A big shout out to ABC Radio NSW for being a Stand for Children's Health. Each week, I will be chatting to Patrick on air about food, family and children's health.
We've got loads of great topics we'll be covering. Most weeks, I will be on air live with Patrick on Tuesdays at 10.40am. However, some weeks I may be on a different day if I'm running school incursions.
Here is this week's recording.
Budget friendly food tips
Andrew:
Eating. Budget friendly food tips. I have a little segment each Tuesday called The Root Cause. We catch up with Belinda Smith and with the cost of living going through the roof, well has been going through the roof, I'm sure there's a lot of families that sit down and look at their budget and think, well, there's certain things you have to have in a household. Food is one of those.
Belinda, good morning to you.
Belinda:
Good morning, Andrew.
Andrew:
How are you handling this winter of 2024? I don't deal well with winter. I'm a much more of a summer kind of person. So the drop in temperature is being felt quite a lot.
Andrew:
But you know, you're always going to look for positives in life here. Always look for positives, Belinda. One positive about winter is the winter food.
Belinda:
Ah yes. Good slow cooked casseroles, they’re delicious warming for the soul.
Andrew:
I tell you what a bit of a go-to because I start work fairly early in the morning. I normally roll in about 5.30 this time a year. My go-to is a couple of crumpets, toaster, well cooked, butter, honey. How am I tracking?
Belinda:
I love a good crumpet and beautiful honey from our beekeepers is just divine.
Andrew:
Well anyway now look you want to tell us today about budget friendly food tips. As I mentioned in the introduction, the cost of living is spiralling out of control.
Belinda:
Yeah definitely, I mean it's certainly something we hear a lot from our parenting communities when we're visiting schools is just about the rising cost of living and so I thought we could have a bit of a chat today about some simple things and also I guess to perhaps consider when we’re looking at things how we can spread the cost of things.
I've got five tips that I'd like to share today.
So I'll kick start with one of them which we often think rising cost of living everything's increasing but it is still cheaper to actually cook at home and we can make our dollars stretch further at home. I've just been sharing with my different community some of the things that I've been doing at home in terms of stretching our meals. So I mean I think it might have been the last call that I actually had with Patrick. I spoke about what I did with a lamb shoulder and how I made that, roasted that and with vegetables and then the next day turned the leftovers into a pie. It basically spread across and made seven different meals.
Another idea was last night I actually made a big pot of Mi Goreng, you know, which had chicken that I had roasted, a heap of vegetables, some noodles and different sauces, all up the ingredients was about $30. Now that's four adults, serves for, I say adults because both of my kids are eating adult servings at the moment. So four mains, three lunches and there'll be breakfast with my son tomorrow, that's $3.75 per meal. So you know like that's a pretty reasonable cost per meal.
So and in doing that like really looking at our ingredients. So for instance, you could buy the packs of I think they're the two minute noodles by Maggi which are pretty staple for a lot of households and teams. But they work out to be a dollar. a brick of noodles whereas if you buy the long life noodles off the shelf you get four bricks for $1.50 so it's significantly cheaper and the biggest difference is that you're just actually missing that sachet that goes with adding flavour but we can create our own flavours from our ingredients in our pantry so that's one way.
Another way, I’ve made a big shepherd's pie, no sorry not a shepherd's pie, lasagna and that will and I throw in a can of lentils to help pad out that meal. So not being afraid to add things into your standard recipes to kind of push them out. So with that lasagna it'll be four mains, four lunches and adding the lentils in gives me leftover mince filling that I can then use for breakfast. So again, that's about $3 a meal. So it's just about different ways we can cook at home that can save us a meal. So in making your meal stretch further, you know, don't be afraid to add frozen vegetables or canned beans or lentils, adding in your slower burning carbohydrates like quinoa, barley, rice, pasta. All of these things will take a standard meal and stretch them across more. So that's a really good way of keeping your costs down cooking at home.
Andrew:
It probably brings back memories from me as a young kid growing up at this time of year and on a Sunday everything that was left over went into the pot and you used to say to my mother tea and she'd say stew which basically meant everything that was left.
Belinda:
Yes in fact Andrew, that's a good point. That was one of my, you know, one of my ideas is you have an eat now shelf in your fridge. So, you know, you get to the end of the week and you pull everything out and you pop it on a shelf that's dedicated that, okay, that's the stuff that we need to eat first. And you either turn it into meals like what used to happen in your household or, you know, quite often these foods can be like, you know, I'm thinking stewing of things like apples, turning your pumpkin into pumpkin soup, all of these kinds of things. So just making that conscious effort to pull it out and put it on a shelf to say, okay, I need to do something with this now otherwise I'm going to waste it. Because at this time where everything is going up we really don't want to be wasting food. We don't want to be throwing away that, those limp beans or whatever when we could throw them into the slow cooker. So putting things on the eat now shelf and making sure you do something with it is another tip.
Andrew:
Do you tend to farmers markets?
Belinda:
Yeah that's another great one. Shopping locally and in season is always cheaper than buying things that are out of season. You know, we are in a way we're blessed and we're cursed in our country because we can access produce all year round. And, you know, sometimes that produce has been brought in from overseas. Sometimes it's from other parts of Australia. And that is a good thing in a way, but it's also a bad thing in a way because it's teaching us to eat foods that aren't actually in season and their mother nature is so intelligent.
We are designed to eat with the season where we're at and that produce will always be cheaper and even better you can go one step further than just eating in season but it's like to shop at your local farmers market.
So in Australia we've got two great websites and I use these a lot when we travelled around Australia - there's the Seasonal Food Guide Australia website which allows you to select what region you're in to find out what's in season. So shopping to what's in season is one thing and then trying to find a farmer's market that's close by and there's so many gifts from shopping at a farmer's market like you're shopping locally and in season, you're helping the local farmers. Often the farmers markets are such a wonderful experience for you to take the kids to and educate them because the farmers are always more than happy to put out like little taste test amounts and kids love picking up the little taste test amounts and trying them out. They're quite often the farmers are really, really quite generous. They're really grateful for your support and they might pop an extra zucchini in with what you've bought you know like as a thank you and you know you don't obviously get that when you go to you know the supermarkets so you never get to the cashier and they say oh thank you for shopping here's another you know zucchini or a carrot to say thank you.
So there's so much wonderful things that you get from the farmers markets and if you're lucky in where you are some of the farmers markets even have like live entertainment that's there. So it's a bit of an outing for the family as well as a shopping experience. So definitely check that out and you can there's a website called Australia's Farmers Markets Association and you can click on their find a market and have a look at what farmers markets might be around where you are. That's another great idea.
Andrew:
We're talking to Belinda Smith. We're talking this morning about budget-friendly food tips. And I just want to ask, are you one of these people that sort of sits down maybe on a Sunday and plans the week ahead or do you just sort of maybe plan the Monday then roll through the rest?
Belinda:
No, I do. I wouldn't say I'm an extravagant planner but I do have like a little notebook that I sit down and I draw a line down the middle and I do dinner and then lunch and then I have every day of the week. I have a look at what I have in my pantry in my fridge already because obviously if I can keep costs down by using what I've already got is I then don't need to buy as much.
So I look at what I've got and then I always like on Thursdays I order my produce from the growers markets and that gets delivered on Friday. So on Saturday morning I look at what's coming in the growers markets box plus what I've got in my fridge and pantry and then map out my meals and basically the way we eat here is what we have for dinner tends to turn into our lunch boxes the next day, you know like throw things into a thermos. It saves a lot of stress in the morning because you already know what you're doing but it also helps you like really just you know stretch your meals. further as well.
So meal planning doesn't need to be complicated. I know that there are some weird and I shouldn't say weird, lots of extravagant ways to plan but it can be very, very simple. A little thing that I like to remind people about when we're making our meals is that if we have a protein source in there and that could either be a plant-based protein source like your lentils, your chickpeas, you know, tofu, you know, or a meat-based source. If we have a protein in our meal, then that's actually going to keep us fuller for longer. And they're also important if we've got children for muscle growth and development.
If we have a slow-burning kind of carbohydrate in there, you know, rice, oats, quinoa, these are a good source of energy. So you're combining your protein with that slow burning energy. If we add in a healthy fat like use a little bit of olive oil or some good quality butter, maybe an avocado or some oily kind of fish then you're going to increase satiety and it also will help with your brain function.
So combining your protein, your slow burning carb, your healthy fats and then of course adding in your vegetables. This is where we get the all-important fibre that our body needs to digest to help us, you know our body to function properly and the fibre combines with the protein to help you stay fuller for longer.
So if we include all of those things in your meal, that gives you an opportunity for that meal to give you longer lasting energy and stay fuller for longer.
There's a great, wonderful new app that's being created called Saveful, S-A-V-E-F-U-L, and that allows you to look at what you've got in your pantry, plug it into the app, and it will go off and find you recipes to say, okay, these are the ingredients that you've got, you can create this recipe. And we know from our data that we collect from parents of the schools that we work with, 83% of parents are looking for more ideas and recipes to help them with their fussy kids. That app is just, that could be a real life changer for people in terms of saving money to help them use what they've already got in the house.
Andrew:
Well some good tips there, Belinda Smith, before I let you go, what's on the go tonight? What are you throwing on the table tonight?
Belinda:
We are actually having the lasagna. Oh, okay. Tonight. So yes, lasagna steamed veggies on the side.
Andrew:
Beautiful. Always good to talk. Belinda Smith. Thank you.
Belinda:
Thank you, Andrew. Take care, everyone.