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.