One Hundred Dollars a Month

A big THANK YOU to everyone who sent in their photos for the $20/$20 Challenge in 2015. I hope by sharing those pantry pictures and organization stories, you were able to gain a little useful information. The challenge might be over, but I’d love to still see those pantries! If you’re willing to share, I’m willing to share, so keep ’em coming. If I end up using your submission, you score a $20 Amazon gift card! See details below.  ~Mavis

Hi Mavis

My name is Kerry and I’m from Perth in Western Australia, the world’s most isolated capital city! Our isolation means we need to be more creative with our grocery dollars than our cousins on the East Coast. Perth has just opened its first Aldi stores, Aldi has been “over East” for 16 years!

My family consists of myself, my husband and our menagerie of farm animals, currently comprising 1 domestic cat, 3 sheep (2 ewes of breeding age and one wether), 1 rooster (a Rhode Island Red cross) and 12 hens of various breeds. The hens are primarily Isa Browns, a small, hardy, friendly and excellent egg-producing hen. I have two New Hampshire hens, which were supposed to ultimately produce chickens for the freezer, but this hasn’t happened. We also have 2 beehives.

My home is a relocated mid-1920’s house with absolutely NO built-in storage. I have managed to get around this by creatively displaying some of my food in hanging dressers and utilising period furniture in other rooms. I also have two refrigerator/freezers, which accommodate bulk buys, food from the garden and orchard as well as the occasional lamb from the paddocks.

The hanging dresser in this photo houses re-purposed coffee and relish jars holding a variety of dried beans, herbs, spices and oddments that don’t “fit” in other places in my food storage. The jars on the top shelf originally belonged to my mother and date back to the late 1970’s! I made the “mob cap” covers and knitted the lace shelf edging, a work still in progress, as you can see. On the cupboard below I store my bread machine and sacks of bread mix. I make my own loaves, buns, scrolls and pizza bases. The kitchen scales were a wedding present to my parents in 1956 and they still work!

Our farm is 5 acres, situated about 38 miles east of Perth, nestled in the vast expanse of eucalyptus forest. We have a mixed orchard and I bottle several varieties of fruit each year, as well as dry some fruits. I also make jams, relishes, pasta sauce, chutney and pickle some vegetables. The buffet cupboard (below) holds bottled (canned) fruits, homemade jams, unopened baking supplies and purchased canned goods. I keep an inventory of what I have stored to assist me with meal planning. We try to eat something we have produced at every meal, or at least every day.

This is another of my storage cupboards, a restored 1934 food safe, with screen doors to keep insects out. As the contents are always on view, I endeavour to keep it as tidy as possible with most foods stored in Tupperware containers. This is my day-to-day food storage and contains items as varied as opened packets of baking supplies to breakfast cereal and cooking oils. The antique canisters atop the cupboard hold what they say! They date from about the same period as the house. To the left of the picture is my laundry room where you can just see one of the fridges, this is the fridge that holds all the bulk supplies (oats and rice), garden produce, as well as some beer for “himself”!).

Another antique sideboard in my dining room hides a food storage secret! This sideboard was given to me by the son of our late neighbours. It was a “thank you” for being good neighbours to his parents while he lived abroad. I shared eggs, garden produce and companionship. He told me that they thought we were like the neighbours they had had in times gone by! They were originally from Europe and migrated to Australia with the multitude of displaced persons after WWII. I loved to hear their stories of how they survived the war and their early years in Perth. This piece of furniture also dates from about the same period as the house, so fits perfectly.

It accommodates my tea/coffee/milk powder supplies, extra jars and unopened packs of dried beans, Mexican food “kits” and corn chips, and muesli (granola) bars, which are cheaper for me to buy than make. I also store dry yoghurt packs purchased on special, cooking sherry and port, catering packs of cling film and baking paper (tucked away in the back) and unopened packets of breakfast cereal.

My shopping habits vary with the sales: what I genuinely need, and with the constant task of restocking the supply cupboards with bargains (which must equate to 30-50% off regular price). As I live almost 38 kilometres (24 miles) return trip to the stores, I often will either make do with what I have or re-arrange my meal plan to use something I do have.

My food bill has consistently reduced over the last 7 years by a combination of thoughtful planning, careful shopping and making the best use of whatever the garden offers up. I think planning is the key to reduced food bills. I have a set maximum price limit for meat at $10 per kilogram (roughly $4.50 per pound), and for fruit and vegetables $4 per kilogram (roughly $1.80 per pound). This means we rarely eat produce out of season (a good thing) and eat the more nutritious foods (like carrots). These limits do not restrict me at all, rather they cause me to be more creative with what I can buy.

Our meals consist mainly of “basics”: pasta meals (like spaghetti bolognese), stir-fries, casseroles, curries, the occasional roast, and in the summertime, BBQs. I make many vegetarian meals as well. Our meals are always accompanied with either a salad or cooked vegetables. I use the excess honey our hives produce and excess eggs the hens lay to trade for other goods, such as nuts, or fruits or vegetables that I do not grow. Last year’s honey harvest was a bumper, 25kg.

I reserve the top shelf of our kitchen fridge for items that need to be eaten that week, whether they are leftovers or fresh made meals or ingredients for other meals, e.g. stock for soups. The remainder is the usual assortment of condiments, fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, nuts.

My freezer’s’ contents fluctuate with: sale items, lamb from the farm, frozen garden produce, and my weakness, ice-cream! My fridges reflect this sameness, to: produce purchased on sale which we don’t grow or don’t grow enough of (broccoli springs to mind), as well as the next day or two’s meals ready to be cooked or already cooked, daily supplies like milk and other dairy products, and the salad or vegetables from the garden which we will eat fresh that week.

Once a year I trade several kilos of honey for a 25 kilogram (roughly 50 lbs) sack of rolled oats. We eat porridge for about 8 months of the year only switching to bought, plain cereals during the hottest months. I also make granola from these oats adding in some of our nuts and dried fruits.

A recent investment in a vacuum sealer has meant not only a tidier freezer, but longer storage life for the items vacuum sealed. I love it and don’t know why I lived so long without one. My laundry freezer contains lamb from our paddock and pork from the supermarket. The kitchen freezer contains chicken and beef (mainly in the form of mince, or ground meat in your terminology!). This makes for not only tidier freezers but better overall organisation (you can never be too organised!).

I think it is a privilege to have this much food and as such, show my respect for this abundance by trying my best to not waste it.

Thank you for allowing me to share my abundance from across the other side of the world.
~Kerry

If you would like to have your garden, chicken coop or something you’ve made featured on One Hundred Dollars a Month, here’s what I’m looking for:

• Your Garden Pictures and Tips – I’d especially like to see your garden set ups, growing areas, and know if you are starting seeds indoors this year. If so,  show me some picture of how you are going about it.
• Your Pantry Pics – Submit at least 5 HIGH QUALITY pictures of your pantry/fridge/cabinets, as well as a short blurb {at the very least} about you and your food habits.
• Your Chicken and Chicken Related Stories – Coops, Chicks, Hen’s, Roosters, Eggs, you name it. If it clucks, send us some pictures to share with the world.
• Cool Arts & Crafts – Made from your very own hands with detailed {and well photographed} pictures and instructions.
• Your pictures and stories about your pets. The more pictures and details the better.
• Garage Sale, Thrift Store and Dumpster Diving pictures and the stories behind the treasures you found including how much you paid for them.

If I feature your pictures and the stories behind them on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I will send you a $20.00 gift card to the greatest store in the world: Amazon.com.

Go  HERE for the official rules.