Home-made soup

Having finished our Christmastime travels, we are back at home, so the scales are back in use, and I'm keeping a note again of the cost of our meals.  Having got back in the mid-afternoon yesterday, dinner was the only meal remaining.  We were both feeling a little under the weather, so I decided to make some soup - and attempted to make it sufficiently hearty to be a meal in its own right.

We still had a few potatoes left from the 25kg sack we picked up (despite donating them to the general Christmas supply at my parents'), and they were still in good shape. I used 4 small potatoes (244g = 6p), chopped into small cubes (picture above), and 110g (=24p) of "soup mix" - consisting of dried pulses and barley. The latter I had in a jar (see picture), so had to try to remember the proper way to reconstitute it.  I covered the mixture in water and set it boiling, then reduced to a simmer for a couple of hours, until the peas seemed soft.  It wasn't what I should have done.  The real instructions are through the link, above, and involve soaking overnight, and making sure they are well-rinsed.  Oops.  I don't think I've poisoned us, though, but I should remember for next time.  I added a bit of salt and pepper, and a bay leaf (from a huge CostCo jar - no idea of cost per leaf, but perhaps up to a few pence) while it cooked, and the water seemed to pick up a nice flavour.  I added the potatoes once I thought the soup mix borderline-cooked, and then left it all to simmer until the potato was cooked too.  I was pleased with the result; It was very tasty, though the soup mix was slightly too much on the borderline of being undercooked, but only just.  The colour was a bit wan, but I don't think unreasonable for a potato soup.

It made three bowls-full, which between the two of us we finished up.  By itself, it was quite a light meal, but it was enough for me.

Christmas Lunch

We're staying with my parents on Christmas Day, so according to the rules we are running by, we will definitely come under budget, as we are relying on the provision of food by others.  We did bring along what remained of our sack of potatoes, which is about half of the original 25kg weight.  

I haven't been accounting for food since we've been away staying with friends and family.  No doubt our generous hosts have been spending more than £1/day on each of us.  Yesterday, my mum made her amazing cheesy bean pie.  I might have kept to a reasonable cost with that if I had not had 4 or 5 helpings.  For breakfast this morning there was scrambled egg.  We've generally been avoiding eggs, as they are rather expensive (cheapest free range ones go for about £1 for 6).  The eggs my mum stocks are not as cheap as that, and I'm guessing I ate about 50p worth of egg for breakfast.  Lunch is no doubt going to totally blow it, though at least I know the potatoes didn't cost too much.

mid-way point

We're about half way through December.  I've started being a bit more slack about about weighing out everything single thing going into a meal, though that's partly because I've got a better idea about what everything costs without having to weigh it.  

For breakfast this morning I had a bowl of Fruit and Fibre (Waitrose Essentials).  I have quite a big bowl -- 50g -- which comes to 13p.  The milk adds 5p, so my breakfast was 18p.  I was a bit lazy with preparing lunch and didn't take any in.  Obviously not the best idea...

For dinner Natasha's sister was round so there were three of us for dinner.  I made parmentier potatoes (potatoes @700g = 17p + oil & rosemary = 20p -> 37p), some dhal (28p lentils + 10p oil, one small onion = 8p, 8g curry powder = 4p, 3 garlic cloves = 6p -> 56p) and some fried aubergine & mushrooms with oil and cumin seeds (120g aubergine = 30p, 33p mushrooms, 15p oil & cumin = 78p).  

The potatoes and dhal were split three ways, and the mushroom thing (pictured!) two ways between Natasha and her sister Sigourney.  

So I dined on 13p + 37/3p + 56/3p = 44p, to which I should two cups of coffee at work (6p) coming to 50p.

Natasha's breakfast was Waitrose Essentials rice pops (10p) + milk (5p).  Her lunch was a pre-planned Christmas party at work which completely blew the budget, but her dinner then came to 37p/3 + 56p/3 + 78p/2 = 70p, so at least dinner and breakfast was well within budget.

By the way, that dhal is just great, and I recommend anyone to learn to cook it.  The curry powder is cheap if you buy it in bulk (as in the link above), and lentils are also pretty cheap.  It's real comfort food but is also pretty good for you.  I don't think I'd get tired of eating it every day, especially if I could accompany it by roast potatoes, like I did today.  Mmmm.

[edit: When I first wrote this post I missed the lentils from the cost of the dhal.  Oops -- fixed now]

TISATAAFL

As Natasha pointed out yesterday, it's been a good week for free food.  We are quite lucky that opportunities to have our food paid for as part of our work do crop up from time to time – clearly not everyone trying to eat for £1 per day can say the same.  Today, I had to go to Cambridge (as proof, I attach a picture I took there of some bikes) for a meeting at the University Examination Syndicate, and it included lunch.  I got a lunch voucher which entitled me to a soup, a main course and a dessert.  I took up the offer of all of it, and had a potato and stilton soup, a main of bean casserole with rice, and a pot of fresh melon chunks.  Oh, and a bread roll with the soup.  It was a full main meal for the day, and very nice it was too, except for the melon chunks which were insipid in taste and too unripe.  I really felt stuffed (and a bit unwell) afterwards.  Normally I wouldn't eat so much for lunch, but I felt honour-bound to make the most of it.  

I'd had a normal breakfast, and for dinner, a baked potato with butter sufficed.  My total food spend for the day thus came to 40p, though if I'd have had to pay for lunch, it would have been several pounds.

I got some vouchers through in the post the other day from Tesco, trying to entice me to buy things from them with discounts.  Some of them I will probably use.  For example, they are offering me 20p off a jar of Tesco Everyday Value peanut butter.  I love peanut butter, but not if it's got added sugar.  So this usually means I have to get somewhat more expensive stuff as stocked in supermarkets or go to Holland and Barratt, or CostCo who both do huge tubs of unsweetened PB (though it's the very worthy stuff with nothing added to stop it separating and having a layer of oil on top which needs to be stirred in every time you use it).  If I remember correctly Tesco Everyday Value PB is a rare cheap unsweetened version.  I'll still have to figure out if it's cheap enough to actually use.  If a slice of peanut butter on toast is going to cost 50p then it's hardly going to be worth it. 

There are some other vouchers in there I doubt I'll use.  50p off when you spend £2 on products from the pies and savouries counter ("Includes quiches, slices, Scotch eggs, pork pies & sausage rolls") -- not because I would never buy such things, but I doubt that they are viable on £1/day even with the 25% discount.   Then there are others like "Save 50p on new Tesco whipped full fat soft cheese".  I think I can live without whipped soft cheese.  It sounds a bit wrong, though maybe I am missing out.

Being a good influence

It's been nearly two weeks now that we've been attempting frugality and thus far I've been astonished by the response from people.  So many people seemed very interested and to be closely following our progress.  Today someone at work told me how they were totting up the price of coal and oil that they use in cooking- a level that I don't yet aspire to!

This week has been a pretty good week on the free food front.  I never really realised how much free food I get.  Tuesday I had an all day off-site meeting.  It overran horribly so we didn't get lunch until half three that day- I was starving!  Fortunately there are people more prepared than me that brought snacks (and kindly donated them) so I had a pack of mini cheddars and a penguin at about 1pm.  Wednesday was a free dinner courtesy of a talk that Paul was hosting and today there were celebrations on offer in the office (plus I tucked into some birthday chocolate).  All in all, I feel like I'm cheating and it's all a bit too easy.  It's becoming easier- particularly as we're buying cheaper food through some astute purchases.  I'm finding dairy products the hardest challenge- no cheese or cream, I do like potatoes baked in cream.  It could be much worse though and my weight has been very stable since starting this endeavour which is reassuring.

Let's see how the weekend goes!

This measly breakfast is toast

Today I made a big mistake- instead of cereal for breakfast I had toast.  Financially this was sound; two slices of toast with butter a lot cheaper than a bowl of cereal.  Initially I felt a lot more satisfied too.  This was not to last.  Two hours later I was starving and being at work there wasn’t much I could do, not within budget.  I started off by substituting all my tea drinks of the day for chocolate digestives.  This helped me make it through until lunch time when a big bowl of pasta kept me going for oh an hour and a half.  Then things looked bleak.  Ten minutes later I realised that I had a gift of food on my desk, some nuts covered in chocolate and a caramel glaze, a gift from a relative roughly six weeks ago.  An inch of this had be back on my feet. Then came an unexpected treat- homemade mince pies from a colleague. It was awesome. I came home to a dinner of leftover mash and toad in the hole which I supplemented with some peas and gravy. All in all not a bad day. Won't be having toast for breakfast again any time soon though! 

End of week 1

It's been the end of week 1, and I think we've done pretty well.  Natasha already talked about some of the weekend food in her recent post.  I haven't fully costed Sunday, when we attempted to have a normal roast dinner, but I've worked out my own food.  It's time–consuming to be so careful in measuring out everything and then looking up the cost, especially when much of the food was bought a while ago, and without particular thought to the price and that I would later be keeping a record of it.  

Yesterday, Sunday , I managed a cheap breakfast by eating leftovers.  It was just some plain rice, which was fine by me, though I realise if I am to convince anyone of the easy possibilities of eating for £1/day, I should try a bit harder to make appetising food, rather than having some plain leftover rice.  Still, for lunch I had avocado on toast, with a bit of salt, pepper and olive oil.  The avocado was the expensive thing here, though with the veg market on campus selling them for £1.20 for a bag of 6 small ones, I got through only 20p of avocado, though actually, it was too much for one slice of toast (2p), so I should probably have saved half for later / given it to someone else.  I guess the drizzle of oil added another 2p or so.

The roast dinner was always going to be the costliest part of the day.  I wanted it to be as normal as possible, as my oldest daughter really looks forward to Sunday roast.  On Saturday, when taking the youngest daughter swimming, we drove past a farm selling 25kg sacks of potatoes for £5.99.  This is much cheaper even that the on-sale potatoes I bought at Tesco earlier in the week, for Natasha's birthday meal.  This sack was Maris Pipers, too;  the favoured spud for roasts.  I picked out three large potatoes which, when chopped gave 18 decent-sized roast potatoes.  More than enough for the four of us.  That cost 23p for all of us.  Natasha had suggesting mash for cheapness, but I went for roast, with 19p of fresh oil, and a little bit left in a pan from before.  Of all the vegetables we had, I went for carrots, to try to save cost for the toad in the hole.  I prepared 491g of carrots;  possibly quite a lot for four of us (one being a baby), and they came to 39p;  so the potatoes + veg part of the meal came to 81p or 27ppp (for the three being charged, though the baby did indeed eat some).

For the toad in the hole, Natasha has already mentioned the cost to her.  Flora (oldest) and I had two vegetarian sausages each.  They cost 25p a piece, so that was already half our permitted cost.  I had them just cooked in some oil that I siphoned off the nearly-done potatoes, though I made real toad in the hole for Flora and Natasha.  I didn't want to use the caged-eggs that had been bought for us for myself.  I also had a bit of mustard with my dinner.  Less than usual, and I didn't weigh it, so I can only guess how much it cost.  5p, perhaps?

So my day's food came to 0p (breakfast) + 24p (lunch) + 82p (dinner), though I had slightly smaller portions than ⅓, so perhaps I could just about count it as £1.  Still, if I'm going to have roast dinner, I should think about either having cheaper food earlier in the day, or not having the veggie sausages.  Our other staple for Sunday lunch is a puff-pastry tomato tart.  That may be potentially cheaper, but I haven't worked it out.  

So this 25kg bag of potatoes (pictures) looks like a great thing.  I hope I can get through them all, though.  If I have to throw any away, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to account for it.  I am supposed to store them in an airy dark dry place between 8–10ºC.  I'm not sure I have anywhere that fits the bill.  Roast potatoes every night it is, then...

The weekend

I've found breakfasts quite challenging this weekend.  I normally have cereal on week days and I'm cool with that.  At the weekends when I have a bit more time I tend to have breakfasts that take a bit more time to make and are (in my opinion nicer).  Having croissants that you bake from frozen in the over wasn't an option though because my normal portion alone comes to £1.50.  I'm also fond of crumpets and eggy bread but it's all too expensive.  In the end I didn't really fancy anything and just had a larger lunch which suited me well enough.

That was yesterday, today had different challenges.  Dinner was a roast.  It's a favourite of the 7 year old and we wanted to try to plan it in as normal for her.  Her favourite is toad in the hole and yesterday we worked out carefully how to pay for it over the course of the day; I opted for a larger lunch of avocado on toast again with no breakfast (36p), I forget what Paul did in the end, he'll probably blog about it.  My real problem came from the sausages.  As the only meat eater in the house, I don't go through sausages that quickly, so tend to separate them into twos or threes and then freeze them.  Lately (the last 6-8 weeks or so), I've been especially hungry so had frozen sausages into threes.  When Paul asked how many sausages I wanted I had a myriad of problems- more than two would be too expensive, but if I just have two what to do with the remaining sausage- one was clearly too few.  Then, I realised that they actually cost twice what I thought (33p per sausage.)  Then the solution hit me- cook more rather than less.  We ultimately cooked all three sausages in a lot of batter and then cut it in half for tomorrow's dinner.  I still came in over budget- 50p on sausages, plus 27p on potatoes and veg (not yet worked out the cost of the batter) but I think it's a lot nearer to the mark than I would have otherwise been and a lot more sensibly filled with food.  With my hot squashes I reckon I may well be about 15-20p over budget.  Quite a lot really, Paul may yet save our average as he's clearly the frugal one.  We shall see.  I'm not going to beat myself up since I had a very good day yesterday and have prepared quite a lot of good stuff for tomorrow; half a toad in the hole for tea, (cheaper) pasta and pesto for lunch.  I think we/I'll be in a good place.

Buying bargains ... or not

As Natasha pointed out in her post earlier today, we had some leftovers to dispose of and we made them the basis of our evening meals today.  They had been costed already in previous days, since we are counting the amount of food cooked or prepared, not actually necessarily eaten.

I was pretty hungry at breakfast, and had a big serving of cereal (Waitrose Essentials bran flakes) which came to 20p, including milk.  I was at home for lunch, and had Marmite on toast.  The bread was a slice of Waitrose own-brand wholemeal, which works out a 5p per slice.  I measured the amount of butter I put on, which turns out to also be 5p.  I didn't actually weigh the Marmite.  I have a huge (600g) plastic tub of Marmite which I bought from Costco at least a couple of years ago.  A quick search suggests that they sell it for £2.59.  I reckon the amount I put on toast probably doesn't exceed 1p at that rate, but maybe as much as 2p.  I don't have scales sensitive enough to measure.

The leftovers I had for dinner – some potatoes, kale, celery and onions – didn't look so very appetising, so I decided to augment them.  I had a tub of chick peas that I'd tried to reconstitute from dry.  Most dried lentils and pulses I'm happy to soak/cook, but I never seem to get on with chick peas.  I soaked them for a couple of days, then tried boiling them endlessly.  They seem to take so long, which has the problem that I end up leavening them unattended, they boil dry and then burn.  I tried to only have them boiling for periods when I was in the kitchen cooking other stuff, so that they would boil to tenderness over several sessions, but in the end they ended up drying out and getting burnt when I thought I could get away with leaving them for a bit.  I caught them quickly and they weren't totally ruined, so I added a handful to the leftovers.  I used 15g of butter and some Costco powdered garlic to fry the whole lot up.  It was actually rather tasty.  The chickpeas, butter and garlic that I added to the leftovers only amounted to around 10p.

In the title of the post I mentioned buying bargains, or not.  The bargain came when I stopped in the local shop, in the campus of the University of Surrey, where I live.  I wouldn't normally consider buying food there, even when not trying to be quite so provident, because it has the usual convenience store expense, but they had a couple of loaves of bread going cheap as it was the last day they could be sold.  They were thick–sliced Hovis white bread, which is not what I'd usually buy, but at 35p/loaf, I couldn't resist buying them both.  I also picked up the newspaper (The Independent), which has a cover price of £1.40, but which is sold by Universities for 70p in an agreement with the publishers who want to get students as life-long readers (all the broadsheets do this).  In the end, then, I paid the paper's cover price for the paper plus two loaves of bread.  Given that the bread was at its sell-by date, I put one and a half loaves of it in the freezer

The perhaps-not-bargain came in the form of another thing I wouldn't usually buy;  a bag of Tesco value frozen chips.  I got them yesterday when I was buying things for Natasha's birthday dinner.  They were a mere 85p for a 1.5kg bag.  It seemed pretty cheap (and I guess it is), but I should have paid more attention to the fact that I bought 2.5kg of King Edward potatoes for £1, which is clearly a better deal.  Well, anyway – Natasha and I both fancied something to augment our leftovers, so we went for chips.  Living the dream.  I had 150g of chips (8.5p), in the form of a chip butty with white bread (4p for 2 slices + 10p butter).  We used 140ml of oil, shared between 2 batches of cooking chips.  We'll use it again, but cost it with this meal.  That's 9p each.

All in all, then, my breakfast was 20p, lunch 11p, dinner 32p, plus "free" leftovers.  Oh, we finished up some discounted Mr Kipling cakes that Natasha's mum gave us, at 6p for each of us, and we had a cup of Lapsang Souchong tea, at 5p each.  I had a coffee at work for 3p.   All-in-all, then, I got up to around 80p.

The best of intentions...

When I wrote my earlier post today I was still full come breakfast time so around 11am I started guiltlessly snacking on yesterday's leftover. There were plenty of them so I had intentions of basically eating nothing paid for but avocado on toast.  It was all going well. Instead of tea I drank hot squash. When it came to lunch though I decided that one avocado on toast- a grand £0.25 was not enough and decided to have a slice of toast and butter alongside it for good measure bringing the tally to £0.35. For me this seemed to be a theme.  The plentiful leftovers for dinner I ate at 5pm when the baby was having dinner. This was my downfall- it was too early for dinner, or maybe it was not having breakfast or finding out that Paul had purchased the aforementioned 1.5kg bag of chips. So I had a second dinner of chips (17p), and decided I wanted ketchup (bizarrely for me) at 3.5p and then as we had some biscuits (2x3p) that needed finishing today decided to splash out a whole 5p on smoky tea! That brings me to a grand total of £0.71! A lot more than the 30p or so I'd envisioned spending today but hey- what a life of luxury I live.  

birthday blowout

Yesterday was my birthday and I went a bit nuts.  Dinner totalled about £2.50 plus a glass of wine that could have cost anywhere between £1-2 (I can’t quite remember how much it cost and didn’t pour it myself or measure it.)   I started day badly with the biggest bowl of rice crispies I’ve eaten yet because the packet was nearly empty.  That cost a good £0.25 then I had two 3p biscuits and then the real killer- a slice of birthday cake that although homemade, still cost 30p!  I had three cups of tea over the course of the day and then lunch, a big bowl of pasta and pesto for about £0.15.  All that tallied to 80p (when you take precise costs not rough ones) so the lesson is, if you’re going to eat cake, don’t have breakfast.  The good news is that today we’re onto own brand rice pops (although right now if I fancy anything for breakfast it’s toast) so that will be cheaper.  But I digress, for dinner, we had a feast of pork belly (Paul had veggie sausages), cauliflower, kale, celery and mash potatoes and it totalled £14 for the 8 of us eating.  Paul found some bargain potatoes that he didn’t even use all of for this meal.  Then we had a tasty lemon drizzle cake kindly made by Paul’s mum which I’m going to estimate cost £6 because then we get a nice round number of £2.50.  That gives me a grand total of £3.30 so quite a lot for a day.  I really don’t feel that hungry this morning though, unsurprising with the number of calories I consumed, so I’m starting to think that it might even average out to £1 over the course of the week.  Maybe that is too optimistic though.  I guess time will tell.  There’s a reasonable amount of leftover food from last night which is already “paid for” yesterday- we might end up having a very lean day today.  

My mum asked earlier in the week if you can have a nutritious diet when you’re paying so little for food and I think the answer is yes, particularly if you’re prepared to substitute meat for protein sources like lentils but it takes a little more care.  Sources of carbs like rice, potatoes and pasta are very cheap and it’s tempting to fill up on them but we’ve managed quite a high vegetable content this week and a modest amount of dairy.  We are lucky to have a vegetable market that comes very near where we live once a week which sells a lot of (generally) seasonal stuff very cheaply.  We picked up a bag of 6-8 avocados for £1.20, the price of one in most supermarkets.  In all honesty they don’t have the same longevity but we know that and can plan around it.  I’m looking forward to avocado on toast for lunch today costing 25p.  

Coping with celebrations

Food from the veg market

Even before we decided to do our £1/day project, the 4th December, being Natasha's 30th Birthday, was a long-planned family event featuring a meal cooked for her, her mum, one sister, her dad & his wife and stepson, and my mum.  When we started the scheme, sticking to £1 each was never the plan for today.  

Still, when I shopped today, I was in a somewhat parsimonious mode and actually it didn't go too much over-budget.   I had asked Natasha what she wanted for dinner, and she had requested pork-belly, it being one of her favourite things.  I figured I'd do some mashed potato and an selection of vegetables with it, as I knew that would suit her.  

It being Thursday, I went to the vegetable market which comes to the University on this day.  I went much later than usual -- around 3pm, and they were selling some things more cheaply than they do earlier in the day, so that was worth finding out.  I picked up an aubergine, a bag of 7 avocados, some tomatoes, some mushrooms, some spinach (on special offer) and some carrots.  I may have forgotten something else, but it came to about £6.  I then went to the supermarket to get the pork belly.  I was expecting that to completely blow the budget.  I don't buy meat very often (not eating it myself) and was a bit surprised to find that it didn't cost so very much.  For the 7 meat-eating diners it came to £10.   Already over-budget, but not terribly so.  Tesco -- the supermarket I went to (because it is a short walk) -- were selling 2.5kg bags of King Edward potatoes for £1.  This was enough to cover mash for 8 people, and then some.  I cooked a bag of kale (cost £1) from the veg market, and about £1 of cauliflower, and boiled up some celery, with a little mint, that came to about 10p.  For me instead of pig I had a couple of Tesco veggie sausages (50p for the two of them).

I made an error when serving the kale, which was to drain out the water.  I did this out of habit, but it was a rich green water full of goodness that I should have saved for soup stock.  Too bad.  I guess my dinner came to: sausages (50p) potatoes (10p), kale (10p), cauliflower (9p), celery (1p) = 80p. I breakfasted on a slice of melon I got form the veg market at Uni ages ago.  I bought it because it was cheapish for a melon (£1.50 for a cantaloupe melon), but it was really unripe.  I have let it sit slowly ripening.  I had a pretty measly slice for breakfast, but enough.  I didn't measure the angle I sliced, but it could have been no more than around 10p worth.  I'm ashamed to say that I missed lunch again, for various reasons, but it meant that I did come in under budget, even though I wasn't really planning to.  I should say, too, that my mum brought some birthday cake for Natasha that I haven't included in the calculations.

The meat-eaters would have come in over budget, because they ate a little over a pounds-worth of meat each.  There is some food left over, though so that will help us in the next few days.  As well as the genuine leftovers, there is also pork fat, which Natasha may enjoy some of her food being cooked in.

Day 3 dinner

To follow up on Natasha's post – yeah, we both didn't pay for lunch today.  I still tried to be pretty frugal when preparing dinner, but didn't worry quite so much about it.  I used a whole bag of mushrooms from last week's veg market purchase (£1 for the bag) along with onion, garlic, butter, herbs and rice to make tasty mushroom pilaf.  The whole cost of the dinner came to £1.30 for the two of us, which is just fine.  My breakfast came to 6p, which was the cost of the oats in my porridge. Natasha didn't even eat breakfast, so we are well under budget, although we did both wangle over-budget lunch from other people.  To be fair, my sandwich buffet was not all that luxurious and the vegetarian sandwiches were quickly snarfed, so I don't really think I had too much of a blow-out.  Natasha's mum also picked up some reduced Mr Kipling snacks at Tesco for us.  They were pretty gross, but they were cheap and we both snacked on one after dinner (at 3p each)

One thing I've noticed since I've started doing this is that I'm really careful when chopping veg or preparing lentils or something like that, that I waste as little as possible.  I am much more careful than before that when I discard trimming from vegetable preparation, I really only throw away waste bits.  In fact, when I prepared the cauliflower the other day, I kept all the leaves and stems to use for something or other.  Must remember to actually do that, rather than let them fester in a bag in the fridge.

There's no such thing as a free lunch

Yesterday we both came in under budget, in part because I had a free lunch available at work that day. We discussed beforehand the best way to cost such events- I also have milk provided for tea and coffee only (woe betide an occasional cereal user but that is another issue). In part I felt it was cheating- eating potentially expensive food that I hadn't paid for. Ultimately, we decided not to count them and our logic was this: the food is generally already paid for, regardless of whether we try to stop it and wasting food to try to prove a point is silly. I'm making an effort not to complain about being hungry (a big change for me) to try to avoid inadvertent "donations" but if someone in the office brings in cake I'm not going to torture myself.  The same principle applies to pre-planned meals with family and friends, office parties etc.  

Hopefully as time goes on we'll build a rough profile of how much each meal typically costs, and then we can have a choice about whether or not to spend our free lunch money.  For example- today we both had a free lunch, Paul at work and me at my mother's but we didn't then blow our day's budget on dinner.  Maybe we should have though.  

Part of me wonders if I'm inadvertently stifling how creative we'll be with our food/ money by having so many opportunities to eat normally but on the other hand I suppose it's possible to feel overwhelmed and give up if it's all too stringent.  So far so good though (though it's only day 3).

Dining with fancy cheese for <£1

So for dinner tonight I made a combination of cheesy sprouts and a large onion bhaji.  Natasha (who posts and comments here as "still hungry") is not a fan of brussel sprouts (whereas I like them), but she does think they're nice mashed up with some cheese.  The only cheese we have in the house is fancy Waitrose Davidstow cheddar, so I had to use that.  For the onion bhaji too, I used some natural yoghurt in the batter.  That was also fancy stuff – organic Yeo Valley yoghurt, as it was the only full-fat stuff for the baby (and indeed me) that the nearest supermarket had.  Most natural yoghurt on sale is unfortunately "zero-fat".  Still, we came in under budget for the day.  Partly that's because I forgot to pick up any food to take in for lunch,  but I had quite a big breakfast and quite a big dinner.  Oh, and also because Natasha got free lunch at work.

 Here is the dinner recipe:

Onion bhaji with cheesy sprouts (served 2)

248g brussel sprouts, trimmed and chopped into quarters (32p)

57g cheddar cheese (45p)

63g chick pea flour (6p)

20g rice flour (2p)

one 179g onion (15p)

4.5g organic yoghurt (14p)

sprinkle of chilli powder (1p)

sunflower oil (costed into yesterday's meal, re-used)

boil sprouts until cooked, mash them up with grated cheese

 mix rice flour, chickpea flour, and yoghurt, then add water until it is a thick batter.  Chop onion coarsely, then mix with batter.  Spread onion batter out over the pan and fry over a medium heat, turning to cook through and crisp both sides.  

Here's a piccy (that's probably about 2/5 of the total, since I usually split it about 2:3 between me and Natasha)

Breakfast on day 2

Breakfast is probably the easiest meal to make cheaply.  At least for me.  I don't usually have a great appetite, and I often skip breakfast, though I'm trying not to at the moment. 

One particular reason that it's easy for me is because I like porridge made with water and a bit of salt.  It's what I had yesterday, and my breakfast cost 4p in raw materials (which is all we're counting – cooking costs are not included in any of this).  I'm pretty sure I could cut that 4p down by buying oats in greater bulk.  I had bought a ½kg bag of Waitrose Essential porridge oats.  If I had bought a 1kg bag the cost of the weight of oats I used (40g) would have rounded to 3p, but I dare say there are cheaper ways of getting oats. Today I splashed out and had Bran Flakes (also Waitrose Essential), 49g of which set me back 10p, with 109ml of milk adding an extra 5p.

Yesterday I had a cup of instant coffee.  I was somewhat surprised to calculate that the cost of the coffee (Douwe Egberts, so not the really budget stuff) was only 3p.  I'd also worked out that if I make myself I cup of espresso with the stove-top espresso maker, then I use 30p of coffee – a serious chunk of my £1/day. 

End of day 1

we ate ¼ of a cauliflower for dinner 

So it's the end of day one and whilst the boyfriend has come in perfectly on budget (and will point out that I ate more than my half so really he's under-budget), I have massively blown mine- £1.44 and I'm still hungry.  The good news (sort of) is that I'm always hungry and right now I'm no more hungry than normal.  I could make excuses like us having own brand rice crispies rather than cheaper ones, or that the expensive fancy bread that I ate up would have gone stale and wasting it would be worst and the baby ate some anyway but I'm not going to (anymore than I just have at least).  Tomorrow is another day, one that comes with a working lunch provided!

I've quite enjoyed figuring out the relative prices of difference drinks for example.  I now know that the decaf tea I drink costs twice as much as regular tea.  It's been good for me to think a bit more about what I'm eating/ drinking; there are lots of things that I enjoy almost equally but have drastically different costs e.g. hot water with a slice of lemon/ a cup of smoky tea. 

So today I ate cereal for breakfast, we both had lentil soup (me with bread) and for dinner was a curried cauliflower dish with chips.  I rather fear I'm going to end up epitomising that poor people eat badly as I felt far too much glee when I discovered that Tescos sell 1.5kg for 84p! To sum up: spices are practically free- a penny a gram, porridge made with water is a lot cheaper than cereal (with good reason since it's disgusting), where possible buy in bulk and think carefully about the value of branded food.  I think as the month progresses and we buy our food more carefully we'll be eating more luxuriously (and finish the day with a cup of fancy tea).

Starting off

Having decided to see how to eat on no more than £1 per day per person, we figured we'd set up a blog about it to help us record how it goes, and perhaps because it will be of use to others.  It's not the first blog to do this, and I dare say it won't be the last either.

We're doing it not because we are struggling to pay for food at a higher rate than that but partly from a desire to be frugal, but also because one day we'd like to buy somewhere to live.  Right now, people living and working in the vicinity of London face the situation that house prices go up in one year more than a school teacher's annual gross salary -- i.e. a house "earns" more money that a person's labour.  This is largely thanks to successive governments doing what they can to appease property-owners, but it is pricing young people out of property if they don't have money to inherit.  Mere wage-slaves such as we are will find it hard to get our own place to live.  If we can save more money, there may be hope (as long as we earn more money than teachers - even saving their whole gross salary will not be enough).

Anyway.  We're going to try to document here how we do.  Starting in December is maybe an odd choice, with Christmas coming up which we'll be spending away with family.  We'll post regularly with updates on food expenditure.  We're aiming for £1 per day per person, including the two adults and one 7yo in the family, but not the baby.  We'll make best estimates of what the food already in our cupboards cost.  We're not going to be able to do things like ensure we go to the supermarkets at just the right time to get the discounted perishables, but I'm sure just running this experiment will make us think even more carefully about what we buy when we do go shopping.

More later!