If DH comes home to find me flat out on the lounge in front a Simpsons rerun (or these days on the floor in front of the baby bouncer), then he knows there’s a good chance I’m not going to be cooking dinner any time soon. And $25 later, we usually end up with KFC.

I’m all about cooking from scratch. It’s cheaper and healthier than convenience food. But sometimes it pays to have a little bit of that convenience food in the cupboard or the freezer for days where you just don’t feel like cooking. Because a microwave meal, a frozen pie or a jar of simmer sauce is going to be a lot cheaper than takeaway and often healthier.

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I have a little bit of a history when it comes to chocolate. Apart from being a chocolate lover, that is!

When I was a kid, my mum had her own home-based business making handmade chocolates. Everything from the tiny hand-painted delicacies filled with sweetness, to a giant Easter bunny which had around a kilogram of chocolate in it. Sometimes I would help her individually wrap each one for sale and occasionally I would make my own chocolates for gifts.

Later, the first department I worked in at Grace Bros, quite a few years ago now, was the confectionary department (when there was one), which became the Easter egg department at this time of the year (and for at least two months before Easter). So I learnt a couple of things about chocolate.

Chocolate is high in antioxidants and therefore is pretty good for you. The problem is, that most of us don’t actually eat real chocolate. Many of the popular brands that we consume are cheaper than real chocolate because they substitute the cocoa butter for vegetable oil and then increase the amount of sugar to make it taste ok. Vegetable oil and sugar cause the very problems that the antioxidants are supposed to prevent.

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These are the weird little things I think about because I have way too much time on my hands.

If you want to cut down on the grocery bill, the first thing to do is to reduce how much food gets wasted. But what does this mean in practical terms? The other day I was thinking specifically about wasting bread.

I was eating the crust end of bread so it doesn’t get thrown out (DH tells me he leaves them specially for me), and I was thinking that throwing the thin crust out doesn’t at first seem like much waste. But then I did a little maths:

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With 24/7 supermarkets, and the ability to buy what you need to cook and eat every day, it’s not that common these days to keep a well stocked pantry. While it may seem restricting to cook with only what you have on hand, if you keep a well stocked pantry, the variety of meals possible are endless.

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Method

1. Line a pie dish or flan tin with pastry. Blind bake and cool.
2. Whisk eggs and sugar until well combined. Add cream and whisk to combine. Add lemon juice and zest. Whisk well to combine.
3. Pour into prepared pastry base. Bake for 35 – 40 minutes at 150°C.
4. Cool and serve

The bigger the tart tin, the thinner the filling, but it is a very rich and ‘tart’ tart so a little goes a long way. Using a store bought pastry case will mean that this dish will take less than 5 minutes to prepare.

Buying tomato paste in bulk jars is cheaper. The problem is that it goes mouldy really quickly. You could divvy it up into an ice container and freeze, or just freeze the jar, which is what I used to do, scraping out what I needed. This was a pain in the bum.

Now I just store the jar in the fridge upside down.

It’s surprising just how effective this is. Tomato paste now lasts for months and I have never had mouldy paste since.

Just make sure to tighten the lid well so there are no spills…and explain it to your family – they might think you’ve gone a bit balmy.

Army disposal stores have all sorts of useful, inexpensive things for camping, travel, outdoor living and picnics. But they also stock items for everyday use around the home.

We have quite a few things purchased from the disposals store.

A billy, a flask and tin cups for camping and travelling.

Tin plates that we use not only for camping but everyday in the kitchen (a tin plate with a lip makes a great pie dish and they are good for keeping food hot in the oven).

But my prize army disposals item is my cast iron frypan.

I bought this huge cast iron skillet at my local army disposal store for $8 about 6 years ago. My mum has been using cast iron pans for as long as I can remember, and I had to have one too. This is my favourite fry pan. It gets used a lot. And these things last a life time (or longer).

Cast iron is excellent for cooking in.

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