Author: Snoskred

Animal Kingdom – The TV Series

4 Comments Posted on July 26, 2017July 25, 2017 by Snoskred

There is no question about it – we are living in the days of peak television. How else could I have let this fantastic show sit on my “to watch” list for nearly 2 years?

I have been a huge fan of Scott Speedman since the Felicity days. So when I heard they were making a TV series based on the Animal Kingdom movie and Scott Speedman was set to be one of the main cast, I added that to my list of shows to watch. And just recently – having finished Line of Duty which is another show I will be writing a post about soon – I spotted it on Netflix and dove in head first. Wow, what a ride!

Having completed all the episodes presently available, I went to watch the movie again. I had seen it a while ago but the main thing I remembered was Ben Mendelsohn and his dark, malevolent presence in that film.

If you have seen the movie do not think of it as a spoiler for the TV series – almost none of the events of the movie appear in the TV show as yet and I have seen season 2 episode 7.

The main thing the movie has given the TV show is the cast of characters and their backstory. The show begins in a very similar way to the movie, but then the TV show moves off onto a different path and what a delight it is to travel with it.

If I had to describe this show, it would be a longer version of Point Break. The surfing is there, the jumping out of planes, the robberies, the crime planning, the California setting, virtually everything that was great about Point Break is present here. However they have added to it a fantastic cast and some highly talented and experienced crew.

I love what they have done with Smurf – played by Ellen Barkin – in particular her costumes are great but they have taken her character from the movie and stepped it up like 300 notches – not only is she the matriarch of this crime family but she is a huge part of it, basically the ringleader of it, choosing the jobs, allocating the work, laundering the money, making big decisions. I loved the scene where she is ironing male underwear, too. This role in the movie gained Jacki Weaver an Oscar nomination. Due to so much excellent television Ellen Barkin has not received any nominations for her portrayal of Smurf and that is a great shame.

Shawn Hatosy is playing the character of Andrew ‘Pope’ Cody – played by Ben Mendelsohn in the movie – and Shawn is really amazing in this role, SO CREEPY. Before I saw this my one question was who could possibly do justice to that role and now that question has been answered. It is very interesting that in the first season I felt quite scared by his character but in the second season somehow they turn the tables a bit and I found myself cheering him on and hoping he might find what he is looking for.

There is a lot of shirtlessness and nudity which you will either love or dislike. I’m totally fine with it myself. There are some other aspects to this show which people might not enjoy – definitely some violence but it is not pointless, it fits in with what is happening on the show and it is not done just for kicks, there is always a reason for it.

Me personally the one storyline I did not enjoy was the detective trying to get info on this crime family by whatever means necessary. I think that went a little too far and by the end of the first season I wanted to slap that detective for about an hour. I was truly grateful when she did not show up in Season 2, at least she has not yet, though there are still a few episodes left to watch.

Some interesting names popped up in the directors chair – in particular Regina King, Laura Innes and Emmy Rossum have all directed episodes of this show.

Where can you see this in Australia? Netflix only at this stage, I am afraid. :/

television shows

Almost Chicken Kievs

4 Comments Posted on July 24, 2017July 23, 2017 by Snoskred

Warning – this post contains some images of raw chicken, a bit further down in the post! My apologies but I wanted to show you the chicken pocket. ;)

Sometime in the later half of 2016 we did a run to Lenards at Warrawong to pick up our big order of chicken. We would usually order 12 mini roasts, a bunch of kievs and filos, and other assorted things. We would bring it all home, foodsave it, put it in the deep freeze, and cook it over the following three months.

When we arrived to pick up our order, they informed us they would be closing at the end of October. When I went online to check other locations, I discovered there was nothing nearby and the closest location would now be Menai in Sydney. We did run up in February or so and grab a bunch more chicken, but since then we did some experiments and created our own version of the Chicken Kiev.

Though our version is not a real chicken kiev by any stretch of the imagination. If you do want to make a “real” one, I suggest this video of the Jamie Oliver recipe.

Ours are not crumbed. My kiev does not contain any garlic at all. The Other Half gets a Jamie Oliver inspired bacon and garlic butter with cheese which I wrap in ham. My kievs are seaweed, wasabi, olives and feta cheese wrapped in ham.

How do I make the Bacon and Garlic butter filling? I cook the bacon in the oven first then chop it. I use ground garlic and minced garlic to cover all the garlic bases and I use proper butter but you can feel free to use any kind of margarine spread you like if you prefer. I put the ingredients into a bowl and mash them together. With the butter I do suggest taking it out of the fridge ahead of time and if it is particularly cold as it was on this day, you may need to pop it into the microwave for a short burst before attempting to mash it.

With the feta mix, you can use seaweed and wasabi of any kind. I like to use the Danish style feta as it holds together once you have mixed it, the Greek style is a bit more crumbly and difficult to work with for this recipe. I am lucky because I have a wasabi and seaweed powder which I have sourced from a local nut roasting company, so my powder mix also has macadamia nut oil. I chopped up some olives to add in, as well.

Then I lay out the mix onto a couple of pieces of ham, roll these up, and stuff this into the chicken pocket.

The other half gets some cheese added in because he likes it that way.

Probably the hardest part of this entire recipe is making the chicken pocket. If you do not cut enough of a pocket you can’t fit everything in. If you cut too much, you might create a hole where you do not want one. But once you have done it a few times, you become a bit more confident. On this day we made 18 kievs in total – we like to do this job in bulk.

The kievs were then paired up into foodsaver bags, vacuum sealed, and then placed in the freezer.

There is no reason to stick to any kind of kiev rules here, folks. I once had a chicken kiev which was filled with black cherries and Camembert. I’ve thought about doing strawberries, balsamic vinegar and feta, perhaps wrapped in spinach. The only limit is your imagination and what flavours would go well with chicken. I believe almost any flavour suits chicken. In summer I might try mango and avocado salsa of some kind.

Doing this job in bulk – which took us an hour and a half but we also cut up chicken strips during this time – means that we can eat kievs for the next 9 weeks and all I have to do is take them out, defrost them a little, pop them into the roaster, cook them for 42 minutes, and prepare some vegetables to go along with this great dinner. :)

recipes

Movie Catch Up 10

2 Comments Posted on July 19, 2017July 17, 2017 by Snoskred

Loved

Okja

“Meet Mija, a young girl who risks everything to prevent a powerful, multi-national company from kidnapping her best friend – a fascinating animal named Okja.” IMDB

Okja is not the first made for Netflix film but it is the first one I have seen. It is controversial in many ways which I won’t go into – this review does a better job of giving you some of the story about what happened at Cannes and also why this movie would probably not have been made without Netflix.

Having seen the trailer for this movie I had a pretty good idea of what I would be in for. I said to the other half – I don’t know if I want to watch this movie with you because I am pretty sure it is going to make me cry. I thought some more about it and I said to myself, I can control my emotions! So one Friday night I said I am determined I will not cry about a CGI superpig, we will watch it together.

Not only did I cry about a cgi superpig, but it was completely ugly crying. I do not want to spoil any of this movie for you because I do think it is worth seeing, though I believe you will need Netflix to be able to see it I do wonder if they might allow TV networks to purchase it and show it at a later time in order to give this movie a larger audience. Okja raised a lot of questions for me that I am still not sure I have answers for, and even a week later I still find myself thinking about it.

This movie had a great cast many of whom were playing teeny tiny parts compared to other parts they have done. Every part counts and these performances added up to make something great. Tilda Swinton is in this movie, and there are two of her! That was something I really loved. I did feel like Giancarlo Esposito was under-utilised and I wanted to know more about his character and what his motivations were as that did not seem especially clear. I also felt like a lot had been cut out of this movie and that might have been one of the things cut.

It was lovely to see Stephen Yeun away from The Walking Dead though his role was fairly small he provided one of my biggest laugh out loud moments of the movie when he showed his new tattoo. Jake Gyllenhaal played such a crazy character who was also quite evil. I was not sure whether to laugh or despise him, though despise him won out after a particularly brutal series of events. Paul Dano was here too, with a beautiful, calming character in the midst of much character craziness.

Before I Fall

“February 12 is just another day in Sam’s charmed life, until it turns out to be her last. Stuck reliving her last day over one inexplicable week, Sam untangles the mystery around her death and discovers everything she’s losing.” IMDB

I forget where I heard about this movie but wherever it was marketed it to me as similar to Groundhog Day which is one of my favourite movies of all time, so how could I resist? One icy Saturday afternoon when I decided to use the soft sole express and had 90 minutes to fill where I could not walk around the house, I thought this movie would be perfect. And I was right. I really enjoyed it overall. Though some of the music in the movie, in particular the party scene which we saw multiple times, I was not a great fan of.

It was kind of all my favourite movies as a teenager mixed together to create a new thing entirely and very well done. The Groundhog Day aspect was excellent. If you like that movie you will probably enjoy this even if you don’t enjoy watching angsty emo teenagers.

I enjoyed the cast overall but Zoey Dutch played the main role of Sam and I think she was brilliant in it. I had never seen her before in anything but I became a fan and will definitely look out for more of her work.

Disliked

To The Bone

“A young woman is dealing with anorexia. She meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.” IMDB

Another very controversial Netflix movie, but this one is Not Great At All and in my opinion it had nothing to do with any of the controversial reasons why. It just seemed to be absolutely pointless and have no message at all. It did not educate, it did not illuminate, it did very little at all.

Keanu Reeves was completely wasted as a doctor who was supposedly unconventional in the way he treated this disease – I would say this doctor had no plan or idea of how to treat this disease or perhaps if he did, we never got to see or understand what his treatment might be. Other than taking his patients to see some rain art, because they are alive, but it seemed to me like an excuse to have a montage of people dancing in the rain.

What a lost opportunity for the people who do suffer from eating disorders, to have their stories told in an engaging and educational way. It is my understanding that the lead actress – Lily Collins who happens to be Phil Collins daughter – has suffered from this disease, as had the director. I am not sure what exactly they were trying to achieve here but I felt like whatever it was, they did not manage it.

movies

Snoskred-land Lately

7 Comments Posted on July 17, 2017July 15, 2017 by Snoskred

We are more than halfway through No Buy July – for me that means no buying of clothes. The very last thing I needed to do clothes wise was to update my sleep wear because that was anywhere from 4-6 sizes too big for present size me. Kmart was having a clearance and on the 30th of June I picked up 4 very comfortable new nighties in size 10-12 for $5 each. YAY!

As we walked through the shopping centre to pick up one item from the supermarket that same day, I said to the other half – “I might just check Noni B. They had that dress in my size on the clearance rack when I was there yesterday but it was still very Up Money.” As I walked into the store the staff member greeted me and then told me everything on the clearance rack was $20. “Even the dresses?” said I? “Even the dresses” said she. I grabbed that thing so fast nobody saw it. I am sure if you could watch it on CCTV I became a blur of movement. I dashed into the fitting room so quickly The Other Half was messaging me “where did you go?”

I fits, I buys. I had been wanting this dress for over 6 months, I even mentioned it here on the blog. And I got it for $20. That is CRAZY TALK I am telling you. :) The material feels amazing, it has kind of a crimp in it is the best way I can explain it.

I did pick up another gorgeous top for $20 at the same time, and I pointed out my next wanted dress to The Other Half..

Unknown to myself, I had matched my new kettle to my upcoming new outfit. This is the Breville 1.7 litre kettle in Dragonfruit. She is a sparkly delight. We’d had our previous kettle for over 10 years and the spout was plastic and beginning to biodegrade somewhat meaning hot water would go everywhere when I tried to pour it. Very dangerous, it had to be replaced. I was worried because my Mum had bought a stainless steel kettle which is the noisiest kettle ever, you have to shout to talk over it. But this one is whisper quiet and it makes a gorgeous BING sound when it is finished boiling. I love it.

Speaking of things I love, no, I did not enjoy spending some serious cash on a new coffee machine but I love the one we’ve ended up with. We’d had the previous one for 6 years and when we did the maths, it cost us 12 cents a cup. I’d like a bit more than 6 years out of the next one, thanks appliance deities! We do use it quite a bit – 4 cups of coffee a day minimum, plus occasional extra shots for iced coffee or adding to a smoothie or milkshake.

I’ve been cutting down on dairy lately because I had a bad flu which just dragged on and on. It seems to be uncooked cheddar cheese which is my main problem – if I eat it I have a stuffed up nose for the rest of the day. I figured while I was eliminating things I would give some different milks a try for coffee. The new coffee machine froths coconut milk perfectly and almond milk not quite as well but it is do-able. I am loving my coconut milk cappucinos. You get a coconut flavour as a bonus. Our afternoon coffee is accompanied with one serving of Dark Kit Kat.

June is my birthday month and Crabtree and Evelyn were having a sale plus they sent me a $15 birthday voucher, so I grabbed a couple of hand creams and some salted caramel fudge. They did not quite bring enough salt for my liking. Rose and Pineapple hand creams smells like a toilet freshener according to the other half – it just so happens that is the one I most love. ;) I gave him the Spiced Earl Grey to try and combat his winter hands. Carribean Island Wild Flowers is super loud in a good way and the fragrance sticks around through several hand washings.

TVSN were also on sale. I am clearly not the only addict to this channel in the family but my biggest addiction is to their clearance pages. Grumpy suggested I buy this top.

While I did not take that particular advice as I felt it was slightly up money though I may well buy it later on when it is reduced if it is still available in my size, I did purchase one Diane Gilman top which I had been watching for months in clearance that suddenly jumped down to $9.95, and one set of tops with rainbow holographic sparkly sequins. I am always impressed with the quality of the goods once I receive them.

The Berry Bypass is now officially open – one lane of cars each way with a speed limit of 60km/hr. We ventured over to Berry on Saturday to check out the town minus all that traffic – seems like most other people in the world had a similar idea. We drove the bypass on Sunday on the way to Costco, it was brilliant.

Home

Zoo Time 1

6 Comments Posted on July 14, 2017July 11, 2017 by Snoskred

Kemiri was recently euthanised after 22 years of a fantastic life at Adelaide Zoo where she was a much loved animal who truly loved humans. I have written about her before on the blog. Make sure to click through and read about the time she gave some humans a big scare.

After we left Adelaide, Kemiri got to do something which – knowing her as well as we did – I am certain pleased her enormously. She became the Big Cat who interacted with the humans. She was a Sumatran Tiger who firmly believed she was a human, due to her hand raising.

On the Facebook post where they announced her passing, people posted a lot of photos of that time they got to meet her. She touched so many people across her long life and turned a lot of people into passionate supporters of animal conservation. But she really would not care about that – she just loved being near to the humans.

zoo

Movie Catch Up 9

2 Comments Posted on July 12, 2017July 11, 2017 by Snoskred

Some quick movie bites today.

Loved

Florence Foster Jenkins

“The story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York heiress who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite having a terrible singing voice.” IMDB

I do not even know what to say about this film. I feel like all the words will not be enough. It was just beautiful. The costumes were stunning, the hair and makeup was gorgeous, everything was delightfully sparkly. The scene with the sparkly star head dress, I could watch that over and over. Photos do not do it justice, the movement of the stars, so beautiful.

And at the end when it takes a sad turn towards the tragic, one cannot help but feel that Florence Foster Jenkins truly sucked the marrow out of life, and when she came to die, discovered that she had truly sung, even if it was off key.

Bring your kleenex for this one folks, Meryl is in fine form and you will need them. Earplugs are optional. I highly recommend this film.

Christine

“The story of Christine Chubbuck, a 1970s TV reporter struggling with depression and professional frustrations as she tries to advance her career.” IMDB

Some films never quite get the recognition or attention they deserve. Christine is one such movie. Set in the mid 70s the costumes and sets are incredibly well done and that is what I noticed at first, until the first rate performances took over. What a great ensemble cast this is, backing up the main star Rebecca Hall beautifully.

Michael C Hall was the main reason I had this on my to-watch list and he was great as always. Another stand out was Timothy Simons who plays Jonah on Veep – I really liked his performance here. A pleasant surprise was J. Smith-Cameron who I loved from Rectify, here playing the mother of Christine.

This is not a happy story as Christine was the first person ever to attempt suicide live on television. It is a story well told and performed. Would I recommend it? As long as you know this is not a happy story and especially if you are a fan of any of the cast.

Disliked

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

“Remake of the 1956 film noir film “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” in which a writer’s plan to expose a corrupt district attorney takes an unexpected turn.” IMDB

Given that one of my favourite movies of all time is a remake of a movie from the mid-50’s which starred Michael Douglas – A Perfect Murder – I had high hopes for this one which also starred Michael Douglas plus that cute guy from Desperate Housewives AKA Jesse Metcalfe. My high hopes were sadly not met.

You know when you are part way into a movie and you just know it is bad and is going to get worse? That is how I felt here. So about 16 minutes into this one, I turned it off and put on A Perfect Murder instead. It was the right thing to do. :)

movies

Sausage Rolls Of Your Choice

8 Comments Posted on July 10, 2017July 9, 2017 by Snoskred

Oh S**t, said I, one Saturday evening as we were preparing to make sausage rolls. We forgot to get more tomato sauce. On checking the bottle in the fridge, there was not enough. We will have to run to the shops. No, said the other half. I will just go without sauce. ARE YOU CRAZY, said I. If you don’t want to go, I will just do a quick run to IGA. You can start shredding the veg then add in the mince and the egg, if you like. And so he did.

But of course IGA was out of stock, so was Coles – this was the first time I got a hint they had removed it from their range of products they stock. But they still had Beerenberg chutney so I was able to grab that. It is almost the same as the sauce, just chunkier. Luckily Nowra Fresh stocks it and they were stocking the shelves when we arrived for a bulk meat buy-up, so I now have 3 spare bottles in the cupboard plus one in the fridge and I will grab more when I next see them.

Any South Australian who has ever experienced Beerenberg tomato sauce knows that you cannot settle for a lesser sauce. I normally keep two bottles on hand and replace one when we use the first one up, but we have been enjoying a lot of pasties, sausage rolls and pies just lately. It is winter, and I made a huge batch of chicken sausage rolls a few weeks ago. We ate some, most went into the freezer, where they keep being retrieved and eaten for small lunches or dinners.

Have you ever seen how much sodium is in the shop bought sausage rolls? I have, and it is unlikely that The Other Half will ever be allowed more than a very occasional one now that he has to watch his sodium. We do have some Vili’s in the freezer for emergencies, but at 649mg of sodium when his daily goal is 1000mg.. that leaves him very little for other meals.

And the best thing about making our own – I can pack them full of vegetables. We usually put in carrot and zucchini – this time we added in leek and brussel sprouts as well. I do not use any filler at all – zero breadcrumbs – and the recipe is super simple – it is purely mincemeat of your choice, one egg per 500g of mincemeat, then the vegies. Plus an extra egg for the egg wash.

I take a sheet of puff pastry, cut it in half, lay it on my baking paper, egg wash one side and place the sausage mixture on the other side. Then I use the baking paper to roll the sausage up into the puff pastry. I hand it off to The Other Half, who cuts it up into 4. These get placed into a baking tray lined with baking paper and egg wash the top.

We even make our own chicken mincemeat these days. We just take chicken breast and put it in the food processor. Things are getting very back to basics around here! But in the case of beef mince, I usually get the 5 star from Aldi and it is excellent. We will make our own one day just to try it.

Any leftover mince meat can go into a muffin pan. Just spray the tins with cooking spray of your choice, top them with a little cheese, and they make great meatballs. If you are not feeling like the puff pastry deal these meat and vegetable muffins can be a very easy dinner. Just put everything into the food processor, spoon it into the muffin pan, top with cheese, cook for 30 minutes and dinner is served. Since we tried these muffins we have made them a few times, so easy, quick and so tasty!

If you want to make a non-meat “sausage” roll version, a mix of ricotta and feta with the vegetables would be awesome. I would add in some olives and also some spinach. Maybe mushrooms but lately I have been part cooking them first before putting them on pizza and draining them on paper towel as they seem to be full of excess moisture.

recipes

The Aldi Cat Bed

10 Comments Posted on July 7, 2017June 28, 2017 by Snoskred

Grumpy is appreciating this Aldi cat bed very much lately, especially since it got very cold here.

We were lucky to find this on special for $9.99. I bought one. I put it in the bedroom the first night and Grumpy discovered it and settled in. The next morning I carried it out into the lounge and put it in front of the gas heater and she spent the entire day there.

A couple of days later we had to go back into town and I sent The Other Half to buy a second one if they had it. He returned with two more!

Aldi, kitties

TV Catch Up – The Handmaid’s Tale

6 Comments Posted on July 5, 2017June 26, 2017 by Snoskred

Based on the 1985 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, you will hear a lot of big words used to describe this show. The IMDB description says “Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.” which is more 50 cent words than your average sentence involves. I prefer the version that Elisabeth Moss gave on the Seth Myers show.

“Try to stay with me it is a little far fetched. It is about a right wing fundamentalist group who takes over the government, and takes away all of women’s rights.” The story really is not quite that simple and it is not just the womens rights that vanish – plenty of men get punished and killed on this show as well. Though there is one scene where you might be right on board with that as a concept.

I read the book a few months ago knowing this series was on the way and knowing I would want to see it because Elisabeth Moss is one of my long time favourites. She is the true star of this series, she is the center of this story and she is absolutely magnificent. She will greatly deserve every award she wins and I have no doubt it will be all of them available. However she might face some competition from Evan Rachel Wood for her incredible performance in WestWorld.

When I heard that Joseph Fiennes would play the Commander and Yvonne Strahovski would be Serena Joy, I really could not picture that having read the book. I had seen much older people in those roles. However it has worked out for the best, because somehow Yvonne made me feel empathy for Serena Joy – certainly not something I expected and not something I experienced when I read the book.

Samira Wiley – who Orange Is The New Black fans will know as Poussey – is another stand out cast member in a show full of amazing performances. O-T Fagbenle is incredible as Luke and Max Minghella is great as Nick the driver. The costumes are beautifully done.

Taken by itself this show is terrifying enough. When you combine it with some of the other shows of recent times – WestWorld in particular has some similar themes along these same lines and I typed some thoughts about that here – we might be in the middle of peak television right now, but it is also the middle of scary as heck television, in my opinion.

Starting tomorrow the full series is available on SBS on Demand – for free. But here are my suggestions re watching it –

This is NOT a show to binge watch. You need to take some time between episodes. You need to let it sink in. The first 3 episodes are especially heavy to watch. This is not a show for right before bedtime because it will make you think and you won’t get to sleep. I’ll be honest and say even when I watched the episodes early in the day I found myself thinking about them at bedtime. They resonate pretty strongly.

Having said all of that, I do think this is a very important show to watch especially right now, with all the recent talk of internment camps for certain groups of people etc. Are we at the top of the slippery slope that could lead us to a world like this? I sincerely hope not. :(

television shows

Spreadsheet Grocery Shopping

10 Comments Posted on July 3, 2017July 2, 2017 by Snoskred

For the past couple of years I was using a very cute meal planning and shopping list set. At the start of 2017, I went to print out a set for this upcoming year and could not find the file on my computer. I went to the blog I got it from originally and that blog had vanished. The file could no longer be found on the internet. And thus it was time to create something ourselves.

However, we decided to take one giant leap into the computer age and create a shopping spreadsheet. You have no idea how much time this saves me – and how many times it has saved me from arriving home without the items I need. And today we are providing you with a spreadsheet you can modify and use for yourselves.

When I would write the Aldi shopping list down on paper, I would mentally walk around the store in my head so that the items on the list appeared in the order I will find them in the shop. They have not changed the layout in our Aldi for many years so this is easy to do. Some of you will have the exact same layout as we do.

It is not quite so easy for Coles because they are forever moving things. The amount of items I buy from there is constantly decreasing – they are now removing a lot of the items we like from the shelves. In recent weeks, my favorite blueberry scented rubbish bags, peanut butter powder, and now BEERENBERG tomato sauce have vanished entirely. I do envision a day when we do not go there at all. There have been weeks where we only bought Manning Valley eggs.

Guess what happens when you take away the items I want, Coles? No, I do not buy your down down version. In many cases I try out the down down version at Aldi, which usually happens to be cheaper and better than yours anyway. For items I am not willing to compromise on, like Beerenberg tomato sauce, I go elsewhere and I buy in bulk when I do that. At least two other places stock Beerenberg locally, so I will buy it there. Less money in the Coles till. Whoops, Coles!

I am not a spreadsheet star but The Other Half is. Magically he created a spreadsheet that only prints the items I need with a number next to them on the final version. So how does this work?

Step 1 – I go in to the spreadsheet and save it with today’s date, so I do not screw up the original and I don’t have to remove all the numbers I added later..

Step 2 – I enter in how many of each item we need to buy. For things like vegetables I usually just put a 1 if we need it because I know how much I will need to get of each item.

Step 3 – I click on the print tab at the bottom which takes me to a new screen where only the items with a number appear.

Step 4 – I check over the list and make sure it is correct, then we print it out double sided – Aldi one side, Coles the other.

We are creatures of habit here in this house, so the things we tend to buy are usually the same each fortnight.

Here you can grab your very own all set up, empty and ready to customise Shopping List Empty – The Other Half has put in some notes for you about how it works. If you want my version which includes all the things we regularly buy, you can grab that here – Snoskred Shopping List. You can also grab Libre Office which is like Microsoft Office only completely free here – that is the program we use for all word processing and spreadsheets.

Happy shopping!

shopping