Day 10! Time for the last recipe and the results! Did I pass the challenge??

Wow, so the final day has come... I must admit, it has been an enjoyable challenge.  Big M has been so impressed with the meals that he wants us to keep the food allowance this tight so we can free up some extra cash for other spending... and seeing as I would love to actually have plants in the garden bed out the back, some paving for the kids to ride their bikes on, to paint the house and to have curtains, skirting, and a new lounge suite... I'm rather happy to comply :)  Although it will be nice to not stress about it sometime, and splurge a little on something a little extra special.  So once a week I will continue to post a great family friendly recipe, if you have any recipes that are a favourite in your household, email me & I'll trial it, and post the results.

But I'm sure you're all hanging out to see if I really managed to complete the challenge at hand.  Now, don't forget I did have a lot of staples in my pantry & fridge, pasta, rice, potatoes, onions, milk, eggs, so I was technically only needing to keep my budget of spending to $60, not actually $60 total for all supplies... aww I hear you say, I thought she wasn't going to magically spend $6 a meal for the 10 days! Nope, sorry, and to make you wait even longer, I need to share with you Day 10's dinner, which was a Sour Cream Quiche (recipe from 4 Ingredients).

Day 10 - Sour Cream Quiche
4 eggs - $2.00
400ml sour cream (I used 200ml light sour cream & 200ml garlic & parsley sour cream)- $3.23
1 sheet puff pastry - $0.90
200g diced bacon - $1.40
2 spring onions, sliced finely - $0.70
1 handful cheese - $0.75
Salad leaves - $1.45
Total Cost: $10.43
Negligible items:
Spray oil
1 Tbs rice bran oil
Salt & pepper to taste

1. Heat oven to 180C.  Spray quiche dish with oil (I use a pyrex dish, circular & fluted so I can see if the pastry is cooked on the bottom). Semi defrost a sheet of puff pastry.
2. Heat a little oil in a fry pan, cook bacon and spring onion til bacon is crunchy & onions are soft, set aside.
3. In bowl, combine eggs, sour creams, salt & pepper.
4. Lay pastry in dish, pour on bacon & onion mix, spread evenly over pastry, sprinkle grated cheese over the top.  Pour over egg & sour cream mix.  Place in oven and cook for 30mins.  If your pastry starts getting too brown, cover loosely with alfoil until the rest of the quiche is cooked.  Don't be fooled, you may think it looks ok at 20mins, but you want your pastry to cook on the bottom!  (which is why I use pyrex).
5. Remove from oven, let sit for 5mins so it can settle.  Slice & serve with salad greens.

And it was yum!  So good!  I usually tend to make very eggy quiches that don't hold very well, but because of the sour cream, this one held up beautifully.  Now my pyrex dish (the one I also used for the tuna mornay) is quite large in diametre, so the quiche is not very deep, should you want that really high quiche, use a 20cm diametre dish.  My quiche lasted two nights, as Big M was away the first night, we only ate half of the quiche, so the pic you are seeing is the second night's serving after being reheated in the microwave & served with parmesan ciabatta and a salad with orange & olives (this would be day 11 so I haven't included the extras in my budget).

Ok... I will finally give you the results of my spending for the past 10 days... purchasing meat, the occasional core ingredient (sour cream, apricot nectar etc) as well as fresh salad in the last few days (as I had some in the fridge for the earlier days)... the grand total spent is.... drum roll please...

$56.30

Woo hoo!  I did it!  I cannot believe it, I was getting worried when I spent so much on the meat in the first few days, but then as the time went on, making meals that weren't so "meaty" and more "carby" it made the difference to the budget, hopefully not a big difference to my waistline!  So there you have it, yes it can be done... with a little creativity, and some good suggestions from friends, dinner can be cheap, well balanced & enjoyable (albeit a little greasy for a few of them, oops!).

Now what's the next challenge???