Tuesday dinner: Lasagne. Recipe here. 800 gm of schnitzel plus vegetables as noted in the recipe has made enough food for two nights. It will probably be served on toast for Thursday night's dinner. Total cost of meal for 10: about $16.

Wednesday breakfast: 20 Weetbix with milk & sugar or glucose.

Wednesday lunches: school children taking sandwiches and fresh fruit, others toast or sandwiches.

Wednesday dinner: Wednesday is sports day, so the kids eat at various times. The two schoolkids had a rice pack from Uncle Ben - as you see on the shopping list - with a bagel, followed by an apple. The wee chap had a small omelette followed by a banana, while the grown-ups had toasted sandwiches. Total cost of the meals - around $10.

Thursday breakfast: the usual 20 Weetbix.

Lunches: schoolkids take bagels & fruit, others have toast & sandwiches.

Thursday dinner: the leftover schnitzel & vegetables, on rice. Feeds five comfortably.

Friday: breakfast & lunch, as usual.

Dinner: thanks to school sports, Friday was a bit of a washout, and I used one of the New Way sausage roll packs. They aren't the healthiest food on the planet, but at 15% fat, are a lot better than many alternatives, plus over half the fat is polyunsaturated and has virtually no trans fats.

For $6-00, the pack divides into 16 sausage rolls, which, with a couple of slices of bread and some tomato sauce, make an easy, cheap dinner, and still better for you than most fast foods.

Saturday, breakfast stays with Weetbix, while lunch is a what you see is what you get - a mix of toast, sandwiches and fruit, with a yoghurt to finish for the kids.

Dinner: rump steak. Recipe here. Total cost of $16-00 for a delicious meal for five.

Sunday: Weetbix + toast or sandwiches for lunch, with fruit, of course.

Dinner: Savoury scones. Recipe here. These are tasty, easy, nutritious, and very cheap! Whopping cost at $6-15 for 5 meals and three lunches.

Still to go: sausages, noodles, scones, sausage rolls.

Monday Weetbix, then leftover scones for lunch! (Keep them in the fridge, they're just as delicious cold.)

Monday dinner was a cracker, and my own invention. I'm calling it Chicken a la Charman Pie avec Fromage! Recipe here. As noted in recipe, 16 bucks again for five meals + half as much again left over.

Average cost of dinner for the first seven days has been $10-57, feeding five people. How many KFC pieces or Whoppers does ten bucks get you? Feed you and your three kids? I think not!

Tuesday - Weetbix for breakfast, bagels and fruit for lunch.

Tuesday dinner was simply the chicken leftovers - 9 tenderloins - with a packet of six sausages. Note these are 95% fat-free sausages, so are expensive at $6 a packet, but with some bread & tomato sauce, makes a tasty dinner, made healthier by the chicken with it. Mon/Tues dinners totalled $24, including bread, so $12 a day, which is pretty good.

Wednesday - You guessed it! Weetbix for breakfast, with the last bagels + sandwiches & fruit for lunch.

Dinner is about to get thought about right now, and I'll get back to you on that!

We left today as "Get your own dinner", which means the kids head for packets and the adults head for toasted sandwiches. Total cost about $10 for the whole family.

Thursday - Weetbix, sandwiches & fruit for lunch.

Thursday dinner was an interesting one. Not wanting chicken again, I have banked a pack in the freezer and swapped for an equivalent value pack of schnitzel. I didn't feel like the schnitzel standby of beef olives, but we did have a few slices of Molenberg bread that were expiring, so I made something quite odd, but tasty & healthy. Recipe here. Cost $14-00.

Friday - Breakfast & lunch as usual. People may wonder whether kids are happy with sandwiches or bagels and fruit every day. Well, they take it from choice, and they have plenty of choice of what to have with it, so we're happy that they're happy. They also get a variety of fruit, as can be seen from the receipts, with a leaning towards apples & bananas. Lucky they like them, I guess!

Friday dinner was the usual Friday free-for-all, with the kids eating rice meals and adults toasted sandwiches or baked beans on toast. Cost about $8-00.

Saturday - standard breakfast & lunches.

Saturday dinner was the leftover schnitzel from Thursday, along with a packet of sausages. Nice home-made, oven-cooked chips to go with them plus a couple of slices of bread. Not a complete dinner in terms of nutrition, as there were no vegetables with it, but as can be seen from this diary, we all eat lots of vegetables and fruit, so it isn't necessary to have them every dinner time.

The sausages cost $6, and the other meat was already cooked, so another cheap dinner.

Sunday - breakfast & lunch.... same old, same old. I think we varied from toast to cruskits today, along with PB&J and plain old jam sandwiches. Plus fruit.

Sunday dinner is pizza. Total cost is $9-05 to feed all five of us, and note that being home-made, they are pretty damned healthy. As well as tasty!

Recipe is here.

Monday - breakfast & lunch again as usual.

Monday dinner - leftover pizza & a pack of sausage rolls. We had the second-smallest pizza left over, so that and sausage rolls made a nice, quick dinner at a cost of $6-00 for the sausage rolls.

Tuesday - I think I'll stop mentioning breakfast & lunch unless it's something out of the ordinary - we all like Weetbix for breakfast, and we all like sandwiches for lunch. As you've seen from the shopping lists, we buy fat-free ham, which does several lunches and contributes to a dinner a week.

Tuesday dinner was a packet of that delicious and cheap rump steak we bought yesterday. Recipe here.

Cost $15-50

After 15 days the average dinner cost has been $9-91, or $2-48 per person. Note I'm only dividing the amount by four - the little fella is only three, so it gives a fairer impression of what the cost per person is to leave him out.

See that? Less than two-fifty per person for dinner. What's that - one small McDonald's burger? One medium fries?

Wednesday dinner - the rest of the rump steak, with some vegetables and potatoes. Cost about $5-00 on top of the meat already noted for yesterday.

Thursday Dinner - a busy day means it was cook your own dinner day, and the kids made their packet dinners and the adults had toasted sandwiches. Cost: $8-00

Friday dinner. Swapping the other pack of rump for a 1 kg pack of chicken made a good meal with the last of the vegetables, making enough for two days again. Cost $18-00.

Saturday dinner was the balance of the chicken from yesterday plus some rice & pasta at a cost of about $2-00

Sunday dinner was sausages & omelette. Cost $7-00 for the sausages plus $3-00 for eggs, cheese & some ham slices in the omelette.

Monday - we're still munching through the Weetbix for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch, with fruit every day. The kids usually have fruit for afternoon tea as well.

Dinner was chicken drumsticks. One pack feeds all of us, with the kg costing $6-00 being 12 drumsticks. Not a huge amount of meat, but easily sufficient when vegetables - beans, carrots & cabbage - are added to rice.

Cost $9-00

Tuesday dinner was the lamb roast. Along with roast potatoes & fresh vegetables enough was left for another dinner. Cost for Tues was $9-50 for the roast & $4-00 for vegetables. There was even enough meat to enable some tasty lamb slices to be taken for school lunches Wednesday.

Wednesday dinner was fish cakes. Check here for recipe. $13-00 for five dinners.

Thursday dinner sees the cold lamb being served with Molenberg bread and salad - tomatoes, carrots, celery & homemade coleslaw. Cost of vegetables $5-00, with meat already paid for on Tuesday.

 

   

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