles food plays in our lives.

• Shepherd's pie from left over lamb roast
• Lamb curry from left over lamb roast or lamb neck chops
• Cottage pie with minced beef and mashed potato topping (sweet potato or pumpkin topping)
• Corned beef and colcannon
• Corned beef hash
• Salmon with potato salad
• Swedish meatballs, potato salad and fresh pickled cucumbers
• Pea/lentil soup
• Chicken noodle soup
• Beef, barley and bone marrow soup
• Beef casserole and herb dumplings
• Lasagne
• Quiche
• Spinach pie with filo pastry
• Sausage rolls
• Boiled egg salad
• Canned salmon salad
• Tuna loaf
• Fish cakes
• Cabbage rolls
• Potato pancakes (Kartoffel Puffer)
• Pork sausages with onion gravy and vegetables
• Roast lamb, chicken or pork
• Rissoles, red cabbage and potatoes
• Pork chops, cabbage and potatoes
• Meatloaf

Australia meal recipes - allrecipes

I've been wanting to review our financial situation for a while now and when the Brexit referendum came up with a surprise "leave" result last week, I knew I had to start.  Of course no one knows yet what sort of changes this vote will bring. The only certainty is that there will be change. I hope for the sake of all my UK and European friends that the changes won't be too drastic or drawn out.  Whenever there is uncertainty in the world and it looks like there may be hard times ahead, the first thing I do it make sure my own house is in order. If I know I'm doing all I can do, if our budget is solid and we're prepared for anything, I know we have a good chance of getting through it.

Over the weekend I spent time looking at our financial situation. I went through all our contracts and accounts so I know exactly where we stand and if there is any way we can improve what we're doing. Wasting money at any time is unwise, to do it now is stupid. I also looked at our stockpile and garden and worked out how we could cut back if we need to.  One thing is for sure, the less we rely of others to live the life we want to live, the better. Being self-reliant in a connected community is the best way to move forward and provide for yourself. That is true all the time, not just in times of crisis and change.

I've been wanting to look at my food shopping for a long time. I think we're doing okay but I can't be certain until I check. So I'm in the process of making up a price book which is something I did very early on in my simple life. I expect that price book will help me as much now as it did back then.  I've kept my shopping dockets from the past month so I know the current prices of all the groceries we buy regularly. There are apps you can use on your phone to do this too, but I can't be bothered keying in all the info and for me, paper works best for this. In the coming weeks, I'll be using that price book when I menu plan and make up my shopping list and I'll take it with me when I shop.  It should help me not to over pay for anything on my list.

I'll add a few more cheap and easy meat-free meals to my rotation. Dropping meat from the menu is an easy way to save money; we usually eat too much meat anyway. The protein we eat doesn't have to be animal protein, it can easily be plant-based protein so finding new recipes will add variety to what I serve in the coming months. I'll continue to shop for what is in season because it's usually at it peak flavour and cheaper.  23 meals to cook when you're broke

I often cook from our garden so I've also taken the time to look at how that will function. We have a productive vegetable garden now but I want that to continue right through to the end of the year so we increase the amount of vegetables we eat but don't buy as many. There are a couple of things I want to add to the garden but mainly we have to successfully follow up the greens, beans, herbs and salad vegetables that we're currently growing so there are no gaps in the supply. Succession planting has always been a hit and miss affair for me but I'll focus on it now and plan more carefully.

We don't have any financial problems right now. We've been systematically replacing appliances with good quality energy saving models for the past few years.   That has set us up well for the future and has helped reduce our electricity costs significantly. Our home maintenance is very good, we have a near new car, we don't need new clothes or shoes at the moment.  I do need to work on gifts, make soap and continue to cook from scratch, make our cleaning products, mend clothes and sew household linens when we need them instead of buying them. I'll continue to compost and recycle and we'll try to cut back on our consumption of electricity, gas and water, not just because it's expensive to waste those resources but because it's something we should all be doing.

And what if all this is for naught? What if nothing dire happens in the UK and Europe and we sale into the future with no ripples to tip our boats over? Well, then all this will be for our own peace of mind and to address the increasingly desperate problem of our environment. That's something we all need to do, starting yesterday. I wonder what your immediate plans are and if they've been influenced by the vote. I'd love to know what you will do, maybe I'll pick up a few things that will help us here.

Sunday morning 7.30 and I'm trying to re-establish my routines. They used to work well for me in the past but were abandoned when I was writing; it's about time they pulled me back into shape again.  And shape is an appropriate word here - routines shape my day, they'll probably do it for you too if you give them a chance. I like to have all my regular, easy housekeeping finished by 9am. If I can do that, I can concentrate on a larger project from then until lunchtime. So the bed is made, bread is set to rise, the kitchen cleaned and lunch prepared, all before 9am. We have our main meal at 12 noon so I often get started on the prep before nine. If it's a slow cooked meal it might already have been cooking since the night before. Now that we're moving towards the cooler weather, when we have plenty of soups, curries, casseroles and roasts, one of then will usually be filling the house with home cooked aroma and reminding us that at noon, we'll be sitting down to a hot nourishing meal that will keep us going throughout the afternoon and evening.  Late in the afternoon we might have toast, a crumpet, fruit, yoghurt or tea and cake. We don't need much then. I find that having the main meal at lunch works better for me now that I feel tired in the afternoon. I know I've feed us well and cleaned up while my energy level is still high and it doesn't take much to prepare a snack later on.

We have a visitor here for the next week so I'll probably move the main meal to the evening but the cooking will be done well before then and I'll just have to serve and clean up. The dishwasher does most of the work that I used to do washing up by hand, so cleaning up after a big meal in the evening isn't the palaver it once was. Late yesterday afternoon I set out my meal plan and shopping list for the week. I'll shop today and look after Jamie, then during the week, with Hanno's help, we'll really concentrate on one of our biggest annual tasks - our new season vegetable garden.

Usually in the afternoons I do slower and easier tasks or work on my sewing and knitting, and later in the afternoon, just when the light is dimming, I like to go out to the garden. Connecting with the natural parts of my world never fails to remind me of my place here. I take off my shoes and feel the grass under my feet, I feel the soil for dryness and moisture and sometimes I water the plants while I watch the birds and listen to the sound of the neighbourhood. We are all surrounded by such artificiality. I really felt it while I was away touring with Hanno and Tricia. There was no grass to feel, no vegetables to pick, only concrete, bitumen, plastic, glass and unfamiliar, man-made noise. We are all part of the natural world and for me, this part of the day is therapeutic.

This week I'll clean out the fridge and organise one shelf of the stockpile cupboard a day until it's back up to scratch. Later this morning I'll clean the floors and organise the kitchen table and dresser.  Since we went away they've become dumping grounds, holding a variety of things that needed to be put back in their rightful places. They need to be tidied, with fresh flowers brought in, so it's once again a pleasant area to sit and talk. It will all get back to normal eventually, it just takes time and a bit of effort.

I have two Brisbane outings this week. On Friday, 1 April at 12 noon I'll be at Dymocks in Brisbane for a book signing. The address is 177 Albert Street, (Cnr Elizabeth and Albert), Brisbane. Please come along if you can. Don't forget it's Mother's Day soon, maybe the mother in your life would like to read The Simple Home.  Then on Sunday, 3 April at 4pm I'll be at Riverbend Books, 193 Oxford St, Bulimba for a talk, crafts and afternoon tea. I hope to see you there but I believe the event is already booked out.