I can feel the seasons starting to change. I wonder if you feel it too. 

Menu planning can help reduce the cost of living for most of us. It encourages you to think about your food choices, it helps create a healthy balance of meals throughout the week, it gives the potential for less food waste and, for most of us, it reduces the amount of money spent on food.  I think there are two main ways to plan your menus:

1. you plan before you shop
2. you plan after you shop

If you're a new cook, make sure you start building up your recipes to include favourite meals as well as new meals you think the family will enjoy. Always think of the nutritional value of new meals as well as the time they take to prepare and the cost per meal.

I know quite a few ladies from the US and Canada use coupons to cut down on what they spend but here in Australia coupons are generally only for takeaway food or processed food that's not worth buying. I'd be interested in knowing if you've found coupons for healthy food and groceries.

But this post is about menu plans and I'm mainly interested in reading how you do that. Tell us your meal plan secrets.


If you want to be more prepared this Christmas, Judy has started a Christmas gift, decoration and card list over at the forum. There are lots of good ideas there and plenty of motivation to get started so you can avoid rushing later in the year.

Although I don't write about it nearly as much as I think about it, food budgeting is one of my favourite topics. It's the first area I concentrated on when I started living a more simple life, it's what convinced me that we could indeed live this way and I believe it's the one area where almost everyone can save money. If you can provide good food for the table while saving money doing it, that spare money can go towards debt reduction or something you love. And the good thing is, the money you save on food can be continued savings every week, if you put your mind to it. I have to say too that although spending an extra twenty dollars a week on food won't break the bank here, I think a prudent and thrifty approach to the amount we spend on food, or anything, is a significant and meaningful way of living our simple life. The trick is finding the balance - good food for a good price or value for money, always.

However, food budgeting isn't just about saving money on food, it's more about the wise management of food spending, storage, planning, as well as developing and maintaining a good set of skills.

Of course, it all starts before we ever get to the shops with menu planning, growing food at home, and making many of the things we used to buy. If you plan your menu you'll waste less food and probably spend less money.  Don't feel guilty or inadequate if you don't have the time right now to do all this. There are times in your life when you will be more involved in home production rather than in buying what you need. When you can do it, take the opportunity to get involved in providing for yourself and your family. If you're not there yet, just accept it for what it is and do what you can do. I'll write about menu planning tomorrow.

While I like to think the way I budget here is more about the right food choice for us rather than the cheapest food I can find, there are some little things that make a difference to how much I spend, while still getting the food I want. For instance, I use the delicious milk from my local Maleny Dairies for drinking, cooking, cheese and yoghurt. On the odd occasion I don't have their milk, I use powdered milk for yoghurt and cooking. If you can, work out your own substitutes for those times when you can't get what you'd prefer. Being prepared and organised will help you in those times and you'll be able to avoid buying the most expensive replacement.


One way to reduce the cost of the food budget is to cut cut down on meat consumption. We aim at the three/four rule: three days with meat, four without. Sometimes it's the other way around but I never worry if it is, it generally works it's own way out. If you are going to do this you should find a good vegetarian cook book or web site. At the very least you should understand a bit about "complete protein" - meat and fish are complete proteins, lentils, legumes and nuts aren't, but by combining proteins, you can make complete proteins. For instance, baked beans aren't a complete protein but baked beans on wholemeal toast is. The bottom line many of us eat too much protein. We all need protein but it doesn't have to be animal protein. Learn more about complete protein here.

I guess my top tip would be to start with what you have. So if you're about to shop or menu plan, check to see what you have in your fridge and freezer and if you're growing food or keeping livestock, work out what is available for the kitchen in the next week. Another wise strategy is to barter your excess food for food you need. This requires contact with a lively community or at the very least, a vibrant street of like-minded folk. It's amazing what you can do with bartering once you get into it.

Once you have the food in the kitchen you have to know how to store it correctly so you can cut down on food waste. Stockpiling, preserving, baking your own bread, biscuits and cakes, making your own sauces, jams, relishes and dressings, as well as cleaners and laundry products, will cut your spending at the supermarket. All these skills can be learnt and built upon. Every thing you make yourself will be cheaper and probably tastier and healthier than the commercial version. If you can, build up your home production skills and you'll reap the rewards. One of the reasons I love making my own is that I don't have to ingest all those preservatives and artificial additives that are usually in commercial food. Making my own cleaners and laundry products helps me live with far less chemicals than I would if I had to rely on commercial cleaners. I still get the job done but with less money spent and less risk.


I want you to remember that we're all bound by the time we have available to do all the things I mentioned above.  You may not have time to bake bread or make soap or cheese but I'm sure you could work some of it into your days. For instance, making a batch of washing liquid will take about 15 minutes, organising the slow cooker with your evening meal will take a few minutes but will save on the time you spend preparing a meal when you return from work. Think about how you can change things around to do a few of these things.  Be satisfied with what you can do now and when you have more time you can do more. Don't feel guilty about what you can't do just do what you can and be pleased with that.

I'll carry on with a post about menu plans tomorrow. It's an important topic and it's one of the ways to really cut down on what you spend on groceries.  In the meantime I'm interested in reading about your ideas on food budgeting. What do you have success with? If you've reduced your food expenses and buy healthy food, tell us how you did it.

Most of us home bakers have a gaggle of well used recipes to bake a variety of bread for our families. I am no different. These are soft white bread rolls that the English call Baps and the Scots call morning rolls. I often use wholemeal flour instead of white and these photographed are wholemeal. They're nothing fancy, just an all purpose roll that are easier for children to eat than a crusty roll. The rolls are perfect for lunch boxes, for a hearty bacon and egg roll or sausage on a roll for a Saturday family lunch in winter, or for salad rolls all around in summer. These rolls are a great accompaniment for soup and that is why I made these on the weekend. We had them with our sweet potato and pumpkin soup.

The other thing to point out is that there is another common recipe for Baps using vegetable oil or butter but no milk. I prefer the recipe using milk. To make these rolls soft and light you need a small amount of fat; it also makes the dough easy to handle and shape.  Using milk instead of butter or oil gives you enough fat from the milk for the lightness and flavour, but without the two tablespoons of fat the other recipe advises. 

The recipe will make up 12 small or 8 large rolls.

• 2 level teaspoons dry yeast 
• 2/3 cup lukewarm full cream milk
• 2/3 cup lukewarm water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups unbleached white (or wholemeal) flour, plus a little extra for shaping and finishing

The weekend is almost here and I hope that means you have more time to relax and enjoy yourself.  Winter is slowly coming to and end here with our daytime temperatures now in the low to mid-20s. It's a lovely time of year.

Thank you for your comments during the week. I'll see you again next week. :- )

It was one of those special days yesterday - one when the hours dissolved into each other, I had no real work to do and I sat knitting sample dishcloths using leftover yarn from recent projects. I'll be showcasing the dishcloths at the talks I'll be giving in Brisbane in September. I'll have details about them for you soon. Slow and steady was the order of the day. Hanno was working in one of our bathrooms that we're renovating at the moment. Meals were a breeze - homemade sausage rolls and celeriac soup, so apart from the knitting, there wasn't much to do. The sun shone outside, it was neither warm nor cold, and everything went according to plan.

I've been harvesting beetroot, tomatoes and eggs from the backyard and by far, the most abundant of those are the eggs. Our hens are producing between nine and ten eggs every day and have been all through winter. We have been giving away eggs left, right and centre, and using as many as we can in our kitchen.  The other day I made some delicious Portuguese custard tarts, they used up four eggs. It's a very easy recipe and the tarts are moist and luscious; they'd be perfect lunch box or picnic food. I used the recipe from Not Quite Nigella, it was so easy and quick and it made up 12 delicious tarts. There is an excellent tutorial with photos on her site. BTW, I added an extra egg to my custard and it worked well.

I pickled the beetroot and I've shared that recipe before so won't repeat it again, but I did use a different vinegar and it made a remarkable difference. I bought some organic apple cider vinegar and used 125 mls of it along with 125 mls of my regular Cornwells apple cider vinegar. It was so good. I actually drank some of the pickling liquid on its own after we had a small bowl of the beets for lunch on the weekend. The liquid was dark blood red and, simultaneously, it made me feel like a vampire and healthier as soon as I drank it. :- ) My grandmother drank the vinegar dressing after we finished the salads she used to make. We never used oil in those days - olive oil could only be bought in chemist shops/pharmacies then. Most people just used vinegar, salt, pepper and sometimes a little sugar to dress their salads. I still have a preference for non-oily dressings and am quite satisfied with plain vinegar, as long as it's a good one.

The tomatoes will be used fresh and in various meals, I don't have enough to preserve them. But the other preserving I did do last weekend was a grapefruit cordial. The lovely Sandi who lives on a small farm in the next town brought over a large bucket of pink grapefruit recently. I was going to make marmalade but then didn't have the time nor the inclination to cut the peel, and decided to make cordial instead. I made up light sugar syrup and added enough grapefruit juice to make a slightly sweet-sour cordial. We enjoyed it with our lunch when Sunny and Jamie visited on the weekend. Made up with cold, sparkling mineral water, it made a refreshing drink. It is a wonderful thing to be able to make many of these drinks and preserves but I'm truly thankful I have the fresh produce to use.

This is the cute red riding hood coat Hanno and I sent to Alana, Tricia's grand daughter. I hand knit the little mittens to go with it. The coat is a 0 size but Alana is so tiny it might be another year before she gets to wear it.

Life continues to bubble along here. Our days are full of interesting work and frequent breaks and we'd have it no other way. The weather is slowing getting warmer and soon I know I'll be complaining about the hot weather again. I'm enjoying a very slow and lazy August because things will be busy again for me from September onwards.  How is life treating you in your home?

There was a time when, in my dim and distant past, I would throw out clothes that had a hole, a missing button or a broken zip. I feel real shame writing those words but it's my shocking truth and made worse by the fact that I knew how to repair all those problems, but I chose not to. I thank my lucky stars that I realised how wasteful I had been and started mending my ways, as well as my clothes.

Last week, one of Hanno's jumpers developed a small hole in the side, right near the side seam. Looks like it was caught on a nail or something. It was a shop bought, pure wool jumper and apart from the hole it was in perfect condition. I got my sewing kit out and started work. The hole was small, about the size of a thumb nail, and as it was at the side seam, it was simply a matter of taking off the messy wool ends and sewing the sides together.  Had the hole been any bigger, I would have used my darning mushroom and darned the hole.

Darning is a method of sewing that will repair a large hole by using running stitch in and out of the hole. You can use a darning mushroom or egg behind the hole to provide a surface on which to work. Using the remnants of the threads left in the hole, and the edges of the hole, the running stitch from top to bottom and then at right angles, leaves you with a sturdy and clean repair.  There are many darning tutorials on You Tube but I like this static tutorial by Wool and Chocolate because of the neat finish she produces.

I used a darning needle for the operation. A darning needle is a steel or plastic needle with a blunt point and an eye large enough to thread through wool or a few strands of embroidery floss.  I also needed thread or wool exactly the same colour as the garment I was repairing. I used embroidery floss because I had the exact colour match in thread, but not in wool. 

I started the repair job by checking to see if the hole would run a ladder up the side of the jumper, just like a hole in tights would. In this case, yes, if I didn't do something to anchor the ladder, it would have created more problems later on. So working from the wrong side, I stitched the edge of the ladder so it couldn't run, causing a bigger problem. Then it was just a matter of pulling the edges together neatly, with no puckering or folds, to work my way through the hole.

When the hole looked like it was closed, I turned the jumper right side out again to check the repair. This time I didn't have to go back in but sometimes you can see a place where you'll have to go back and add a few more stitches.  It's worth doing because this repair took me less than 20 minutes and to work enough hours to buy a similar jumper would take me a few hours.

Have you been repairing clothes too?

A recent poll in The Guardian gave a good indication of widespread hope, all around the world, of a simpler life. It also showed that most of us are happy but we want to slow down. But it's a bit of a Catch-22 this slowing down thing. You're on a treadmill, planning for your future, trying to do the hard yards to get debt repaid, raising children, being a good parent, building a happy and capable family, and there doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day to slow down and take stock. Although it seems counter-intuative, slowing down and living simply do require planning. Without a plan, often it doesn't happen.

Let's take slowing down first because I think most of us here have started our simple living journey but many of us don't take enough time out to sit back, take a deep breath and just relax. One of the ways to do that is to consciously take time out of your normal routine to include family activities or to spend time with friends. I think the obvious one is to start a tradition of Saturday or Sunday family lunch. It's something most people think is a good idea but it doesn't happen. Someone in the family has to be the person who instigates the lunch - someone has to think it's more important that what usually takes place. Maybe that is you. If you don't have family close by, invite your friends and start your lunch that way. The important thing is to have a regular time during the week when you spend time doing something that will relax you, something a bit different to your daily routine.

Of course, this can happen in a number of ways. When I invite family or friends over, I like to plan and supply all the food, much of it from our garden. But you should do what suits you best, remember, the point of this is to relax. So you might do all the cooking, you might ask people to bring a plate, you might take it in turns to present the lunch in different homes. Do what feels right. The only imperative is that is should be a regular gathering, something that becomes an agreeable and delightful habit for all of you. Family bonds are often strengthened with the regular sharing of food.

If you're on you own and don't have family living near by, or a group of friends you feel you want to invite to your home, make a ritual for yourself that helps you relax and slow down. It may be a daily walk, a weekly visit to a park or gallery with a cup of good coffee afterwards. It might be a visit to the library to spend a couple of hours reading with people around you. If you have a botanical garden near, a walk around there once a month to notice the change in seasons would be a wonderful way to slow down.

When you're having your lunch or walking or reading, don't allow yourself to think about anything except what you're doing and where you are. Be there in that moment to fully experience everything the time you're spending there will give you. Allow it to relax your mind and open your heart. Use it to build tradition and memories and to have a break from your normal routines, whatever they may be. When you first start doing this you may think that you'll get behind on your work but you'll probably find, like I did, that having that time out allows you to appreciate why you're working and you'll return to your work with more energy. Having no time to relax and unwind sometimes builds resentment. Planning it into your daily or weekly activities is a wise move and your work will soon adjust to accommodate it.

And to start simplifying your life?  That will be different for all of us but I think the best way to start is to think about what you're struggling with at the moment. If that is money or paying off debt, then start there and create a budget. Work out clever ways to change how you shop for groceries. These are not big savings but they are consistent and will add up. If you don't have a problem with money but want to start eating healthier food, think about how you can do that. It may mean planting a vegetable garden, finding a good fresh food market, not eating meat, learning how to cook gluten-free, building up a good repertoire of home cooked meals or making things at home that you now buy at the shops - bread, yoghurt, preserves and cleaners, to name just a few.

Yes, all these are just small steps, but that is what simple life is. It's a series of small and continuing steps towards the life you want to live. When you start with that one small step, new opportunities open up, new possibilities present themselves and if you follow your nose, you'll start building a simpler life. Remember though, you have to be flexible and change your mindset. Instead of working to gain everything you want, be thankful and satisfied with what you have. 

What are your strategies for maintaining a peaceful and slower life? How did you start living your simple life?

I've just started a thread over at the forum to continue this discussion, you can also ask questions there.

Kathleen, one of our Frizzles, displaying her magnificent hat of soft feathers.

I hope you've had a good week. Mine has been a bit hectic with a few bundles of bad news coming my way. The weekend should fix that though, for all of us. Sunny and Jamie will share Saturday lunch with us, the rest of the time I'll be working on my patchwork quilt.  Keep smiling, friends.

=== ♥︎ ===

Happy birthday to our horses. When I was a little girl, my mother used to remind Tricia and me that August 1 is the birthday of all thoroughbred horses in Australia (and the Southern Hemisphere).

Carrot cake  ; - )

Last week I said I'd write about a chicken meal for the slow cooker, so here it is. I cooked mine in a cast iron pot in the oven because I left it too late for the slow cooker - it needs at least four hours and  I only had two. The recipe is the same though and I hope you enjoy it. It will serve four to six adult portions and, as usual, you can use whatever vegetables you have in the fridge. I've given the oven cooked and the slow cooker instructions, so watch out for the points of difference as you read.

Get yourself a free range or organic chicken, or better still, one of your own meat birds, and make sure there is nothing in the cavity. Wipe the skin dry and place the whole bird in a lightly oiled pot to brown. Don't skip this step, it's what gives the chicken the depth of flavour it will develop during the cooking.

While the chicken is browning, chop up one onion, one clove of garlic, two carrots, three sticks of celery and some mushrooms. When the chicken is brown on both sides, remove it from the pot and add all the vegetables.  Brown them for five minutes.

While the vegetables are browning, organise your spices.  I used cumin seeds, dried chilli and paprika as well as finely chopped flat parsley from the garden.  If you have to grind the spices, do that now. 

You can use any vegetables you have in the fridge - but do use onion as it gives the meal a good foundation. You can choose your own spices and herbs too. Use what you have on hand. If you enjoy curried chicken, this is a good way to make it when you don't have a lot of time. Add your favourite curry paste or spices, let them toast for a while, then add the water. Chicken is a very versatile meat and will team up well with many flavours.

When the vegies have developed some colour, add the spices and stir them around with the vegetables to toast. This will bring out their natural flavours. Add two dessertspoons of plain/all purpose flour and stir in. Add one litre/quart of water and stir. When that's done, add the chicken back to the pot, season with salt and pepper and mix it all together. If you're using the slow cooker, this part of the cooking is now done.

If you're going to cook this in the oven, it will need more water than the slow cooker version so pour over another litre/quart of water.  You don't need to use stock for this - the water will turn into stock while it's cooking the chicken and vegetables. Mix it all together.

You can prepare everything to this point the day before and store it in the fridge. You don't have to but if it will be easier for you to do it in two batches, this is where you end the first batch.

If you're cooking it in a slow cooker, pour the contents of the pan into the slow cooker and start it on the low setting. It should cook for at least four hours but it will bubble away nicely, developing flavour, all day.

When it's finished, add two spoons of sour cream (optional), and serve it with potatoes, or rice if you made a curry. The meat should just fall from the bone.

Please note: if you use chicken pieces or chicken breasts for this recipe, don't cut them up. Slow cooked chicken will dry out if it's in smaller pieces. If you need to serve smaller pieces, cut them after cooking.

This is a good hearty family meal and just right for a mid-week meal when you're working throughout the day. If you can manage to do the preparations the evening before, you just pop  it into the slow cooker before you go to work. I hope you enjoy it.