How Cheap Can I Eat?

Very sad, very upsetting news this morning. I went to the fridge, excited to see my cheesecake, and found that it hadn’t set. I removed it from my loose-base tin, and examined it on the worktop. Definitely not set. The consistency of the cheese element was like thick yoghurt. Without the edges of the pan to hold it up, the cheese started to collapse. Frantic, I cut myself a slice (or as much of a slice of yoghurt as you can cut) and put the rest back into the pan, causing a fair amount of mess in the process.

This is a disaster, it hasn’t set and while it doesn’t taste *too* awful, I’m not sure if I can stomach trying to eat the whole thing. I will take a picture later today to show you all. It’s tragic, very, very tragic. :o(

5pm: Picture time. I was baffled at this failure. Clearly the arrogance of my incredible brownie cake has come back to haunt me.

I’m currently eating as much of it as I can. In fact, this might be my tea tonight.

I’m not sure whether I should just dispassionately list everything I’ve eaten every day of the month. That wouldn’t interest me so I’m not sure who out there would tune in just to keep updated about what I’m putting in my mouth. Suffice to say yesterday was last of the cornflakes (49p), another chicken sandwich, and the rest of the pizza and a few chips for tea.

Today marked a change with Sainsburys Basics museli for breakfast. Despite being mega mega cheap it was just as nice as any museli I’ve ever had really. Some ‘basics’ things are noticably not quite as nice as their branded alternatives, and yet others are exactly the same. For example, I’ll never buy branded peanut butter again, it’s identical. Ditto Jam, Margarine, and flour. It’s a well known fact that many unbranded goods are produced by the same factory as the big brands, and yet the contents are identical. Cocoa is a pretty good example of this. How different can something like that be, from brand to brand? It can’t, so it’s not.

Stir fry later, I look forward to that. I’m still mulling over cheesecake recipes, the major problem being that marscepone, a major ingredient that I do not currently posses, seems to be very expensive. I think I’ll mull it for another day and try to pick it up from somewhere on the cheap.

7pm: Stir-fry!

This was very excellent, and there was enough left for a sizable second portion. That’s lunch tomorrow!

Also, and I don’t want you to get excited, viewers, but my cheesecake is now setting in the fridge. I’ve never made cheesecake before so I really hope that it tastes of yummy lemon, and not philadelphia on digestive biscuit.

Ingredients bought for cheesecake, plus other bits and bobs, came to £4.67. Total spend now £48.81.

Very little to report over the weekend. Yesterday was a busy day, so it was a cornflakes breakfast, peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch (a forgotten favourite), and reheated sausage casserole for tea.

Sunday wasn’t much better, with another cornflake/PB&J  combo, but on the plus side these meals are entirely filling and cheap.

To my credit I did go shopping again for a couple of bits:

Big bag of oven chips for 41p! I was going to resist buying anything like this, as I do have potatoes in the cupboard so I could make my own, but for this price I could’t resist. The pizza there was £1.64, which I’ll eat in two halves, making it a cheap 82p per ‘meal’ that I’ll get out of that. Everything else is ingredients for a stir fry that I’ll make this week. I’ll get at least two portions out of that on consecutive days, so it’s all good.

Total spent today was £6.13 making the total spend so far £44.14. That gives me less than £31 left for the rest of the month and it’s only the 6th today. I’m not worried yet though, I have loads of ingredients in the cupboard and I envisage that I’ll just be buying the odd ingredient or two to complete recipes from now on.

More cornflakes for breakfast and another sandwich for lunch. The most interesting thing about today was the chilli con carnie I cooked for tea:

Once again, this was a pretty good meal. I’m amazed that nothing I’ve cooked so far hasn’t killed me, or tasted rank. Froze another two portions, so that’s 4 meals in the freezer now I can use another day.

I’ve also decided to make cheesecake next week after the brownie cake runs out. I literally can’t wait

2pm: Breakfast and lunch today was the same as yesterday, with the exception of a piece of brownie cake. It’s truly the best thing I’ve ever made and should last me all week. Yay!

Must plan ahead a few meals for maximum savings. Tonight I intend to cook a sausage caserole (thanks to MaliA for the suggestion) which should last two or three days. I don’t actually have a caserole dish, so I’ll be popping to the supermarket tonight for that and possibly a couple of ingredients.

Chilli is another suggestion I’ve had quite often, so I think I might cook up a big batch of that tomorrow and freeze it. Mmmmm, chilli.

8pm: Sausage Casserole is cooked!

Another couple of sliced potatoes, all of my sausages, an onion and various seasonings. Took a little while to prepare but it tastes pretty good and there’s enough here for at least 3, if not 4 hearty portions. Anything I don’t eat tonight will be bagged and frozen for another day. Cost: No more than about £4. Result!

Must confess I spent £2.75 in Sainsburys today on a couple of seasonings, some more chopped tomatos, kidney beans, and tomato puree which will be going in tomorrow’s chille Total spent so far: £38.01

1pm: The morning started with a hurried bowl of Basics Cornflakes. For 49p a box these are great. They’re not Kellogs, but they’re tasty all the same.

My homemade sandwich for lunch (chicken, mayo, lettuce, valued at £1 or so) was just fine, and I murderously devoured the apple I’d brought as a snack, too. This will be my lunch every day for the rest of this week.

What occurs to me most at the moment is that I’m hungry. This month wasn’t supposed to be a diet of any kind but it’s very interesting how restricted I feel about my food. Normally when I’m hungry, I just eat more, and if I run out of food, I buy more.

Since I’m working to a strict budget I can’t knowingly binge on a load of food when I know there’s no scope for just buying more. What I have in my cupboards at the moment has to last two weeks, so I am forced to think about my portions carefully and not overdo it, or the whole experiment will fail. I wonder, has anyone ever dietted where the restriction was not calories, but price?

I certainly intend to eat as ‘normally’ as I can without restricting portion size where possible, and I thoroughly intend to make use of the cocoa powder I spotted in my cupboard by making some brownies tonight. With a few of the right ingredients it should be a bargainous treat that’ll last several days. Results to be posted later.

8pm: Tea tonight was a couple of potatos sliced and baked with rosemary, with a bit of lettuce, and chicken breast flavoured with a bit of paprika. Might sound a bit mish-mash but it was a decent meal that filled me up.

Straight after that I set to work on my aforementioned brownie. I was forced to buy chocolate for this and spent £1.60 on two 140g bars of Cadburys Dairy Milk. I wasn’t planning on buying branded (Sainsburys do awesome ‘basics’ chocolate bars for 25p), but I had no choice today as I wasn’t passing anywhere that sold the cheap stuff. Smack my hands.

Shortly after starting I realised I didn’t have the shallow baking tray needed for brownies. What I did have however was a small bread tin, so I have instead baked a massive brownie cake. It’s currently cooling but an initial taste test confirms its probably the NICEST thing I’ve ever made. It’s all I can do to resist mashing my face into the tray and eating it all in one go. Recipe was c/o Jamie Oliver.

Midday: I am about to go for my first shop. I’ve made a list of basic ingredients with no particular meal in mind. Once I get all the food back here I’ll mull over all the suggestions I’ve had so far and then to cook something worthy. I’ve had a very cheap day so far by eating the weetabix I had left over in the cupboard. After I’ve been to the shop to check prices I’ll estimate a cost for that meal later. I suspect I’m going to have to spend more than my £18 weekly budget initially to stock up on those essentials that will hopefully last longer than a week.

I’m hungry.

6pm: I’m back, and I have food.  My first shop cost a total of £33.66 and on that basis I should have enough food for nearly two weeks. Here is my receipt:

And this is what I got for my money:

To briefly summarise, there’s potatoes, bread, milk, eggs, margarine, cheese, bacon, sausages, chicken, turkey mince, plain flour, self raising flour, frozen peas, frozen peppers, cornflakes, museli, and a few tinned things. A crackingly good variety of stuff for £30.

A lot of the basics stuff is really stupidly cheap. 20p for baked beans, and 19p for a tin of basics rice pudding (Ambrosia alternative was 79p). Basics flour for 36p (branded alternative was £1.08) and I defy it to be three times nicer. You can see a lot of ‘Sainsburys Basics’ stuff here, and I’ll have to report back on whether cheap means nasty or cheap means delicious bargain.

The cheapest bread was 37p, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy it. I put it in the trolly for a while but then swapped it for some bakery bread for £1.09. It has to be worth the extra.

On the whole I’m pretty pleased with my haul and providing I cook everything in advance and freeze some portions, I reckon I’ll have more than enough to last me a couple of weeks. Today has been a bit of a rush so I’ve only had two meals, the weetabix breakfast (4 weetabix + milk, Cost: £0.48 I reckon), and then this for tea:

Some egg noodles (from cupboard) with peas and some chilli sauce, probably about £0.50 worth. Pretty good start to the mission so far.

Still a bit hungry, so I might eat an apple (21p) as a snack. It occurs to me that I haven’t really bought any other snack foods so I’ll have to do something about that or I might spend the whole month being annoyingly hungry. Onwards to tomorrow!