Wow, grocery prices are rising and rising these days, aren’t they? What used to cost my family of five $150 per week (that’s Aussie prices folks, LOL - no coupons and a horrible conversion rate!) four years ago is now hitting the $200-$225 mark. It’s frustrating to think that the ‘cheap homemade pizza’ that was once a weekly menu staple has made way for a Pizza Hut special - because at $5 a pop for those, they’re actually cheaper! Seriously, a 600g (one-and-a-third pounds) bag of generic shredded cheese has shot up past the $7 mark. Blocks of cheese to grate yourself are only marginally cheaper. Throw in pepperoni, vegies and pineapple and it becomes more cost effective to get takeout pizza. One bag of cheese might stretch to two homemade pizzas but I’ve worked out the total cost of the ingredients we like on our pizzas and Pizza Hut wins, hands down (we could be different down here though - I’ve often come across references on American sites about takeout pizza being more like $12 or $15 each. In which case DIY sounds like a pretty good deal :P)
So, where do the rising grocery prices leave us?
In the Lizzie’s Home family, it’s a constant see-saw - providing healthy, filling meals and snacks but in a way that fits with our budget. With three children in school, there are three lunchboxes to pack every day (each including fruit, and something for recess and lunch), as well as Talented Hubby’s work meal. Then comes the snacking. My goodness, my family can EAT! Master J (ten on Saturday…gulp!) eats almost as much as Daddy now. And my kids are typical grazers. On school days they have breakfast at home and take a packed lunch to school. Then it’s home for afternoon tea. Then dinner. Though we’re pretty good at getting their fruit and veg into them, when you couple all this with a snack-happy husband, I feel like I’m at the supermarket twenty times a week just keeping them all fed!
One of my biggest food faults is that I can fall into a rut of just throwing a packet of this, or a muesli bar (granola bar?) of that into their lunches each day. With three children, a box of 6 bars lasts two days and costs $3 on sale - and they’re hardly rib-sticking. Add them up over the course of a month and we’re talking a whole lot of moola. I tend to go for convenience rather than low-cost. So I’m hatchin’ a plan.
From Monday (the start of the next menu round in this house, and also grocery day) I’m going to avoid, as much as humanly possible, buying commercial ’snackfood’. Here’s a list of things I’m not going to buy:
muesli bars (granola bars)
potato chips
crackers (this will be hard…I’ll have to experiment with making my own)
ready-made cake bars
boxed cake mix (I’ll bake from scratch only)
mini sultana (raisin) snack boxes (I’ll buy a bigger bag and perhaps jazz it up in a kind of trail-mix way)
those mini fruit bars (Aussies: Bellis School Bars)
…plus whatever else I’ve forgotten
Instead, I’m going to have to plan and bake ahead for the kids’ lunchboxes and our family’s general snacking. I’ll make my own cakes, biscuits (cookies) and crackers. From scratch. It’s not like I can’t turn out a mean Fudge Brownie, but I’m just not so crash-hot on all the pre-planning cooking from scratch will force me to do. I’m the mother who is throwing a packet cupcake mix into the oven at 11 o’clock at night because I wasn’t organized enough to have done it already!
I figure I’ll probably be in the kitchen a lot in the first few days building up some freezer stock and experimenting. Also, if you noticed in my Basic Daily Plan I have a large-ish window of opportunity in the afternoons to get some baking done. Perfect. Tiring….but perfect. I can’t say I’ll be 100% successful at this, but I’m gonna have fun tryin’!
What do you bake from scratch to satisfy your kids’ perpetually-empty stomachs?
0 comments:
Post a Comment