Tag Archives | tesco

Snacks that don’t expire

By on October 10, 2011 in Calorie Cost, Snacking

This morning’s ill-advised snack:

As well as being a pretty lazy purchase in lieu of making my own chocolate cornflake cakes, it’s given me the idea to start classifying my snacks in terms of their calorie cost per pound. This strikes me as a handy way of seeing how much calorific bang I’m getting for my buck.

That makes today’s snack have a Calorie Cost of 376kcal per £1.

The second, slightly disturbing thing I noticed is that the before before date on these is the 17th December, more than two months from the date of purchase.

I find that pretty amazing, as I’m sure homemade crispie cakes don’t last like this. What the heck am I eating that keeps this humble snack viable for so long?

Can Kate Really Bake?

By on September 29, 2011 in Calorie Cost, Delicious, Snacking

Somewhat unashamedly on mornings when I run to work (another 544 Fitocracy points in the bag!), I had this in lieu of a healthy, sensible breakfast.

Kate's Zesty Lemon Loaf SliceThis was a tidy 88p from Tesco. I was a little suspicious about the ‘Kate’s Cakes’ name, as I don’t trust big, lumbering supermarkets not to come up with a fake and fun brand that tries to convince you that your mass-produced snack was genuinely made in a kitchen by a lady called Kate.

I was pretty surprised to find that Kate’s Cakes are in fact an independent supplier that serves many clients, and they even have a rather cute website. In addition to four flavours of loaf slice (all of which I will now have to try), it seems they also do snack bars, full-sized cakes and muffins. My only criticism is that nowhere on the packaging is there a calorie breakdown (something I always look for), and checking on the website I see my inconspicuous little cake slice is an eye-popping 376 kcals! Definitely something I’d prefer to know as my usual cut-off is about 250. Also quite a fatty, sugary content, so a healthy snack this is not.

Cake slice nommed

Nearly 94 calories in that bite!

Pretty tasty on the whole, and I do like cakes with poppy seeds as it adds a little bit of crunch to the bite and makes me pause to savour it a little longer.

All in all, worth a try, but only if you’re prepared to exercise it off afterwards! Another snack chosen entirely at random next time :)

Calorie Cost: 427kcal per £1

Confident of Victory

By on July 17, 2008 in Cheap Eating

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.

Lazy Weekend

By on July 6, 2008 in Shopping

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.