Festive wreaths...

Wreaths. My earliest memories of wreaths have to do with Christmas, grave yards, and war memorials. While we were in Manhattan, KS, I noticed that many houses had wreaths on their front doors, wreaths which would change seasonally. It was kinda nice, but most of them were plastic *sigh* And then we were heading into our first Solstice and Christmas in Manhattan, KS, and I couldn't resist the temptation of a $10 bunch of branches... And a tradition was spawned! 

So, when a neighbour was doing some pruning, and that pruning included a wattle tree and a few olive trees, I couldn't resist making some wreaths for the festive season, even though they would probably be a bit tired within a week. He didn't mind – the branches were destined for a hugel mound – I just delayed that journey for a few branches.

In lieu of florists wire, I cut some wool to (hopefully) usable lengths, Michael cut the wattle branches into individual segments, and we got stuck into it!

Michael wound some short wattle branches together without the wool, while I made a bigger wreath of wattle using a combination of winding branches together and anchoring it all in some places with the wool – which turned out to be a good length. I also made an olive wreath by twisting branches together (no wool required).

In the course of 30 minutes we made three wreaths while drinking tea and enjoying the afternoon. It was a really nice activity and I kinda wish we made them more often but I know that the green branches last longer if they are on the trees...

We tied the wreaths together using the wool, making a string of wreaths and hung them from the front door so they hung largest to smallest. They looked lovely at first but now they are past it and we probably need to take them down and make some fresh ones next week, in time for the Solstice and Christmas. What traditions do you have for this time of year? Which ones have been passed down over the years and which ones are evolving?

Cheap thrills: Gingernuts...

I really like gingernut biscuits. Really like. Buying them off the shelf is probably cheaper than making them, but I think they last longer if homemade. Unless half the batch is eaten on the first day, which may have happened the first time my Dad (Pop) made a batch of gingernuts in July this year... I also really like baking and if I make them myself I can add some cardamom, which just so happens to be one of my favourite spices. So if I make a batch, it's a win-win.

155 g butter (if using unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt)
1 cup plain white flour
1 cup plain wholemeal flour
1 cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon cardamom powder
2 heaped teaspoons ginger powder
1 teaspoon sodium bicarbonate (bicarb)
1 egg
1 teaspoon golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 160 ˚C and line baking trays with baking paper.

In a large bowl combine both flours, sugar, cardamom and ginger powders, and the sodium bicarbonate. Rub in the butter, working it in until the mix resembles fine crumbs.

Whisk the egg and golden syrup until well combined and add to the flour and butter mix. Work together using your hands to form a firm dough. Take tablespoonfuls of the dough, roll into balls and place them on the prepared baking trays about 5 cm apart.

Bake for 15 minutes or until light gold in colour (or a little longer, if you prefer a darker biscuit). Leave on the baking tray for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

Enjoy!

Cheap thrills: curry leaf powder...

Ok, so no photos of curry leaves, but! the recipe did require curry leaves. It also required fenugreek seeds, which we hardly use, so it was a good recipe to try.

So, the recipe: the recipe comes from Dakshin: Vegetarian cuisine from South India by Chandra Padmanabhan, a firm family-favourite cookbook, my uncle A introduced us to many years ago. It made the cut 2 years ago and it came to Manhattan, KS, and as Jimmy's taste buds are being ruined by the balance-but-bland food at daycare, I figured it was high time to re-introduce Indian spices to our diet. (Plus, with only 3 months to get through our spices, we have our work cut out for us.)

Now, the powder, once made is mixed with rice and a little ghee, and can be served with yoghurt and other things, but the idea is that it's a quick and easy meal that satisfies the taste buds. My Dad mentioned making a powder or two and I've been itching to try them, only we didn't have a food processor... And then my boss gave me some coffee from a work trip to Ethiopia and we needed a coffee grinder, so we picked up a spice/coffee grinder at a local op shop thrift shop. The powders were going to happen...

After looking through the recipes, I found one I could make without having to buy anything and without much planning. There were a few omissions, but so what? I also had to grind everything in batches because of how small our grinder is, but that's ok.

What you'll need for the "we don't have four of the listed ingredients" version:

• 30-35 dried curry leaves (or dry roasted)
• 2 teaspoons oil
• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds
• 1/2 tablespoon fenugreek seeds
• 1/2 tablespoon brown mustard seeds
• 1 tablespoon red lentils/split peas
• 1 tablespoon green lentils/split peas
• 1 tablespoon jaggery/brown sugar
• a marble-sized piece of seedless tamarind pulp 
• salt and pepper

Rinse the lentils, set aside. Heat the oil and add the cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds, and lentils and saute for a few minutes. If using cracked pepper, add it while the spices are sauteing. Once the spices are aromatic and before the cumin seeds get too coloured, move the mix to a food processor. Add the jaggery, tamarind pulp, curry leaves, and salt. Blend into a fine powder and enjoy with hot rice (and ghee or yoghurt).

It was pretty good.

The powder can be stored in an airtight container, but I'm not sure how long it can be left... We're storing ours in the fridge and I'm hoping we can get through it before the end of the week.

Jimmy did eat some, although he was reluctant at first. I found it satisfying, but lacking in balance, and have been mixing the powder with leftover rice as a snack at work. We'll be trying out another powder next weekend, as we have a big bag of rice to get through, not just the fenugreek seeds, before we leave/move.

Cheap thrills: extending my wardrobe...

Dressing for work as research assistant is a little different to pulling on clothes to wear to the playground. And my (unplanned) weight loss has brought about its own set of issues, namely most of my clothes are too big.

There are worse problems to have, but this one needed a creative (and super cheap) solution: little alterations.

As a new breastfeeding mother I bought a few tops from here, and they were great: they fitted when most of my old tops didn't, they provided easy access for breastfeeding, and they made me feel a little like the "old" me. I have worn them so often they were worth the expense, but now? Well, the under shirts had become little long, and I was sick of wearing so much fabric, and with Jimmy breastfeeding less and less there was no need for the modesty layers. So, I removed them.

I have kept the modesty layers from the two tops I altered, just in case and so that I can sew them back in place if I ever give them away. The tops do sit differently, and have a different look, and that's ok. My "new" tops are great, loose and airy but still structured enough for work.

Finding pants that don't cost much has been a bigger issue than making small adjustments to tops. There was a part of me that was enjoying being a little bigger and that was the part of me that had to deal with pants that don't quite fit. Again, there are worse and bigger problems to have, so I try not to give it too much thought, which can be tricky when I have to adjust my pants roughly 538,882 times a day.

In a bid to deal with my shortage of pants that fit or don't have rips in them (which describes all 3 pairs of jeans I have been wearing for the best part of a year), I ended up buying some slacks and a pair of jeans so that I might look a little less like a student while working at the university. The slacks fit fine, a little loose, but ok. The jeans? Heavily discounted and a size (or two) too big, I still bought them... I may have been a little traumatised by the opshop not being open... And just recently I found the energy to bring them in at the waist. This bring-pants/jeans-in-at-the-waist is something I may have to do a little more often, because I am happy with the result, but...

It would be nice to be able to buy pants that fit, straight off the rack, no alterations or belts required. Being able to buy new tops would be nice too, but that's not where we're at - our finances are still very tight, even with me working - so we make do, and try to enjoy what creativity there is in the process.

Cheap thrills: Eton mess...

Eton mess or mashed up pavlova with extra cream, take your pick. It's tasty and simple, but it does need to be made in advance - at least 3 hours (!!) before you expect to eat it. 

Coming straight out of River Cottage Every Day, although altered somewhat because of Jimmy and taste testing, the Eton mess has been staring at me every time I flip through the fruit section, tempting me with visions of cream and raspberries and summer garden parties or high tea. So, with raspberries dropping to $1 a punnet (and strawberries $3/punnet), I figured it was time to act before berry season ended.

What you need to serve 6, and roughly what I ended up making:

• 2 egg whites worth of meringue, dolloped onto clean baking trays lined with baking paper and cooked at a low temperature (say, 120 C or a little less) for about 2 hours (although mine only needed an hour and a half.
• 1.5 punnets of raspberries and about 1 punnet of strawberries, washed, with the strawberries trimmed and halved - but you'll need a swift hand if you have the sort of kitchen helper I had. Combine the fruit in a bowl, add a tablespoon (or two) of sugar, mix by hand so that you can mash the fruit a little as you go. Place in the fridge for about 2 hours or until needed.
• Cream. The heavy, made for whipping kind, lightly whipped with nothing added. I used the suggested 350 ml, but it was a bit much because I forgot to allow for Jimmy's fruit consumption and all the meringues we just had to taste...

Other fruit combinations to try are:

• kiwifruit and strawberry
• peaches and nectarines (raw or baked so that they are a little caramelised)
• mango (possibly with banana, or peach).

About an hour before serving, break up the meringues and mix with the cream. Mix in the fruit, so that it is covered with the cream but stop before the cream is completely drenched in fruit juices. Cover and set aside (in the fridge if it is summer) until ready to serve. Eat that night.

Definitely toddler approved: simple enough for them to help in the prep; easy and tasty enough for them to gobble down. That said, Jimmy was more interested in the raspberries and strawberries than the cream or his prune (which was an afterthought), and he was more interested in finishing and having a bath than the meringue.

Michael and I may have had two helpings... which seemed a good idea, because the fruit and meringue are really light, but the cream makes it a little heavier and I was feeling very full. Oh I will be making this again, especially as it is really similar to pavlova in taste but so much quicker (and forgiving) in the preparation. Eton mess for the win.

Cheap thrills: Playdough!

Ok, so yes, all of my previous cheap thrills are meals or other edibles, and yes, this is actually edible playdough. Edible playdough! Not that you'd want to eat it, but Jimmy has a tendency to put everything in his mouth...

I found the recipe here and divided the water, salt, and oil, into four containers. Then I added 15 drops of food colouring to each container, combined the flour and cornstarch, and slowly added enough flour to make the dough.

Somehow I ended up with about one cup of the flour mix left over, but it is fairly dry here in Manhattan, KS, and the finished dough had a good texture so I'm not too worried - I did store the flour mix, just in case. Next time we make playdough, I will probably add a few more drops of food colouring because the colour dulls as the amount of flour increases.

Jimmy kept tearing off chunks and throwing them onto the floor, and he generally seemed to enjoy the playdough. Here's to a summer of mashing playdough when it's too hot or too wet to go outside.

Cheap thrills: Brioche...

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been making sourdough brioche. It's good - I can't believe I didn't make it sooner. Admittedly I thought it was going to be a little fiddly, so I was happy to wait until Asha was visiting so that there was another set of hands to help with Jimmy.

There was no reason to worry about Jimmy, but I was right about the fiddle... This may have had more to do with the recipe I used than anything else, but it was worth it.

After a quick search online, this is the recipe I used. There were others, and I intend to try out this one and this one too (along with some waffle recipes, but that's another story for another day). For the recipe I used, I still needed to search for some methods...

I followed the recipe to the letter, with one exception: I used lemon rind but no lemon essence. The dough was more like cake batter, especially after incorporating the butter using frissage. And the French folds? Well, that was a mess.

I lost a lot of mixture because it was all over my hands and the bench (and we didn't get any photos of the webs of dough between my fingers). Did I mention it was like kneading cake batter?

When I went to bed I was little concerned about how it would all go. Hoping the dough wouldn't rise too fast I turned our heating down ~1 C, but I could have left it as it was.

This is what the brioche looked like in the morning. Not promising, but I went with it. After drizzling a beaten egg white and a little milk, I 'cut' down the middle of the dough. Imagine cutting through cake batter... And into the oven it went!

The recipe made no mention of using a water bath in the oven, but I put one in for 7 minutes. A water bath helps with the initial rising of the bread, and I use a shallow pan with boiling water on the lowest rack in the oven - a quick spray of water will also do the trick. Using the water bath added 10 minutes to the overall cooking time.

The result? It rose beautifully, smelled amazing, and the crumb... oh my goodness...

Jimmy approved too! And we ate it all that day. Ok, we ate most of it for breakfast.

It was also so good that I made it again for Asha, for breakfast, the morning before her early morning flight to LA.

Cheap thrills: Oti (or making the place smell like Christmas)

Once I started to get excited about celebrating Jimmy's birthday, I wanted to do it properly. And part of doing it properly is having oti, an Indian ginger and chilli drink that my Dad makes for Christmas and other family celebrations. Oti is served cold but it packs a punch, but what really makes it special is what it does to my parents house on the evening it is brewed...

Ginger, cinnamon, lemon, cloves, and caramel notes fill the house, which already smells wonderfully of fresh pine and baking gingerbread... This is what Christmas smells like.

I think it was the warm night and fireflies that we saw on the 4th of July that made me think of oti.

My family's recipe comes from a cookbook* that was written in the 60s or 70s, by a group of women associated with the Vellore Christian Medical College**, Tamil Nadu, India. Some of the recipes are Anglicized, while others are more traditional, and with a few (basic) Indian spices, most of them can be prepared in any kitchen, anywhere in the world. And as the College had staff (and family) from places as far flung as the UK and Australia, I thought*** the intention of the authors of the book was just that - it would allow people to recreate the tastes of Vellore (and South India) in their kitchens.

My parents came into possession of a copy of this book because my Grandad taught at the Medical College as a professor of medicine from the mid 1950s to sometime in the 1970s, and he and my Granny brought up their 4 children, including my Mum, in Vellore. The children were sent to boarding school in Melbourne, Australia, once they were close to starting high school, but they came away from Vellore with a fondness for the people, the culture, and the food, and they have passed this deep appreciation onto their spouses and children.

I suspect that the book and subsequent editions are no longer in print, and if they are, you'd have to be at the College to know where to go to buy a copy. I also suspect that most families in India have their own recipes for oti. The following is my family's variation on the one that was published all those years ago in Vellore, although I think my Dad adds 4 cardamom pods to the dry frying pan. Play around with the amounts of chilli, ginger, and caramelisation of the sugar, until you get something that suits your tastes.

Oti

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 6 cloves
• 2.5 full length cinnamon sticks
• 3-6 red chillies, dry or fresh
• 2.5 litres water
• 3 cups sugar
• 9 cm fresh ginger, sliced or grated
• 1 lemon, finely sliced

Dry fry the cloves, cinnamon sticks, and chillies (I used 3 fresh chillies, which provided a nice level of heat while still being enjoyable), until their scent fills the kitchen. 

In a large pot**** caramelise the 1/2 cup of sugar with a few drops of water. The depth of colour here will determine how dark the oti is, but be careful not to go too dark because the last thing you want is to burn the sugar. Even slightly burnt sugar will affect the final taste of the oti. 

Once the sugar is caramelised and close to the colour you want it, carefully add the water, followed by the rest of the sugar, ginger, and dry fried ingredients. Boil the mix, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the sliced lemon. Leave overnight to cool, covered. Strain, bottle, refrigerate, and enjoy in small glasses! 

This recipe makes about 2 litres of oti, which should last about 2 weeks in the fridge. Unless you drink it all in the first week... just like we did. Before I managed to take a photo of the finished drink. Looks like I'll just have to make some more...

My Dad's oti, in progress, Dec 2012

*The book in the photo is a copy of the original because my parents copy was falling to pieces and we, the children, were moving out of home and needed our own copies.
**Mum, don't go to the website, it'll make you homesick for Vellore (I recognise some of the buildings from photos you've shown me, and that old video of Grandad).

***My Dad has informed me, see the comments, that the book came from a dinner in Melbourne, hosted by the Friends of Vellore Association, for former members of staff at the Medical College, but see the comments for more details.

****If your pot is dark, like mine, do this step in something that allows you to see the colour of the sugar as it caramelises, and then carefully but quickly add it to the 2.5 litres of water before it goes beyond the colour you want.

Cheap thrills: don't get much cheaper than this...

One of Michael's coworkers went fishing, and promised Michael some fish. Michael brought home 4 fish. Fish!

Actually it was a surprise for me, but as they were frozen I had some time to think about what to do with them...

The first two fish were eaten the next evening, cooked with ingredients we already had in the house. There was an hour or so pouring over my much loved, and well used, copy of River Cottage Every Day, in the search for inspiration and I wasn't disappointed. Decisions weren't made until that afternoon when the lure of fluffy-but-crunchy potatoes became too much...

But I was in a hurry, so this is the method I used:

Fluffy potatoes

• 2 potatoes, cut and peeled (or peeled and cut, or just wash and cut)
• 3 tablespoons oxtail fat (or oil)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• water

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C, put 3 tablespoons of fat (or oil) into an ovenproof pan (I used our new skillet and the reserved fat from the oxtail stew) and set aside. Boil the potatoes in salty water for 10 minutes, drain and allow to steam in their pot. While the potatoes steam, put the pan and fat in the oven. When the fat is melted, and starting to smoke, remove the pan, put the lid back on the potatoes and toss them (lightly!), then quickly put them into the pan and coat them in the fat. Quickly return the pan (and potatoes) to the oven and bake for at least 30 minutes.

While the potatoes were backing I made up some mustard aioli, although I initially wanted to use chilli, mustard seemed safer (Jimmy has a habit of rubbing food in his eyes... especially at dinner)...

Mustard aioli

• 1 large clove garlic
• 1 teaspoon mustard (any sort will do, I used a German style)
• 1/2 cup whole egg mayonnaise

Peel and chop the garlic, roughly/finely - it's up to you. Put it into a small bowl with the mustard and mayonnaise and mix well. A day or 2 in the fridge allows the garlic to permeate the mix and mellow, a little.

After making the aioli, about 15 minutes after putting the potatoes into the oven, I added the fish. As they were already gutted and scaled, prep  was going to be easy. I gave 2 fish a good rinse, pulled the skillet out of the oven and made room in the middle for them. I quickly coated one side of each fish with the fat in the skillet and turned them over. Then I cracked some pepper over them, stuffed a few bay leaves and a clove of garlic in the cavities, threw a few more bay leaves and garlic cloves around, and added a generous drizzle of olive oil on the fish. The olive oil may not have been necessary... Put it all back in the oven for another 15 minutes.

We had our fish with peas and broccoli, and a little mustard aioli, not that we needed the extra fat...

Cheap thrills: new staples and an old favourite...

Ever on the lookout for meals that can be cooked in one pot or pan and that provide enough food for two adults, a very hungry bubba, with leftovers, I had to try this Spanish Tortilla because we had asparagus in the fridge that needed cooking... I've now made it twice, adding spinach and switching using a large kohl rabi instead of a potato. I'll be making it again.

And using an oven proof cast iron frying pan is great - I follow the recipe up to the point where the egg mixture is added to the pan and then I put the whole thing in the oven for 30 mins (at 180 degrees C (not the 230 degrees C in the recipe)), and walk away. The added bonus is that cast iron retains the flavour of the last thing it was used to cook, so the last one tasted of taco mince. The next one will taste of something else, probably sausages...

Now back to that hungry bubba, whose appetite is worthy of a post all its own... I've stopped having morning and afternoon tea, for the most part, although some days I need two afternoon teas to get through... Jimmy is a growing bubba, and he has an appetite to match and although he is still breastfeeding, he needs more and is not afraid to ask for it. He'll crawl over to his highchair and look for bits of the last meal he dropped, or he'll point at a banana, basically asking for it. This boy eats a lot of bananas... This boy eats a lot of fruit!

But sometimes fruit is not enough, so I've started making these pancakes if I'm after something more than fruit. Jimmy fills up quickly too, mostly because of the egg but also because we eat half of the banana before sitting down to the pancakes. I added raspberries the other day (torn in half and a little mushed) and they worked well, although Jimmy prefered the fresh ones. Oh well.

While we're on the topic of fresh ingredients, who likes masala chai? Don't know what I'm talking about? How about chai tea? Chai latte? Are you with me now? Well, chai means tea, latte means milk, masala means a mix of spices, so masala chai means spiced tea, but it is usually a milky tea and oh so yummy...

I came across this recipe for masala chai a while ago, not sure when, but didn't think about it until I started craving masala chai once we arrived in Manhattan, KS. We had only recently been taken to the Asian Market, and had only bought cinnamon quills (or sticks, as they're called here), but it was enough to prompt Michael to point out that we could now make masala chai. Well, we didn't have any cardamon pods, did we...

We bought a packet of cardamon pods and a packet of cloves the next time we were there. The cloves were for something else, but turns out they go into the masala chai too! And it's a darn good masala chai recipe too. As an added bonus, the bubbling spices fill our flat with a wonderful aroma... If it's winter where you are, I strongly suggest you make yourself some, and if you're really sensitive to caffeine, I think it should still take delicious without the tea - I'll be doing this myself during winter, so that Jimmy can enjoy it too.  

Are you seeing a pattern here? Yes, I spend a bit of time reading A Cup of Jo, like a lot of other people, and while we might seem like a slightly odd match, I really enjoy reading Joanna's blog: she's a bit goofy and not afraid to share that side of herself; she's also a mum (or should I say 'mom'?), and she's pretty generous with how much she shares of her boys and her struggles with motherhood; she also has some of the most amazing contributors, especially the foodies. Plus, I can get my fill of New York without having to deal with the smells or the crowds or the dated outfits in Sex and the City.

Cheap thrills: Oxtail stew

This rich, delicious, definitely not low fat, dish was worth all the time it took to cook, the hours smelling the spices, the rich meat and bone marrow, and... oh let's just say it was yummy and hearty and very, very satisfying. Here's the link to original recipe, because it's not mine.

One lazy Sunday afternoon, a week after this, after waking up from a nap (I like naps, had you noticed?), I started cooking about 0.66 kg of oxtail with probably 0.3 kg beef mince as per the recipe, with a few chances... As I had half amount of meat, I used half of everything else, but without the wine, using vegetarian stock cubes and a few carrots, powdered cinnamon, and fennel seeds instead of star anise. It took a long time to cook, so we didn't have it for dinner that night. But the house smelt great.

Instead, after straining the stock, mashing the onion through the sieve and retaining the carrot, and removing the meat from the bones, the stock, onion, carrots, and meat was combined and stored overnight in the fridge. The sight that greeted me the next morning was lovely: the fat had risen to the top of the container, creating a lovely thick layer over everything else, just like I remember my Mum getting, when she did similar things. Oh the fat was easy to remove! (And save...) Oh and the marrowbone jelly that was under it... wibble-wobble...

But all that jelly had to be reduced... but I didn't do it all at once, oh no. Just about 1/4 of what I'd made when into the first real tasting, another 1/4 went into the freezer for much later, 1/4 went with Michael for lunch the next day (no extra attention), and the final 1/4 went into the fridge for later in the week. It took a while for that jelly to reduce. I can't remember how long for that first night, but the second time it seemed to take forever...

Once the sauce was reduced I sifted a generous teaspoon of cocoa over the stew, instead of the chocolate, and mixed well. When it looked right, and my stomach couldn't handle it any longer, I served it with... I honestly can't remember. I'm sure peas were involved. Perhaps some other greens too... But it was sprinkled with parsley and devoured by all three of us.

Oh it was good... So good in fact, that later that week when I used what was in the fridge, I also used the 1/4 of stew that was in the freezer... Admittedly, as I was a little unwell, my eyes may have been bigger than our stomachs... And I may not have let it reduce long enough, but I did remember to take photos of the stew as it was served, this time with mashed potato, with onion, fennel root, and broccoli stems. We still ate it. All of it. And yes, Jimmy approved.

Jimmy's serve...

... mostly made it into his belly.

The cost of living...

Metric measuring cups, $2.99 from Goodwill (imperial ones cost $0.49)

When was the last time you took a good long look at your finances? No, not just scanning your bank statement, but actually writing down what you spend on day-to-day living - when was the last time you did this?

Me? I've never really done it, until now. A few years ago Michael spent about 6 months entering every dollar he spent and where it went and came up with a very pretty and interesting Excel spreadsheet, with pretty graphs showing his savings going up. I might have the patience for knitting, but I wasn't really interested in doing something so... tedious?

As the "home maker" Michael has charged me with such a task, because we have been living off our savings for the past 4-5 months, and really don't want to dip into our savings now that Michael is being paid (yay!!). We're actually hoping to save money. Strangely enough, doing it fairly simply, it is actually interesting and reassuring to see where our money is going.

Now, I'm only using broad terms like: food; eating out; rent; utilities; hygiene (although this sort of comes under household items); alcohol; clothes/home (which includes crockery etc, linen, shoes, books, computer and camera bits, wool...); and touristy activities. Initially there was also a column for establishment costs, just to keep a record of how much it has cost to set up our apartment, even in the little we have done, because it'll give us some idea of how much we'll be spending on that sort of thing when we come back to Australia*. There are no columns for: living on a very low income and savings for 4-5 months; US Visa processes. Needless to say these two columns would be scary.

So, after about 1.5 months living in Manhattan, KS, I think we'll be ok... but we've been a little overwhelmed by the whole process and may not have always been thrifty as possible, i.e. we were buying 1/2 gallons (1.89 litres) of organic whole milk for $3.50, when 1 gallon (3.78 litres) of the home brand whole milk costs $3. That's all part of the learning curve, just like finding bread without sugar and learning that Acetaminophen is Paracetamol.

Once we've been here for a few more months I think we'll have a better idea of where we can save money on food and minimise food waste, buy in bulk for stockpiling, and minimise water and electricity usage. For now we're focusing on eating as simply and cheaply as possible without compromising our health, making do with what we have, buying second hand where possible and lower-mid range where it's not (in the hope that these items will last the year), cheap thrills, and, as Michael would say, not dying.

And if we can afford to pay $2.99 for measuring cups, when we already have imperial measuring cups ($0.49 from the Salvation Army shop), for my sanity (not just because they're pretty), I think we might even be able to travel a little outside Manhattan, KS. But we still have to watch the money.

*We have some homely things in storage, so the cost of re-establishment should be less, but there will still be costs involved.

Cheap thrills...

In a bid to save money and to stave off boredom, Michael suggested that each weekend we cook something we haven't cooked before from one of the cook books I brought with us. Genius! We both like cooking and all three of us enjoy eating, and with two adults around for the whole weekend it's easier to take the time to cook something unfamiliar. As an added bonus we might even get some leftovers for lunches or the freezer for emergencies...

So we started last Saturday night, looking at recipes in River Cottage Everyday Cook Book. With our selection made and shopping list written, we made an evening run to our local supermarket. Yes. You read that correctly. And it's open 24/7, probably with a few exceptions, but still. Saturday night food shopping, with a baby! I digress...

It was a good thing we went when we did because we wouldn't have been able to walk to the shops until Sunday afternoon because it rained, and rained, and rained. There was thunder and lightning too and a National Weather Service warning for flash flooding in the area. So, it was good weather for soup...

A thrifty fish soup! Follow the link - it's worth it!

Now, I had to change it a little... We don't live near a proper fish monger, so instead of whole fish, I used about 1.5 kg catfish fillets, with one fillet going into the stock along with two chicken drumstick bones. Dry thyme was used instead of fresh thyme (about 3 pinches). There was also no wine in the stock. I also retained the carrot from the stock and put it in the soup, along with the well cooked fillet of fish. The leeks were kinda huge, so I needed to add water to cover everything. Instead of cleaned squid I used 200 g of frozen mixed seafood. And because I'm a mum, I added a bit of chilli and garlic to store bought whole egg mayonnaise.

The apartment smelled delicious, making stock was fun and a little therapeutic, having lunch simmering away during the rain was a little romantic, and Jimmy's enthusiasm for it was just wonderful. Ok, so I drained his so that he could eat it with his hands, that way it was a baby friendly meal too! And the store bought mayo? With the chilli and garlic, it made the meal, although home-made mayo might be better.

I'm looking forward to eating the last of the thrifty fish soup that's in the freezer and when I remember to take photos, I'll share the results of my variation on oxtail stew (also from River Cottage Everyday Cookbook). In the meantime, here's our resident food critics' response to the thrifty fish soup:

(The bowl of drained soup was eaten by the handful and there was hardly any mess.)