Menu Plan w/c 10 Jan

Mon - chicken curry & jacket potato ( there is enough curry leftover from yesterday)

Tues - fish pie served with carrots and green beans

Wed - bolognese

Thurs - sausage casserole

Fri - beef stir fry

Sat - quiche

Sun - steak

any veggies used are either from the organic veg box or our garden which have been frozen

Getting Back To Normal

Well yesterday saw Dave go back to work and today has seen the boys go back to school; I return to work tomorrow.

Today will be a general catch up day, which will include the following jobs:
putting clean laundry away
baking for the freezer
putting the Christmas tree and decorations away
making a birthday card for a friend

I also hope to if I have time to make a start on some decluttering, even if only one box and will take baby steps to achieve this.

Menu Plan w/c 3 Jan

I am trying to use as much as possible from the freezer and cupboards this month, although I do need some meat and fish before the end of the month. I also receive a weekly organic veg box.

I have planned meals for basically the whole month but will only post them here weekly.

Mon - takeaway ( I save my coppers throughout the year and this pays for a New Year treat before we all go back to work/school)

Tues - pork steaks, roast potatoes, carrots,broccoli,sprouts and swede

Weds - savoury mince and mashed potatoes, green beans

Thurs - gammon and chips

Fri - tacos, salad

Sat - HM pizza

Sun - chicken curry and pilau rice

any veggies used are either from the organic veg box or our garden which have been frozen

NEW YEAR, NEW US!!

Happy New Year to everyone.

I am going to do a few things a little differently this year.

I will not be logging all our rubbish as we pretty much have it down to where we are putting the minimum we can for us into our landfill bin. We ended the year by having put out 12.67kg, so just over 1.0kg per month or for those who like to visualise the equivalent to a bag of sugar.

The garden is going to be more productive for us this year than last year as we have more time to get things planned, and we will concentrate on maximising our growing room.

Another thing I'm looking to do is to try and make more of the snacky things which the boys like to eat, not always easy I know but even though it hasn't produced much more packaging this last year, I feel I should be at least trying.

I am also going to be more stricter with my grocery budget and menu planning, especially as certain grocery items are subject to the VAT increase on 4 Jan.

Add into the above that I want to do some serious de-cluttering and get back into my card making then I think I will have a full year ahead.

Veg Garden

I have been totting up the tally charts I kept during the summer of the veggies we grew this is what we picked:

tomatoes - 9.852kg
green beans - 4.023kg
carrots - 1.178kg
cucumbers - 67
courgettes - 18
butternut squash 3

Catching up - Life gets in the way

It seems that every time I get chance to post on here lately I'm apologising for not posting iyswim.

Anyhow we are coming to the end of the halfterm week and we all go back to school or work on Monday.

This week Dave has had the week off as well and we have just spent time relaxing and not doing much.

It has been nice not to get up to an alarm clock.

Cooking has been casual using things up or what we fancy from our stores.

We have spent some time in the garden clearing a few things away and doing some general tidying so there is less to do another day. Also doing a bit of planning ready for next year so hopefully we can grow more veggies ourselves.

Our waste management seems to have evened out and although some weeks is a little more than my target others it is under; I'm not going to be fastidious in trying to achieve the target every week we are averaging 185g per week for the last 42 weeks so not a major amount in real terms for a family of 4.

Dave is hopefully starting a new phase in his work when he goes back on Monday, he will be doing some courses but also will possibly be working different hours and days which should mean an increase in income for us; this is obviously not to be sniffed at in the current economic climate.
So I will be holding the fort more, but also will be looking at what we can still do to maximise our income and growing potential.
I know I want an apple tree and that will be sorted for next year, we have made a note of the types of veggies which grew well and which we all also liked, and will grow more of these utilising the most space available.

Apologies

Where has the time gone.

It doesn't seem five minutes since I was writing about the end of term activities and finishing school for the summer.

Well now next week we are all back at school.

The waste management has still been going well, and as the garden has been very productive there has been alot less packaging as all the salad ingredients are from the garden not the supermarket.

We have still been having an organic box but have reduced it to fortnightly, this has been mainly for potatoes and an odd veg like cauliflower which we haven't grown.

The garden has been prepared for some winter veggies as well, we have leeks, sprouts, swede, and hopefully parsnips and some winter potatoes.

It has been an eyeopener as to how much of any one particular type of veg we need, I thought I had planted loads of carrots, but we are eating them as fast as they are growing and I haven't even managed to put any in the freezer. So next year I will have a much bigger bed for these but will increase the sowings even more than this year.

I had hoped to have a baking day before school restarted just to get a head start on packed lunch items, but I don't think this will now happen as I had to go into school yesterday for a meeting and today have errands to run in readiness for Monday; I will maybe do a few mini sessions and fit them around my work times, just to get some bits in the freezer.