Your Cheapskates Club Newsletter 36:22
In This Newsletter
1. Cath's Corner
2. From the Tip Store - Great Meals and No Food Waste; Food Wasted = Less Fun; Fill Up With Vegetables
3. Share Your Tips
4. On the Menu - Pasta with Creamy Pumpkin Sauce
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge - Thinking Ahead to Party Season
6. The Weekly MOO Challenge - Sausage Rolls
7. Cheapskates Buzz
8. The Cheapskates Club Show
9. Ask A Question - Have a question? Ask it here
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,
Well hasn't this week flown by!
I've been spring cleaning, washing windows, gardening, updating the pantry inventory and generally just keeping busy.
One of the things that kept me busy has been our forum. We have a new topic: Ingredients Give You Options, because well, ingredients give you options, and I thought it would be good to have one place where we can share how we use the ingredients we have, whether it's in an old favourite recipe or to mimic a convenience, packet, or tin of something.
If we fill our pantries with ingredients, then we can really put all those recipe books to good use, instead of letting them catch dust on the shelf. And we'll be helping the grocery budget too - ingredients cost a lot less and go a lot further than a packet or tin.
Shelftember has been fun so far. Again, having an ingredients based pantry helps - lots of options and the possibilities are limited only by my imagination (or time - there never seems to be enough time!). It's not too late to join the fun, the link to the video is below.
Have a great week everyone.
Happy Cheapskating,
Cath
PS: Love our site? We love referrals! Send a note to your favourite newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, friends and relatives, and tell them about us!
2. From The Tip Store
Great Meals and No Food Waste
Our household consists of my husband, myself, our adult daughter and my sister. I bought a small magnetic whiteboard and drew up a table on the bottom half of the whiteboard with eight spaces. This represents seven nights of dinners and Saturday brunch. Everyone has their name allocated to two spaces; this is worked out based on everyone’s schedules. I cook our Saturday brunch every week and one dinner. The rest of the family cooks two nights a week. We work out the menu prior to grocery shopping. The top half of the white board is used to write down what leftovers are in the fridge and the date it must be eaten by. We have great meals and variety every day, and everyone only has to think about what to cook twice a week, meaning a little more leisure time. Our food waste has gone down to almost 0, resulting in saving money and less landfill.
Contributed by Eleanor
Food Wasted = Less FunApproximate $ Savings: $50.00 + a month
In our family of 3 adults I have been monitoring the amount of food that has been wasted over the past 2 months. I estimate according to the price and weight how much the waste has cost us, tally it up and let DH and Dad know how much we have wasted. This amount is then taken out of our allocated holiday money. It is amazing how by doing this it has made us all aware of portion sizes, eating leftovers and correctly storing food e.g.: chips or biscuits so they don't go stale. This has made us all work together because less money for holiday = less money for fun.
Contributed by Donna
Fill Up With VegetablesApproximate $ Savings: $1 per meal
The cost of meat is really going up a lot. Vegetables cost much less per kilo. If you can fill everyone up with more vegetables at each meal then you do not have to serve as much meat. This makes each meal a little cheaper. If you calculate how many meals you serve each month, you will notice the difference. The major supermarkets suggest five serves of vegetables each day and this really helps spread the money carefully. There is a bit more preparation involved than serving more meat, but you will be healthier and wealthier over the long term. Make at least one night each week totally meatless without telling anyone. Storing all those veggies can be a nightmare until I realised that my local big supermarket is already storing veggies and throwing out the spoilt ones. I just shop for veggies more frequently and only buy what we will use over the next three days. Sometimes frozen veggies are cheaper than fresh. This really does work.
Contributed by Louise
There are more than 12,000 great tips in the Tip Store
Add a Tip
3. Share Your Tips
The Cheapskate's Club website is thousands of pages of money saving hints, tips and ideas. There are over 12,000 tips to save you money, time and energy; 1,600 budget and family friendly recipes, hundreds of printable tip sheets and ebooks.
Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club.
Share your favourite hint or tip that saves money, time and energy and be in the running to win a one-year subscription to The Cheapskate Journal.
Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
Share Your Tip
4. On The Menu
Pasta with Creamy Pumpkin Sauce
You'll need to cook around 500g peeled pumpkin to make two cups of puree. Use a pumpkin with flavour and substance like a Queensland Blue or Kent, for a sweet, flavourful sauce that will have everyone lining up for seconds.
Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp butter
2 cups pumpkin purée
2 cups chicken stock*
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp chilli powder
Pinch cayenne pepper
Freshly cracked black pepper
4 tbsp cream
500g pasta
Method:
Cook pasta until al dente. Drain.
While the pasta is cooking, prepare the sauce. Crush two cloves of garlic and add them to a large frying pan with the butter. Sauté over medium-low heat for 1-2 minutes, or just until the garlic is soft and fragrant.
Add the pumpkin purée and chicken broth to the frying pan and stir to combine. Add the nutmeg, chilli powder, cayenne pepper, and some freshly cracked black pepper. Stir in the spices and let the sauce simmer over medium-low heat while the pasta cooks (about 10 minutes), stirring occasionally.
Once the pasta is finished cooking and is draining in a colander, add the cream to the frying pan and stir it into the pumpkin sauce. Taste the sauce and add salt if needed (this will depend on the type of stock you use). Finally, stir the drained pasta in to the sauce and serve.
*To make the dish vegetarian, use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. Homemade chicken stock is virtually free, and will bring the cost down to around $2.70 for four serves.
Next week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Chicken
Monday: Curried Sausages & Rice
Tuesday: Pumpkin Lasagne
Wednesday: Fish Cakes & Salad
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Cream Cheese Patties
Saturday: Sausage Rolls
There are over 1,800 budget and family friendly recipes in the Cheapskates Club Recipe File, all contributed by your fellow Cheapskates, so you know they're good.
Add A Recipe
Recipe File Index
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge
Thinking Ahead to Party Season
I know it's still a few months off, but this is the time of year I start thinking about Christmas, New Year, summer holidays, Australia Day, our Anniversary, a couple of family birthdays - in the space of eight weeks we have all those things plus the usual end of year/Christmas parties and barbecues, summer get-togethers, camping and so on.
We eat at all these things, and because they are all special occasions, we tend to eat just a bit more extravagantly than we normally would.
More chips and corn chips, dips, cheese and fruit platters, cakes, biscuits, desserts, salads and of course drinks.
Lots of those things aren't on my regular shopping list, so they need to be added, and paid for. They need to fit in our regular grocery budget, and that's why I start looking for sales, especially half-price, and buying the shelf stable and long life items now.
This month there will be lots of soft drinks, chips, corn chips, dips, snack type foods on sale because it's September and that's Grand Final month for AFL; a week later it's the NRL Grand Final.
As soon as they're over, the early Christmas/New Year goodies should start appearing.
So now is a good time to start shopping. Make your list, and check the flyers for sale prices. When you buy something, be sure to put it away so it doesn't get used before you intend, and cross it off your list.
This week I added two jars of chocolate peanuts to the Christmas box, $5 each on half-price at Coles. My Christmas treat shopping is off to a very delicious start!
The $300 a Month Food Challenge Forum
The Post that Started it All
6. The Weekly MOO Challenge
Sausage Rolls
These are an Australian staple. We love sausage rolls for lunch, they're a staple for birthday parties, we take them on picnics and camping with us, the kids used to take them to school for lunch.
But have you seen the price? Even the supermarket frozen sausage rolls are rather expensive, and not all that nice either. But a sausage roll from a good bakery can set you back $3.60!
So let's MOO them! They are really easy to MOO, quick to put together and they can be eaten hot, cold or frozen for later.
Here's my original recipe:
Ingredients:
500g sausage mince 6.00
2 medium onions, grated 1.00
2 bread rolls or 4 slices bread, crumbed .80
1 egg .35
1 tbsp mixed herbs .10
3 sheets puff pastry 1.90
1 egg extra, for egg wash .35
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Line two baking sheets with baking paper. Combine all the ingredients until mixture is smooth. Use your hands, it's easier. Cut the pastry sheets in half. Divide the mixture into six and drop onto the pastry sheets. Use your hands to form the sausage. Roll the pastry over the meat. Place seam side down on the baking sheets, three to a sheet. You need to leave lots of room between each sausage roll to allow the pastry to cook properly and evenly. Cut each sausage roll into four, not quite all the way through. Brush with the egg wash. Bake 30 minutes, turning regularly so the pastry cooks evenly. Remove from the oven and place on cooling racks immediately. Makes 24 sausage rolls.
These days with the price of sausage mince, I add one or two cups of mashed potato to the mix. If there are zucchini in the fridge to be used up, they are grated and added too. These things bulk the mixture out to almost double.
Costings:
Twenty-four lunch size sausage rolls from the bakery costs around $86.40 ($3.60 each from our local bakery).
Original recipe: $10.50, 43 cents each (makes 24 party size), 86 cents each (makes 12 lunch size)
With potato: $11.80, 24 cents each (makes 48 party size), 48 cents each (24 lunch size).
It just makes sense to MOO sausage rolls!
Get in on the fun and discussions here.
7. Cheapskates Buzz
From The Article Archive
What You Should Have in a Cleaning Stockpile
Will I Want That When I'm Retired?
How to Decide How Much to Stockpile
This Week's Hot Forum Topics
Ingredients Give You Options
Meal Planning 101
Going Lower and Living our Best Lives
8. The Cheapskates Club Show
Join us live on YouTube every Tuesday and see how we are living debt free, cashed up and laughing - and find out how you can too!
Latest Shows
1. Cath's Corner
2. From the Tip Store - Great Meals and No Food Waste; Food Wasted = Less Fun; Fill Up With Vegetables
3. Share Your Tips
4. On the Menu - Pasta with Creamy Pumpkin Sauce
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge - Thinking Ahead to Party Season
6. The Weekly MOO Challenge - Sausage Rolls
7. Cheapskates Buzz
8. The Cheapskates Club Show
9. Ask A Question - Have a question? Ask it here
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,
Well hasn't this week flown by!
I've been spring cleaning, washing windows, gardening, updating the pantry inventory and generally just keeping busy.
One of the things that kept me busy has been our forum. We have a new topic: Ingredients Give You Options, because well, ingredients give you options, and I thought it would be good to have one place where we can share how we use the ingredients we have, whether it's in an old favourite recipe or to mimic a convenience, packet, or tin of something.
If we fill our pantries with ingredients, then we can really put all those recipe books to good use, instead of letting them catch dust on the shelf. And we'll be helping the grocery budget too - ingredients cost a lot less and go a lot further than a packet or tin.
Shelftember has been fun so far. Again, having an ingredients based pantry helps - lots of options and the possibilities are limited only by my imagination (or time - there never seems to be enough time!). It's not too late to join the fun, the link to the video is below.
Have a great week everyone.
Happy Cheapskating,
Cath
PS: Love our site? We love referrals! Send a note to your favourite newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, friends and relatives, and tell them about us!
2. From The Tip Store
Great Meals and No Food Waste
Our household consists of my husband, myself, our adult daughter and my sister. I bought a small magnetic whiteboard and drew up a table on the bottom half of the whiteboard with eight spaces. This represents seven nights of dinners and Saturday brunch. Everyone has their name allocated to two spaces; this is worked out based on everyone’s schedules. I cook our Saturday brunch every week and one dinner. The rest of the family cooks two nights a week. We work out the menu prior to grocery shopping. The top half of the white board is used to write down what leftovers are in the fridge and the date it must be eaten by. We have great meals and variety every day, and everyone only has to think about what to cook twice a week, meaning a little more leisure time. Our food waste has gone down to almost 0, resulting in saving money and less landfill.
Contributed by Eleanor
Food Wasted = Less FunApproximate $ Savings: $50.00 + a month
In our family of 3 adults I have been monitoring the amount of food that has been wasted over the past 2 months. I estimate according to the price and weight how much the waste has cost us, tally it up and let DH and Dad know how much we have wasted. This amount is then taken out of our allocated holiday money. It is amazing how by doing this it has made us all aware of portion sizes, eating leftovers and correctly storing food e.g.: chips or biscuits so they don't go stale. This has made us all work together because less money for holiday = less money for fun.
Contributed by Donna
Fill Up With VegetablesApproximate $ Savings: $1 per meal
The cost of meat is really going up a lot. Vegetables cost much less per kilo. If you can fill everyone up with more vegetables at each meal then you do not have to serve as much meat. This makes each meal a little cheaper. If you calculate how many meals you serve each month, you will notice the difference. The major supermarkets suggest five serves of vegetables each day and this really helps spread the money carefully. There is a bit more preparation involved than serving more meat, but you will be healthier and wealthier over the long term. Make at least one night each week totally meatless without telling anyone. Storing all those veggies can be a nightmare until I realised that my local big supermarket is already storing veggies and throwing out the spoilt ones. I just shop for veggies more frequently and only buy what we will use over the next three days. Sometimes frozen veggies are cheaper than fresh. This really does work.
Contributed by Louise
There are more than 12,000 great tips in the Tip Store
Add a Tip
3. Share Your Tips
The Cheapskate's Club website is thousands of pages of money saving hints, tips and ideas. There are over 12,000 tips to save you money, time and energy; 1,600 budget and family friendly recipes, hundreds of printable tip sheets and ebooks.
Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club.
Share your favourite hint or tip that saves money, time and energy and be in the running to win a one-year subscription to The Cheapskate Journal.
Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
Share Your Tip
4. On The Menu
Pasta with Creamy Pumpkin Sauce
You'll need to cook around 500g peeled pumpkin to make two cups of puree. Use a pumpkin with flavour and substance like a Queensland Blue or Kent, for a sweet, flavourful sauce that will have everyone lining up for seconds.
Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp butter
2 cups pumpkin purée
2 cups chicken stock*
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp chilli powder
Pinch cayenne pepper
Freshly cracked black pepper
4 tbsp cream
500g pasta
Method:
Cook pasta until al dente. Drain.
While the pasta is cooking, prepare the sauce. Crush two cloves of garlic and add them to a large frying pan with the butter. Sauté over medium-low heat for 1-2 minutes, or just until the garlic is soft and fragrant.
Add the pumpkin purée and chicken broth to the frying pan and stir to combine. Add the nutmeg, chilli powder, cayenne pepper, and some freshly cracked black pepper. Stir in the spices and let the sauce simmer over medium-low heat while the pasta cooks (about 10 minutes), stirring occasionally.
Once the pasta is finished cooking and is draining in a colander, add the cream to the frying pan and stir it into the pumpkin sauce. Taste the sauce and add salt if needed (this will depend on the type of stock you use). Finally, stir the drained pasta in to the sauce and serve.
*To make the dish vegetarian, use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. Homemade chicken stock is virtually free, and will bring the cost down to around $2.70 for four serves.
Next week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Chicken
Monday: Curried Sausages & Rice
Tuesday: Pumpkin Lasagne
Wednesday: Fish Cakes & Salad
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Cream Cheese Patties
Saturday: Sausage Rolls
There are over 1,800 budget and family friendly recipes in the Cheapskates Club Recipe File, all contributed by your fellow Cheapskates, so you know they're good.
Add A Recipe
Recipe File Index
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge
Thinking Ahead to Party Season
I know it's still a few months off, but this is the time of year I start thinking about Christmas, New Year, summer holidays, Australia Day, our Anniversary, a couple of family birthdays - in the space of eight weeks we have all those things plus the usual end of year/Christmas parties and barbecues, summer get-togethers, camping and so on.
We eat at all these things, and because they are all special occasions, we tend to eat just a bit more extravagantly than we normally would.
More chips and corn chips, dips, cheese and fruit platters, cakes, biscuits, desserts, salads and of course drinks.
Lots of those things aren't on my regular shopping list, so they need to be added, and paid for. They need to fit in our regular grocery budget, and that's why I start looking for sales, especially half-price, and buying the shelf stable and long life items now.
This month there will be lots of soft drinks, chips, corn chips, dips, snack type foods on sale because it's September and that's Grand Final month for AFL; a week later it's the NRL Grand Final.
As soon as they're over, the early Christmas/New Year goodies should start appearing.
So now is a good time to start shopping. Make your list, and check the flyers for sale prices. When you buy something, be sure to put it away so it doesn't get used before you intend, and cross it off your list.
This week I added two jars of chocolate peanuts to the Christmas box, $5 each on half-price at Coles. My Christmas treat shopping is off to a very delicious start!
The $300 a Month Food Challenge Forum
The Post that Started it All
6. The Weekly MOO Challenge
Sausage Rolls
These are an Australian staple. We love sausage rolls for lunch, they're a staple for birthday parties, we take them on picnics and camping with us, the kids used to take them to school for lunch.
But have you seen the price? Even the supermarket frozen sausage rolls are rather expensive, and not all that nice either. But a sausage roll from a good bakery can set you back $3.60!
So let's MOO them! They are really easy to MOO, quick to put together and they can be eaten hot, cold or frozen for later.
Here's my original recipe:
Ingredients:
500g sausage mince 6.00
2 medium onions, grated 1.00
2 bread rolls or 4 slices bread, crumbed .80
1 egg .35
1 tbsp mixed herbs .10
3 sheets puff pastry 1.90
1 egg extra, for egg wash .35
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Line two baking sheets with baking paper. Combine all the ingredients until mixture is smooth. Use your hands, it's easier. Cut the pastry sheets in half. Divide the mixture into six and drop onto the pastry sheets. Use your hands to form the sausage. Roll the pastry over the meat. Place seam side down on the baking sheets, three to a sheet. You need to leave lots of room between each sausage roll to allow the pastry to cook properly and evenly. Cut each sausage roll into four, not quite all the way through. Brush with the egg wash. Bake 30 minutes, turning regularly so the pastry cooks evenly. Remove from the oven and place on cooling racks immediately. Makes 24 sausage rolls.
These days with the price of sausage mince, I add one or two cups of mashed potato to the mix. If there are zucchini in the fridge to be used up, they are grated and added too. These things bulk the mixture out to almost double.
Costings:
Twenty-four lunch size sausage rolls from the bakery costs around $86.40 ($3.60 each from our local bakery).
Original recipe: $10.50, 43 cents each (makes 24 party size), 86 cents each (makes 12 lunch size)
With potato: $11.80, 24 cents each (makes 48 party size), 48 cents each (24 lunch size).
It just makes sense to MOO sausage rolls!
Get in on the fun and discussions here.
7. Cheapskates Buzz
From The Article Archive
What You Should Have in a Cleaning Stockpile
Will I Want That When I'm Retired?
How to Decide How Much to Stockpile
This Week's Hot Forum Topics
Ingredients Give You Options
Meal Planning 101
Going Lower and Living our Best Lives
8. The Cheapskates Club Show
Join us live on YouTube every Tuesday and see how we are living debt free, cashed up and laughing - and find out how you can too!
Latest Shows
9. Ask A Question
We have lots of resources to help you as you live the Cheapskates way but if you didn't find the answer to your question in our extensive archives please just drop me a note with your question.
I read and answer all questions, either in an email to you, in my weekly newsletter, the monthly Journal or by creating blog posts and other resources to help you (and other Cheapskaters).
Ask Your Question
10. Join The Cheapskates Club
For just $25 you can join the Cheapskates Club and get exclusive access to the Cheapskate Journal, the monthly e-journal that shows you how to cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun for a full year.
That's unlimited 24/7 access to EVERYTHING in the Member's Centre!
Click here to join the Cheapskates Club today!
11. Frequently Asked Questions
How do I change my email address?
This one is easy. When you login to the Member's Centre just click on your name at the top of the page to go straight to your profile page where you can update your details, change your password and find your subscription details.
Not a Cheapskates Club member? Then please use the Changing Details form found here to update your email address.
How do I know when my membership should be renewed?
Memberships are active for one year from the date of joining. You will be sent a renewal reminder before your subscription is due to renew. You can also find your membership expiry date on your profile page.
When you login to the Member's Centre just click on your name to go straight to your profile page where you can will find your join date and your expiry date.
What will you do with my email address?
We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
How did I get on this list?
The only way you can get onto our newsletter mailing list is to subscribe yourself. You either signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Club Web site or are a Platinum Cheapskates Club member.
12. Contact Cheapskates
The Cheapskates Club -
Showing you how to live life
debt free, cashed up and laughing!
PO Box 5077 Studfield Vic 3152
Contact Cheapskates
www.cheapskatesclub.net
We have lots of resources to help you as you live the Cheapskates way but if you didn't find the answer to your question in our extensive archives please just drop me a note with your question.
I read and answer all questions, either in an email to you, in my weekly newsletter, the monthly Journal or by creating blog posts and other resources to help you (and other Cheapskaters).
Ask Your Question
10. Join The Cheapskates Club
For just $25 you can join the Cheapskates Club and get exclusive access to the Cheapskate Journal, the monthly e-journal that shows you how to cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun for a full year.
That's unlimited 24/7 access to EVERYTHING in the Member's Centre!
Click here to join the Cheapskates Club today!
11. Frequently Asked Questions
How do I change my email address?
This one is easy. When you login to the Member's Centre just click on your name at the top of the page to go straight to your profile page where you can update your details, change your password and find your subscription details.
Not a Cheapskates Club member? Then please use the Changing Details form found here to update your email address.
How do I know when my membership should be renewed?
Memberships are active for one year from the date of joining. You will be sent a renewal reminder before your subscription is due to renew. You can also find your membership expiry date on your profile page.
When you login to the Member's Centre just click on your name to go straight to your profile page where you can will find your join date and your expiry date.
What will you do with my email address?
We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
How did I get on this list?
The only way you can get onto our newsletter mailing list is to subscribe yourself. You either signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Club Web site or are a Platinum Cheapskates Club member.
12. Contact Cheapskates
The Cheapskates Club -
Showing you how to live life
debt free, cashed up and laughing!
PO Box 5077 Studfield Vic 3152
Contact Cheapskates
www.cheapskatesclub.net