Lemon Slice

I love pretty much  anything lemon flavoured including this lemon slice.  The trick to making a great lemon slice is to include lemon juice in the icing on top.  The more zing the better.  I've tasted a quite a few lemon slices that don't have the lemon flavour and I've been left wondering what slice it was.

This slice keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge and travels well too.


1/2 a tin of sweetened condensed milk.  I think the current size is 400grams

125 grams of melted butter

1 packet of Marie biscuits or similar sweet biscuit

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1 cup of shredded coconut

Grated zest of 1 medium lemon ( I like to add more )


Crush the biscuits with a rolling pin or in a food processor.
Add all other ingredients and mix well until everything is wet.
Place into an oblong slice tin and pat down with the palm of your hand.
Refrigerate for one hour

Lemon icing -

Approx. 1  1/4 cups of icing sugar
juice of 1/2 a lemon

Mix together until a thick icing is made.  Add a little extra lemon juice if needed.
Spread the icing over the slice working quickly to even and smooth it out
Add a little extra shredded coconut to the top of the icing and press slightly into the icing.
Return to the fridge to set.

To cut the slice,  take it out of the fridge for 1/2 hour before cutting.  It can be cut in the tin or taken out and cut. 
Store in containers with baking paper between each layer.

Making The Most Of Citrus Fruit.

When most people think of Winter they think of colds,  the flu and putting the heater on.  I love Winter for the cold weather,  comfort food and most importantly,  citrus fruit.  At this time of the year citrus fruit is in abundance and it's cheap. My girls love oranges as a Winter snack. They cut them up into eighths and eat every last drop of pulp.  Much better for you than store bought orange juice and cheaper per portion size.

I love to make 50 / 50 cordial for the family . It's made with 3 oranges and 3 lemons. So to have the cheap Winter fruit available for cordial in Summer, I zest and squeeze the oranges and lemons into a container and freeze. I also make a whole orange cake that uses one orange. I just blend the whole orange ( minus the pips ) in the food processor and freeze it in a container for all year round baking.

Lemons are coming into season too. With supermarkets selling them at 80 cents each, I'm very grateful that my lemon tree is in it's sixth season of bearing a good amount of fruit. To make the most of the "free" lemons, I zest them and freeze the zest for lemon slice, lemon and pistachio biscuits, lemon chicken and savoury chicken or salmon flan. Then I juice them and pour the juice into ice cube trays and freeze. The ice blocks are stored in an airtight container to be used on fish , pancakes, to make lemon butter, jam.  lemon slice etc, etc. This year I'm planning on slicing some lemons and freezing the slices to make lemon chicken.

It's great to have these items on hand in the freezer. It stops the need to run to the supermarket for one lemon. I'll bet it would be out of season and you'd be paying premium prices.

If you haven't thought about it before, growing a lemon tree is great. It looks good, the blossoms and fruit smell divine and a bowl of lemons on the kitchen bench is a little ray of sunshine in the middle of Winter. It can be grown in a pot too. Best of all, you'll get your money back from the cost of a tree in no time.

So if anyone offers you a bag of lemons, or your neighbour has a tree with too much fruit for them to use, you'll know what to do with it.

Lemon butter

Orange cake and muffins

Freezing the juice.

Lemon butter for presents

Getting ready to make 50 / 50 cordial.

Running Out Of Groceries Or Grocery Money

Running out of food can be a scary situation to be faced with. What to do ? What to do ? I guess the first question you need to ask yourself is " Have I really run out of food or do I have food but don't know what to cook ? " If you have run out of food just because you didn't buy enough,  then it's time for a new plan of attack. Writing a menu plan for the week might be a good place to start. Then write your shopping list from the menu plan. Don't forget to include breakfasts, lunches and snacks as well as the main meal.    Once you've mastered shopping for a week then you could try fortnightly or monthly shopping.

You might be in the situation where you haven't run out of food but feel like the food you do have isn't going to make great meals. This is the perfect time for experimentation. Grab your cookbooks or use the internet to try something different. There are websites where you can search for recipes with certain ingredients. This could be the making of a new family favourite recipe.

If you have run out of grocery money for whatever reason, you have a few options. Can you make meals out of the food you DO have ? Can you find some extra money from another area of your budget ? I'm not talking about hundreds of dollars. $20 or $30 could last a week or two with a carefully planned shopping list if you have basic ingredients on hand like herbs, spices and a few baking ingredients like flour and sugar

Once again a menu plan will help you through a tough time until money becomes available again. A packet of quick oats will give you a filling breakfast for a week. Two loaves of bread will be enough for lunches. Buying one piece of the cheapest fruit available per person could be a snack. In Winter apples, pears and citrus fruits are very cheap. In Summer it could be stone fruit or grapes.

Dinner doesn't have to be fancy if money is tight. Here are some cheap meal ideas -

* Boiled potato with steamed veggies, seasonings and a little grated cheese on top is very yummy and cheap.
* 300 grams of mince can be bulked out with rice, rolled oats and cheaper vegetables like beans, cabbage or carrots.
* Eggs, baked beans or spaghetti on toast
* Pasta with tomato sauce and cheese
* Pasta with a tin of tomatoes and grated vegetables
* Fried rice without any meat.
* Pancakes

Remember,  water is free ( or almost free ) so drink lots of it.  If you are after a hot drink,  then tea is cheaper than coffee.

Have you ever run out of grocery money or groceries ?  What did you do in this situation ?

Bulk Cooking

Bulk cooking is a great way to save time in the kitchen. For those of you who are new to this concept, it pretty much means exactly that. You cook multiple meals at the same time to store in the freezer. The benefits of bulk cooking are -

* It saves time in the kitchen at meal times.
* Saves on electricity / gas.
* Emergency meals on hand in the freezer
* Helps avoid the takeaway temptation.
* Meal preparation is simplified
* Older children can get tea ready for you if you are sick or faced with an emergency.
* Great for taking on holidays
* Unexpected visitors can be fed.
* Peace of mind
* Great for portion controlling the meat.
* Being prepared for sickness in the house
* Being ready for financial hardship.

The benefits I listed above really are wonderful.  Most importantly,  bulk cooking is about getting your house in order.  I cannot stress enough how important this is for you,  your family and your friends.  Here's a question for you to think about.  If an emergency came to your home,  would your family and friends have to feed you ?  Yes it's wonderful to have a meal offered to you,  but would you be relying on others to get you through a crisis or emergency ?

I've lost track of the amount of times I've been asked to provide meals for others.  I try to help when I can but often these requests come at a time when I'm away on holidays,  having a very busy week or I'm sick.  Also, to be honest my budget doesn't stretch to feed other families.  Then I feel a little guilty that I can't help. Then I worry that the person or family doesn't have food to eat.

We've had a few emergencies visit our family over the years.  Five years ago I was hospitalised for a kidney stone.  Thankfully my sister in law and her mother were able to take care of our girls at short notice.  Darren took food out of the freezer to bring into the hospital for him to eat while he sat at my bedside.  After I'd been home for a few days,  we remembered we had a visitor coming for lunch. This had been organised a week earlier.  Thankfully I had lots of soup and chocolate brownies in the freezer to serve.  The visitor didn't know I'd been in hospital a few days earlier.  She guessed something was up when I had to sit down while Darren and the girls organised lunch.

Both Darren and my Mum have been hospitalised right on Christmas a few years running.  During those times, I had to drop what I was doing to be with them.  Thankfully I had a menu plan and plenty of meals in the freezer to defrost and eat.  It was one less thing to worry about.

Most of the meals I bulk cook are made with beef mince or chicken.   I buy a couple of two kilo trays of mince at a time. I try to plan this when I have a couple of days off from work. I then weigh out the amount of raw meat I need for the multiple meals I plan to cook.  The other option is to cook a double amount of food when you are preparing dinner each night.

For spag bol I use 300g for the four of us. If I want to make four meals for us then I weigh out 300g x four meals = 1200g. I cook the mince in a large electric fry pan and add four tins of tomatoes, four serves of tomato paste and four times the amount of seasonings. Once cooled it is spooned into four containers and frozen.

I use 400g of mince to make pie meat. This is eventually made into a family sized pie that serves the four of us. If I want to make pie meat for four pies I weigh out 400g x four meals = 1600g. It is cooked, seasoned, thickened with gravy powder and corn flour. When cooled it is divided into four containers and frozen. When frozen I empty it out of the container and double wrap it, label and date it and pop it back in the freezer. When I want to make a pie, it's defrosted in the fridge overnight then spooned onto a pastry lined pie plate and topped with cubed potato. A pastry lid is placed on top then cooked in the oven.

I use 400g of mince to make a meatloaf. To make four meatloaves I weigh out 400g x four meals = 1600g. I need 3 tablespoons of uncooked rice x four meatloaves = 12 tablespoons. This is cooked and added to the raw mince with salt, pepper, onion, parsley, four eggs and large squirts of tomato sauce. Mix well and divide into four meatloaf / baking tins and cook at the same time in the oven. When cooled double wrap and place in the freezer.

I hope these recipe ideas give you inspiration to give bulk cooking a go. It only takes a few hours to have 15 - 20 family sized meals ready for the freezer.  It's a small sacrifice to make for your family's peace of mind in a crisis.

Chocolate brownies from the freezer

Single serves for the freezer

Hamburger patties in bulk

Trays of zucchini slice ready to portion and freeze

Soup for the soul and freezer.

Do you bulk cook for your family ?  How has bulk cooking helped you in a crisis ?

5 Ways To Reuse Bread Bags

Have you been known to throw out those bread bags and not given them much thought ?  I was guilty of doing this for many years. Then one day I had a light bulb moment.  Surely there must be a way to repurpose them to reduce my cling wrap and freezer bag use.  After all,  they are a perfectly good plastic bag.  Here are five ways to reuse your bread bags and save a little money -

*  Use them to line your bathroom bins.  If your kitchen bin is small enough use them there too.

*  Keep a few bags in your car glove box.  They make great rubbish bags and sick bags, 

*  Use a bread bag when scooping out the kitty litter.  Tie a knot in the top of the bag then deposit it in the bin.  By doing this you won't have a yucky smell leaking out.

*  When storing food in the freezer,  use a bread bag as a double layer against freezer burn.  I use cling wrap or a freezer bag to wrap the food then a bread bag as the outer layer.

*   Use instead of cling wrap to cover a bowl in the fridge.  If the bowl is small enough just slip it inside the bag and fold the excess plastic underneath.  If you need to cover a large bowl,  cut the bottom of the bag off.  Then cut the bag length ways to get a wider piece of plastic.  Cover your bowl and secure with a large rubber band.

Drying the bags out

Bin liners.

NOTE -  When you've finished eating the loaf of bread,  make sure you turn the bags inside out,  brush the crumbs off and dry for a couple of hours.  This will avoid mould growing in the bags

What's In My Freezer.

I guess the title of this post should read "What's In My Freezers " as I have three freezers.  No I don't collect freezers as a hobby but I do love having the space to freeze whatever I want.  I have a 660 litre side by side fridge / freezer   I think about 240 litres of it is freezer space.  I have a 120 litre freezer and a 180 litre freezer ( our latest addition to the freezer family ).

For ten years I fed my young family out of the 120 litre freezer and Darren's old fridge that had a small freezer compartment inside.  Space back then was at a premium and boy,  did I stack those freezers well.  Not one box of convenience food could fit in those freezers ( not that we could afford it back then ).    Bread,  rolls and icecubes went into the little freezer compartment in the fridge and mince, chicken  and a few meals went into the 120 litre freezer.

When we outgrew Darren's old fridge we upgraded to the 660 litre side by side.  About 2 1/2 years ago we were given another freezer but unfortunately it only lasted two years.  So a few months ago I bought the 180 litre freezer.

As you know we have a vegetable garden and fruit trees.  The freezers come in handy for storing excess  garden produce.  This saves us money as quite often we can eat our produce from the freezer when it's out of season and costs a fortune at the supermarket.


Here's a list of what we store in our freezers -                          LEGEND -

MEAT
                                                                                                  HM = homemade
Mince divided into 300 gram sizes
Lamb chops 4 per package                                                       C = convenience
Chicken fillets individually wrapped
Fish                                                                                           G = from our garden
Legs of Lamb bought in Spring on sale
Sausages 6 per package
Diced beef in 400gram snap lock bags
Roast beef cut in half to serve 4 people
Silverside cut in half to serve 4 people
Salmon patties 10 per package     HM
Fish fingers   C
Sliced ham
Hamburger patties     HM
Whole chickens
Chicken drumsticks 4 per package


SOUPS

Chicken stock     HM
Vegetable soup    HM
Pumpkin soup     HM
Chunky chicken and veg soup    HM
Chunky beef and veg soup    HM
Potato and leek soup     HM

MEALS

Spag bol sauce     HM
Lasagne portions    HM
Leftovers of casseroles in single serves     HM
Pie meat - ready to make a pie     HM
Meatloaves          HM

BAKING

Raspberry and white choc muffins     HM
Blueberry and white choc muffins      HM
Chocolate choc chip muffins              HM
Wholemeal bread with extra goodness      HM
Pita bread     C
Rolls      HM
Pumpkin scones        HM
Plain scones        HM
Chocolate brownies      HM
Cakes for church morning teas       HM
Biscuit dough - assorted varieties     HM
Saved bread crusts to be made into dried bread crumbs      HM
Raisin bread    C or HM
Pizza dough      HM
Hot cross buns      HM

VEGETABLES

Corn cobs     G
Beans           G
Corn kernels
Celery
Capsicum
Broccoli stalks diced     G
Broccoli       G
Cauliflower   G
Cooked and pureed pumpkin
Cooked tomatoes     G
Zucchini    G    

FRUIT

Lemon juice in ice cubes    G
Raspberries     G
Strawberries     G
Cooked apple
Oranges - blitzed
Blueberries
Bananas
Fruit icecream      HM

OTHER

English muffins    C
Crumpets     C
Sweetened condensed milk in 1/2 and whole can portions     HM
Tomato paste in ice cube size
Mini quiches / flans     HM
Sausage rolls      HM
Rice - cooked leftovers
Icecream    C
Yoghurt - to be used as a starter      HM
Butter
Vegetable stock ( given to me )     HM
Icypoles    C or HM
Pastry    C
Zucchini slice    HM


I think that the entire contents of our freezers.  Of course we don't have everything stocked at the same time,  but we do try to keep as much a possible.

In a few weeks I'll talk about the best way to store food in the freezer

This is the freezer part of my side by side fridge.  That's pita bread on the top shelf bought at a market.  Baking is on the next shelf with the lemon ice cubes and sweetened condensed milk. Crumpets are on the third shelf with cooked rice stored in the white container. Veggies are on the next shelf.  .

Then there is the bread shelf and below that are two slide out drawers with frozen fruit and biscuit dough

  

The 120 litre 23 year old freezer and our new 180 litre freezer.  They hold the meat, soups,   garden produce and freezer meals

                                                 Our 660 litre side by side fridge / freezer