Ginger Oatmeal and Food Prices

Following up on the ginger tea post of last week: This morning I made my usual bowl of oatmeal. But instead of plain old water, I used the left-over ginger tea in a pot I had made last night. Well worth trying! It certainly adds a bite to the daily dose of oats. With a bit of brown sugar added, the overall effect was a useful addition to my breakfast bag of tricks.

Maybe tomorrow it will be ginger pancakes. I'm also thinking about "egg nog" custard with nutmeg. Might put it on the pancakes.

Sunday morning, we went to "Fruit World" on Mokoia Road. We left with a swag of fruit and veggies for the week for the four of us, and the total bill was $54.47. I'm still struggling to work out why some people think fruit and veggies are expensive.

Comparing and contrasting, we went to Woolworths at Northcote Centre and had a look at the meat. The lean lamb leg steaks were $22.99 / kg. Enough for two meals for four people, where meat wasn't the main event, was over $15. Now that IS expensive. The rest of the meat prices were similarly off the wall....so we resolved to find someone with a lamb or two who would be happy to sell it to us so we could have it home-killed. Might not be any cheaper in the end, but it can't be any more expensive. I don't know why our domestically-supplied meat has to go to grain-fed prices when our livestock aren`t grain-fed. Is our lamb in such heavy demand that we will be exporting all of it if we don`t pay the 'global' price locally? For now, I'm boycotting the usual lamb meat supply chain and going looking for an alternative.

Our strategy of doing as East Asians do and adding small or moderate amounts of fibre / nutrition / protein to a core dish of rice seems to be paying off. The food is good and the cost is low per meal. Yet we do not feel we are any worse off for it. If anything the revised cuisine is generating curiosity and stirring imaginations into action.

The other popular addition to the household cuisine has been homemade hummus. The litre I make each Monday lasts about a week. It costs under $4 to make the litre, which is huge saving over buying hummus in the shops. The family most often uses as a substitute for butter or margarine in sandwiches or as a spread on toast. The weekly doner kebabs (spiced and diced lamb or pork with hummus, yogurt, chopped lettuce or spinach, grated carrots and diced onions wrapped in a tortilla) also see the hummus well-used. I call that perfect food. Low fat, filling, diverse....and cheap.

It has taken me almost 50 years, but I think I'm beginning to find the fun in food. Getting it at a reasonable price has added spice to the game.