Reducing waste in the home

I'm a bit of a greenie at heart and fairly frugal, so my motivation for reducing waste and converting to reuseable products where possible is two-fold: save the environment and save money.  It is also very satisfying to glide by all the products you no longer need in the supermarket - our fortnightly shops are usually $120 - $140 which I understand is pretty good for a small family.  Here are examples of reuseable products or other ways that we reduce waste:

• Watering down products - You'll be amazed the number of products you can water down or use less of.  A plumber friend told me it is actually better for your dishwasher to use half measures of powder!  Try using half as much powder in your dishwasher, clothes washing and using less shampoo and conditioner.  I also tend to water down my liquid soap, shampoo, conditioner and moisturisers with about 1/3 water.  Lastly, once your white vinegar gets half-empty, top it up with water and leave it in a sunny spot for a couple of days and it will reach full-strength again.  You can continue doing this 3 or 4 times with the same bottle.  Vinegar has a myriad of uses around the home - try using it in your house cleaning.
• Make your own - we make our own bread, pizza bases, yoghurt, muffins, meatballs, pikelets and more.  We save the end-pieces of bread and any imperfect slices, blitz them in the food processor for home-made breadcrumbs.
• Grow your own - herbs are the easiest way to get started and save so much money by not buying fresh herbs by the bunch.  The best bit is the more you harvest, the better and faster they grow!  Vegies and fruit trees are also a fantastic way to grow your own but I must admit we've had mixed success with those.
• Use less meat - In stir-fries, curries and other dishes we generally use 1/3 - 1/2 of the meat a recipe requests.  For dishes in which a fillet is the main component we try to stick to the 150 - 180g serving size per adult, halving one fillet between us if necessary.  As meat is often the most expensive ingredient in a meal, this can save a lot of money!
• Find uses for kitchen scraps and leftovers - use leftovers as pizza toppings or sandwich fillers, or freeze unused portions of wine and sauces in ice cube trays or zip-lock bags and meals in single or kid-sized portions.  Use stray vegies at the end of the fortnight to make stocks and freeze.  Feed scraps to chickens if you have them (or someone elses' if you know anyone with chooks) or start a compost or worm farm.
• Tea towels, handkerchiefs and terry towel nappies - We generally don't buy tissues or paper towel, but use reuseable cloth options and simply wash them and reuse.
• Feminine Hygeine - I use a Femmecup, which is basically a small latex cup that is inserted much like a tampon, emptied, rinsed and reused over and over.  I haven't purchased pads or tampons in a long time, and it paid for itself in a matter of months but has an expected lifespan of 10 years.  There are many other brands available or other options such as cloth pads.
• Nappies - we use modern cloth nappies full time.  They are just as easy to use as disposeables, and so cute!  Almost all of our nappies are "one size fits most" and have been used since Geekling was 2 weeks old through to now (almost 20 months and counting).  Here's a couple of photos of Geekling in the same nappy at 5 weeks and again at 1 year - the same nappy still gets used but I don't have a more recent photo.

Free family day out - Southbank

A couple of weeks ago during the Brisbane Festival we took a lovely family trip to the city and South Bank.  Aside from dinner, all our activities were free!

We parked at my work in the CBD and walked over the Victoria Bridge to South Bank.

... where visited the museum...

 The touch parts had seen better days but Geekling still loved them

One Cute-a-sauras and Daddy-rex

Geekling loved the ocean room, and the taxidermied animals.  There was a possum at the enquiries counter that the attendant even took out of the perspex box to let him pet until he tried to pull its tail!  He declared it was a "cat" and was thoroughly delighted to touch it.

We then had another look at the Liquid Interactive Light Scope, before taking a Citycat back over the river.

We went to dinner at Little Singapore, where Geekling enjoyed eating noodles from chopsticks and more or less inhaled my roti.

Then it was back over the river to South Bank for gelato followed by the Santos City of Lights show.  Geekling was absolutely enthralled at the start of the light show but had lost interest by the end.

Sadly, the Liquid Interactive Light Scope and Santos Light Show are both over (I just hadn't gotten around to posting this earlier as I had to find my camera cable to upload the photos), but I am sure there will be another festival or cultural celebration soon that we can make a day or an evening of.

Vegies are tasty!

This post ties in well with my recent guest posts over at  Brisbane Kids - creative food play and my favourite pizza base recipe.  Brisbane Kids is also on Facebook and are a great way to keep up with cheap and fun activities around Brisbane such as expos, fetes, festivals and other celebrations.

We're having a little trouble convincing Geekling to eat vegetables at the moment.  The frustrating thing is that he will eat the same vegies in one form (on a pizza, pureed, mashed or in another dish) but then not in another (whole or chopped).  We don't want to take the developmental step back into purees all the time so here are a few of the things we've been trying to overcome this:

Muffin Tin Meals

We try to give Geekling a muffin tin meal once a week, and challenge ourselves to include one food he hasn't eaten before.  He will usually try something from each of the six compartments but we must admit he doesn't often go back for a second mouthful of vegies.

Dip-Dip

We tried lightly steaming some carrots and broccoli, and adding some yellow capsicum and cherry tomatoes, then serving with a home made cheesy dip (recipe below).  He loved this but tended to just dip the vegies, suck the dip off and dip again.

Our floor cleaner (dog) Mr L waiting patiently in the background for any dropped vegies or drips of dip

Cheesy dip: simply mix and microwave lightly to warm

2 tbsp cream cheese
1/4 cup cream
1 - 2 heaped tbsp grated cheese
1/2 tsp french onion soup mix

I threw this together using leftovers, but you could also use store-bought cream cheese spread or combine corn relish, gherkin relish or even tuna to cream cheese.

Vegie Tempura

Since Geekling is a fiend for fried potato chips we thought we'd try tempura.  He had a little bit, but it wasn't the success we'd hoped for.  He'd had a big afternoon of grazing at a birthday party and had some fresh bread while I was frying up so we might try again soon.

 Geekling gets started while Mumma continues frying

We used calamari and prawns, sweet potato, spring onion, green beans, red capsicum, broccoli, mushroom ans zucchini.

We wound up with two full plates of tempura left over after hubby, Geekling and I had finished and had to call in reinforcements to help eat it!

On our list of things to try is baked vegie "chips" and American-style pumpkin pie or muffins (both of which I LOVE).  Geekling loves vegie pizzas and fritters, so we do have some back up plans, and we tend to sneak grated veg into lots of other meals like meatballs, pasta sauces etc so we're sure he's well enough.

Hello from Thailand

This will be another quiet week on the blog as I am in Thailand for a friend's wedding while hubby is home with Geekling.  I have my camera and the cable to transfer data so if the  stars align and I have net access and I have a few spare moments I may put a post together, otherwise expect to see something from me next Tuesday.