A Totally Boring Post

I'm afraid this post is going to be totally boring, completely practical and absolutely unoriginal!

I need to get groceries this afternoon, so rather than doing a meal plan (which I do every week anyway) AND a blog post, I'm going to follow Eilleen's lead and just do an online meal plan!

Now due to our Biomedical Program, we have a cooked lunch and dinner everyday, so my meal plan tends to be a bit longer than most peoples are as I have to actually make a proper plan for lunches!

Saturday
Lunch - Lamb Cutlets & Pesto Quinoa
Dinner - Chicken Tenders (maybe battered??) & Vegies

Sunday
Lunch - Diced Chicken and Quinoa
Dinner - Lamb Steak & Vegies

Monday
Lunch - Chicken Sausages & Quinoa
Dinner - Chicken & Vegie Soup (cooked in the slow cooker)

Tuesday
Lunch - Lamb Steaks & Quinoa
Dinner - Roast Lamb

Wednesday
Lunch - leftover Roast Lamb & Quinoa
Dinner - remaining leftover RoastLamb & Vegies

Thursday
Lunch - Lamb Steaks & Quinoa
Dinner - Shperherds Pie

Friday
Lunch - Chicken Sausages & Quinoa
Dinner - Lamb Steaks & Vegies

Extra Things:
I always make 1kg of chicken sausages per week, as well as all our other snacks and meals.

So, what do I need to buy?

Meat as always! We have to eat extremely fresh meat and cannot store it for any longer than 3 weeks in the freezer, so I do just buy my meat fresh each week - it does mean that I can't really buy in bulk, and I don't utilise my large chest freezer as well as I'd like, but these are just things I have had to accept. And of course we can only eat lamb or chicken...

Vegies - I am due to get my fortnightly organic vegies delivered next week, so my order needs to be in by Saturday night.

Just a few grocery items - most we buy direct from our Biochemists' store, but the local supermarket does have some things we need.

So here's my grocery list:
MEAT
Lamb Cutlets
Chicken Tenders x 1.5kg
Chicken Breasts x 1kg
Lamb Steaks x 2kgs
Roast Lamb x 1 large (around 2.5kgs if possible)
Lamb to mince x 750g
OTHER SUPERMARKET
Tissues
Zip Lock Bags (I hate these, but this is what Kindy are asking lunches be provided in so I use 2/week)
Garlic Salt

ORGANICS DELIVERY
Macadamia Nuts
Sweet Potato
Swede or Turnip
Choko
Shallots
Carrots
Green Beans
Chinese Cabbage
Brussels Sprouts
Pumpkin

And I think that's about it. This weeks shop will be my more expensive of the fortnight as I am getting my vegies this week.

The Downside to Food

There's a downside you ask?!

For those of you new to my life, my eldest daughter, Miss E who will be 4 later this month, has many feeding aversions due to her undiagnosed allergies causing some fairly significant issues until earlier this year when we embarked upon our Biomedical Intervention Program. From June of last year until February this year, she was fed via a Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (PEG) tube - a feeding tube surgically inserted directly into the stomach. She was fed a very specific prescription only formula based entirely on amino acids.

As a result, the past 5 months have been quite a battle for us to get E to actually eat. She loves the food we can now offer her - especially seeing as it doesn't make her sick! She also can eat - although it did take quite a few weeks initially to encourage her to eat, and she is finally starting to overcome her aversions to certain textures - she is now eating soups and cakey type textures for the first time in her life....

HOWEVER, she needs to eat 6 times per day, and for the past few weeks, every single meal has been an enormous struggle.... She has been quite stressed over the fact that her younger sister spent some time in hospital with pneumonia, and she missed out on her mummy time, we are also selling our house, and I will be honest and say that my mood has not been so flash - between being hormonal and still trying to catch up on sleep from our stint in hospital a fortnight ago, I have been quite the grouch :(

So by the end of last night I was just in tears as a result of the daily stress I suffer from due to trying to get E to eat... Unfortunately she is at an age where she knows how important this is to me that she eats, and I suspect that she sees this as a way to get some extra mummy time :(

Over the weekend we are going to try and encourage E to spend some time with me doing fun things.... things that wont make either one of us cranky! Preferably out of the house too! We have been trying to spend more one on one time together but its quite difficult with Miss G still not having fully recovered from her hospital trip either...

So, for me, food has one massive downside and that is that I have lost an enormous amount of the pleasure I used to get from it due to constantly fighting over it.... I used to be an emotional eater and couldn't just eat to feed myself - I had to ENJOY what I ate... nowadays when I'm stressed I simply don't eat... Fortunately though 5 months of daily contact with our Biochemist and I now eat 6 times a day regardless!

I don't usually blog about my emotions or the personal stuff here, but I suspec that's going to change! Whilst we do have a great online support network for dealing with these issues, I do feel a little guilty about constantly boring the same people every single time with my dramas.... so at least an anonymous (or reasonably anonymous!) audience can stop reading my blog if they want!

On a lighter note, here is a pic of the chippees we made yesterday! And yes, that teatowel was completely coincidental... but I had to include it in the pic :D

Another week gone..

Gosh time is flying by at the moment...

Firstly I have to say I've done our budget analysis and whilst there were a few categories we were over budget on, they were the ones that a single purchase could easily cover the whole months' budget - for example, household stuff - Emma needed a doona so for us to buy one to suit our allergies it was a lot more than a single months household budget would ever be, but we don't need to buy it again thank goodness!

Emma was in desperate need of some long sleeved tops and a Wanted Ad didn't provide any, but a quick trip to our op shop did - so for $8 I was able to get 4 shirts and a pair of pants for next year as opposed to the fortune I would have spent had I gone to the shops for them - so I'm very happy with that! I just wish our op shops opened on the weekends so I could go shopping whenever the mood strikes me! I'm still on the hunt for a pre-loved Sunbeam or Kenwood mix master though... can't seem to find one of those here at all :(

The not so good part of our budget was of course groceries. Whilst I have accepted that due to our treatment program I will be spending more than I would like on groceries I do need to work out how to shop a little smarter to save as much as I can. Vegies are now being sourced at the local farmers markets which does save money and supports local growers as well as providing a nice little morning outing just for me so that is a huge step forward for us. I now just need to work out a better way of sourcing the meat that we need - its quite difficult to get the butchers here to tell me how old the meat is when they get it and unfortunately that is a major thing for us to consider.... Anyway, meat is my next project as far as groceries go :D

Our electricity usage has also decreased so I'm very excited about that! I am actually looking forward to getting our next bill - well, I'm not, but you know what I mean! LOL

This week we only used 35 kwh's of Offpeak and 102 kwh's of Peak electricity which is around 19.6/day - so a reduction of almost 3 kwh's per day! Very happy!!

My Vegie garden is officially a disaster zone, and we didn't get a chance to replant last weekend, so hopefully that will happen this weekend. We are actually starting to consider not putting ANY ornamental plants in our gardens as we renovate the house, and make the gardens purely productive... but I need to do a bit more research into that before I can go making too many plans.

The sale of our block of land settles next week so once that has all gone ahead we can start to get serious about planning our reno's.... that will be a very interesting time for us...

I'm also feeling a massive urge to get back to my readings about Buddhism - my life needs the peacefulness I gain from this so its imperative that I start again. I have actually requested an mp3 player for Mothers Day so I can download meditations and learn to meditate as I also believe that it will be such an important tool for me to learn. Of course DH and the girls may have other ideas LOL...

Oh and I have been sewing! Here is a pic of a dress I whipped up on Sunday afternoon for Emma - she helped me do most of it too :D As a bonus it also fits her little sister!



Here is a pic of the outfit I have made/embellished for my nephew for his First Birthday. I bought the jumper and added the pocket and made shorts to match. His birthday isn't until May so I can't wait to hear how it fits!




And finally, this isn't made my me, this is a Vintage tablecloth that has been turned into a beautiful little dress that I bought for Em - the poor girl has really got no clothes so each fortnight or so I'm slowly trying to increase her wardrobe - and this will fit for a long time I think.



And I think that is quite enough from me!

A realisation...

I simply am going to have to break some of my rules :( I'm not very happy about it but I also have to remind myself that first and foremost is my girls health...

What AM I rambling about you ask?! OK as you know we are now underway on our special Biomedical Intervention Program to help my beautiful girls and on Day 18 I can honestly say I have seen some massive improvements so it is absolutely worth it... BUT it is costing us more than our old lifestyle for groceries (we need to eat around 1kg of meat per day as well as making EVERYTHING from scratch from specific order in only ingredients) and also as part of the requirement so avoid contamination things relating to food/meals/eating etc need to be bought new.

So how am I going to work around this... Well for starters we are no longer allowed take away so any money spent there previously can now be diverted to our Grocery category, as can $90 per month that was in our Medical Budget as that is the amount we have reduced our pharmacy costs by already (and will continue to no longer need YAY!), as can all those little things that add up like a snack when out shopping and fuel spent going to our hospital and driving for over half an hour to find a car park when collecting feeding tube supplies etc... So financially I don't see us being any worse off (although today I will be doing my first analysis for an entire fortnight on the program).

BUT I cannot avoid having to purchsae some new things for the kitchen - for example I have had to replace a lot of things including our toaster, and we have also needed some new equipment that I didn't have (waffle cone maker) and things like this need to be new to avoid any cross-contamination. I have also purchased some new easter egg moulds because for the very first year ever my baby girls can have a special chocolate concotion for easter! And again, to avoid any contamination I have had to buy new.


I think I am going to add a clause in the pledge that allows purchases NEEDED (not wanted) due to the BIP to be brand new without necessarily meeting all our other criteria. What do you think? Is it a cop-out or am I really justified?

Unfortunatley though this past fortnight has been an expensive one... our new laptop arrived, and we had to replace our stove. With the stove I opted to purchase one from the only local supplier able to offer me local service/parts/assistance etc. They are locally owned/operated and stock an amazing range of spare parts in store and have qualified staff to do the repairs. It wasn't the cheapest stove we could have bought, but it was the one from the supplier that we felt was right for such a purchase. And I am now back in baking heaven as things are turning out due to a stove that works!

I'll be reporting back in the next few days regarding our fortnightly analysis, but I wanted to get all this down for now and get some feedback...

Theresa

SO how was our second weeks Budget vs Spending?!

Finally I have a few minutes to blog!

It was actually almost 10 days ago now that I did our second analysis, but here's the results:
Groceries overspent by $126... but that includes putting new batteries in every torch and getting some extra bread and meat for our non-event of a flood, so I'm ok with that.
Household - UNDER by $20 YAY
Dining Out/Takeaway - only spent $68 this fortnight which is a lot less than last fortnight so its a bit of progress.

In other areas of spending we are all within budget so I feel confident we are going to do OK once we really get into the swing of it all :D

As for our Budget for our Biomedical Intervention Program...

Well we set ourselves a Budget of $2000 to cover the replacement of the *contaminated* appliances/equipment, purchase of new needs, the program Fee and any other incidentals that may crop up. Food and anything else prescribed was to hopefully be met out of our grocery budget.

So far we have spent $306 on the replacing/purchasing of equipment and $1440 on the program fee and our first food order for a total of $1746 INCLUDING food! I'm really happy with that and am glad that includes food!

I think we will also find a massive financial benefit as we have today and tomorrow left of our *old* lives which includes takeaway, then we will be on a strict diet regime with NO takeaway included at all so even if our food does cost a little more than regular food, its still got to be less than adding in our current takeaway expenditure. Although saying that, this fortnight will include a fair bit as we are having our *last* of a few things for a long time - our last chinese, our last thai... etc!

Refashionista's - Now February was the start of my two month pledge and I haven't bought ANY clothing for any of us! I do have a pile of clothes that I have dug out that can be refashioned, but I just need to find the time! In my pile I have:

• A pair of old jeans to turn into a denim skirt
• A pair of old tailored pants with a stain on the leg to turn into shorts
• Another pair of pants to turn into shorts (why exactly do I have so many long pants in the middle of Central Qld?)
• A floaty skirt to tailor down so it doesn't blow up every time I set foot outside the door!

I've finished the last quarters BAS's for my bookkeeping clients so i'm hoping that my *work* nights can become sewing nights! I still have to finish a dress I cut out for Em ages ago too!

Here's a pic of the floaty skirt - I think I'm just going to unpick the side seams and trim out all the curve! What do you think - will that work?



I also need to get googling and find a tute on how to turn the jeans into a skirt (I know I've seen one SOMEWHERE!) so if you do happen across it let me know!

I think that's enough of me today!

Theresa

So I bought it...

ugghhh that is a phrase I used to say a LOT and I have used it again today and HATE it.

As mentioned in my previous post, we are about to start on this Biomedical Intervention Program for our girls, and it involves replacing a considerable amount of stuff around the house. We did up a bit of a budget to replace these things, and have been discussing water filtration as all cooking and drinking water needs to be filtered, as well as discussing lockable storage cabinets for our shed to lock things like the dog food etc in that does have ingredients that will be banned, but obviously we need to feed our dog, so Pete will be doing this.

Anyway, I went out this morning armed with my list and bought the things I needed to buy (about to compare budget to actuals very soon but I think I did ok), but whilst I was out, I found the water filters that you can attach to your tap for $60 down from $90 at Big W. So I bought it.... and I hate that I have just bought it because we haven't actually discussed exactly which method of filtration we are going to use, but (and here I go justifying it again), I felt I couldn't let that saving pass and if we do take a while to decide exactly and have to order something in etc, at least we can now use filtered water in the kitchen regardless.

I must admit though that it was super easy to install, so I have done it myself already and it is excellent! Our water has been extra chloriney lately (I suspect due to floodwaters!), and I just had my first glass in ages straight from the tap that I actually enjoyed - usually I have water from my filtered jug that lives in the fridge so the ants dont get in, but I am not a fan of cold water.

I will report back later in the week once I have completely finished picking up the few extra things we need for the program as to how the budget has gone.

Theresa