How Cheap Can I Eat?

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.

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.

In the last couple of days I’ve had a load of really great suggestions for eating cheaply and healthily using basic ingredients. A lot of it is news to me but I’ll be putting it to good use next week.

In the meantime I haven’t been shopping and I’m draining what little remains of the food in the house. By the time July 1st rolls around I’m going to be near-starving and desperate for something, anything, to eat. I’m looking forward to my first shop

I find myself in a unique position, my girlfriend has moved out, and for the first time in years I am the master of my own nutrition. I am a bad man who, prior to now, have had the majority of my meals cooked for me, and so I’ve never had to think too hard about what and how much food to buy as long as there was enough for two.

More interestingly, and with my blessing, the girlfriend has taken most of the contents of the larder, on the grounds that she was more likely to eat it than I was.

I have been left with a larder that looks like this:

A fridge that looks like this:

And a freezer that looks like this:

I have no food. A mixed collection of random seasonings, odd half-used pots and other odds and ends, but nothing here that makes a meal. This seems like a great opportunity to see just how cheaply one man by himself can eat for one month.

I’ll set myself some basic rules:

1. I’m allowed to eat anything I’ve currently got in my cupboards as part of my meals without it being included in my monetary total. Don’t worry, there isn’t much.
2. Other grocery shopping isn’t included in any money totals. This blog is all about the cost of food. I’m not buying ‘Tesco Value’ shower gel or ‘Sainsburys Basics’ Arse Scratching Loo roll. Some standards must be maintained.
3. If someone else buys me food or otherwise feeds me, I will give an estimation of what it has cost and add it to my total. In other words I can’t cheat by scrounging off my mates all month, which is just as well because I doubt I’d get more than one meal out of any of them, the miserly shits.
4. I must have variation. This means I can’t buy 30 x 9p tins of beans for £2.70 and eat that for 2 weeks. Bleugh. I’ll have to get creative to avoid eating the same meals over and over.

We start on July 1st, I hope you’ll follow my progress and offer me advice on how to prepare and eat cheap meals with maximum nourishment. My target for the month is anything less than about £75, which will give me about £2.40 a day to spend on lovely food and seems more than achievable on paper.