Week 3 - so busy I couldn't blog!

Baking is time-consuming and exhausting! That is the conclusion I have reached this week. I've been working my way through 10kg of flour, baking a loaf of sourdough bread each day, making biscuits regularly to use up leftover porridge and fill up the lunchboxes, and baking cakes and cupcakes for my daughter's birthday events last week. On top of the baking I've been cooking everything from scratch even more so since we have started running out of things over the month. By the end of my daughter's birthday last Friday I felt like collapsing from cooking exhaustion! We only had small gatherings but there were multiple and there was a lot of bread and pizza involved.

Anyway, today when I did the weekly fruit and veg shop I bought a loaf of bread and it feels very liberating not to be preparing the bread tonight! Once this month is over I think I'll go back to making bread a few times a week instead of every day. It will also be better for my waistline as I tend to eat half the loaf when it comes out of the oven! I also decided to get the fruit and veg at my local market this week, instead of ordering the usual CERES box, as the challenge of using everything up in the box has also been a bit exhausting. I know we'll easily eat everything in the fridge and fruit bowl this week.

Week 3 highlights are all to do with the kindness of my friends and family. People have been quite taken by this challenge and have been very kind in their support, both verbally and in kind!

• My friend Mel who lives in Sydney sent me a 'no spend challenge care package'! One morning I was thrilled to find it on the doorstep. It included some yummy chocolatey treats as well as a selection of herbal teas (which coincidentally I had just run out of). It made me very happy!
• Another friend Mel gave me a present of 'Orgram No Egg', which is an egg replacer. Very lovely and very handy for all my baking!
• My sister-in-law had us over for dinner (lovely!) and on leaving donated us chillis, onions and garlic as well as some other stuff from their Hello Fresh boxes that they couldn't eat due to my brother's food intolerances.
• My friend Laura shouted me and Ginger a coffee and babycino after our outing to storytime at the State Library. So good!!! I really miss cafe coffeee...

Speaking of cafes, I've nearly caved so many times this week, but have kept on walking. Good on me! Poor Ginger is having major withdrawals as well. It's usually such a regular part of our day that she just can't work out what is going on! However, I am really enjoying my stovetop coffee at the moment, so it's not actually the coffee that I'm missing.

In other week 3 news, we ran out of nappies and toilet paper! So I did an Aldi run and bought a pack of each. And also bought some ground coffee as I really haven't been enjoying the one I had in the freezer. It will make the final week a lot more bearable.

This has made us think about what we are going to do next month. Adrian and I have decided that in terms of groceries we'll continue on with a similar method, but will plan a lot better. So this will mean a monthly meal plan and one massive shop at the start of the month, with the fruit and veg box or shop each week. I've also decided to try and avoid Coles/Woolworths all together, as I think I can now get most stuff at Aldi (they now have tofu and vegan snags/burgers, nuttlex) with the remainder from my local shops (health food store and greek importers). I've already started a list of things we have run out of and will do a general meal plan to ensure we can do most meals. We actually still have a lot of food in the cupboards that needs to be eaten, so I'll try to incorporate that into the meal plans.

Although I'm not quite sure how I'm going to use up 5 tins of sliced beetroot! My obsession with keeping the cupboards well stocked has meant some serious over-supply of certain things. Creating a very detailed meal plan and shopping list and then sticking to it will be quite a challenge for me!