Back in February, I mentioned that I would like to try cooking a broth with veggie scraps. Well, I finally got round to it! We’re no strangers to veggie broths by any means as I regularly make chicken broth for us, but while I usually use whole vegetables such as carrots, onions, celery and parsnips, this time I made a lovely broth with lamb bones and veggie scraps.

First of all, let’s talk about the ‘scraps’ and what exactly are those ‘scraps’? In a nutshell, those are little bits and pieces of certain vegetables that you’d otherwise throw away but which are still perfectly edible and thus usable, and of course, washed clean. It could be the very bottom of a cauliflower stem or tomato and green pepper ‘tops’ or perhaps a bit of an onion peel if you’d peeled the onion a bit too much and it was no longer ‘whole’ enough to be chopped finely.

So instead of simply throwing all of those veggie scraps into the compost bin, I started collecting the edible and washed bits and pieces in a bag in the freezer and I’ve been adding to it ever since: cauliflower stems, a bit of zucchini peels and fleshy bits, tomato tops (without the green stems), red pepper tops (again, without the green stems), some onion, celery and carrot bits. I had probably collected over 1kg of scraps over the last two months which really just convinced me even more of how much food does indeed get wasted in our kitchens.

Back in February, I also purchased a 2.5 kg pack of lamb which, although not cheap, was cheaper because it was on special for about R130.00, if memory serves me well. I used the meat in 3 different meals which I had cooked for us in bulk and which have lasted us for quite some time. When we brought the shopping home that day, I chopped up the meat to prepare for cooking but I’d kept the bones aside in the freezer and that’s what I used in the broth today.

Ingredients:

500 gr. Lamb bones

3 whole Garlic cloves

3 Carrots

1 Onion

3 Vegetable stock cubes

(Or use 2-3 Tbsp. Aromat)

A few whole peppercorns

Freshly chopped Parsley to taste

Salt to taste

Veggie scraps:

Cauliflower stems

Zucchini peels and fleshy bits

Tomato tops (without the green stems)

Red pepper tops (without the green stems)

Onion, celery and carrot bits

Noodles

(optional)

Method:

Put all the ingredients in a large stock pot (the one I used is 7 litres) and top with 4-5 litres of cold water. Bring to the boil then simmer for just over an hour. Strain your broth through a fine-mesh sieve, adjust salt and pepper to taste and voila, the broth is ready!

I chopped up the carrots into small pieces and removed all the meat off the bones and chopped those up into small pieces as well. Those are the only 2 ingredients that I’d put back into the broth (you can skip this if you are planning on using the broth as stock addition to other meals).

Just before serving, we like to add noodles (broken up into smaller pieces) into the broth and allow it to simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the noodles are cooked.

This broth is delicious on its own though and it freezes very well. It can also be a great addition when cooking stews or any other dish which requires you to use stock. Enjoy!

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I don’t like to waste anything, especially not food. Sometimes, sure, it just happens. Food goes off or becomes mouldy, perhaps it was too hot or it was left in the fridge for too long. We’ve all been there and done that at some stage but that’s not to say that we shouldn’t make a conscious effort to minimise such food waste and/or avoid it altogether. We really do try our best to avoid food waste in our kitchen as wasted food is, after all, money wasted.

Not only that, food waste is a much larger problem, in South Africa as well as globally, costing billions in whichever currency you look at it. Yet, there are how many people who go to bed hungry each night? According to this article by Farmer’s Weekly Food wastage in SA: shameful facts 31,4% of all food produced in South Africa goes to waste. Food wasted during consumption accounts for 5% of this waste and occurs mainly in urban areas by those who can afford to feed themselves. I also recently came across this BBC new story How one woman is winning the fight against food waste which was very inspirational!

So on a personal level, and as an individual, here is what you can do to avoid food waste in the kitchen.

Know how much you need & buy what you need

This is the first step: do your month-end shopping with a grocery list. I know this sounds like an absolute cliché but we do it, and it works for us. It helps us stick to buying only what we need and nothing else that might go to waste because it didn’t get eaten. I know that it can be hard sometimes to find the time in our busy schedules to go through the fridge, the freezer and the pantry taking stock of what we have before we produce a shopping list, and go shopping, but we remember why we do it and that keeps us going.

Meal planning

Meal planning goes hand in hand with step number 1 above. Meal planning ensures that we plan to use up the food that we have and that we’ve purchased for the month so that nothing, or as little as possible, goes to waste. For some ideas on how to get started with meal planning check our my posts Meal Planning Around Specials, Meal Planning Ideas and Meal Planning Folder Dividers.

Use every bit of meat & vegetable that you buy

When I meal plan, I make sure that I plan to use up every little bit of meat and vegetables that we’ve bought for the month. I’ll give you an example of how I do that. Last month I bought a budget packet of lamb meat that was on special at Meat World. When I got home, I probably spent an hour removing all the meat off the bones and chopping up the meat. I apportioned a small amount of meat to use in my Green Beans soup recipe, the rest of the meat I used to prepare Lamb Curry and the bones ended up in the freezer to be used when I next make a broth for us (you can check out my Chicken broth recipe in which you can substitute with beef or lamb bones as substitutes for chicken and you can make use of vegetable scraps).

Prepare your vegetables in bulk: wash, peel, chop, etc.

If you buy veggies or fruits in season, when they’re most affordable, you are far more likely to buy such produce in larger quantities because it’s so cheap. I often do that in which case, it’s best to wash, peel, chop and prepare fresh produce, especially veggies, as soon as I get home or at least within a day or two of purchase. I then freeze what I can, cook what needs to be cooked immediately and store the rest for use within the week or two. Last month, I also started collecting vegetable scraps as I’m preparing our veggies in bulk. I’ve stored these scraps in a freezer bag and I will use them to make a broth for us soon. Here you will a useful list of vegetable scraps you can use to make a healthy and delicious broth.

Preserve & pickle produce

Some produce, especially fruits, are only cheap and affordable when they’re in season and supermarkets and greengrocers have surplus stock. That is the best time to buy produce in large quantities to preserve and pickle. We haven’t bought jams or konfyt in years, for example, as I make enough for us to last us a while and we always have plenty to share! We especially enjoy our homemade fig jam, stewed peaches, marmalade, quince konfyt, apple butter as well as tomato sauce, tomato juice, peach juice and sweet pepper relish.

Compost

Having a compost heap or bin in your garden is an absolutely awesome way to recycle all the fresh vegetable and fruit waste from your kitchen. You don’t even have to have a very large garden to find space for a compost bin – you can do it on a small scale and still benefit. We love our compost bin. It is fairly large though so as a result every 6 months or so we have about 7 or 8 20-litre buckets full of organic manure to add to our garden, and this is practically free.

Store veggies in the fridge at eye level

This is something that we’ve started doing just recently and we’ve found that if we can see the fruits and veggies (especially the fruits) they’re a lot more likely to get consumed before they go off. We used to store our fresh fruits and veggies in the bottom drawer of the fridge and we would then often forget about what was there. We often used to throw away mouldy carrots, cucumbers, mangoes to name a few. But not anymore because we can now see the fresh produce on the shelves of the fridge and remember to eat it.

Cook in bulk and freeze

Cooking in bulk and freezing meals is definitely the way to go. It’s also very convenient to have ready-made meals in the freezer which you can defrost on weeknights and as a bonus, you haven’t spent a fortune buying ready-made meals from the shops. I usually cook several meals in bulk just after I’ve done my month-end shopping. It is tiring, I must say, and I know lots of people who prefer not to cook in bulk and freeze because of that. However, I make the effort because it saves us money and it also means we don’t waste food that has been purchased in bulk at the end of the month.

Use up all your leftovers

Dinner leftovers can turn into a large source of food waste. Even if leftovers are stored in the fridge for later use, if we don’t consume the leftovers soon, they will end up as wasted that’s for sure. Taking leftovers to work the next day is a good way of using up leftovers rather quickly, or even having the same dinner two nights in a row works for us. Food is food. Alternatively, you might want to consider using those small amounts of leftovers as an addition to another meal you’re cooking. To give you an example, I recently used up a small amount of leftover mushroom sauce and gravy in a vegetable pie. It was delicious!

Don’t over-serve your plate but eat everything that’s on your plate

This is one of the easiest ways to avoid food waste – eat everything. Dish up enough but finish it. Seeing food left on a plate and then thrown into the bin is really one of my pet peeves. There are so many who are less fortunate than ourselves to have any food on a plate so in our household this type of food waste is an absolute no-no. If, for some reason, one of us can’t finish what’s been dished up on our plate, we will simply leave it in the fridge for later.

We’ll still eat recipes gone wrong

Not all recipes will turn out as wonderfully as we’d hoped they would and sometimes even the best of chefs have their off days! Sometimes a cake will fall apart… a veggie bake might not taste that great with a certain combination of spices… but, that’s no reason to turn a small mishap in the kitchen into wasted food. We’ll polish off our plates but just remember not to make use of the same recipe again!

Keep track of what’s in your pantry, fridge and freezer

This is probably not the easiest things to do, I admit! We all have busy schedules and lead busy lives. Sometimes, we just forget to check what’s in the pantry, fridge or freezer, I know. It’s happened to me more than once. But, I have since learnt to make an effort to check the expiry dates on items in my pantry especially, and to incorporate soon-to-expire items in next month’s meal plans. For more ideas on using up items in your pantry and freezer, have a look at some of my posts on the Pantry and Freezer Challenge.

Please share some of your ideas of how you avoid food waste in your kitchen by leaving me a comment below.

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On a hot summer’s day there is nothing more refreshing than a delicious salad to cool you down. The Tomato & Black Beans salad is one of our favourites, especially in summer, although we make it all year round – we enjoy it so much! Very often we have the Tomato & Black Beans salad as a meal on its own with just a slice or two of warm, freshly baked and buttered bread. However, this salad can be a delicious accompaniment to any meal though, for example, the Spicy Chicken Livers.

For this Tomato & Black Beans salad recipe it’s best to use ripe jam tomatoes as they are much sweeter than ordinary ripe tomatoes. We use whichever type of tomatoes we have at home but if you manage to get some jam tomatoes on a really good special then you should definitely give those a try! The sweetness of jam tomatoes balances well against the more acidic ingredients in this salad: the onions and the vinegar.

The Tomato & Black Beans salad will cost you approximately R22.00 to make if all the ingredients are bought on special. This recipe yields several generous servings.

So here’s what you need to make this deliciously refreshing Tomato & Black Beans salad on a hot summer’s day, or any day!

Ingredients:

4-5 ripe Tomatoes, cubed

1 large Onion, finely chopped

2 fresh Jalapeῆo chillies, finely sliced, seeds and all

1 tin Black Beans, drained

(Or use any type of tinned beans in brine)

4 Tbsp. White Vinegar

(Or use Apple Cider instead if you prefer)

3 Tbsp. Olive Oil

(Or use Sunflower or Avocado Oil if you prefer)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

In a salad bowl combine the cubed tomatoes, finely chopped onions, sliced Jalapeῆo chillies and drained Black Beans. Mix well. Now you are ready to add the dressing. Try mixing the suggested amounts of vinegar and oil in a cup and keep adding to your salad, stirring and tasting of course until you are happy with the taste. You might need to adjust the oil and vinegar amounts to suit your taste. Serve immediately and enjoy!

Serving suggestion: enjoy this Tomato & Black Beans Salad with a serving of delicious, Spicy Chicken Livers.

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It’s much, much cheaper to make Sausage Rolls at home, and we often make a batch or two. A Sausage Roll is nice as a meal on its own with some gravy and salad on the side, and they’re also an inexpensive but convenient food to pack for picnics or road trips.

Sausage Rolls are very easy to make at home. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll know that I just love quick and easy recipes which make delicious foods! This Sausage Rolls recipe is just that with only two ingredients – a Puff Pastry roll and Vienna sausages, or any other kind of sausage that you prefer or have on hand.

The Puff Pastry roll can be purchased for R9.99 each when they go on sale (I prefer to use Today). The Vienna sausages will come to about R2.50 each when packets of Viennas (Enterprise Chicken & Cheese Viennas for example) go on sale as well. The total cost for this recipe is only R27.50 for 7 Sausage Rolls.

If you were to buy that many Sausage Rolls in the shops you would have to pay at least R16.00 per Sausage Roll, spending a total of at least R112.00 (Sausage Rolls do vary in price, as I’m sure you know, depending on where you buy).

Ingredients:

1 Puff Pastry Roll

7 Vienna sausages

1 Egg wash

Salt and Pepper to taste

Spray ‘n’ Cook

Method:

Defrost the Vienna sausages for 30-45 seconds in the microwave (depending on the strength of your microwave) and set aside. Defrost the Puff Pastry roll just enough so that it can be rolled out easily. I usually use a rolling pin to even and thin out the pastry just a little. Cut 7 pieces across the Puff Pastry. As you only need enough Puff Pastry to roll around each Vienna it would be a good idea to measure against the Viennas or the sausages that you are using and cut accordingly.

Roll each Vienna into a sausage roll. Cut one or two slits on the top of each sausage roll. Spray an oven tray with Spray ‘n’ Cook. Layer the sausage rolls about 3cm apart. Brush each sausage roll with egg wash and season with salt and pepper. Bake at 180 for about 25 minutes. Serve with a side salad. Enjoy hot or cold.

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Pickled beetroot is one of my favourite side dishes, or as an addition to leafy green salads, especially in summer. Beetroot is plentiful at this time of year and you can usually buy it in bulk at your local greengrocer’s at a good price. I mentioned in my post Grocery Finds & Savings in December that I bought a 5kg bag of beetroot for R29.00 which I used to make pickled beetroot for us. Although pickling beets is not a difficult process, it will require 2-3 hours of work in the kitchen so be prepared.

Pickling your own beetroot will cost you less than purchasing pickled beets in the shops. At the moment, a 750gr. jar of pickled beetroot costs on average R27.00. If you were to buy 4 ½ kg of pickled beetroot you would have to buy 6 jars in the shops which would cost you R162.00. I spent R29.00 for the beetroot and R19.00 for a 2-litre bottle of white vinegar, no name brand, which is really all you need to make pickled beetroot (adding garlic is optional). In total I spent R48.00 and saved R114.00.

Pickled beets will last several months if bottled properly and stored in the fridge so you can continue to enjoy the products of your labour over a longer period of time. This really makes the effort of pickling beetroot worthwhile. Here’s how to make pickled beetroot, the really easy way!

Ingredients:

5kg Beetroot

2 litres White Vinegar

Water

A few cloves of Garlic (optional)

Method:

You need to boil the beetroot and there are two different ways of doing this – boiling it on the stove or cooking it in the microwave.

If you plan on boiling the beets on the stove, wash them but do not peel. Add the beets to a pot of boiling water and continue to boil on fairly high heat until you can easily insert a knife or a fork into the beets and they feel soft. Remove the pot from the stove, strain the water and allow the beets to cool before peeling them.

If you plan on cooking the beets in the microwave, wash and peel them first. Microwave a few of them at a time in a suitable microwave dish with a lid. Don’t add any water. Allow up to 2 minutes for each beet, microwaving on high until you can easily insert a knife or a fork into the beets and they feel soft. Allow the beets to cool. In the meantime, sterilise the jars you’re going to use.

Once the beets have cooled down, they are now ready to be sliced, grated or cubed – you choose what you prefer. Bear in mind that beetroot which is finely grated or thinly sliced will absorb more vinegar and will therefore be more acidic. The opposite is true for thicker slices or cubes. If you are planning on adding garlic, use only freshly peeled garlic cloves and thinly slice or grate them.

Lastly, prepare the brine. For about 4 ½ kg of beetroot you’re going to need just under 2 litres of white vinegar. Measure the 2 litres of vinegar in cups then mix 2 parts (cups) vinegar to 1 part (cup) water. We find that this combination suits our taste but you might want to adjust that if you prefer slightly more acidic brine, or slightly less acidic.

Lay out the sterilised jars you’re going to use. Fill the jars with beetroot almost to the full, but not quite, packing the beets tightly, but not too tightly. Add the garlic if using. Top each jar with brine and close the lid. Store in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

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There are a lot of recipes out there for Chili Con Carne. A lot! And many of those recipes require you to cook the minced meat from scratch, which we normally don’t. If we have a little leftover Bolognaise Sauce for Pasta, which I usually cook in large batches and freeze, that’s what we will use to spice things up a little (literally!) with this easy, cheap and super quick Chili Con Carne.

Using up the leftover Bolognaise Sauce for Pasta to make Chili Con Carne just makes this dish so much more flavourful. Sure, you could just have the Bolognaise Sauce with some pasta for dinner but if you’ve already had that two nights in a row – which sometimes does happen to us when I defrost a tub of Bolognaise Sauce – then it’s Chili Con Carne night for us which we so enjoy. Here’s how to make this simple meal.

Ingredients:

2 Ladles of Bolognaise Sauce for Pasta

1 tin Beans in brine (drained)

*you can use any beans that you like

1-2 Chili Peppers (to taste), finely chopped

¼ Tsp. Cayenne pepper

¼ Tsp. Chili Powder

Salt and Pepper to taste

Spray ‘n’ Cook

1 Tbsp. Oil

*You can halve all the ingredients if you have a smaller amount of Bolognaise Sauce leftover and it will still yield a few reasonably sized portions.  

Method:

Spray a deep pan with Spray ‘n’ Cook, add the oil and allow to heat up. Fry the Chili peppers for a minute or two. Add the Bolognaise Sauce for Pasta, drained beans, spices and salt and pepper to taste. Cook on moderate heat for about 10-12 minutes and serve immediately.

Serve with:

A toasted, buttered bun or a slice of bread.

Rice or couscous.

Fried eggs.

Mashed or baked potatoes.

Pasta or noodles.

The last time we made Chili Con Carne with leftover Bolognaise Sauce for Pasta, we served it with a couple of ‘fancy’ fried eggs, as you can see in the photo. I honestly don’t know whose idea this originally was but it did its rounds on social media a while back and ever since then it’s been one of our favourite way of making ‘fancy’ fried eggs – I just love the taste. It also looks super appetizing on your plate!

It’s easy to make though. All you needs is a 2cm thick slice of green pepper. Slice the green pepper across to get a round shape. Heat up a frying pan a little, place the sliced green pepper, add a few drops of oil in the middle of the slice and allow it to heat up a little. Crack an egg inside and fry it. Use an egg lifter to remove it gently from the pan and onto a plate. It really goes well with a serving of Chili Con Carne and a slice of warm, buttered bread. Enjoy!

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December, despite being the crazy, hectic month that it is supposed to be, brought a whole lot of grocery finds and savings for us. I managed to avoid the inevitable madness of December shopping by doing most of my grocery shopping earlier on in the month. When I did have to go back to the shops for just a few more items on my shopping list I realised how lucky I was to have planned and finished most of my shopping earlier on! December was an unbelievably hectic time to be in the shops and I’m glad I didn’t get stuck right in the middle of it!

My first stop was at Apple Tree Fresh Food Market and I scored some really good deals at the beginning of the month. I purchased a 10kg pocket of potatoes for R29.00 (their ‘regular’ price is now ocver R70.00!), 7kg butternut also for R29.00 and a 10kg pocket of onions also for the same price. The potatoes and the butternut were our staples for the month, and now into January as well. I also purchased a 5kg bag of beetroot which I used to make pickled beetroot. A 700 gr. jar of pickled beetroot costs on average R25.00 – 27.00 in the shops so if I had to buy about 4,5 kg of pickled beetroot (if we exclude the weight if the beet skin) I would have paid at least R150.00 but I paid R29.00 for the beetroot and R19.00 for the vinegar so this was about a R100.00 saving for us.

Apple Tree Fresh Food Market was also running a special on green beans, tomatoes, lettuce and button mushrooms for R13.00 per punnet so I was able to stock up on that as well. We have enjoyed some really yummy mushroom sauce to go with our meats over the holiday season. I’ve also used some to make mushroom risottos as well as an addition to omelettes – being at home during the holidays meant that we had a lot more time to prepare and enjoy a variety of hearty breakfasts at our leisure! I also bought 3kg of plums for only R25.00 which was about R8.00 per kg and cheaper even than our ‘cheapest’ fruit i.e. bananas.

My next stop was at Meat World. While I was hoping that they would have Biltong on special for just over R120.00 per kg, but they didn’t, I found boneless gammon for R69.00 per kg as well as bacon for R60.00 per kg, which is about R20.00 cheaper than in regular supermarkets. I didn’t buy much else at Meat World as we had other meat which I had stocked up on the previous month, and that’s probably going to last us until end of January and more than likely well into February as well.

Some of my other finds at Pick ‘n’ Pay included milk at R21.00 for 2 litres, yoghurt at R22.00 per litre, butter, oil, eggs at R36.00 for a tray of 30 (regular grain-fed, large eggs) and a variety of other smaller items which were on my shopping list such as crackers, sour cream, toothpaste, air freshener, etc. I also used up a R57.00 in Smart Shopper points on my total shop.

What I did buy at Pick ‘n’ Pay which was not on my shopping list were the Lady Speed stick deodorants which I love and I was so surprised to see how cheap they were – R12.99 each! I also managed to find Mitchum’s antiperspirant stick deodorant for R37.00 on special as well. Their regular price is well over R50.00 and their price on special usually isn’t less than R42.00 each (even Makro was running a special on 2 of those for R85.00 which is R42.50 each). Both of these were a good buy and I think I’m going to regret not stocking up more!

I didn’t buy much at Checkers as they didn’t have items on specials that were on my shopping list for December. I did, however, find 3 ready-made pizzas at R27.00 each (reduced to clear). We had one immediately that night and froze the other two for use later. I also found 400 gr. punnets of strawberries for only R13.00! I bought quite a few, some of which we ate that week, and the rest I washed, removed the stems and froze for use as an addition to porridge, to make smoothies and flavoured water (check out my post on Frugal Summer Refreshments) and to bake. Neither the pizzas nor the strawberries were on my shopping list but I was within my budget so I bought.

I bought most of my toiletries at Dis-Chem as they had quite a few specials on but the absolutely best buy for me were the Handy Andy Actifizz trigger bottles. I used a Unilever deals voucher x 2 for this which they had on offer last month. It was basically buy 2 for the price of 1 up to the value of R45.00 which brought the total voucher amount to R90.00. At 36.00 per bottle the total price for 4 bottles was R144.00 of which R90.00 was discounted as well as a further R13.00 that I had in Dis-Chem Loyalty Benefits points. Effectively, I only paid R41.00 for 4 bottles which came to R10.25 each!!! That was an unbelievable saving and I will be buying the same item again this month to add to my pantry stockpile because the voucher is also available in January. You can have a look at all the Unilever deals or read more about Why I Love Unilever Deals Coupons.

The only item I bought at Woolworths in December ws the steamed Christmas pudding (400 gr.) and 1 packet of mince pies. On 23^rd December Woolworths was offering 30% off to WRewards card holders for any 2 Christmas puddings and/or mince pies. So I paid only R56.00 for the Christmas pudding which was cheaper than any other supermarket at the time. Then again on 27^th December Woolworths was offering 20% off Christmas puddings, labelled as ‘reduced to clear’, so I bought another one for us to enjoy on the days leading up to New Year. You will usually find a few Christmas pudding tubs on ‘reduced to clear’ shelves at Woolworths so if you feel like having some even after Christmas, you can get it a bit cheaper then, though these do get grabbed quite quickly!

And my last find for the month of December was dog food (chunks) for our doggies and shampoo (for me) on Takealot. I actually stocked up quite a bit on dog food which will last us for at least another 3 months. There was some wiggle room in my budget plus the price was really good – between R155.00 – R165.00 per 7.3/10kg bag. The 7.3 kg bag was R35.00-R50.00 cheaper than in supermarkets – depending on the retailer – and the 10kg bag even more cheaper! I’d stocked up on tinned dog food over the previous 2-3 months so I didn’t need to buy that this month. And the 750ml Pantene shampoo was R35.00 cheaper than Dis-Chem.

You might be wondering by now why I haven’t mentioned any Christmas gift shopping in December. If you remember my post from February last year Start Budgeting for Christmas Expenses Now, you’ll know that I started saving for Christmas gifts a little bit each month from then onwards. I was then able to start shopping for Christmas gifts as early as July. It is not true that the best ‘specials’ come just before the end of the year – I’ve actually found some very nice gifts throughout the year so that by the time November came my Christmas gift shopping was done and dusted and everything was packed and ready to go! This kind of planning also reduced a whole lot of panic and stress that comes with finding ‘the right gift’ and I could quite comfortably avoid shopping malls and shopping centres altogether as I didn’t actually need to buy anything.

All in all, with these grocery finds & savings in December that’s a whole R638.00 saved! I’m very happy about the amount.

What were some of your grocery savings & finds in December?

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Once you start Meal Planning around Specials, it’s important to stay organised from one month to the next. That’s why I use a Meal Planning Folder in an A4 arch lever file with printable Weekly Meal Plan pages and Meal Planning Folder Dividers that I can insert as needed. It helps to work with lose pages because you can insert as many as you need and when you need them.

I’ve seen Post-it notes that are used to stick and shift your recipes around laminated Weekly Meal Planning sheets as you meal plan (and this looks really neat and awesome!) but I actually like to write down my meal planning ideas for this one simple reason: I can keep track of our meals each week, and each month, so that I can rotate our meals and make sure we don’t often have the same choices. Writing everything down is an absolute life saver for me, otherwise I would definitely forget.

I also use Meal Planning File Dividers so that I can keep track of my meal planning on a month to month basis. For each month I file a copy of my Meal Planning around Specials shopping list that I use to do my month end shopping as well as the Weekly Meal Plans that I’d used for that month.

Download your FREE printables:

Meal Planning around Specials Shopping List

 Meal Planning File Dividers

Weekly Meal Planning Sheet (blank)

At the back of the file, I also keep a list of our favourite Breakfast, Snacks, Dinner and Sandwich ideas which I use to meal plan around specials each month, making sure I rotate the meals as well as the staples, the protein (meats) and veggies. Have a look at my Meal Planning Ideas post for some of our favourite meals and snacks.

Consider subscribing to my weekly Newsletter now to receive your FREE copy of affordable and easy 20 Sandwich Ideas on a Budget. For us, this is an absolute life-saver on the days when there are no leftovers to pack.

Happy Frugal Meal Planning & Enjoy the Savings!

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As we welcome the New Year, I thought it would be a good time reflect on my top 6 posts that have been viewed, liked, shared and commented on the most in 2016!

Thank you to everyone who has visited my blog, subscribed to my Newsletter, liked my page on Facebook and followed me on Twitter in the past year. I look forward to interacting with you even more in 2017.

For now, here are my top 6 posts in 2016!

1. Make Sushi at Home: It’s Much Cheaper

If you’re a fan of sushi but not quite the fan of paying for sushi takeaways, which can be a bit heavy on your budget, then this is the post for you! Watch my video tutorial and learn how to make sushi at home. The ingredients you need are affordable and all it takes is a couple of fun (and messy!) practice sessions until you get the hang of it! But when you do, I promise you’re going to enjoy making sushi and afterwards savouring the delicious taste of homemade sushi on a budget! Read the post here…

2. How We Reduced Our Monthly Expenditure

‘Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.’ – Benjamin Franklin

In order to find “extra” money in our budget, we had to reduce our monthly expenditure. We wrote down all our expenses on a piece of paper so that we could see very clearly how much we spent, where, when and on what exactly. Once we had these figures on paper, it was easy to see how much was too much and where the leaks in our wallets were! We then had a better idea of which leaking tap we needed to tighten or close for good. In this post I share with you how we fixed those expenditure leaks so that we could find “extra” money in our budget. Read the post here…

3. Homemade vs. Store-Bought

Have you ever wondered whether it would be cheaper to buy something or to make it at home? I know I have. In fact, it’s something that’s almost always on my mind. I love to do things at home – to cook, bake, sew, crochet and I enjoy all sorts of DIY projects. So I always have to ask myself whether it would be cheaper to buy something or to make it at home. Let’s look at the pros and cons. Read the post here…

4. Becoming Credit Card Free: Our Journey

Proverbs 22:7 ‘The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is a slave to the lender.’

Becoming credit card free and living life more frugally hasn’t been an easy journey for us. But the option of living life as borrowers, ‘servants to the lender’ and to credit card debt certainly didn’t feel that great for us either. This post details the beginning of our journey to becoming credit card free and living live more frugally and more economically. Our journey inspired me to start my blog. Read the post here…

5. Stick to Your Grocery Budget

South Africans spend, on average, 12,8% of their income on food and beverages per month, making this one of the top 3 expenditures in South African households along with transport and housing. We used to spend roughly the same amount of our income on food, and sometimes even more than that, if truth be told. We now spend about 10% of our income on food and beverages each month, and in this amount I also include all the food and treats for our 4 doggies as well as all our household cleaning items and our toiletries. And we pretty much stick to our grocery budget each month. This post tells you how we do that. Read the post here…

6. How to Save Money Grocery Shopping

Statistics show that food is the 3^rd highest household expenditure, after housing and transport, in South Africa. As I do most of the grocery shopping in our household I pay attention to the prices and it seems to me that each time I go to the shops something else has just gone up again. I try my best to be as frugal and careful as I can be when it comes to grocery shopping and here’s how I save money on our monthly grocery shopping. Read the post here…

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these top 6 posts and thank you again for your support in 2016! I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

If you’d like to stay in touch in 2017, and beyond, consider subscribing to my Newsletter to receive an email when I publish new blog posts or like my page Frugal in SA on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Instagram. I look forward to staying in touch and hearing from you, my lovely readers.

Happy Frugal Living in 2017!

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While a Pantry and Freezer Challenge may not be everyone’s cup of tea, we’ve quite enjoyed doing this challenge earlier on in the year. Here are some of the lessons learnt and the benefits we experienced in our month of the Pantry and Freezer Challenge. If you are thinking about doing a Pantry and Freezer Challenge yourself, then these are the benefits you can expect too.

We saved money

Yes, we definitely did! Because we used as much as we could from our pantry and freezer, we didn’t need to buy as much from the supermarkets which saved us quite a bit of money that month (and the next too, as we froze some of the meals we prepared for later). If this is your primary reason for deciding to do a Pantry & Freezer Challenge, then you’re definitely on the right track! You can then decide at the end of the month how best you’re going to channel the money that you’ve saved. You could use it to add an extra payment or two towards your debt repayment, or you could add it to your savings account if you don’t have any debt to pay off, or you could simply decide to use the money for whatever else you need it at the moment.

We got creative in the kitchen!

We sure did! While I prepared some of our tried and tested meals during the Pantry and Freezer challenge month, I also experimented a little here and there and created meals that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise! One of these meals that we really enjoyed and will definitely make again is the Soya Beans & Mince Meatballs recipe. During this time I also searched around for new recipes and this is always a good thing. Sometimes we become too set in our ways and there is hardly a reason to venture into the unknown but the Pantry and Freezer Challenge will definitely give you a reason to do just that!

We used up odds and ends in our Pantry

While it may not always be a good idea to deplete your entire pantry stash, we managed to use up all the odds and ends in our pantry, including half open packets and items that were about to expire or have just been sitting around for too long. If you decide to give the Pantry and Freezer Challenge a go, this will definitely give you a reason to rethink the contents of your stockpile in general and then to restock your pantry and freezer with items that you need and actually want to stash (I know I sometimes buy items that are on reduced even if we don’t often use them!).

We were more mindful of the items bought afterwards

Rethinking the contents of both your pantry and freezer during the Pantry and Freezer Challenge will definitely make you more aware of what you actually want and need to have in your stockpile and will possibly stop you from buying items that are on reduced or special if you know you are unlikely to use them. This is definitely what has happened to us! I now know that there are items that I will unlikely buy again to include in my stockpile while there are others that I will definitely be stocking up on if I find them at a really good price, such as the Soya beans.

If all of this sounds like a good idea, then head on over to my Pantry and Freezer Challenge post to see how you can get started too!

Happy Savings & Frugal Living!

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