:: 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?

:: 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!

it took a while...

two days solid in fact. Negotiating my shonky connection to make a few changes around here was a true test of my sanity, but I did it and the place looks a bit brighter don't you think?

today, ALL of my schooly children have a full day of learning... well, I say learning which strictly speaking isn't what goes on in the Algerian school system but never mind. We've had two weeks of exams with some of the children only having school in the morning and some in the afternoon. I can't believe I home-schooled them all for so long without going completely and uttterly demented. They would have tested the patience of the most pious, and I'm not kidding you. Algerian children are wild. And my children are becoming seriously Algerian

I have nothing much planned today, beyond some mild menu planning....a tight-ish month lies ahead. Our shop has been closed for a month (most butchers close for at least that long after Eid) so I'm going right back to basics with my budget and cooking insha'allah.

I'm thinking of doing a post a day for December.... a budget and menu plan special.
It might keep me on track.. it could drive me madder, quicker!
Who knows?

Other than that, there's nothing much doing except some crochet catch up. DD7 needs to have the poncho I started sometime before the cold weather ends so I need to crack on with it insha'allah.

I have things to share later, so I might yet be back at the other end of this fine and sunny Algiers day....
yeah sunny!  We're almost dried out now mash'allah. Two rooms have stopped leaking and are now forming some decorative water bubbles that look like they want to burst.
Our store room is the one room that refuses to stop soaking up all available water and raining indoors. Which is a problem as fas as food storage goes, but there's nowt to be done if the room is insisting on being a sponge.

Me, I'm just getting on with it. Homesickness is behind me. Seven months of careful saving and a moderate amount of planning are ahead of me. There will be frustrations, and no doubt more bouts of longing for "home" but that's life, innit!

And as another day starts...

It was raining incessantly as I started writing this post this morning. DD11 had left for school, as she always does at 7:20, and both boys had left a little earlier. It's exam week here in Algeria and school for my boys has been happening at 7:30. They're home again for the day at about 10am, so the week has been... a challenge!

Only DD7 was left ready and waiting to leave, and though she normally walks to school on her own, this morning, with the rain pelting down, and the sky still pitch black, DD19 and I put on our outdoor stuff and braved the elements in order to keep her company, The result was a very happy to not be walking to school on her own 7 year old. So a good start to the day.

Unfortunately the downside was, that having taken lots of pics around the breakfast table this morning, I missed prime connection time for uploading, and I only just managed to upload this one. After half an hour!

It's now 11:10 and I should seriously start thinking about throwing some pasta in a pan to be honest and getting some other chores out of the way. I hung curtains in my sitting room yesterday to cosy the place up a little. One of the by-products of short lease renting is that it sometimes makes you less likely to bother to cosy up your living space, we are however a bit tired of feeling like we're living in temporary accomodation and we're just going ahead and cosying up the place for winter... well I guess as much as you can with an Algerian house. They don't naturally lend themselves to a homely feel, they can feel in fact, a bit sparse and cold so it's no easy task getting the comfort factor right. Added to that is the fact that by putting "our" kind of stamp on our living space we naturally make our house look more than a little odd and "unkempt" by Algerian standards. But the task is, to make this house our home for the next seven month insha'allah.

The rest of my day will hopefully be about finishing up some blanket making, and some stitching that I've been working on. I don't like the stitching it has to be said. It's a practice piece that I can't wait to see the back of.
And there's a doily that needs to be finished, it's for a pillow case that needs some livening up. Oh and did I mention the dh just phoned to ask if I would cook chicken biriyani for 8 this evening... yup biriyani for 16 (that's including those of us at home) no problem!
I don't mind, dh will eat in the masjid with the brothers. It's almost a night off...but not quite.

And now, I'm off to do that pasta... tidy up a bit, think about making some samosas & pakora to go with that biriyani.....

Today needs to be a doing day.
Unfortunately doing is not my strong point!
I am a creature built for comfort, and I get distracted, EASILY!.

Today I need to find some spare tarpaulin to fashion a makeshift pane for my glassless window. It was cold last night, and not alot warmer this morning. I could manage for a while longer but because my bubby boy sleeps with us in the room it needs to be tad warmer. His pathalogical aversion to any kind of bedcover isn't showing any sign of abating so I'll have to go another route!

I also need to brave the fridge today, it needs cleaning and looting for semi-useful grub to cook ahead of my new month of housekeeping. My children tend to graze from the fridge without mercy or inteligence, consuming all things useful and leaving me with oddments that are difficult to find any sensible use for.

The sewing machine needs some loving attention today, my poor dd11 needs some new clothes and the only way that's going to happen is if I actually make them. I hate sewing and I'm not sure why. I'm fairly competent, can work without a pattern, and as long as there are no zippers in sight my finished garments are fairly decent. My 7 year old is wearing dresses my 19 year old was wearing at her age, so they even last longer than shop bought. I really can't fathom my aversion to it. Beats me completely, so I'm just going to knuckle down and get on with it without thinking too much.
I hope I have some kind of camera soon to take WIP pics with...
  I have to put some thought into where November's allowance needs to be spent most. I had a poorly month this month. Unexpected expenses do not make for a happy healthy purse. And I have three people in line for the dentist, two kids waiting for new school bags, and some winter wooly making that needs to be financed from somewhere because it's just so much more cost effective than buying ready made. I have two days left and yet again there has been more month than money, so at some point todatay insha'allah I will be sitting myself down with a pot of tea and my notebook and trying to make sense of my finances.

We've just about decided what cakes to make for Eid, and what bits of sheep we'd like to keep.  And it looks like we might have a new sheep taking residence upstairs on the terrace til summer, which will please bubby boy!

The rain is still falling in fits and starts, our store-room ceiling which is directly under the untiled and fairly water-logged terrace has started to bubble... it wont be long before the rain finds it's way in. I may have to find a new home for my dry goods. And if our sheep is indeed coming home we'll have to spruce up his living space, and rescue the rug thats been up there for the best part of the year, which will go to the Lavage (car wash) for a steam clean some time this week insha'allah

And just to mix things up a bit, sons 14 & 13 have just arrived back home in the rain. Sport was cancelled so no school till 1:30pm. The joys of motherhood in Algeria!

Love and peace people
xxx

We've been back at school for about three weeks now and I really should be settling into some kind of routine...
It's been hard getting back into a rhythm though after four months of summer holiday.
I've been trying to ignore all the things that distract me from being present and attentive during my children's day. It's been hard... I'm easily and all too willingly distracted from most things domestic, and so it's been a challenge to stay focused at times.
 Three weeks in though and the barest hint of me actually getting my crazy act together is finally starting to show. The children are mildly relieved and I'm sure by the time the winter holiday comes round in December I'll have almost found my feet.

Nothing much else has happened over the past three weeks. Dh has been and come back from the UK....
I have tea, I have chocolate, the 18 month old has quickly learned to use both of these new words with willful abundance and my sanity will be thankfully less questionable for a wee while, at least until the tea and choccy runs out. And if only I could muster enough intrest to load the bread machine with enough bits and bobs to make a half decent loaf so that I had a more interesting vehicle for my Marmite than scraggy old Algerian baguette then I'd be on a bloomin roll luvvies.

However, this is ME, and I have a list of wanna do's longer than I care to admit to and it's time to kick my botty into gear. I remain hopeful that October will be THE month the brain fog finally clears!

I haven't forgotten by the way, the requests for recipes. we've had some connection issues, I seem to be sorted now though so I'll be posting a few later in the week insha'allah. Unfortunately my phone and only source of picture taking died on me and I'm waiting to see if it can be fixed, so I'm not sure what will be happening on the photo front. DD19 and I often go out these days and lust after camera's in our local shopping mall... but that will have to wait. We're tryng to be grown up, by not allowing our wants to overtake our needs.
SO not easy!!!

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.

·         

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.

When I lived in the UK I was fortunate enough to have a kitchen I could keep a table in, and I did for many years...until the size of my family outgrew it.

I no longer  boast a kitchen large enough for my table..but I do have a table now that the whole family can sit around.

And it sees alot of activity masha'allah.

I have a typical old Algerian kitchen that boasts no cupboards or workspace, so the table that lives at one end of my sitting room has become my work station and food prep area.

My 19 year old most often prepares afternoon treats for us all here, and it's wonderfully heartwarming to see her gather her younger brothers and sisters around her to let them help, it's also the place she's most likely to give them an impromptu science lesson.

It would seem that once homeschooling is in the system it's there for life!

It's where I sit to work out my monthly housekeeping, write up my monthly menu plans and generally find a way of budgeting the unbudgetable.

I'm never alone though masha'allah..I budget at one end... dd19 bakes at the other, and everyone else comes and goes and interrupts for one thing or another.

More often than not we clear a space somwehere in the middle for afternoon tea.

  

Some days of course there's no room for anything other than crafting... and then the whole space lies victim to whatever we're all working on. From sewing to crochet to knitting, sometimes our whole table looks like the debris from an explosion in a haberdashery store!

 

 and even though we may no longer be able to build the hub of our home around our kitchen, we've managed to create  space we can all gather around and enjoy each others company and share snippets of our day

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.

It's been roughly four days since my bubba's little gums started to cut four new teeth all at the same time.

Four sleepless... and I mean SLEEPLESS... nights.

A baby who does NOTHING except scream or sleep, and quite why the screaming HAS to happen at night and the sleeping all through the day is beyond my comprehension completely...

And an increasingly foggy sleep deprived barain brian brain., that is now making little or no sense of anything.

My heart feels for my little man, he's grumpy, in pain, and has to cope with how frightening I am beginning to look after four days of total sleep deprivation...

Anyhow, things still need to get done round here...

I still have more than half a month to wade through budget-wise..

and for the rest of this month, quite frankly if it's NOT frugal then it's NOT on the menu.

I'm finding it increasingly hard to stay withing budget these days, food prices have risen sharply since this time last year, and my budget (which hasn't!) has suffered greatly.

So it's a make and do (as much as possible) week in my house...

using as much of what I have to hand as I can.

Making my bread instead of taking the lazy option and buying it (we easily get through 10 baguettes daily)... especially after just buying 25kg of flour!

Using up all those veggies that are starting to languish at the bottom of the fridge, and generally just being an all-round tight wad for the next couple of weeks.

I buy oil, washing powder, milk and water in bulk at the start of the month... so already have those to hand, plus the flour and about

 20kg of semolina, the question is..is it possible to get by for the next three weeks on 400da (or less) per day?

Now I love frugality, and all ethics behind it... but even I'm thinking that this is a bit of a tall order.

Today on the menu is roasted vegetable cous-cous.... for using up all those lingering courgettes that seem to have built up.

And then something meaty, most likely ripped from the freezer at the last minute, for dh.

The children and I are mostly veggie (by choice) which makes life so much easier in so many ways!

And in the mean time, as I said, there are plenty of things yet to be done...

there is a bulk load of sheep fat that needs me to remember to defrost it before I can render it down later this week.

There is bread to be baked, laundry to tackle, sewing to get done and the other side of a crocheted tunic top that needs to be finished for dd19.

Better be off then hadn't I.....

And IF you spot a typo, it's the lack of sleep wot did it!

First day back at school.... After a late night trying to upload photo's to my blog, and a super early 5am start with alarms going off all over the place to ensure I didn't sink back down into my pillow and snooze off again, I now feel like a bit of a brain fogged zombie.

There are of course lots of things to do, there is laundry to get done, especially this morning with the promise of a warm day ahead and lots of sunshine.... it was only after sitting down to write that I realised I had loaded the machine and forgotten to turn it on....

Lunch of course needs to be ready by 12pm, and I do believe I half heartedly started a list at 7am with a few other jobs scrawled on it... and the vague notion of a menu plan for the day.

At any rate...it's Sunday.... first day of the week, which makes it hard enough to get started anyway... and first day back to school, and school routine makes it even more likely that I'll still be sitting here mulling things over and keeping myself hydrated with copious amounts of tea when I really should be putting food on the table.....

 So I'm off to pretend at being a good girl.... I'll start slowly by plugging in the washing machine and then see where the brief spurt of actiity takes me, something tells me it may lead me straight back to the kettle!

Life or something like it...

Keeps getting in my way,

So we'll blithely ignore the fact that I haven't been here since declaring I'd be back after a cuppa and chores, we can even pretend it has everything to do with my diligence in housekeeping and attention to domestic detail and nothing at all to do with the shonky nature of Algerian Internet if you like... would certainly make me feel a whole heap better! Especially as my sitting room at the moment has been well and truly ransacked by my mini-man who has developed an obsession with my yarn basket... picture if you will what you think an explosion in a yarn store might look like and then you might be somewhere close to what my sitting room looks like several times each day. It's too easy of course to remove it... he loves tipping out the contents, rolling around with it all and then giggling as we rush to pick it all up faster than he can lob it all over the show.
Anyhow.....
I promised you pics didn't I?
Documented evidence of things done....
There has been homemade pitta bread and falafel.... does that count?

Along with lovely cotton doilies, fresh thyme, and an attempt to use up all my bits of stray yarn by making a blanket.... yes I know it's spring here in North Africa, but the rate it takes me to finish a project these days I'll be lucky if it's ready by winter!

We're nearly at the end of the spring holiday, a two week break that was much needed and not nearly as well appreciated as it could have been, but we'll blame that on the children shall we?
Tomorrow the children will be packed off to school bright and early, and after catching up on chores and cooking I intend to get down to some serious sewing...the backlog of things to be done is horrible.
I'm a slacker pure and simple on the making clothes front... I stopped and started with two tunics and still have at least two others cut and ready to be put together insha'allah.
If I can keep my eyes open after a late night and an early start though it will be a miracle...

There was a whole different post meant for these photos, but at some point between writing it and hitting the publish tab my connection was lost and so were the words I had carefully chosen to share with you.

And in true Kate fashion there is absolutly no way I can hope to recreate the post that was meant to be...it just isn't living in my head anymore I'm afraid.

I'll share the pictures of bits of my home that went with it though insha'allah.

It's somebody else's house of course as we're only renting, but it definately feels like home masha'allah.

We took these on Thursday, which is our day for a big clean up and getting ready for the weekend. Hence the reason you see my trusty old broom propped up against the wall...

Cleaning is bad enough anywhere but here in Algeria the dust is relentless and the morning clean is a ritual that is the most commonplace part of everday life for women here.

And it's strenuous and monotonous work... alot of homes are old, tiny, overcrowded...and you can forget things like dishwashers and washing machines.

Most of the women I know wash laundry by hand or have an old fashioned twin tub, that requires almost as much manual labour as washing the clothes by hand.

This is the third house we've lived in since we came almost two years ago and to be honest I don't mind moving around or even the moderate uncertainty that comes with renting.

Having said that we're a least hoping to stay put for the next year insha'allah.

The area isn't the most beautiful it's true, but the children have put down roots and our neighbours have been so helpful and supportive that it's hard right now imagining moving away.

I don't even mind that the top of our house is completely open to the elements, in fact in summer it's lovely being able to look up and see the outside inside.

This is taken from the second floor where the bedrooms are, and directly above where you see the tarp, is where our sheep lives and where our laundry gets hung.

The rooftop terraces are so close together in our ziniqa that you can easily chat with neighbours from up there...

and there's been some tentative steps on the crafting front

I lost my mojo a bit over the winter, but there are loads of ideas germinating up there in my head..it's just a matter of finding the time to get some of them done.

I'm working on a couple of cardigans, a  baby one and one for the 19 year old in my life...she chose some lovely deep teal yarn that's a joy to work with.

Yarn is a bit hit and miss here, and there's certainly nothing close to the gorgeousness you can find in the UK, but it's cheap and you can find nice soft yarns at a fraction of what it would cost back home. You just have to be prepared to look hard.

Also we only seem to be able to purchase yarn in 25, 30 and 50g balls...which is a bit of a bummer..especially when you're working on a larger projects..but them's the breaks I guess.

and tomorrow...

well, we've been planning a trip to the opticians for glasses for dd19

and there will no doubt be the usual round of meals to fit in somewhere.

There are lesson plans to write out for Tuesday

and I need to phone my Mum, even though the poor old love can barely hear what I'm saying these days.

Other than that, nothing is set in stone.

We'll wait for the day and just roll with it insha'allah.

xxx

I never actually mean to stay away for as long as I do,

Life just seems to keep me busy with other things most of the time, and not much of it would be considered blog worthy I'm afraid...

We've been housebound for a couple of weeks, waiting for the rain to stop and the weather to clear up enough for us to venture a bit further out than simply to the school and back,

and in the meantime there is the never ending round of meals to cook and mess to clear... which sounds a bit like a complaint, but isn't... honest!



there is always some joy to be found in even the most mundane of daily chores....

one of my favourite jobs over the winter months has been cooking at my taboona, which warms the kitchen up beautifully, and it suits me fine to sit and throw things into a pot at leisure instead of standing over the cooker wishing I was doing something other than trying to feed the five thousand....again!!

having said that my love / hate with cooking has abated somewhat over winter, and I have learnt some new recipes from neighbours and friends.

Now, I would promise to show you them...and WILL if I remember, but lets face it we all know I'm a flaky, brain deficient sloth with terminal brain fog

busy mother of 7 with a home and husband to run!

I've also learnt to love my bread maker this winter...which should have meant less of what you see below, but what it actually resulted in was not bread to break at the dinner table,

but the most delicious chelsea buns and other very tasy but admitedly not nearly as neccessary yuminess.

It has helped to keep the wolf from the door though and the children happy into the bargain, so whats to complain about  (other than a few extra inches on the hips)

there have been attempts at healtiness, I mean I have been THINKING about going on a diet...

I just don't seem to have got much further than the thinking stage....

we eat pretty healthily here, no pre-made nonsense and all freshly cooked from scratch...just possibly rather too much of it...

I did write myself a wish list of what I wanted to achieve this month, and don't seem to have achieved very much of it, apart from developing a better sleep routine..which no doubt says alot about me...

I'm off now to do a spot of Good Blogkeeping...

one of my to-do's for Feb was blogging 3x a week and sorting out my blogroll.....

doing well so far aren't I?

xxx

part of my pledge to self for 2011 is keeping it real...
so instead of coming here and ignoring the fact that I gave myself things to do over the weekend, we're going to study the anatomy of a to do list...or more correctly a "to don't" list

my menu plan for January got dumped and deserted half way through thanks to price hikes that made my carefully created and fuss free menu impossible to follow, and so I had the bare bones of an idea of what to cook for my crowd over the weekend... which covers the first four to do's on my list..only two of which were achieved..the garantita and pitta bread got made...the split pea soup and falafel didn't... thats not to say we didn't eat, we juat ate other things..and I can't even remember what!

I did sew velcro onto 3 nappies but my dear friend needed her sewing machine back for a bit so the rest of that job got frogged for a while...

I didn't remember to send the 6 year old to the tutor this weekend, so giant slap on the hand for me..I'm flaky you see, with the short term memory of a gnat and the long term memory of a flea so I can't really be held to account for forgetting can I?

I also didn't cut out any clothes to sew... the bag of material is sitting in the corner of the sitting room making it's presence felt, but what I did do was mend quite a few dresses that dd10 had been a bit too enthusiastic in and so she has a few more wardrobe options than she did, which makes me feel only semi flaky on the clothes making score...and I console myself with the fact that the fabric will still get used to make dresses but it will probably be closer to summer by then and it will be a whole new summer wardrobe...

Okay..stop laughing...I'm trying to give you honesty here!

I did catch up with emails..well, some of them at least...but better than nothing right?

The sardines are still in the freezer, but that's because dh brought home some lovely bbq liver and chicken...NOT my fault!

sticky lemon buns were meant to be made on Saturday morning, but.... I was due to visit a friend and got comandeered out of the house a couple of hours earlier than scheduled and had no time for yeast...which brings me neatly on to doughnuts which there was also no need for me to tackle cos my lovely friend made em instead..so I did HAVE doughnuts...I just didn't MAKE them

the maqroot are still soaking in smen in the kitchen..but that just makes for a moister maqroot in my book, and there's no point cleaning the cooker till I've fried the maqroot is there?

and the crochet...erm well... I didn't FINSH anything but I did START something else...starting is my strong point.

and there you have it... a to don't list deconstructed.

and as I have said before, I dont feel bad about non-achievments. Not alot of the time anyway. Life just happens that way. I write a list...some of it gets done...some of it gets shifted along..it all gets done eventually, just not always in the time frame or order I initially intended

right now though, two of my children have reappeared after only an hour of school because teachers didn't turn up for work, and it looks like they only have two hours of school this afternoon. So the day gets rearranged hastily to accomodate the unexpected... so I'm off to find something interesting to cook for lunch insha'allah... wish me well
xxx

Sunday...

and start of a new week for us here in Algeria...

It took me a while to get used to a Friday /Saturday weekend when I first came here

but it's normal now...and we generally look forward to the couple of days off school.

Falling into a slightly different pace & routine.

It's not altogether unbusy of course...

Friday, being Jumuah is the nicest day of our week.

My boys wander off to tutors in the morning while the rest of tidy up the house a little and make ready for any of the drop in guests we normally get over the weekend.

Boys are back in time to shower and run off to meet their Abi in the masjid and then we prep lunch and settle down to a nice family meal post salat... and hopefully to an afternoon of lounging around catching up with all the things we wanted to do during the week but didn't have time for because we were too busy doing the "have to's" of life.

Although in reality our weekend quite often gets hijacked by friends and neighbours popping in for tea and a chat.

This weekend was nicer still because lunch was courtesy of an aunt in law who sent it along with my boys..and then we drifted off in the afternoon ( they live just a short walk away)to spend some time with them all and the new baby in their lives masha'allah.

Saturday is another affair altogether...back to an early start after the Friday lie

and making ready for my "Saturday Girls"

A group of 5-6 girls from my Tuesday masjid class who come for extra tutoring.

Though we've decided that Saturday should be more informal and as we're not actually covering much academic ground on a Saturday we're changing it to a crafting session insha'allah...so I hope we'll have something constructive to show for ourselves sometime soon.

My other two regular adult students weren't able to make today... so we had an easy afternoon.

Dh was out all day, so we all sat down with the knitting sticks and cast on projects to make us happy...

a rash of baby wear  is taking shape on our needles and after a few days of not being able to find a rhythm to our yarn crafts we are finally back in the groove and happily knitting away masha'allah.

Tomorrow?

Well,

it's the first day of a new week...

which, in my house means cooking & cleaning

getting rid of all my week long stash of stale bread and turning it into bread puddings

making some soup and bakeables

getting rid of weekend dust and lighting bakhoor to freshen the place up

and being ready to offer up the younger ones something warm and comforting after the long-ish walk down to the school and back...

I love the start of a new week almost as much as I look forward to the weekend...

My younger children are another matter altogether..

After years of homeschooling, Sunday morning holds less joy than it used to..and it seems more important now to make home somewhere where they can offload and relax.

I used to fight against housework and what I thought was the drudgery and monotony of everyday chores.

But I know that my job makes the other people in my life more relaxed, and makes life easier for them..after all they are the ones who are facing the real hardship of having to leave home day in day out whatever the weather....

The job I used to resent...even if ever so slightly I now (usually) tackle with relish and a new found enthusiasm.....

Reclaiming the home...

Keeping a home healthy, happy and well fed isn't something that happens by accident...

Whether you're a stay at home mum or working..it takes time, thought and a sense of purpose.

And I have learnt this late in life...

There is a profound sense of fulfilment to be had from knowing that those you love, feel cared for by you and that your efforts at home give them a deep feeling of contentment and happiness.

Don't get me wrong though..not everyday is bathed in sunshine and smiles.

But even on the days when the laundry seems like it's never going to end, when the water has gone off just as you were about to start the all important (in DZ!) morning clean, and you have no idea what to cook because you forgot to get anything fresh in the day before, we get through and get it done.

As I've said before I'm not a natural housekeeper, But I've learnt to love the satisfaction it gives me to see the results of my work on the faces of my loved ones.

So if their happiness means dilligently budgeting so that I can put a hearty spread on the table, then so be it.

And if my sole purpose, after worshipping Allah ta'ala is to gather them all together and keep them a tight happy unit, then I'm content with that.

Feeding everyone though has not been an easy task here in Algeria,

There have been plenty of hurdles to jump in the past year, and its sometimes been a steep learning curve,

both for me and my purse

The challenge has been an interesting one though,and I'm gathering lots of information and cooking tips from the Algerian women around me, which helps enormously, and which I'll hopefully be able to share over time insha'allah.

I learned farly early on, that if I wanted my budget to withstand the hardships it was likely to face then learning to cook like an Algerian was going to be a neccesary part of that..

And it's made a huge difference...

I can honestly say that without the love and support of the Algerian women I've met here, the whole procees of settling down and learning to fit in would have taken alot longer and would have much harder going.

I'm almost at the start of a new frugal homekeeping month, so connection permitting..I'll be sharing tips and recipes along the way insha'allah.

I'm off now to have my first coffee of the day and do some menu planning....