James Lovelock on YouTube

The following is a discussion with James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis:



In the vid, Lovelock discusses climate change and its possible impacts on humanity, our ability to change and transform our planet, and his planned expedition into space as a 90 year old astronaut.

A thought-provoking interview, and well worth watching.

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Foolproof, budget-proof, meal plan

I want to share with you my foolproof, budget-proof meal plan.

I have two pre-school kids, a chaotic life that involved shepherding them from kindergarten to activities throughout the day, and a busy evening schedule that sees either my husband or me out of the house four nights per week for our singing committments.

What this means is that, increasingly, meals were turning rapidly into unhealthy shove-together fast food. We always seemed rushed, take-away was forming an increasingly large part of our staple diet, and our food budget was expanding - as were our waistlines! This scenario is pretty common in families like ours.

Then we hit on our solution.

We rotate our meals now, the same (or similar) each day of the week, and it works well. Sure, this sounds old-fashioned and uninteresting, but it works for us.

Shopping costs have been reduced significantly, we're eating better and healthier, I'm not bored by what we're eating, and amazingly it's not taking any more time.

In fact, because my trips to the supermarket are fewer, I'd say I'm spending less time overall on the hunting, gathering and feeding part of our lives!

All good.

Is it boring?

Not in the least.

If you try this method, don't be concerned about changing a day's food in a week or two - this is just a guide.

I change which soup I do every week, and I change my stir fry every couple of weeks. The key to this isn't eating exactly the same things each week - it's planning the week in advance and knowing what to cook in advance and how to cook it, so there's no wastage, and no headaches about what to cook at four in the afternoon when the kids are yelling at you! Instead, because you planned it all out, you know you have all the ingredients, you know how to cook the night's dinner, and everything is ready to rock!

Here's the outline:

DINNER MENUS
• MONDAY: Pasta with sauce, salad, fresh fruit for dessert.
  
  
• TUESDAY: Stir fry, rice, fresh fruit for dessert.
  
  
• WEDNESDAY: Falafels, salad, hard boiled eggs.
  
  
• THURSDAY: Soup, toast, tinned fruit and ice-cream.
  
  
• FRIDAY: Leftover soup, toast, fresh fruit for dessert.
  
  
• SATURDAY: Fried rice, barbecued tofu, cake for dessert.
  
  
• SUNDAY: Omelettes or tofu, leftover fried rice, fruit and ice-cream for dessert.
  

LUNCH MENUS
• MONDAY: Sandwiches, fresh fruit.
  
  
• TUESDAY: Leftover pasta (if any), baked potatoes, fresh fruit.
  
  
• WEDNESDAY: Leftover stir fry, leftover rice, fresh fruit.
  
  
• THURSDAY: Sandwiches, leftover falafels, Leftover hard boiled eggs, fresh fruit.
  
  
• FRIDAY: Leftover soup, toast, fresh fruit.
  
  
• SATURDAY: Sandwiches, Leftovers from the fridge (whatevers), cake, fresh fruit.
  
  
• SUNDAY: Leftover fried rice, cake, fresh fruit.
  

You can see that a lot of the lunches make use of leftovers from the night before. This makes sense in terms of avoiding wastage and saving money. It also makes sense to cut down on the workload, yet still provide a hot lunch for everyone, as we live in a cold climate and a hot lunch is nice :-)

Breakfasts tend to be simple - I like to have porridge for breakfast, the kids have cornflakes, and the MOTS has weet-bix or toast. I haven't included them in the above plan - to do so seemed silly, as we have the same thing every day except...on Saturday mornings we have PANCAKES!!!! I make gluten-free pancakes for the family, quick and easy to do. You can find the recipe here.

We have a rice cooker, which simplifies the mass production of rice in our family. All meals are also vegetarian and gluten and dairy-free, as my son is on a vegetarian, gluten- and dairy-free diet (tricky!), and we keep a vegetarian household.

Vegetarian diets are usually, although not always, cheaper than meat-based ones - but this does depend on how many specialty vegetarian foods you buy. Fake meats and suchlike, which we do not buy, are well-known for being quite expensive.

The biggest budget impacts on our food bills are the specialty gluten free items for my son, and rice milk, which is getting towards $3.50 a litre. A year ago it was $2.29. Food price increases are truly staggering. Most soy milks, which are a lot cheaper, contain barley which has gluten.

Eggs are also expensive - we're in a rental at the moment which doesn't allow us to have chickens, but chooks are at the top of the list the moment we find a house to buy! Fresh produce is also costly, so the less wastage the better. I hate throwing food out.

Cooking from scratch

With a couple of exceptions (falafels being one, gluten-free cakes for my son being the other) I cook everything from scratch. I generally don't like packet foods and premade sauces, and find them expensive and tasteless. I also find they don't save any time at all, because you still have to chop everything up and cook it - the real time spent in the kitchen! Thank you, but NO THANK YOU, Mr Heinz!

Packaged foods are an expensive way to eat, and a real budget killer. If you want to save money in the kitchen, simplify and get back to basic food. You won't regret it.

Adapting this system to suit yourself

Adapting this system to suit your own needs and tastes is easy. Find half a dozen easy meal options that are healthy, quick, economical and that you are happy with. Add a soup recipe - I can recommend my carrot soup recipe (it's delicious!). Soups are great to make in bulk because they're cheap, healthy, and you get a few meals out of them. They also freeze well.

I'll blog my stir fry recipe (sweet and sour) and my Chinese fried rice recipe as soon as I get around to it. For falafels I use Orgrans gluten-free falafel mix - I'm lazy! It works beautifully, and I just cook the little falafels in a non-stick pan rubbed lightly with olive oil - no deep frying required. So healthy and yum - the kids love them!

Then work out lunches for the week, and put together a shopping list for the week's recipes. Or use mine - I've provided a printable PDF of my foolproof meal planner and associated shopping list that you can download here.

Voila! Your days of not knowing what to cook each night are over! Your days of buying stuff you don't need at the supermarket, then seeing food go to waste are over too! Easy peasy!

The key to being healthy, eating well, and maintaining a food budget is all planning. This system works for me. I hope it will work for you - and save you time and money too!

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