Making dinner streeeeetch further

I'm back online today after borrowing Mum and Dad's computer again. Last night I was computerless and it was boring after the lads went to bed. I have spoken to my girlfriend who has mine and apparently it has rather nasty viruses and thingies jumping all around inside it. Drats. Hoping to have it back for the weekend and fingers crossed it will still be fixed within the limits of bartering.

Last night the boys had dinner with their Dad. I had to go to the supermarket for a few bits of fruit and veges so decided I would get Fridays groceries over and done with at the same time. I still have $30 left of grocery money so that will have to stretch until next Friday. I think we can do it as all we will need is more fruit and vege, bread and milk. So for the next 10 or so days we will be making all our food streeeeeeetch just that little bit further. I have decided to set myself a challenge to see how much of that $30 I can keep in my bank account instead of using it for food.

Luckily carrots were on special for a 1.5 kg bag so to help the fruit go further today they had carrot sticks in their lunchboxes. Man they were super happy about that which is great as they will be getting them again over the next few days. I also have lots of tomatos left in the glasshouse so that will work for one of the boys. Those things put together should help the fruit supply. Each child gets 2 pieces of fruit/veges in their lunchboxes each day along with a sandwich/homemade pizza/scrolls and 2 x baking/snacks. To save on bread I will bake another batch of scrolls and another batch of either pizza bread or pizza bases and that will save on using sandwiches. I have lots of flour and yeast for baking bread and also biscuits etc to fill up the snack category. When we run out of broccoli I will just frozen veges and there are lots of carrots and potatoes to see us through.

So looking at it that way maybe I will get away with just buying milk. In 10 days we would probably use about 6 maybe 8 litres of milk costing less than $10 however I also have powdered milk in the fridge that I will start making again for breakfasts and baking/cooking. Hopefully that will cut the milk back to a maximum of 4 litres or $5.

So there's the challenge I guess. 10 days and the only food I can buy is 4 litres of milk and a bunch of bananas. Can we do it? I'm sure we can.

Tonights dinner was a perfect example of how it can be done. $3.29 got us almost 500g mince. Add to that 1 can pureed tomatoes, 1 maggi cook in the pot, 2 cups frozen veges, 3/4 cup rolled oats and 3 large potatoes and I created enough mince for 2 cottage pies and also another serve of mince which we will have tomorrow night with pasta. All up the cost would have been less than $7 for 3 nights dinners. And healthy, balanced meals at that.

So that's the start of streeeetching my food further. I'll have to do a lot more than that to make the challenge a success and I'll keep you posted as to how I am going.