Shopping at home (again!)

Last week was lovely. Every night one of the ladies from church dropped off a hot dinner for us. All we needed to do was serve it and eat. We also had a dear friend come to stay, and she was such a help around the house and with L, as well as being good company for me. (Thank you Heather!)

Heather holding S and L.

It was wonderful having a week off from cooking, but now I'm ready to get back into it - and I'm keen to make do with what we already have in the kitchen.

We're going to see if we can survive till next Saturday without going to the supermarket. Paul had to go yesterday to buy lightbulbs, since our lounge light blew yesterday morning and the spares we thought we had sitting in the drawer turned out to be one empty box and one blown bulb. While he was there he got a bottle of milk, and I'm hoping that's all we'll need to buy this week.

My home shopping list

Bread
We only have a couple of pieces of store-bought bread left, so I baked a loaf of white bread in the breadmaker yesterday.

Usually I would prefer to make sourdough, but Paul doesn't like eating it and I know that for us to succeed this week, I need to have food on hand that Paul likes.

And wow, white bread is so soft. At the rate we're getting through it, I think I'll be baking more before the week is out. I made the bread in my new Panasonic SD257 Breadmaker, and it turned out beautifully.

I heart my breadmaker so much. I bought it after my old second-hand one bit the dust a few months back. It was a "gulp" moment, spending the money to buy brand new, but the results are so good I don't regret it one bit. I've experimented with a few different breadmakers over the years, and this one is by far the best I've tried. Mostly I use it to make pizza dough and bread roll dough, but I've also made focaccia dough and hot cross bun dough in it. And now white bread.

Fruit
Paul is worried about the fruit situation. We've been chowing through mandarins lately but we're starting this week with none in the fruit bowl. I pointed out that we do have fresh apples and a couple of fresh bananas in there though. We also have tinned peaches, pineapple and mangoes, and a jar of stewed feijoas in the pantry. We have lots of dried apple slices, raisins, sultanas, currants, dates and cranberries. And the freezer contains frozen bananas, berries and plums.

I think we'll be fine for fruit this week. I'll make lots of smoothies for me and L, cook up a feijoa crumble and make tropical risotto for breakfast one day. I also cooked up some apple and cinnamon porridge for this morning's breakfast which made use of some of our dried fruit stash - and we have leftovers for tomorrow.

Vegetables
We've got plenty of vegetables in the fridge, freezer and growing in the garden. I'm also keen to try sprouting mung beans in the sprouter my lovely friends Kate and Ben gave me. I've been meaning to try it for a few weeks now and still haven't got around to it, so I'm not making any promises.

Meat
I've been stockpiling discounted meat in the freezer over the past few months so we have a selection of beef, lamb and chicken in there.

Pre-made dinners
I've been freezing leftover soups, casseroles and shepherd's pie in the freezer in recent weeks (in preparation for baby). All of those will be easy to pull out and reheat at a pinch.

Dairy products
We've plenty of cheese and milk in the fridge, plus a bag of milk powder in the pantry which I use to make my milk kefir with. I've got several packets of yoghurt powder in the pantry as well, so I can alternate making yoghurt from a packet or from leftover yoghurt mixed with milk powder and water (instructions here).

Snacks
Mostly we snack on fruit, but I'll do some baking too. Lately I've got out of the habit of making popcorn, but I'll try to remember to make that if we feel like a savoury snack. And I can always pull some carrots from the garden to make carrot sticks.

Diapers
I bit the bullet on Saturday and started L back in cloth diapers. I had taken a break from this towards the end of my pregnancy with S, as I couldn't carry the washing down to the laundry (which is in the basement under our house). I had some spotting when I was 28 weeks pregnant and had to be careful about lifting anything. The problem was that most mornings I'd forget to ask Paul to take the washing down before he headed off to work, so I kept getting behind with it. Now I'm able to lift again, I'm trying to keep the washing up to date. L is back in cloth nappies during the day, and as soon as her current disposable wipes run out, I'm going to use cloth wipes on her too.

Cleaning products
I made up a batch of dish-washing powder on the weekend, and have the ingredients on hand to make more all-purpose cleaning spray when my current batch runs out.

So there's my plan. It sounds good in theory; I'm excited to see how it works out in practise.