Catherine Spicer, One Good Idea Saves You $50.00 A Year:

This week I have the pleasure of interviewing Catherine Spicer. Catherine has written a book that is all about saving money at the supermarket. She has saved around $100 a week feeding her family of five through using her methods and recipes.

Catherine, a former Pacific Islands aid worker, lived in Fiji for two years helping their population. This opened up her eyes to how much westerners use and waste.

In fact she has even started her own charity, ‘The Tool Power Project’. Catherine’s book, which is entitled using the catchy name “Going off your trolley”. With the catch phrase being, “Need a trip to Fiji? Then Stop Shopping!”.

Catherine’s book sells for the great price of $5.00 (for the eBook version) plus she is going to donate $2.00 from each book to charity.

Now let me say something. This is an extremely good price for a book. Let’s pretend that you read it and you only find one good idea to save money (even though there are a lot more than that).

And this one good idea saves you $50.00 a year. You have just paid for the book 10 times over in just one year. That’s a great investment. Plus it helps a great cause.

I have read it and some of the recipes look too nice to be a cheap meal. However, after looking at the ingredients you soon see that they are very cheap indeed. Also she has included a 2 week shopping list with prices for each item on the list. As you all know, supermarkets take a huge percentage of our weekly wage. Even a small percentage saving off all your shopping can save you a huge amount. Let’s pretend you spend $150 a week and you decide that you want to save 15% to bring your spend down to $127.50. This is a yearly saving of $1170. Very good savings, I would say.

Hello Catherine and thanks for taking the time to answer some questions.

Let's start off with some hard questions.

Why did you write the book, and how did you come up with the concept?
I wrote the book as I got tired of shopping at the supermarket and spending so much money for so little. There had to be a solution and that was to reduce shopping; so I came up with the list. If you are not shopping, you are not spending money! The other thing is, I wanted to cook homemade meals using real ingredients in my recipes and not all those premade sauce things that supermarkets keep pushing you to buy. I also thought that other people in Australia may be feeling tired of their shopping trips and that I may help them with this guide.

What are the best tips for our readers to save at the shopping centres?
Reduce your trips to the supermarket and plan your meals in advance. Go with a list of the ingredients you will need to make the meals, plus any other items you may need for at least 7 days.

In your book you have some great recipes including, ‘Mighty Meatloaf with couscous and salad’ and ‘Red Thai Curry with noodles and coconut peas’. Now these meals might not cost a lot but do they still taste like a million dollars?

Everyone loves the meatloaf recipe. It is covered in a marinade when you cook it, so it is delicious. It is great hot or cold, especially with summer coming up. I have two fussy boys, well they are actually 26 and 18 and they drive me crazy sometimes.

They both love recipes with coconut milk so the Red Thai Curry is tasty but simple.

In the book you talk about a fortnightly dinner menu which will feed a family of 5 for a fortnight for only $99 a week. How is this possible and go into this in more detail?
Having a shopping list as the guide, it does eliminate the need to shop .You have all the ingredients for two weeks. In fact some ingredients are not used up in the first two weeks, therefore your shopping bill reduces down to under $90 if you carry on for another two weeks.

How did you go about doing this? Did you have to research and refine this two week menu?
The book took over a year to put together so there was a lot of testing. The quantities had to be right as well. I had seen lots of recipes on the back of pasta boxes and I thought NO WAY would that feed a family of five, so when I did my recipes I wanted them to be realistic. As you could imagine my family are a bit tired of my recipes, so I am still creating new versions.

At the end of the book you talk about starting your own herb garden. Can this save you money and how did you come up with this?
From my experience using some dried herbs works well, but not herbs like parsley or coriander. So I saw that you could start a herb garden from a bag of potting mix by just poking holes in it and planting the herbs. It does not require much space and it works as long as you water them.

How about a cheap recipe for our readers?
Creamy chicken with rice. Feeds a family of 5. Costs around $11.95

Ingredients
650g boned chicken thighs
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
2 onions finely chopped
300g sour cream
2 tsp thyme
3 tbs tomato paste
1 tbs worcestershire sauce
1 supermarket brand 400g can sliced champignon mushrooms(drained)
2 tbs oil
2-3tbs chopped parsley
salt and pepper
3 cups rice

Directions
1.cook rice as per the instructions on packet.
2.heat oil in a large fry pan.
3.fry garlic and onions until lightly browned.
4.add thyme, salt and pepper.
5.slice or cube chicken into pieces.
6.add to garlic and onions and fry until the chicken is cooked
7.add drained mushrooms and worcestershire sauce, stir well.
8.add sour cream,tomato paste then mix well.
Serve with the rice and sprinkle with parsley

Do you have any saving tips that are not food related?
Yes, I buy 99% of my clothes from Lifeline shops. I don't follow fashion trends and only buy what I like, so second-hand shopping gives you plenty of variation. The selection is really good and you can buy top quality items for $5 -$10.

Give us a background on your charity the Tool Power Project?
The Tool Power Project is a charity I started after working for various Aid agencies over the last 7 years. A lot of Aid money is wasted as it never reaches the people it should, so we wanted to do something that helped the grass roots people.

What we do is recycle items found at our local dump shops and ship them over to Fiji and PNG. Items like sewing machines, grass cutters, saws, hammers, shovels, spades, wheelbarrows etc. We also buy new items like hair cutting sets and other items that can be used. Sometimes we are given items from friends or strangers.

Once they arrive in Fiji they get distributed to our Tool Power community run hire centres. So far we have 5 centres running.

The hire centres help people access tools which they would never be able to afford. Most items cost a $1 day to hire so it makes it affordable for everyone. Most people would not even own a simple tool like a hammer!

Communities keep approaching us to start a hire centre up in their settlement or village so we are constantly looking for items and adding tools to existing centres. Each community hire centre has different needs; for example they may not have power so it is no use giving them an electric sewing machine!

When a community wants to join, all we ask is that they first start up a micro finance

Thanks Catherine, keep up the good work. You must be a very busy lady.