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...