:: TWELVE ::

Want an easy cake recipe?

It doesn't get any easier than this one...

• 3 Eggs
• 1 Cup of oil
• 2 Cups of flour
• 2/3 Cup of sugar
• 2 sachets of baking powder
• 3 tbsp of milk

whisk together the eggs, sugar and oil.

add the flour and baking powder... loosen the batter slightly with the milk and pour into a lightly greased & floured cake pan....

Bake for 20-25 minutes on a moderate heat, and then dress her up

 Often we'll add choc chips, fruit or dried fruit to the batter before cooking...

sometimes we leave her plain and smear the top with strawberry jam and coconut...

It's not the most glam of cakes, but she's steadfast and frugal... and above all quick!

:: ELEVEN ::

Since I became a mother I've always made a point of cooking meals from scratch.
Partly because it's more cost effective, but also because it's important for me to know what my children are eating.

I chose to cook from scratch in the UK. In Algeria there is no choice... we do have supermarkets that sell some convenience foods but generally speaking they're overpriced and not too hot on the quality front...

And what's more children really appreciate good old fashioned home cooking.... 

 I'm not the greatest cook, my food is edible... sometimes it's even more-ish ....

The thing that's most satisfying though is the expectation my children have of coming home and knowing something warm and comforting is waiting for them.

Their day is punctuated by family meal times... the walk to school on a cold and dismal wintry day is preceded by something freshly baked and a cup of milky tea....

The school day is interrupted briefly by lunch-time..which they all come home for.

Cooking lunch at 10:30 in the morning isn't always fun... and I'm usually working on auto-pilot till at least midday, but I know they appreciate coming home and finding one of their favourite meals plated up and ready to go.

It's not always easy, knowing that the day will be full of cooking and feeding.. but Alhamdulillah that we're in a position to feed our children healthy and nourishing food...

There are so many children around the globe who for one reason or another won't be nurtured or nourished enough.

Cooking for your family doesn't have to be about putting fancy dishes in front of them... we're not looking for perfection. Home cooking should be an expression of love... finding joy in the mundane, raising it from a simple household task, to an act or worship... feeding others for the sake of Allah and creating your own family traditions.. this is what our children will love us for now, and remember us for in years to come inshallah. It's as much about us putting the time and effort in as anything else... and well I guess it's the job I signed up for!

Happy cooking people

xxx

:: SEVEN ::

This will be my second time writing this post... my fingers got a bit slap happy while I was typing and I accidentally deleted everything... and now, as I sit here listening to the rain lashing against the side of the house I can't for the life of me start piecing that post back together again from what serves as my head...

I know menu planning was in there but after controlling the urge to take a spiteful swipe at my PC by going upstairs to check on the children I'm too cold to think thoughts of budgeting and food and ... well  it'll teach me to make some notes before I even think of approaching the keyboard in future.... 

Suffice it to say (for now at least) that it's going a good deal better this time around... I forced my own hand a little by taping the , menu to the fridge door for all to see... I gave myself less room to flake out and give up.

I even sat myself down this morning and put together another meal plan for the next seven days... 

See, I can be organised and well balanced when I have to..

It's freezing again here... after a full week of beautiful sunshine.. warm enough to have the windows open, the temperature dropped and the rains came down, and I'm shivering... I hate being cold!

if it's as cold as this tomorrow when dh goes away for the weekend... I'm going to drag the kids down for a camp out in the living room for extra warmth inshallah....

And it's the start of the weekend tomorrow inshallah... three of mine have a half day and one of them only has an hour in the afternoon... so it's a mad rush to get all the weekend cleaning out of the way before they all  get home again..... with dh being away it's also an opportunity to slow down a little and catch up on some reading and crafting inshallah.... 

I've also got some plans to spruce up the blog a little... 

What will you be doing this weekend inshallah?

:: SIX ::

I should have got here earlier to post pics of bread and biscotti...

At times though, life conspires against me... and it seems that 11-ish pm is the earliest I can get here these days...

Our evenings end late, after the younger children go to bed there is bread dough to throw about and whack in the oven.... and this evening I made up a couple of batches of vanilla biscotti before putting the wee man down to sleep..

I also started working on this today... the  work on the yarn basket yesterday paid off! Hopefully by the weekend dd8 should have a nifty little dress bodice to look forward to inshallah... 

It's menu planning day tomorrow... I slipped back into it quietly & made a few changes to the way I used to do things.... and, it seems to be working for the most part mashallah.

Taping my menu to the fridge helped keep me on the straight and narrow.. it was harder for me to back out and take easier but more expensive options once the children were aware of the plans I had in store for their bellies... but more about that tomorrow inshallah...

It's late, and I did today on three hours sleep and not enough coffee

I am working on bringing you pics, but with my camera out of action the only chance I get to snap at anything ( other than the children) is when the dh is home....

Try the bread and biscotti... they were both really easy to prep and bake, and have become firm favourites in our house... 

:: ONE ::

The first day of a new month. And typically, for me, a chance to sit and reflect over what I'd like to achieve during the next few weeks insha'allah. Winter is drawing to a close and I'm already feeling more productive and ready to tackle all those tasks I've been neglecting for so long. 

I've stepped in to March with more focus on being frugal and with that in mind I've organised my menu for the week ahead and even done the grown up thing and written a well thought out shopping list to go along with it... I can already see how much money I'll be saving myself in the long run... it smarts a little though to have to go back to menu planning, but prices here have gone crazy lately. Even basic staples like potatoes have risen in price by at least 20da where I live.. there is no time now to be complacent. The price hikes took me by surprise last month... usually after the two eids are out of the way and people have done with celebrating muloud we enjoy a bit of respite. Prices generally start to slacken a little and things become a little more affordable.This hasn't happened yet... at least not in Algiers. 

Which is why I'm not taking any chance this month insha'allah 

I thought I'd try blogging everyday for March... I had attempted it in December but other things were clearly planned for us that were out of our control. To be honest I think it's to keep me on the straight and narrow as much as anything else. I have a tendency to veer away from the path of good sense and go rogue sometimes and it ultimately ends in chaos and me annoying the heck out of myself for being thoughtless and random. 

So there you are, I'm battle ready and willing to document my foray into the world of the organised and focused. It might not be pretty!

back to super-frugal

Running a household budget is pants!
Plain and simple it's a pain in the neck from start to finish and almost anything can throw it off track.
Can you tell I overspent? Well actually it's not so much a case of over spending, it's doing daily battle with see-sawing prices that seem to have gone mad this month.
Of course the weather has alot to do with that.. we've had so much rain that it's affected our local market, and pushed the price of veggies up to a miserable level.
A couple of months of ill heath and eating out of my stockpile also didn't help matters... and I'm trying to build it up from scratch again, mainly because it helps to free up some cash in the long run and also because it's just so much easier to have things on hand.

So I'm back in super-frugal mode, and am cooking the dishes that I always fall back on when I need something tasty  but kind on the pocket...

The quantities are all relative to how much you feel like cooking, but it's more or less equal amounts of onion; tomato and green peppers gentle sautéed with as much garlic as you can comfortably handle. I also add some paprika for colour and season generously with salt ans coarse black pepper. Once it's looking relaxed and mellowed out break some eggs into the pan and put a lid on top so that they poach in the liquid. Only poach them till just cooked though, what your looking for is a yolk that will ooze out into your saucy goodness when broken. We eat this as is, with crusty bread from a communal plate, even better cook it in something you can take straight from stovetop to table. Delicious...

:: TWO ::

You know it's so hard negotitating computer time when there are offspring lurking. I could swear they conspire to create diversions to make it easier for each other to whip the laptop away from me when I'm least suspecting it.

Yesterday I just gave up... there's no point fighting a losing battle is there?

We were out for most of the day anyway, and had a lovely time catching up with a special friend. Which of course means I didn't actually do any cooking.
I redeemed myself today.I have no pictures to prove it, which is a shame but I know you trust me, right?

Want a recipe anyway?
This is one of my favourite warm salads. I always have salad on the table. It's an easy and effective way to pad out a meal, is relatively inexpensive (depending of course on what you use!) and of course veggies are full of goodness. Ticks all those groovy boxes kids!

Warm Green Bean Salad


Boil some green beans until just tender. (I used about a quarter of a kilo)
Once they're cooked, finely chop a good handful of fresh parsley, and put it into a frying pan with a couple of generous slugs of good olive oil and saute gently without colouring the parsley.
Add some grated garlic (three for me) to the pan and saute for a further few minutes (without browning the garlic) before adding the beans and a little salt.
The beans will only need about five minutes to warm through and take on the flavours of the garlic and parsley.
Serve dressed with the oil.

The recipe was given to me by my husbands aunty. Green beans are relatively inexpensive most of the time here so it's a good tasty and economical side dish.
We had this tonight with a simple beetroot salad. And some oven roasted chicken with new potatoes.

Meat is still pretty expensive here at the moment, so a good option is chicken. It's still not cheap for the average Algerian pocket, but still alot more affordable than red meat.
I try to be as thrifty with a chicken as I can. We certainly wouldn't use a whole chicken in one sitting.

Today I threw the wings in the freezer, I'll save them up bit by bit till I have enough to make some hot wings.
The offal also went in the freezer. I use it up when I have enough to make a decent sized meal. Usually in a spiced sauce, but sometimes, if I have enough it gets roasted with turmeric, lime and corriander. I know for some, cicken offal might have a bit of yuck factor, but I really reccomend trying it.
The cat got the neck today, and the skin... although chicken necks can also be made into a really tasty dish aswell, so the cat doesn't always get the benefit of my generosity.
I saved most of the breast for tomorrows lunch which left me with  the drumsticks, thighs, back and a small bit of breast.

Baked Chicken

Put your cicken, cut into pices into an ovenproof dish along with one lime cut into quarters, a whole head of garlic (split into cloves but not peeled) and sprinkle over, a good heaped teaspoon of cumin, and also turmeric, some salt and freshly chopped corriander. A few good slugs of olive oil are all you need now before mixing everything into the chicken with your hands. I often add potatoes at this stage and roast them along with the chicken in the pan.
It's good to leave it for as long as you can before cooking, but I've also been in a rush and cooked it right away, and it's still delicious.

Cook until the chicken is just cooked through, and the potatoes are tender. You can cover with foil, it'll help create a wonderfully rich gravy.

Serve with a fresh handful of corriander leaves thrown over if you like.

For me the most delicious parts of this dish are the lime, which becomes so lush and soft that you can eat the whole thing, skin and all. And the garlic cloves  which wil have burst out of their skins, and which taste so mellow it's imossible to resist them. We fight for the garlic cloves in my house.. and I regularly use two bulbs to account for the theivery that goes on under my nose at the table!

And that's me for the day. I'm tired and have to be up with the larks. The boys have lessons in the masjid at subh, and it takes forever to get a boy out of bed even at a reasonable hour, never mind at 6am!
It's the start of a new school week and we had some lovely brothers come over this evening to fix our dreadful terrace so that it won't leak anymore insha'allah.
After hardship does indeed come ease, May Allah ta'ala bless each one of you who made dua for us. Ameen

xxx

:: ONE ::

I had already written this post and was about a sentence and a click away from posting. Then my bubba boy disconected me from the mains.... lovely boy with some seriously male traits way too early


I'll start this time with the WIPS... yarn will make me feel good

it's mostly utility makes at this time of year... apart from my shonky stitchery.

Do  you have something you're bad at but love doing anyway?
I couldn't handsew a straight, even stitch to save my life, but it calms my jagged nerves. 

 

I don't mind that its not the tidiest stiching in the world. It's therapeutic. I need it!

 

The poncho is for DD7. An unheated schoolroom is a grim place to be, and as the children have to wear pink aprons over their everyday clothes for school, our personal compromise is to throw on a poncho.

I'm considering ripping this back and doing a partial restart. I have a pattern forming in my head... and you know what? I think a seven year old has the right to feel special in what they're wearing, and it's just too plain as it is. It's slightly too pink for my liking too but there's nothing I can do about that. 

 

The blanket belongs too DD13. He's a chelsea supporter and I'm a weak willed mother eager to please.

Works for him, doesn't always work for me.

And my happy blanket, which only grows as fast as scrap accmulation allows. I love scrap blankets. they remind me of my mother who always had one growing in her crochet bag. We had them draped over all our beds and furniture to hide the wear and tear long before the days when shabby became chic.

We had a gentle start to the day this morning. Chocolate, tea, the decision to read Jane Austen together and not alot else. I'm declaring December a "be good to ME" month. I'm going to nuture my needs this month, which means nourishing my mind, body and soul insha'allah. It's long overdue.
I'm going to be gentle on myself (and hopefully others) and do things that either uplift my soul, bring me closer to Allah, educate my mind, or nourish my body. It felt good to say those things to myself this morning and I think we need to give ourselves permission to honour our ourselves and our wellbeing.


On the housekeeping front, well... it's day one of a new budget. I've already mentioned in another post that I used to menu plan a week or sometimes a month ahead but found it didn't really suit either the needs of my family or the frequent culinary curve balls my dh likes to throw my way. These days I tend to do a stock up of basic staples and work with whatever I have to hand or with whats leftover. 


I did a big veggie shop yesterday. I already have rice stored and some pulses leftover from a big batch buy I did the month before last. I stocked up on 2ltr of oil and a tray of 30 eggs and I have cheese dh brough back from the UK stored in the freezer. We're meat feee till Saturday, and I'll be using what I have to hand or leftover, menu planning daily (we're in Algeria, which means two cooked meals and an afternoon tea!).


I normally take time over breakfast to prepare my meal plan. Having a quiet think at the start of the day about what I want to make. It works for me like this in a way that advance menu planning never did.

I'll share my menu's and recipes from tomorrow insha'allah.

And my gift to myself today? I'm going to have some quiet time. A space in the day to reflect, and believe me...in a house this big and chaotic it will be no easy thing to achieve.

That was some week!

But we got to the other side of it. Not completely unscathed, but a few battlescars add to the character in my opinion. We've been easy on ourselves over the past few days. Been to see a good friend, had a couple of walks out to the market and local shops, done plenty of tea drinking and soul searching. And a fair amount of gentle crafting to stop the brain from oozing out of the skull.

In short we have attempted nothing we had any chance of failing at this week. We all needed gentle passtimes to serve as a balm. & dh went away for a couple of days which meant even more lounging about being restful so all in all, I do feel alot better. Not 100%, not by a long shot. But better.

 

We've been discussing moving on from this rented accomodation to another. we have seven months left on our lease.  And it can be hellish finding decent rentals here. We don't want to stay in ths house for a third year if we can help it. My landlady and her daughters are wonderfully warm and genuinely caring people. But the house has been a bit of a disaster. Alot of Algerian houses are unfortunately. And I'm ready for pastures new to be honest. 

It might not be far, having said that... it could be. It might just even be a new house in the same-ish area. But a change is as good as a rest right?

In the meantime, well dh has phoned and said he's on his way home. Children have gone off to tutors and will be home at 11-ish. It's Friday, so I need to get a crack on with lunch, which on a Friday should be cous-cous but I like to go against the grain whenever I can so that's NOT what we'll be having here.

Friday lunchtime in Algieria is about equal to a Sunday afternoon dinner in the UK.  It's a day when alot of families make the effort to get together. Some people will eat early beofr going to Jumuah, but with my men leaving the house at 12.30-ish and my propensity to lose all track of time, that's  never likely to happen in my home. Instead I fall into the second camp, which means Lunch at 2.30pm, followed by a siesta.

One of my favourite meals (and I make the exception of serving meat on a Friday lunchtime) is a chicken djouez (stovetop casserole) and croquettes. 

I always serve my croquettes Algerian style, in my casserole. but these would be just as nice with a salad, or with a cut of meat and some veggies. Today I'll tell you how to do the croquettes, and then when my dh finally opens up shop again and we have access to chicken once more, we'll do the whole thing, djouez and all insha'allah.

Right, so take a quantity of nice floury potatoes, how ever much you think you'll be able to eat! You'll be mashing them once they're cooked so boil till nice and tender.

Mash them, or put them through a food mill while still warm.To the mashed potato you'll want to add some salt, and I use some stoned cut olives mixed into my mash. (My neighbour uses parsley and tuna which is also nice). Mix in the olives and then roll the mash into golf ball sized balls.

 Make an Indent with your  thumb and put a small nugget of cheese inside the hole before closing it up and re-rolling. The cheese we use is La Vache qui Rit ( basically laughing cow) because apart from President, Camembert and Edam it's what Algeria has. But you could go wild and use something else more to your tatse.

What you need now are dishes of flour, eggs and breadcrumbs. Just enough for the amount of croquettes you've made.

Dip each croquette into the flour, then the eggs and the breadcrumbs before shallow frying the croquettes untill crisp and golden. Ideally I would have loved to show you some finished, but they don't last long enough on the plate for me to click the capture button.

These keep well in the fridge, and would probably freeze well too.
They're easy on the purse too which is always a bonus in my book.

 

And now off to tackle the ever present chores and cooking. Athough, if I might get back later to show you some wips, if I can get hold of the dh's phone for long enought to take any decent pics.

Winter...

is really starting to make its presence felt masha'allah.

The rains have arrived and it's feeling chilly at either end of the day now. The duvets and bedcovers have come out, and the children are out of their summer clothes and wearing vests and long sleeves.

It's still warm later on in the day, even with the rain, but there has been a definate shift in the weather which means it's time to get ready for a colder spell that will no doubt be welcomed by many after such a long, dry summer.

In our house it means rain proofing ourselves. Algerian houses are built to cope only with dry or hot weather. In the winter, even though the weather could be fairly spring like here in Algiers, inside your house it could feel close to freeezing. And rain? you don't want to know about it truly... I thought a lifetime of living in the UK would have me prepared for that one... but there's something so damned relentess about the rain here.

Anyway, our tarp is up, and it will stop most of it from coming in insha'allah.

We have what is typical of alot of homes where I live, an open roof! If you look at the photo you can see just how exposed we are in the winter months.

I'm planning my winter cooking too, finding new recipes to sit alongside the familiar ones I already use.

 

There's just something so comforting about coming home to a house full of the smells of things cooking,

My children spend alot of time walking back and forth from school so its important to me to have good hearty meals on the table when they come in.
And as much as I rebel against it sometimes, it's what I signed up for right?

 

I make an exception to my normal rule of no sweet weekday afternoon teas in the winter. I think it does the children good  to have a little something sweet to tide them over till dinner time.

I already posted my recipe for Flapjack a while back, but just in case you missed it...

 

And all you need to do is melt the butter, along with the sugar and honey

stir in the oats, and press down into a baking tin. And bake of course until nice and golden.

I like my flapjack to be fairly thick, so that it's moist and gooey in the middle, 

use a tin that gives you the right amount of depth to achieve the fapjack you'd prefer. 

Obviously the thinner it is the crunchier it will be, so beware!

We're heading towards a half term holiday here from Tuesday. November 1st is a day to commemorate the start of the revoloution against the French occupation in Algeria, and it's followed hot on it's heels this year by Eid-al-Adha. Which is why the children are benefitting from this double whammy by getting an extra holiday!

So we're preparing for a break (of sorts) possibly some family days out and a bit of travelling if we have time insha'allah in between everything else that seems to go on round here.

And with what's left of my weekend I'm off to tidy up a little, make some lunch and then insha'allah spend the afternoon with a book and some crochet. There are blankets to be made!

I hope you're all having a restful weekend

xxx

Eid and beyond...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food, dressmaking and cakes seem to have been at the forefront of everything we've done or thought about doing for the past month and a bit.

I don't usually enjoy sewing these days, most of my sewing is functional and not too inspiring, but I enjoyed making these masha'allah and the girls love wearing them too which always helps to boost the seamstresses ego.

We're concentrating now on getting the children ready for the start of a new school semester on Sunday. And praying that dh's long journey to the UK is a safe and fruitful one insha'allah. Our pace of life (and eating habits) change when he's not here and we consoled ourselves with his going away with some good old fashioned bangers and mash!

Tomorrow we're off on an early morning jaunt to the market to stock up on school supplies, and then home to bake for some guests we're hopefully having in the evening. We have days to fill.

xxx

to plan or not to plan.....

I should start by admitting that planning is not an innate part of my character.
I am, without a shadow of a doubt the most slapdash person I know, which means I have to fight myself every single step of the way.

Menu planning for my family has always been one of my best defences against myself and in the past really kept me on an even keel and helped balance my spending.


After my post on why menu planning doesn't work for me here in DZ, I've forced myself to take a closer look at why. And my most consistant answer has been me!

So for September I'm back on the menu planning bandwagon insha'allah. I used to plan a whole month at a time (which is no doubt another reason I was having a hard time sticking to it!), but think, I'll just stick to a weekly menu for now. I'll post up my menu plan at the start of each week... which for me is Sunday. And of course share any recipes with you, because I'm nice like that.

I would have started this week, but we still have five or six days of fasting left and I'd hate to bore you with the monotony of an Algerian iftar... which basically consists of not much else other than Shorba and bourek for 30 days... well alright that's a slight exaggeration I know but it's what it feels like.

In the meantime, lets have that chat about meal planning.
Here, as with the budgeting it's bestr to work with whatever is easiest for you.

Consider the lifestyle of your family when you work your menu. Do you have to provide packed lunches?
 Do you have children home from school at lunch time? Will you be eating out or having friends over for a meal?


Once you've considered your needs you can start filling up your menu. Which can be as low tech as scrawling it out on paper..or if you're geeky like me in table format on a word doc...
And again, if it's easier for you to plan a whole month... do that. If you'd prefer to only plan a week at a time then go ahead and do that. I've also done a two week menu and rotated weeks one and two.
The key is to find what works for you and, as with budgeting it might take a while to find a method that suits you and works well.

When I plan my meals I have a few basic rules that I try my best to stick to.  I feed eight peole twice each day and ten every day for dinner, so I need a fair idea of what I'm going to feed everyone.
These days I've been more likely to scootch around the kitchen seeing what I have to hand already before planning whay my days menu will be.

We don't have convenience food here, everything is made from scratch everyday, which amounts to a fairly sizeable workload and a truckload of food!
 Sometimes dh will throw a curve ball and ask for extra plate or two to send out to somone needy, which means a bit of extra portion shuffling...but we get there masha'allah.

As far as shopping is concerned I buy enough for the week, and if I'm in Super frugalista Queen of the penny pinchers mode, I can sometimes manage to eke out a weeks worth of groceries into a second week with some creative cooking.

My menu has four columns...Living in Algeria and having children who come home from school at lunchtime means bowing to schedules and customs. So my menu is broken up into four sections... breakfast, lunch afternoon tea and supper.

I try not to repeat a meal during the course of a week, with the exception of breakfast.
I try to keep it as balanced as possible, but this is Algeria and I can't even begin to describe what everyone feels like at the tail end of a veg season. There is only so much you can do with an aubergine or broad bean!

Lunches are always vegetarian.
Breakfasts need to be quick during the week so we pre-bake as much as we can. A couple of times a week we do a big bake and freeze what we can (with limited freezer space) and pull out what we need when it's needed.  In winer our staple breakfast along with anything baked is semolina (in place of my beloved porridge which we can't readily get here).

Afternoon teas I try to keep savoury during the week, things like peanut butter sandwhiches, bread and cheese or toast. Sweet teas are at the weekend, or if we have afterschool guests.
Afternoon tea might seem like a bit of an old fashioned extravagance for someone on a budget, but it's an important meal for the children, who have after school comittments and need something to tide them over till supper time. As long as it's all accounted for it's completely do-able.

I try to keep meals as simple as possible, and I'm not above a bit of creative recycling either.

Dinner is for carnivores.. dh is home by then and it's always something meaty with a veggie side for those who don't like to eat much meat. And I try to keep it frugal by asking dh for cheaper cuts of meat and then stretching it as far as I can.

I also use whatever freezer space I have to store leftovers which then get pulled out in random acts of desperation when I need something extra on the table or when stores are running a bit low. Either way leftovers have been a lifesaver on more than one occasion.

If you're a patient child friendly kind of parent you could involve the children in your menu planning or even the spousey type person in your life.

Do what comes easiest for you and whatever you have the most time for.
Budgeting and menu planning are never the same for everyone and you have to work with whatever feels right for you. Having said that I still scour the internet for ways I could improve and do it better. It's a never ending learning curve.

You can find loads of funky resources online to help you menu plan... you can even find other people's ready made, tried and tested, eaten and digested menus to simple shop and cook for.

And with that I'm off to plan my eid cake making insha'allah. if you've got anymore questions about budgeting or menu planning or even ideas for topics you'd like to see me cover, let me know.

xxx

Living well on less...

After my last post I was asked to share my thoughts on budgeting and meal planning..
I'm not an expert and I make mistakes...sometimes big ones!
My budget isn't foolproof, but if I stick to some basic principles I can keep my family well fed and happy without having to worry too much.

So let me get one thing straight before we start. Budgeting and living a life even remotely bordering on frugality
doesn't automatically mean you're going to have to live a life of dismal deprivation, eating the boxes other peoples food came in and going completely freegan in a last ditch attempt to keep your head above water on the money front.

Keeping within your budget and being frugal means you're going to be living more conciously... this is a good thing. It means you're thinking about the wider picture and keeping within budget means you're more likely to be able to eat as well at the end of the month as you did at the beginning, which is never bad, especially when you have children.... things can get ugly when children are hungry!

I've  always tried to live a conciously frugal lifestyle, but in the UK I didn't run my budget from my own purse. I wrote a bi-monthly list of everything we needed and then worked with whatever I had to hand. I had a moderate stockpile and things on the grocery front at least, were pretty peachy.

My journey into the word of proper grown up budgeting was born out of neccessity after we made the move to Algeria in the spring of 2008. We had no choice but to tighten our belts and take a cold hard look at our finances. We had no desire to end up back in the UK, but staying in Algeria meant being financially stable, and at the time we were very far from that.

Now for the lovely sister that asked, I can give you the lowdown on my budget but remember its all relative. What works for my family won't work for anyone else. However I'm all for taking the gist of an idea and moulding it to shape my own needs...alot of my budgeting strategy has been picked up along the way after seeing what worked for other people and then adapting it to fit my own familiy's needs

My first top tip is that you make sure that you and spousey are on the same page. Which means you need to sit down together and take an honest look at your finances and what you can and can't do with them. You won't be able to work magic but you can draw up some kind of a plan to make it easier to spend your money wisely, reduce debts and stay afloat.

This is the boring grown up bit... list all your expenses..'  ALL of them!
Everything from the utility bills to the children's pocket money. Include every single expense you can think of. And then start the weeding out process. Some of what's on your list will be an immovabe part of your monthly budget, but take a good look at everything and see if there are things you can reduce spending on or even stop spending on completely.

What you're attempting to do is live within a financial framework, which can be quite daunting at first..especially if like me, you have an aversion bordering on insane to anything remotely grown up and responsible. Which is a somewhat shocking admission from a mother with seven children, but there you are.

To give you some idea of how a budget can work I'll give you a quick glimpse at mine insha'allah

My "payday" is the first of every month. Although sometimes life conspires to make me go ever so slighty over budget and then I may have to start my new month a few days earlier.

We put aside each month what we think we might need to cover utility bills, tutors fees, medical bills, etc. More often than not we're pleasanly surprised to have money leftover, which then gets carried forward to next month.  My household allowance then covers everything else, groceries, school equipment, drinking water, internet. basically everything household including clothing.

The first thing I do when I start my new month is to pay for my next months worth of internet. It's a bit pricey at 2500da a month, but I'm in Africa..I need the contact with the outside world and quite frankly the children need me sane!

Next comes water, my other big budget buster. It's not that I don't trust the tap water here... ah heckers who am I kidding.. I don't trust the tap water here and if it's a choice between the raging runs and putting my hand in my pocket for bottled water, then guess what? I bulk buy 10-15 cases in the winter, more in the summer of course..and have it delivered, which mean I score low on being eco friendly on the transport & packaging. But sometimes a compromise, no matter how ugly it is  has to be made somewhere.

I also buy my milk in bulk at the start of the month, one day I hope I live somewhere where I can easily get hold of fresh unpasturied mik on a daily basis... in the meantime it's Candia.

After that the only other bulk buy I do is flour and semolina. I buy a 25kg sack of flour for 700da on a good day..and seeing as a 1kg bag of flour currently retails at 55da where I live it's a saving audacious enough to blow your socks off.

Once that's taken care of I do the veggies. I write up a list based on what I know is in season and send my boys off to my regular veggie man.. who will quite often let me have any poorer quality veg he has on my list for free. My veg will normally cost me anything between 1500 - 1700da a week..sometimes I have enough to carry me through to the following week although I constantly have to top on potatoes...but I blame that on Irish genes.

As far as fruit is concerned I'm a total opportunist and willl buy whatever I can whenever it's cheap enough.
Dried goods I buy as I need them. If I can sort my storage issues I'd be happy for this to change but at the moment I can't bear to think of laying out money for dried goods only to have them get infested with moths and other wildlife and being useless.

Eggs are bought by the tray at the start of each week for roughly 300da..and depending on how much baking we do wil normally last us a week perhaps less.

Twice a month I buy about 250da worth of peanuts and make peanut butter...  I've also just started making my own applesauce and easy pickles.

Meat, I score lucky on, dh is a butcher, so meat these days comes to me for free. When I was having to buy meat out of my budget we hardly ate any meat at all , and ALWAYS the cheaper cuts... It's amazing how tasty turkey neck is!

Oil I buy in 5ltr bottles, though if it's not Ramadhan I try not to use too much and normally a 5ltr bottle if kept out of the hands of those who cook with gay abandon will last me the whole month.
I also buy a large tub of ghee at the start of the month and a couple of large bottls of olive oil.

Everything else I buy (apart from rice and pasta) is by mizan (weight) which means I can buy as much or as little as I need or my purse can cope with.

Anything else like clothes, unless it's an emergency buy has to be saved for...which is no bad thing, certainly in terms of teaching you to seperate your wants from your needs. 

Of course the biggest hurdle you may have in your new endeavour to save money and stick to a budget are teenagers! If you have one at home it's a good idea to bring them on board and explain to them why you're jumping the good ship spontanious and suddenly changing tactics... after all your decision to spend less or at least spend more wisely will no doubt have a knock on effect on the teens lifestyle somewhere.

Once you've decided to keep a budget, try and keep track of where your money is really being spent. For the first few months of my budgeting life I kept a tally of everything I bought during each budget month...and I mean everything. It was soon easy to see where my money was going and to spot any wastage. I was then able to weed out any budget busters and save some money.

At the end of your month it's always useful to review your spending. Are there things you need to change or things you could have done better?
It might take a while for you to get used to budgeting and fine tuning it the needs of your family. Mine is constantly evolving to take into account the needs of my children or price hikes. I've got used to it. But even I have to go back to the drawing board occassionlly and take a really good look at how I'm spending my cash.

My goal for September is to start having some no-spend days. it's been on my list of goals for ages and it's complete laziness tempered with a dash of disorganisation that's stopped me till now. But I'm hoping it will change next month.

In my next post I'll give you the lowdown on menu planning insha'allah. And saving time and money in the kitchen.

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Why menu planning doesn't work......

 at least not for me in Algeria at any rate!

I was once a huge advocate of menu planning, in the UK and here too when I first started running my DZ home.

It took me a long while to admit that planning menus in a country where I have next to no freezer space, a moderately unreliable electricity supply, and prices that rise and fall like nobodies business just wasn't working.

Menu planning used to make my life easier, when I was able to buy my groceries bulk,

I knew what I was cooking and when, and it took the hassle out of having to think about what I was going to feed everyone.

Here in Algeria, it's a whole different ball game.

I no longer bulk buy my dried goods because they become so  easily infiltrated by beasties...

I do have an extra room in my house to use for storage but it's humid most of the time and not ideal for storing things that would be affected by it.

These days the only things I buy in bulk are water and milk, flour and semolina.

The rest is bought as is needed.

 

 Menu  planning also doesn't take account of my leftovers, and whatever I find in the market that's too much of a bargain to pass up. 

I shop differently these days and it's had a knock on effect, I used to be able to plan a month in advance..now I have to think on my feet.

And lets face facts.. we're in North Africa.... food prices are erratic at best and when I plan a menu I look for things to cook.

I'm an avid reader of cooking books and blogs, and I'm always easily seduced by a new recipe.

which of course takes it's toll on my budget!

So, I have been dragged kicking and screaming to the conclusion that menu planning is no longer for me,

for the past three months I've still written out my menu, but have barely followed it.

We eat well, I cook healthy, nutritious meals and masha'allah my kids can pack food away like you wouldn't believe!

I've learnt to be more flexible, I've asked questions of the Algerian women around me, I seek out what works from people who have been running homes here far longer than I have. 

I sometimes miss the ease with which I ran my home and fed my family in the UK..

but would I swap it for what I have now?

I dont thnk so.. I think we can cope without a menu plan.

But what do you do? 

Are you a menu planner... if you're living in Algeria do you plan your meals?

Have you adapted your cooking to suit your life in here.

Week one...

of Ramadhan has already passed and we're finally falling into some sort of rhythm in my house.
it's exhausting and doesn't include alot of sleep at the right time, but this of course is small fry when you consider the reward insha'allah.

We had a pretty tough first week emotionally and it was tough keeping on track, but this is real life and stuff happens... the trick is to roll with the punches and to keep moving forward.

Week one for us tends to be pretty low key, as we try to concentrate on adjusting to fasting long hours, so other than keeping up with our Qur'an and (for some of us) attending Taraweeh there hasn't been much else going on.
We try to remain aware of  our reason for fasting and we've pretty much cut out all other distractions such as TV, non-islamic reading and non-essential internet usage.

For the small people there has been baking, and as we move into week two we'll include some crafts to keep their fasting minds occupied although all in all they seem to have coped amazingly well.

 

although judging by the way my sweetie looks here, the wait for cake can sometimes be just

too long!!

You can find our biscuit recipe and the tutorial for our advent calender here insha'allah

t'was the night before fasting....

and with more than enough to do already we decided it was only fitting to include an impromptu baking session for the younger girls and their friend ( who happened to bring along her two brothers  aged 3yrs and 15 months!) 

One of our priorities during ramadhan is to make it as enjoyable for the younger people in our lives as possible.

Far too often children get a bit lost and left behind during Ramadhan and I want mine to grow up with as many happy memeories of this beautiful month as they can.

the result was a super pooped 19 year old who volunteered to be head chef and child tamer, and a trio of happy girls with some pretty biscuits to enjoy with milk while the men folk spent their first night at the masjid for taraweeh.

First days mission accomplished ...  on the child taming and biscuit making front at least masha'allah.

"and the recipe for the cookies?" I hear you cry!

It's not mine, it's Nigella's... you'll find it in Feast.

Or possibly on her website.

Either way, the kids are sure to love it so give it a try insha'allah

With  a large brood to feed it's important to be able to put down a meal that's filling nutritious and yet frugal.

If a recipe manages to tick all those boxes then I know I'm on to a winner.

I still normally have to double or sometimes even have to treble a recipe to feed 10 hungry mouths

but I'm so used to it now that on the rare occasion that I have to cook for less I still end up cooking a truckload.

Living a frugal lifestyle means of course that everything we cook is made from scratch..which can admittedly be exhaustingly time consuming, especially living in Algeria where meals happen four times a day, by the clock, and yes afternoon coffee is an obligation dahlink, not a voluntary act of kindness for an impromtu guest.

I sometimes hanker after the days in the UK when feeding my family didn't seem quite so labour intensive as it does now... I often feel like running screaming from the kitchen at mealtimes. 

There is however no alternative.

The family has to be fed, and if I have any hope of coming in under budget at the end of a housekeeping month , then care and dilligence in the kitchen has to be a priority.

Food prices are not always stable in Algeria, and what is affordabe this week may very well be unaffordable next. 

It's just part and parcel of life here, and you learn to roll with the punches your purse takes.

Of course the payoff is seeing my children, and Husband happy with what's put in front of them..even if it is wolfed down without touching the sides.