How Cheap Can I Eat?

Well, the experiment is over.  Total spent: £72.22.

It’s nice to come under the target, although several people have complained that £75 for food in one month seems like a lot. I said early on that if I wanted to go really hardcore, I could just buy 10kg of rice for £5 and have a bowl of rice every day. I wouldn’t die, but I might go insane with boredom and eventually start suffering from malnutrition.

The objective here was to see how easily I could eat properly while spending less than normal. The key really is to cook meals yourself, and more importantly to bag and freeze any leftovers. I still have loads of food left and if I had to I could survive for another two weeks.

You need to spend a bit on good stock ingredients that’ll stay in the cupboard for months, and then all you need do is buy specific ingredients to complete whatever meal you want. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever buy a prepackaged ready meal again, they’re far too expensive for what they are, and I can cook something nicer and healthier for much less.

Thanks to all that have followed my progress

The experiment officially ends on Thursday, and it’s now clear that I’m going to make it with ease.

The only thing I’ve needed to buy since my last shop was more milk for £1.44 which will see me through to the end. In retrospect I bought much more food than I needed, and what I have left could keep me going for many more days.

Recently I’ve been keeping it simple - porridge for breakfast (the last form of breakfast left in the cupboard), a sandwich for lunch, and something either reheated or quickly whipped together for tea. Pasta, rice, or a bit of chicken.

I wouldn’t say I’m suddenly a new person who sees the world differently, but from now on I’ll be buying a lot more ‘basics’ stuff on the grounds that a lot of it is indistinguishable from the more expensive brands. Similarly I haven’t once been tempted to buy a packet of processed food, preferring instead to knock something together with ingredients.

Yes, it takes slightly more brainpower than bunging something in the oven, but at the same time it’s generally a lot nicer, a lot cheaper, and a lot more satisfying to do it myself!

After the success of the sausage casserole earlier this month I’ve decided to cook another one. I have my 8 sausages for 50p, but I’ve run out of potatos, I’m going to have to grab a couple on the way home. Unless anyone else can think of a good sausage recipe I’ve overlooked?

Update: I ended up cooking Toad in the Hole, which was ace, just look at it!

10 days to go, and in an effort to get back on track I had a stir fry today. Had to share with with the gf so sadly there are no portions left for tomorrow.

I’ve still got frozen meals in the freezer, and other ingredients knocking about in the cupboard. I think I’ll do this with plenty of food to spare. The only thing I might need to buy between now and the end is milk.

On that note, a friend of mine sent me this link, about how the big name supermarkets have already been penalised for fixing the price of milk and cheese. While this article is 6 months old, I’m still surprised that the same companies mentioned still have identical prices of milk today. Surely this can’t be coincidence? If it’s not being explicitly fixed, then perhaps they have an unspoken agreement? That would seem to be the case, especially since Iceland, one company not mentioned in the story, is the only place I’ve found where the price is different.

Very suspicious stuff, if you ask me.

A very bad day today, the gf and I had to put our sweet little doggy to sleep this morning. He was 15 and has suffered from a heart condition for the last two years. 4 different types of tablets, 3 times a day has kept him in good health, but we always knew there’d come a time when they stopped working.

Very, very sad

For the purposes of this blog I need to declare that, given the upset, budget eating wasn’t really on the cards today, and the gf and I went out to pizza express to cheer ourselves up. The cost, of course, was far beyond any budget but I’m not counting it towards the total. You can’t adhere to little projects like this in times of woe.

G’bye my little doggy, I’ll miss you x

I’ve just spent £12.39 on food in Sainsburys, in what I anticipate to be my last shop, pretty much. I’ve bought all the small things I need to make enough meals to last me for the rest of the month.

I bought 3 cheap chocolate bars (23p each from sainsburys) as I think another brownie cake is in order. I also bought more sugar, more chopped tomatos, pasta sauce, and more ingredients for a stir fry.

Oh I almost forgot, I bought a frozen ‘Basics’ cheesecake for 70p. 70p!!

I’m now at £70.78. £4.22 left.

Well it’s been another couple of days since the last post. I finally managed to eat all of my spouting potatoes, and also ate the 5 sasusages in the fridge yesterday. Today I had pasta with my Basics Pasta Sauce, with cheese. Plenty for two portions so the second one is lunch tomorrow.

Haven’t bought a thing recently, apart from more milk, which was £1.44 for 4 pints. Fun fact: All of the major supermarkets near me (Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsburys) all charge this exact amount for 4 pints of skimmed milk. Price fixing or what? The only exception I’ve spotted is Iceland, who charge £1.20.

Total spend now £58.39 with 2 weeks to go. I think I can do this fairly comfortably, as I have plenty of ingredients left and won’t need to spend too much more to make several more meals.

I have, on occasion, missed a meal during this month. This usually arises due to a late breakfast, and then a late, large lunch that leaves me sufficiently filled so as to not require dinner. While I’m sure this is to the horror of nutritionalists everywhere, I don’t think it has any particular ill-effects. After all, who said you have to eat 3 meals a day? It’s merely a social convention, so as long as I’m not starving hungry for more than a couple of hours at a time, this isn’t a bad way to go about things.

The last couple of days this week have been a weetabix/soup combo for the first two meals (note to self: need more milk), and yesterday I had some rosemary potatoes cooked in the oven with 3 sliced sausages. Took 45 minutes but the end result was a worthy meal, plus I really need to eat the rest of these potatoes before they start sprouting out of control.

I’m conscious that I have a couple of eggs, and a good deal of plain and self-raising flour that I haven’t yet used. I’ve also got two chicken breasts left, 13 sausages, a packet of bacon, some basic tomato pasta sauce, loads of pasta and rice, frozen peas, frozen peppers, and other bits n’ bobs. What can I cook from this, I wonder? Suggestions on a postcard.

6pm: Well, don’t need to worry about what to do with the eggs anymore. I had pancakes! Milk, eggs, and flour. Couldn’t be simpler, and very nice.

This weekend would have been good and economical but for one thing: Dinner at a friend’s house on Saturday night. Brilliant, tasty meal chock full of vegetables and fish, things I haven’t had lately. Need to assign a value to this meal, so I’ll estimate about a fiver.

This makes the total spend now £56.95. I’ve got £18.05 left for the next 17 days. I still have plenty of raw ingredients left in the cupboards so I think I’ll make it. We’ll see.

As boring as it sounds I’m contemplating another sausage casserole, because the first one was so nice I wouldn’t mind more. I’ve got one portion of it left, frozen in the freezer and I’ve been trying to save it

Morrisons are purporting to sell 8 popular food items for 50p each. There is a store a couple of miles from where I live, so I’ll be popping over tonight to see if this deal is viable. Personally I suspect the publicity it has received means I’ll turn up at the store to find at least 6 of the 8 items completely sold out, because that kind of thing is just typical of special offers like this. I’ll also have a nose around for other bargains while I’m there and report back afterwards.

Food today has been museli, a packet soup from the cupboard for lunch (costing something like 30p and not at all filling), and tonight I’ll probably have a couple of baked potatos, because they need using and I’ve got plenty of toppings, like cheese and branston. Mmmm.

7pm: Back from Morrisons. Spent a grand total of £3.14. For this I got another load of bread, 16 sausages, 4 beef burgers, and a pack of white buns. I was so excited at the prospect of 12.5p burgers that I had two for tea. It was pretty much was I expected cheap quarter-pounders to be. They don’t taste the best but it’s a meal. I won’t make a habit of buying and eating these. The buns will be handy for lunch next week, and the bread will be handy for breakfast toast when the museli runs out.