Boot camp Melbourne

 Recently, we challenged our reader panel to answer that very question. And we were delighted when tips, suggestions and budget secrets poured in by the hundreds! After careful consideration, we selected 10 families to slash their food bills for a week, then chose three of their stories to share with you.

These stories start over the page. But we couldn’t ignore the other fantastic suggestions you gave us – so we’ve also picked our favourite reader tips for you. You’ll find eight of them here, then look for the symbol below
throughout this issue.

$$ Budget Tips

The Abrahams Family Challenge: From $230 a week to $150

BEFORE

My usual shopping style would be called ‘carefree’ – I simply go into the supermarket, and buy what I like!

I usually do have some sort of idea of what I might cook in a week, but I’m often influenced by in-store specials – or I’m silly enough to take the kids with me, which usually results in a very full trolley and a heart attack at the register! I’m also used to buying pre-packed ‘extras’ for the kids’ lunchboxes – rice bubble bars, muesli bars, two-fruit tubs; that kind of thing.

AFTER

Wow, what a week! I expected meat, fruit and veg to be the biggest ‘budget munchers’, so I was shocked at just how much I’ve been paying to ensure we get our recommended dairy intake each day.
It was impossible to afford yoghurt without severely cutting back in other areas, so we went without – which we need to work on.

There’s normally a couple of sweet treats in the house too, but this week, the only thing I caved in on was a packet of marshmallows – I bought them because I thought the kids might go a bit crazy without any ‘treat’ foods. But incredibly, at the end of the week the marshmallows were still sealed. In fact, no one even complained of being hungry! I think this was because we were all eating more wholefoods and less processed rubbish than normal, so we were actually fuller than normal. We all felt healthier, too. 

Overall I’m happy with our result and don’t feel that we fell too far short of the mark where nutrition is concerned.
 

Kerry Abraham's Top Tips!

Know that shopping close to closing time doesn’t always work out. I had heard that shopping close to closing time could save you quite a bit on ‘marked-down’ items. However this really worked against me, as the cheaper bread I usually buy and meat specials I was after had both sold out! Some veg was also hard to buy at that time too, as there wasn’t much left and what was left wasn’t of the best quality. Though I did have a small win – I got one bag of rolls marked down.

Have a backup plan for your menu. With some of the items I had planned to buy sold out, I suddenly had to make changes to my menu plan without the benefit of being able to consult recipes or sit down and do a rough costing for them. This made it hard as I was unsure if I would have all the ingredients needed to make the new ‘replacement meals’. I will certainly make sure I have a separate list of ingredients for a replacement meal or two with me in future to save the stress.

Keep track with a calculator as you shop. This saves unpleasant surprises at the checkout – although it pays to use a calculator that doesn’t turn itself off, if not used for a certain period. Yes, I got caught on this one too! I ended up switching to the calculator function on my mobile phone, which avoided this happening a second time. 

Choose the most necessary items first. These things (such as meat, vegies and dairy) can often be the most expensive, so once you have them in your trolley you can see how much of your budget is left over for items you can do without, or items you can find a cheaper substitute for. 

Include one vegetarian meal every week, to reduce cost. I didn’t think this one would work too well with my meat-loving family, but it was a great success. It will now be a regular thing. Buy whole cuts of meat, and dice or mince them yourself. It’s cheaper than paying extra for the butcher to do it for you. Bulk up with extra vegies and pulses. This actually gained us an extra dinner and an extra lunch, so I got a night off cooking without doing what I normally do – getting take away!

SAVING: $80


Kerry’s tuna pasta bake

Serves 4
200g wholemeal macaroni
2 tablespoons reduced-fat table spread
2 tablespoons plain flour
1½ cups skim milk
1 cup extra light tasty cheese, grated
425g can tuna in springwater, drained
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Cook pasta as per packet instructions.
2. Melt table spread in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and stir until mixture bubbles. 
Gradually add skim milk and whisk until smooth. Cook for 3–4 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent lumps, until sauce thickens.
3. Remove from heat and add half of cheese. Combine tuna, pasta, parsley and sauce and spoon mixture into a 1.5L baking dish. Top with remaining cheese and bake for 25–30 minutes, until cheese is browned.

Serve with salad.












The Iavasile family challenge: From $330 a week to $150

BEFORE

I’ve always wanted to be able to sit down and work out a budget, and a menu, but I never seem to have the time. Usually, I go out and buy whatever – so I’d describe my shopping style as ‘all over the place’!

In our cupboard, there’s usually a lot of chips, snack foods and donuts. Normally, I buy a lot of frozen meals – sausage rolls, hot dogs, pies; lots of ready-to-eat bits and pieces. To help save money, I try to buy fish from the fish markets and chicken from the chicken shop (rather than the supermarket), and I try to shop only once every fortnight. But with teenage boys who are constantly hungry, that can be pretty difficult! We normally eat takeaway once a
week; sometimes twice a week. 

AFTER

I didn’t think I would be able to do this – but I’ve really surprised myself! I’m cooking with herbs now, we make omelettes instead of hot dogs, and we all feel healthier. I’ve also lost a kilo this week, and my son Kristopher has noticed that he’s got more energy. It used to be a nightmare to get him to go for a walk, but now he wants a dog so he can go walking more. You’ve even inspired me to tackle my next challenge – starting a vegie patch!
With Angelo and Matthew’s recent diagnoses, I have felt that eating more healthily isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.
Angelo is no longer working, either, so saving money has become much more important. This challenge couldn’t have come at a better time! I’ve learnt so much.

Laura Iavasile's Top Tips!

Have a ‘staples’ list. I produced a list with every item that I keep stocked in the house, which I broke it up into different categories. I now keep this list on my computer desktop, so when I go shopping I simply print it out, cross off everything I don’t need, and only buy what’s left on the page. 

Try to shop once every two weeks. I have done this by accident recently, simply because I haven’t had the time to go shopping – but I don’t spend as much!

Make your own breadcrumbs. They’re versatile and free! I simply kept all the ends of our bread loaves, placed them into a bowl in the pantry, covered the bowl with a tea towel and allowed the bread to dry out slowly. Once dried, I simply broke up the bread into small pieces and put it through the food processor. I began to do this primarily for health reasons – I wanted to eat multi-grain bread crumbs, and the only type available I could find at the shops was white. But it’s not only healthier, it saves you some money – and you know that what you’re eating is breadcrumbs, with nothing else added.

Grow your own herbs. Fresh herbs can be very expensive, so this definitely helped a lot! I began growing some in a small pot, and then added more to a small garden plot near the house. Dried herbs don’t have the same flavour, and with Ange’s taste buds changing a lot because of the chemotherapy, it’s important that I use fresh wherever possible. You can also freeze leftover herbs, so you’ll always have something fresh on hand. I now have fresh basil, parsley, oregano, chives, lemon thyme, common thyme, lemon grass, sage, bay tree and marjoram, right at my fingertips!

Make extra for dinner. Dinners that allow for lunches for the next day not only save time, they save money – and they guarantee you’re eating something healthy. For example, one night I roasted a chicken, and made a nice salad and chicken sandwiches with the leftovers, for the following day.

Use your freezer for good. I used to keep party pies and sausage rolls in the freezer for those emergencies when people come around, but now that I make things in bulk (see the tip above), I know I will always have something stored in the freezer, like a vegie soup, that will be ready in minutes.

Savings: $180

Roast Chicken with Potatoes

Serves 4
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ cup fresh herbs, finely
chopped (I like bay leaf,
rosemary, sage and
marjoram)
turmeric (optional)
1 x size 16 whole chicken
600g potatoes





1. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Pour oil into a small bowl and mix with garlic, herbs, and turmeric. Rub mixture all over surface of chicken and place into a large roasting dish. Set aside.
2. Cut potatoes into thick wedges. Place potatoes into roasting dish, together with chicken.
3. Roast chicken and potatoes for 1 hour and 10 minutes; basting every 30 minutes.

Remove from oven. Chicken is cooked when juices run clear when pricked with a skewer.

Jessica Merrett ’s Challenge: From $180 a week to $50

BEFORE

Normally, I’m someone who goes to the shops almost every day and buys useless bits and pieces that end up sitting in the pantry – things that aren’t for a specific meal, but look nice to eat! It’s for this reason that I usually end up buying too much fresh produce, and having to throw it away. I like to cook all my meals from scratch, too, which is why I get sucked into buying ‘specials’ on produce. I’ll see a big bag of potatoes and buy them, because it’s ‘cheaper’ than buying just one or two – and then end up throwing them out, because there’s only one of me to eat them. What a waste!

AFTER

I was pretty impressed with my week of meals. I didn’t have to sort through cupboards to find things, because I knew I had all the ingredients I needed. I was full the whole time and looked forward to my pending meals. 

I also was a little more adventurous than normal by trying some new recipes of my own; I sorted through the Healthy Food Guide’s I have safely stashed away to find some creative meals to eat. I even went so far as to buy $2 per kg chicken mince for my dogs, which I cooked with vegies and rice. Homemade pet food is much healthier and goes so much further, pricewise,
than the tinned variety! I had fun doing this, and learnt plenty along the way.

Best of all, I didn’t celebrate my week with take-away – I bought a nice steak to cook. 


Jessica Merrett's Top Tips!

Store your veggies the way they’re supposed to be stored. I hadn’t done that in the past, and it made a huge
difference to their fridge-life. 

Buy a whole chook at once – and roast it on Sunday night. It’s particularly cheap, especially when you consider the cost of a kilo of chicken breasts. Having roast chicken in the fridge helped me avoid takeaway on those days when I’m usually too busy to prepare lunch before work. 

Invest in a yoghurt maker. I did! You can make a whole litre of unsweetened, creamy yoghurt with one sachet of Easy-Yo yoghurt mix. Much cheaper than buying yoghurt yourself. Look at your pantry with fresh eyes. I had some chilli sauce in the pantry, which is something that normally takes forever to get through – but this week, I mixed it with cottage cheese and it made a nice change of scenery on corn thins.
(Actually, that’s another tip – you can do anything to cottage cheese and it continues to taste nice!).

Try jelly. I made up a sachet and had jelly for dessert. I had about one third of the sachet each time; dessert for 22c!

Freeze your bread. I mostly eat it toasted, and it keeps better for longer (particularly when it’s just me).

Try vegetarian meals. They’re cheap, yummy, and a good way to use up eggs and tofu. 

Choose a small range of your favourite vegies. Having a specific selection to work with each week, of all different colours, is better than getting too much of a few different types of produce, and then having to throw things out because you got sick of eating the same thing.

Prepare a meal plan, then a shopping list. It doesn’t take long, and this way, I ended up buying just what I needed, instead of half of the grocery shop! I’m also usually quite adventurous with putting meals together, which can mean that sometimes, my dinner is a ‘flop’. With a meal planner however, I am proud to say there were no flops in my $50 week!


SAVINGS: $130

Jessica’s Tofu patties

Serves 2
200g pumpkin, chopped,
skin removed
150g firm tofu
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 carrot, grated
2 teaspoons reduced-salt
soy sauce
pepper, to taste
½ cup bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Spray ovenproof dish with cooking oil. Set aside. Steam pumpkin until soft.
2. In a bowl, mash pumpkin together with tofu. Mix through breadcrumbs, egg, carrot, soy sauce and pepper. Roll into balls and cover with bread crumbs.

Place into dish and bake for 20 minutes. Serve with salad




Want more info? See our website for complete details of our budget winners’ shopping lists, at:
www.healthyfoodguide.com.au

Article Contributed by:
 

 
Healthy Food Guide
www.healthyfoodguide.com.au