Eating well for little cost!

I'm with you there susiecb

I love the days when I cant go out and I foragae around in the fridge and the veg trays and make several meals at once for eating/freezing. I use lots of veg and pulses which I think are very underated.

My daughter is revelling in her large vegetable garden here in NZ. She has harvested potatoes, carrots, lettuce, green beans, raspberries, strawberries, plums (jam is made), pumpkin, courgettes, etc. etc. Almost every meal is made from freshly picked ingredients, and her husband is becoming expert at making different kinds of bread in the bread maker. The chickens are laying well and the pig is due to be slaughtered next week.
I am not sure where she learned to cook so well, certainly not from me, but her pumpkin soup with home made bread is delicious. Unlike me, she knows which herbs or spices to use - I have to follow recipes exactly.
She has found that growing your own food is a full time job - just weeding takes a couple of hours a day, and it takes an hour to mow the lawns. She is so happy in her jeans and wellies and does not miss her busy professional life in England at all.

My preference is for home grown vegetables (if possible or from the markets) and home made meals. I also read the nutritional value of the vegetables I eat. I find it quite fascinating. Did you know that 'parsley contains no cholesterol; but is rich in anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre which helps control blood cholesterol levels, prevents constipation, protects body from free radicals mediated injury and from cancers,' and that is just a small amount of the amazing nutritional facts of parsley. www.nutrition-and-you.com/parsley.html

It is summer in Australia and today my D2 and I are going to buy a large box of tomatoes and make tomato puree and sauce and bottle it. Last night I cooked pasta with about six different vegetables and five of them had been freshly picked from the garden. The night before I made vegetable soup and I picked some parsley and added it to the soup and then googled it. I love my vegetable soup. Tonight I am going to make cannelloni with spinach and ricotta cheese. I would like to use the tomato puree from the tomatoes that my daughter and I plan to puree.

I also freeze portions so that there are times when I don't want to cook I can use the microwave. Also I am very happy to have the same meal two nights in a row, especially if it is something I really like.

I am also going to start making my own bread and want to buy a bread maker. I also like the idea of making my own ice cream. I had planned to do all of this once I had moved house which I did before Christmas. phew

With my little patch I can only grow vegetables in pots but this past year was very good and there was plenty. If you have a large enough freezer you can save yourself quite a bit by batch cooking. Cook a simple stew without any flavourings whatever and minimum liquid and freeze in portions sizes. When you want to eat a portion is the time to add any suitable leftovers, flavourings and a suitable stock or gravy and no two dishes will be the same. Just do not cook boiled potatoes with your stew before freezing as potatoes do not successfully freeze in this way. I cook my stews in batches that will last three months for one person and it is very handy to be able to eat a good hot stew fifteen minutes after arriving home on a cold day, all done in the microwave with not a saucepan in sight.

I enjoy cooking using fresh veg from our allotment; eggs, honey and pork from a colleague of my husband's. We buy sacks of flour on the day of milling from our local mill and my husband bakes bread once a week, some of which is frozen. We eat healthily and cheaply. Today, with 30 minutes notice, I fed nine people a lunch of home-made vegetable soup, cheese and home made bread and oat crackers.