And yet another dinner for cheap

Pocket bread pizza. Mmmmmm. Ok so it's not the most nutritious, but sometimes when you have no money the most important thing is full tummies! It's probably more expensive than other budget meals we make, but because I usually have the main ingredients in my fridge I only have to come up with the $1.70 for pocket bread. So simple so yum, just pocket bread, tomato paste (or passata if I have no tomato paste) some herbs from the garden, sprinkle some cheese on top. And whatever else I can find. I almost always have olives in the fridge, or a stray mushroom or capsicum to slice up. Frozen spinach is yum too. Sometimes when I've run out of cheese I've drizzled a beaten egg over the top and that's surprisingly good!

More mmm, muffins this time!

The never ending lunch box dramas, blergh, if I never see another lunch box I'll be one happy lady. School is bad enough but even without it I try to pack a lunch box when we go out because the girls are guaranteed to be staaaarving and need food then and there, which gets expensive! These muffins are so cheap, so yum and with a few tweaks not terribly unhealthy.

Chocolate banana muffins

makes about 30 mini muffins

2 over ripe bananas

1 tablespoon of cocoa

1 cup of self raising flour

1/2 a cup of sugar

1 tablespoon of milk

1 tablespoon of butter

1 egg

pinch of salt

mash bananas, mix in the egg followed by the rest of the ingredients. Fill the mini muffin cups about 2/3 full, cook for about 10 - 15 minutes at about 180.

I make it a little healthier with all the usual tricks - substituting wholemeal for white flour, halving the sugar. They taste just as nice without the butter, and I've made it without the milk too (not for any good reason, just that I forgot!)

mmmmm, dinner

Still no camera cable joy! But have decided I will bravely blog on without photos.

I've been getting into living more frugally lately - being utterly despondently broke will do that to you! So I might share here what I'm doing, I pretty much need to make dinner for the family for under $5. That's $5 a meal, not $5 per head like those poxy budget meal ideas usually are. So tonight was fried rice, always a popular one here! It's amazing to think that until about 5 years ago I didn't like the taste of rice, other than creamed rice or rice pudding. I blame a childhood full of icky fried rice dishes, sorry mum, but I just hated them. Hope my children don't feel the same way, although Indigo does sometimes sigh "Fried rice AGAIN?" but she eats it all so it must be nice!

Here's the recipe, it's not hard at all:

Cook some rice. I failed miserably at this until I got a rice cooker, which I love love love, perfect rice every single time, and it was only $12 at Aldi and it's one of my fave kitchen appliances

Cool rice in the fridge. I skip this step if I'm in a hurry, but it does make for a nicer meal if you have time, the rice doesn't stick together like it does if you use warm rice

Mix together a couple of eggs and make a thin omlette. I usually go 2 eggs for the 5 of us

Take the omlette out of the pan and put in about a cup and a half of frozen mixed vegies. I like the Aldi one, it's $1.50 and the vegies are chunky and it has lots of broad beans which have to be one of my fave vegies.

When the vegies are defrosted add the rice and stir to combine.

Add your seasoning. I usually use soy sauce and kecap manis, tonight I didn't have either so I put in some garam massala powder and a little bit of passata, it was so yum!

Stir it all up, divide it into bowls and serve topped with the omlette

Dinner for 5, under $5!

Poor little blog

I still can't get photos off my camera onto the computer! And I just struggle to blog without photos! Booo. Things are still flowing along here at Treehugging Tots Central, children are growing and playing, I am still tiredly dragging myself behind them! I've been rearranging the house which is a long and messy process, and is maybe 3/4 of the way finished, I have to get a bit of cleaning mojo to keep plodding away with it! We've really really been growing out of this space, but since we aren't going anywhere we have to make it work! So the solution is that instead of us having the master bedroom, dd1 having her own room at the back of the house and dd2 & 3 sharing the middle room, we've jugged it so that the master bedroom is for all three of the girls to share (sniff, I lost my ensuite) the middle bedroom is the much needed study, with the treadmill, the tv and the computer, and when I find the perfect table MY SEWING SPACE!!!! Which makes losing my ensuite worth it, and the bed room at the back of the house is now ours. It's actually working very very well, the girls always ended up sharing beds anyway so it's just cut out some dead space. HOPEFULLY one day in the near future I'll have some photos to show you! Well I can dream can't I?