The $120 Food Challenge

I would like to introduce you to Sandra. Sandra survived long-term unemployment, Centrelink payments and Aldi checkout lines and turned personal adversity and penury into a thriving cooking blog. She has created, written and shared over 1000 nutritious, low-cost and family-friendly recipes for her blog The $120 Food Challenge and encouraged thousands of people on low incomes to do more in the kitchen with less.

Her first cookbook, The $120 Food Challenge is published by Penguin Viking and Sandra is now writing her second cookbook. She lives in Melbourne and still shops at Aldi every week.

When I asked her what her favourite things are at the moment she had a long list to choose from. In the end, she decided to share what she loves when she is at home, those small things that always bring a smile to her face. These are her five favourite things.

 

Black Leather Jacket

Someone I follow on Twitter posted a series of photos one evening - she was selling a number of items to raise some cash. I spotted this leather jacket, by Asos, in the middle of them and messaged her at once. It was just $50, near new, had a gorgeous leathery smell and fitted me perfectly. Within an hour of it arriving in the post, I was wearing it to a business meeting, along with suitably Melbourne-ish black boots, black top, black skirt and scarf. I felt invincible.

The Latrobe Reading Room, Victorian State Library

I have lived in Melbourne for almost three years now and since arriving I have moved 8 times. I houseshare, with all my possessions in storage and I don’t always have a desk to work from, which is how I found this amazing space. I find libraries an oasis of calm and concentration. There is something about this space that compels me to just get on with my workload. If I have a deadline to meet, I’ll meet it here.

Room Service

If I could be allowed one indulgence, just once a year for the rest of my life, it would probably be room service. What meal is served doesn’t really matter, but it must be something that allows for a glass of good wine. Naturally this rules out dodgy breakfasts from motels, and that’s how it should be. I don’t get the chance to do this too often so it remains a special event.

Whether it’s hot chocolate and a dessert plate to share with my children, or a steak dinner while encased in fluffy robe after a hot soak or, most enjoyably, room service for two, with desserts popped into the fridge to be eaten later – sometimes much later - it remains my all-time favourite treat.

Sunday Breakfast

I’m often asked what my favourite meal is and I can never answer because I have so many, but my favourite meal time of the week is Sunday breakfast. Growing up, it was a weekly event, my mother providing a Full English every time. I moved out and kept the tradition going.

Every week it’s different depending in what’s in the fridge. This is corn fritters with tomato kasundi, avocado, poached egg. Good coffee is mandatory.

Preston Market

It’s a little down at heel and takes a while to navigate and yet for all this it is vibrantly, chaotically alive and gloriously unpretentious. On Saturdays it is heaving. It is the cheapest source of fresh food I can find. If every major town had a market like this, we could eat splendidly and cheaply year round.

Connected by a rail station and bus stops, adorned with Aldi on one side and a large supermarket across the road, and ring marked by pharmacies, Centrelink, banks and cafés, Preston market is a lesson to town planners everywhere who seek to bring well-patronised services to a community. In a word, it’s centralised. It’s been going since the end of World War II, with a third generation of stallholders selling to loyal customers, switching effortlessly from one language to another as they chat. If you sit in the middle of it sooner or later you will see people from every community, language and culture walk past, their trolleys laden.

Preston market has everything I need: I get cheap groceries in Aldi, then buy pork from the Vietnamese butcher and picked-this-morning herbs from the Chinese fruit and veg seller. I can get duck, game and kangaroo, Callebaut cooking chocolate, nuts, pulses and spices, Polish sausages, fresh pasta, Italian hams and French cheese. And that’s all before I choose meat, fish, fruit and veg which is local, seasonal and sensationally priced. I simply don’t shop anywhere else.

 

Thank you Sandra. I must admit I am totally jealous of that library and wish I had one that marvellous near my place. After wasting hours there, I would then head to Preston Market to stock up on ingredients to make a fabulous Sunday breakfast, with the mandatory coffee of course. I love this list of favourite things!

What are your top five favourite things this week? Leave a comment here, on facebook or follow the conversation on twitter with #myfridayfavourites. Don’t forget to go and checkout Sandra’s website The $120 Food Challenge and say hello.