Our Changed Diet

Slashing our grocery bill to $100 a week has to be the best thing I have ever done. All I wanted to do was save some money, for a change. Now, six months later, I am a successful columnist with my own website – www.pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz – and I’ve saved over $25,000. I’ve been on TV several times and have developed my own brand – Make (as in make your own household cleaning products and cosmetics) – started a company (albeit named Pig Tits and Parsley Sauce) and engaged a franchisee, Lynn Putt, to cover Coastal Taranaki. I’m also a teacher, a public speaker and a bookseller. Amazing, isn’t it?

The truly amazing thing is that with a little bit of forethought and discipline, I now spend in one month on groceries what I used to spend in a week and my family is better off for it in many ways.

Here are a few food items I will never buy again:

Frozen chips: what madness sees us spending $3 plus on a few frozen, crinkle-cut potatoes when you can buy a 10kg bag of spuds for $6 or $7 and chop them up yourself?

Bolognese sauce: I was pondering how bad the cheap no-name pasta sauce could be when some kind gourmet pointed out that you can joosh up a can of whole tomatoes ($1.30) in the food processor by adding a clove of garlic, onion and a herb or three and voila, have really nice pasta sauce. Why didn’t I think of that one myself?

Drinks: fruit juice, wine, flavoured milk – all loaded with sugar, expensive and fattening. We don’t miss those drinks at all. It’s just cups of tea, water and milk at our place now. We all had withdrawal symptoms for about a month and had to train ourselves to remember to drink water so we didn’t dehydrate, but quickly got over it and now water is easily our drink of choice as we’ve kissed those sugar-laden, money- wasters goodbye.

Some other things we don’t get any more include biscuits, roll-ups, muesli bars, strings, tiny teddies, Milo, processed meat, chips, ice cream, pizzas, dips, fancy breads, cheeses and cake. I can’t see it doing us any harm.

Next week: What the kids ate.

* If you want to get in touch with Lyn, you can email her on pigtitsandparsleysauce@gmail.com