Kitchen Plays: Taco Bowls

Every once in a while, we like to pop in to an op-shop (second-hand store) or outlet discount place (Stephen has a knack for finding these) just to see what we can find.

Stephen came home from work the other day with these awesome taco bowl molds. He had found them at an outlet discount place for something like $5 for 2. Since we started on a carb-watch, we've kept tortillas as a staple instead of bread. Tortillas are awesome because they can be used in so many different ways (that's for another post). The taco bowls would just be a fun little treat to our usual renditions of tortilla-based meals. Chuck a tortilla in each of the taco bowls into the oven at 180 C (350 F) for about 10 minutes and it's done!

We were bringing dinner over to some friends on Saturday night for a bit of NRL-watching and overnight Ingressing, and decided we would break in our taco bowl molds. Stephen was on dinner duty and whipped up a brilliant concoction of mince, tomatoes and beans. We also had a bunch of avocados that needed using (we got tiny ones from the St Johns market at 13 for $5), so Stephen made his first attempt at a guacamole (Mr Improviser's tip: adding more smoked paprika only makes it taste more smokey, not more like paprika) which turned out pretty nicely in spite of the colour.

We topped that off with some grated cheese and the greens from our garden, and voila! Dinner that looked slightly fancier than our everyday meals, but actually took not much effort at all!

If you're looking to get some, Stephen found them on TradeMe and AliExpress last night as well. Prices were comparable to his find.

Thanks for reading!

Garden Journals: Plant Garage Sale

We've been talking a while about how to make our rental feel like our place since there's not a lot that we can actually do or afford. So all through winter we've been conspiring to see if we can talk the landlords into letting us put in some potted plants and maybe some vegetables. Well, they told us to have at it. Yay.

Neither of us have done much gardening, so between Google, Robyn (that's Stephen's mum), and the tips we've picked up randomly, we managed to put in a garden that worked with our budget.

Round #1:
A few weeks ago, we picked up some perpetual spinach (Robyn's recommendation because they keep producing for about six months), lettuce, parsley, rosemary, thyme and fennel from King's (we went to the Remuera store at 236 Orakei Road).

Lettuce and Spinach: We've made 3 big dinners (read: either we fed another 2 people or had enough for lunch the next day) from our lettuce and spinach harvest so far, and there's nothing quite like eating the stuff from your garden.

Rosemary and Thyme: It's still fairly winter-ish in Auckland, so we wanted to sturdy, low-maintenance herbs that would keep producing for a while. Stephen has found that we use a lot less herbs when we are using the fresh stuff as opposed to the dried stuff we have been using -- which is awesome!

Parsley: We use a fair amount of parsley just about everyday, but we got these as little seedlings so we haven't quite touched them yet. We also learnt that parsley is self-seeding, which means if we were to keep it in a big enough pot (or better yet, sow it into the garden), it will just keep reproducing (works the same with coriander/cilantro, apparently, except coriander doesn't like being repotted).

Fennel: I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do with the fennel since I've not really cooked with it (if you have suggestions of how to use it, PLEASE let me know!) -- we picked it up because it was part of a 5 punnets for $10 deal and nothing else looked good.

Round #2:
We needed more potting mix, and Robyn introduced us to planting in buckets, so Stephen picked up 4 big bags of potting mix and twelve buckets from Bunnings on the way home from work last night. He also picked up more lettuce and perpetual spinach since they were doing so well, as well as coriander and tomatoes.

And because he's the best hubby of all, he also picked me up a little lavender plant :)

Stephen had also signed us up on Neighbourly so we could find out if there was anything exciting happening in our hood. Well, it so happened that there was a lady in St Helier's who was doing a plant garage sale for bulbs and plants ranging from between $0.50 to $5, so we popped in first thing this morning. We picked up two little marjoram plants, two baby orchids with a few other bulbs with them, two lemon balms, a couple of bromeliads, a baby loquat, and some baby succulents -- all for $10.

We had picked up five big plastic tubs ($5 each from The
Warehouse) for our wedding to use as drink chillers, and seeing as they had been sitting on top of our fridge for the last 6.5 months collecting dust, we turned three of them into pots as well. Stephen put holes into all the plastic tubs so that the plants would drain and we managed to get all the plants repotted before the rain started!

Just to make sure our plants were safe from birds, snails and slugs (the landlord's cats have surprisingly left all the plants alone), we picked up some bamboo sticks, cable ties and netting from Look Sharp (we went to the Mt Wellington store at 72 Lunn Ave).

And now we finally have a garden! We still have a few more things we would
like to do, but we're quite happy with the current turn-out. This has also been a fun little project that will keep us entertained for a while. It has cost a little bit of money, but we're going to get so much in return!

Thanks for reading!

Budget Brekkie: Mini Omelettes

We're both foodies--I like finding recipes, and he likes improvising them, so we usually end up with a concoction that we both enjoy. It definitely helps that we have pretty similar tastes.

Today's post is a mini omelette. We've tried a few different things for breakfast (I got sick of our homemade concoction of cinnamon and brown sugar oatmeal and Stephen is watching his carb intake) and finally settled on homemade muesli for breakfast and mini omelettes for morning tea.

We got pretty lucky with our fully-furnished rental property that comes with a chest freezer, so I make 2 dozens each time and freeze half of it for the later part of the week. That way we each get two for morning tea and another two to snack whenever we want. On occasions like yesterday when Stephen had to take something to work for a shared morning-tea, it was a no-brainer: he took the half we had chucked in the freezer with him.

Mini Omelettes Recipe:
Makes 12

Splash of oil

1 onion, diced

3 balls of frozen spinach, quartered (probably better with fresh spinach, but before we started our vege garden, we couldn't finish a bag of fresh spinach quickly enough so we've just kept frozen spinach in the freezer)

100g shaved ham, cut into bite-sized portions

6 eggs, beaten

Splash of milk

Mixed herbs

Black pepper

Grated cheese (we generally go with whatever is on sale)

* Other options: mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, cumin, paprika

1) Heat a splash of oil in a frying pan at medium heat.

2) Add onions and heat until onions are soft.

3) Add ham and heat until slightly charred. (If using mushrooms and fresh spinach, add those in now)

4) Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F).

5) In a jug, beat six eggs, then add a splash of milk.

6) Line a cupcake or muffin tin. (We've tried it without lining them, but they just don't come off as well and makes it really difficult to clean after. Other recipes have suggested lining them with foil tins, and my mother-in-law suggested double-lining them with paper ones. I found that just one paper layer works fine.)

7) Divide half of the ham and onions mixture and spinach equally into each tin, then add a sprinkle of black pepper and herbs in each tin. (If using sundried tomatoes, cumin and paprika, add those in now)
8) Divide egg mixture equally into each tin, and top with grated cheese.
9) Cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes until cheese is brown.

Thanks for reading!

For Starters...

Hello! If you've stumbled upon our little "Just For Fun" lifestyle blog, welcome! As a first post, I thought I should share a little bit about how this blog came about.

When my husband and I first started going out, one of the first things I learnt about him was that he had an impeccable way of making our dates fun but really cheap. Which was great for us, as we both knew that a youth/social worker (that's him) and a pastor (that's me) would have to be very creatively frugal so that we could still maintain a fun standard of living. Between his cheap finds and my experimental-DIY projects, we've managed to pull off a few adventures.

One of his co-workers made a passing comment a while ago that he should start blogging about his fun finds to do stuff for cheap because it had become quite an entertainment for them, so I thought, well, why not? (His input: Yep, *you* can do that if you want.) We are not extreme couponers or lifestyle gurus by any means; just a couple of fun-seekers sharing our finds.

A little bit about us... Stephen and I met through an alternate reality game called Ingress (the predecessor of Pokemon Go). His IGN (In-Game Name) is Gingernater (he's a red-head), and mine is KampongNinja (translates to "village ninja" as a reflection of my Asian roots). Together, we became the GingerNinja and this is our blog about living on a shoestring budget. Thanks for reading!