Sensible food budgets and healthy eating have been replaced this week by the awesome local foods we are going to miss.
Nom nom nom.
Making the most of here
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Tag Archives: food
Meal planning
Weekly meal planning
Since we have had a baby and moved country, we have had to make many adjustments.
We no longer have two well paying jobs to support us, and now there is an extra (growing!) mouth to feed.
So, what do we do about it? We plan! We make lists! We are strict with ourselves.
I start menu planning by looking through our fridge and cupboards, listing anything that we need to stock up on. This is usually butter.
We then write a mini list of any meals we feel like eating during the week. Anything we need to buy for that meal is added to the shopping list.
I then decide on whether that meal is for lunch, dinner or both, based on whether baby can eat it too – as he only eats with us at lunchtime at the moment.
We don’t decide what each meal will be, but we plan 7 lunches and 7 dinners and make whatever we feel like that day.
This helps us to be really specific when it comes to shopping, to keep our spending as low as possible. We are trying to keep food at €40 per week but aren’t quite there yet.
How do you plan your meals? Do you make shopping lists too?
Any advice on how to keep our costs even lower?
Bake
xoxo
Progress with potential aquaponics site
It’s moved on quite a bit from this, but I’m starting to have concerns about the total amount of sunlight (particularly in winter). So I need to work on some proper maps.
One of the nice things about blogging is having this record of how things progress.
Favourite posts this week
The village
Two moving posts about motherhood that touched my heart this week. It has been a tough one.
This is something I really should be doing. These 5 months have gone by so quickly!
Hooray for les vacances! When you live in such a beautiful country why go anywhere else?
I miss our chickens. When we (eventually) get some more, I’ll be sure to make some curd too.
We have cherry tomatoes all over the garden – we shall make this soon.
I’m sorry, but I love Joy. I want these cookies.
Foods to make rather than buy – we already do some of these but there are many more we could try.
Shake sent me this. He is an awesome husband (and father).
Wishing you all a very happy weekend!
Bake
xoxo
Couiza Bio Festival
Festival entrance
Last weekend we visited the (14th!) annual Bio (Organic) festival in Couiza.
We weren’t looking for anything in particular, but were hopeful to see like-minded people and enjoy the surroundings with baby.
Alongside the produce market (fruits, vegetables, honey, bread, cheese, wine, herbs, seeds…) were craftspeople (selling clothes, handmade leather shoes, wicker baskets, tools, pottery, children’s toys), demonstrators, films, lectures and a whole area dedicated to green building/construction.
Bio market
The location was beautiful – stalls set alongside the river Aude – and the weather just perfect.
I especially enjoyed a stall where a lady had recycled children’s clothes into handbags – very creative! The place was full of families who would have probably been interested in the section for clothes swaps. Had we known this was here we would have brought the many clothes baby has now grown out of!
We didn’t stay for too long but I am already looking forward to the next festival when my french will hopefully be considerably better. One of the talks was about the role of the midwife in France – in the UK I was told to have a home birth next time so it would have been useful to listen to that lecture!
Market stalls
Bake
xoxo