Making do

We head off on our big adventure in just a few days now and unfortunately the finances have hit a snag. Not too dramatic but enough to give me a few worries. As a result we are having a 'make do' week here. Now my friend Eilleen is the queen of the 'no spend week' and although I don't have the positive factor of time to plan and prepare I am finding it interesting and surprising. It's amazing what can be made from what's around the house.



Fruit is a big issue in our house - the kids either demolish the lot within a day or two of our shopping day or it gets to the end of the week and very little has been eaten. Last night I was wondering around the house at about 8pm having that niggling snack-need feeling when I had a bright idea. Using the apples that had been sitting in the fruit bowl for a week I stewed them up and then found a recipe for a crumble topping in one of my favourite books. No piccies - the result was rapidly disappearing and to be honest, it wasn't pretty. Ugly? Yep Tasty? Absolutely!

Ugly but yummy fruit crumble topping

1/2 cup flour

50gr soft butter

1/2 cup soft brown sugar

1tsp cinnamon

1 cup chopped hazelnuts

Mix dry ingredients. Rub butter into dry ingredients until it resembles bread crumbles. Top onto fruit and bake at 180 degrees until it's hot, bubbly & brown. Add ice cream, cream or both!

I also have a bag of frozen berries in the freezer so tonight I'm going to try a new recipe for the crumble and see how it goes - I'm liking this one because any unused crumble can be frozen. I think one of the reasons last nights crumble didn't go so well was because I had too much crumble mix over the top of the fruit.

Crumble for fruit topping

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

60gr chopped butter

2/3 cup flour

Rub butter into flour until it resembles pea-sized pieces

Add the other ingredients

Top fruit to a depth of 1cm

A few weeks ago we were lucky enough to be the recipients of a home grown pumpkin but given that neither of the kids are keen on soups and I really didn't have any other good ideas to make with it the said pumpkin has been sitting and waiting. Tonight we are having roasted pumpkin & creamy spaghetti. Not sure if the vision in my head will be what turns out on the plate but we'll see what happens. It's amazing to really sit down and evaluate the food situation and see exactly how much we waste or misuse. I am here to publicly declare that from yesterday until Sunday (departure day) I will not be spending a single cent on food (or anything else for that matter!) - we have enough in the freezer & pantry to make it through, more than half a tank of petrol in the car and a new found will for saving money!

As a side note blogger recently discovered a blog of mine that I started AGES ago - it's so funny to look back. It was almost like another life back then. Anyway, if you want to have a look it's here. Pumpkin smells delish so I'm off to create an either perfect or perky pasta! Wish me luck!