Stockpiling

We live about 35 km out of town and also I drive into town to work Mon-Fri, I don’t really like shopping. We make mealplans and we know what we’re going to eat but I just don’t like to have to buy all the stuff. So when my friend and I went to Bargara for our long weekend, I stopped in at Aldi’s on the way back to do a big stockpile shop. We don’t have an Aldi’s in Rockhampton just yet. One has opened in Gladstone (1 ½ hours away) but since I drove by the Aldi’s in Bundaberg anyway, I just stopped there and did a HUGE shop. I bought all dry products such as pasta, rice, cans, flour, sugar, oil, toilet paper, paper towels and so on. This is my trolley after the first shop – all dry articles. 

I went in a second time for all our cold products – frozen vegetables, cold products such as cheese and the likes. All up I spent less than $300 but I know this will last us for the rest of the year. 

Now I have stocked my pantry up and I keep an eye for the weekly catalogues of the supermarkets to see what they have on special. If they have something on special we like, I go and get it. Like the Bonne Maman jam. It’s really nice jam and it normally costs $5.50. Coles had it on special for $2.50 – that less than half price! So I bought 6 jams which easily will last us for the rest of the year. Last week, Mexican food was half price and so I bought some of that. From now on this is how I’m going to keep my pantry full and stocked up. Hopefully by the time I run out of sugar and flour, we will have our own Aldi here and I can re-stock from there.

Aldi prices are about 1/3 of the local supermarket giants, so it’s definitely worth while shopping there.

Obviously not dry foods, but fruit and veg are the most important part of the diet. I try to grow everything we use and what will grow here. Living in the so called dry tropics can be challenging and also I have successfully grown red cabbage, things like brussel sprouts, most cabbages and the likes will not grow here, it’s just too hot, even in winter. I try to grow most of my food from seed as it is cheaper but with some I haven’t had a great success, so I will have to experiment some more. I will show you what’s growing in my garden next week, for now I’d like to stick to the stockpiling. I was able to cheaply purchase an entire bag of apples for $1 and the oranges are leftovers of our monthly fruit and veg box. I will be using the apples for my daily porridge, feat some to the chooks and bird and use them for apple strudel and other yummy cake recipes. I’m not sure yet what to do with the oranges yet but probably a nice cake as well or orange and poppy seed muffins or maybe orange and almond cake/muffins since I actually haven’t got any poppy seeds.  Do you have any nice recipes for me?

These tomatoes were also really cheap - $2.49/kg instead of $7.90/kg (or$1.11 EACH!!!) and they’re ripe and yummy! I’m going to make some chutney out of them. I love chutney with some fresh ham or a quiche – hmmm. But so far I have been eating them raw with some fresh basil or on my bread spread with cream cheese.

Bread! I’ve been making bread for a while now and I finally have taken the next step to making sourdough bread. This bread is out of a book and took over 27 hours to prepare! And the best thing is that this bread looks exactly like the picture in the book!!! It tasted fantastic and even Mr S liked it! I’m very proud and I’m glad to announce this is the end of store bought bread!

So far, I discussed stockpiling of dry products as well as fruit and veg – so what’s next? That’s right – meat! We both love eating meat and so does Janus. Unfortunately, these days there’s a lot of additives in meat and you don’t always know if the animals were kept in good conditions. I don’t mind eating meat as long as I know the animal had a happy life and didn’t suffer. So I’ve been looking around where to get ‘good’ meat from and found it at Dawson Valley Free Range. As I said before I hate shopping – finding a park, walking around the aisles, queuing at the register is just not my idea of fun, so I try to avoid it as much as I can. Therefore we needed meat. This is how ½ cow and ½ pig looks like in boxes…

This is my little station - all the meat is packed in huge bags, I have to make the bags, pack it for the 2 of us, seal it, label it and then freeze it. I spent 8 hours doing that! I liked my little sink on the left, so I can wash my hands in between or clean my equipment. Mr S was responsible for labelling, freezing and exchanging the water. That chest freezer over there is now full to the brim with goodies!

Another good thing about buying local meat is that the animals don’t have to travel far for their final destination and that you get everything there is. The poor animal gave its life – the last thing I want is that parts of it are being discarded. I want to keep it the same way as our Grandmothers and their mothers did – make use of everything! I make liverwurst out of the liver. Janus absolutely loves to chew the hooves. I make dog food out of the heart and kidney. I make oxtail soup out of the tail. I will make lard out of all the pork fat. And I will make bone broth and stock out of the bones. And this time I even received the pig’s head as well as the trotters, so I will make brawn – for the very first time ever! Wish me luck!

Janus behaved really way and was lucky enough to get a few treats as well as this bone which he enjoyed eating. 

So now all I have to buy on a weekly basis is milk and cheese - everything else we have at home. What a nice feeling! It also means our weekly shopping bill has reduced from about $100-150 to about $30-50. THAT I'm the most pleased with!

Please leave some recipes in the comments if you like.