Monday 2 February 2015

Food Challenge Week 2 - final week!

We enjoyed the challenge so much, we thought we'd have another go!

We have been asked if we were hungrier than normal, the answer is no. We eat our evening meal at 5pm so are usually ready for a small snack of some kind by 8pm, which is the latest time I try to eat. Sometimes it was toast, a jam sandwich, thawed frozen fruit or yoghurt and jam.

The chicken and vegetable soup, made enough for 3 days, plus one batch has gone into the freezer. That was handy as we almost ran out of vegetables by the Thursday but luckily the meals had been planned to not need any-more.

This time, I am also shopping from my cupboard/freezer and reflecting the price to try and stay within the limit. Leeks though will be eaten from my garden as they need eating. I had enough money this week to buy some apples, pears and bananas, which will really be enjoyed!

Food left from the first week of challenge:
Tinned tomatoes x 2, tinned beans x 1, 1/2 the cheese, 1/2 the pasta, a few eggs. Menu for this second week will be:

Breakfasts: Porridge x 5, Mini shredded wheat x 1, toast x 1.

Lunches: Soups x 4, Tinned tomatoes on toast, leftover courgette fritters and beans, toasted cheese sandwich.

Evening Meals: Pork stew x 2 (1 frozen for another week), vegetable chilli x 2, mushroom stroganoff, courgette fritters and coleslaw and potato wedges, fish cakes, chips and peas x 1, toast.

Herewith my on-line shopping list. Black reflects the on-line price at the time of creating the menu, red denotes how much over that price the item was on shopping day and green under the price!

Whole oats .75 p 24p
Long grain rice .40 p
Pasta to refill stores .20 p
2 x 4l milk 1.78 p
Single box Shredded Wheat 1.49p 20p
1 tin red kidney beans .23p - coming out of my cupboard
Potatoes 1.59p 9p but 1/2kg less
Pork .99p
Carrots .49p
Swede .59p .30p
Leeks .89 - from garden
Onions .69p
Pumpkin .89p .20p
Mushrooms .89p
Courgettes x 6 1.78p
Frozen Peas .89p From freezer
Fish cakes pack of 4 .75p From freezer
Sunflower spread .69p
Crème fraiche .79p
Bananas .78p 10p
Pears 1.07p .08p
Apples .95p .03p

That leaves us .60p  from this week plus 24p from last week (I think). As we also still adhere to war rations for meat, it helps keep the price down. Although each week we can have up to £4.40 in total, the limit of £20 for all food means we might not always be able to afford it!

An extra bit of shopping was done separately for our top up of toiletries/tea etc. It came to £17.00 which is not part of the challenge as that is for food only.

11 comments:

  1. You have another excellent week planned, Im not sure I could do it, £25 would be more comfortable for us. Starting this week I want to try and get all my shopping from the new local Aldi, it will help reduce my spending as I wont be tempted by offers at the bigger supermarkets. Our freezer is well stocked and I have done a menu plan for the month, its not set in stone but it would help if we stick to it :-)

    Do you think you could eat this way long term or would your diet become monotonous? There is a thread on the Frugaldom forum running at the moment £5 per person per week for all meals, way out of my comfort zone!

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    1. Menu wise this is pretty close to how we normally eat so I guess it would be possible to do it long term, excluding toiletries. Certainly £25 per week might be better which is something we might think about afterwards to reduce our normal food bill a little more. Problem there is I like to keep a good store cupboard and that would probably get depleted very quickly. Avery interesting and useful trial though.

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  2. Leek fritters are good, could save buying courgettes?

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    1. Didn't even cross my mind, how annoying. Thanks for the info though. I did need courgettes for the vegetable chilli and soup. I guess any veg would be quite good. We make them using gram flour and lots of spices.

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    2. Sweetcorn fritters we also very tasty. I use tinned sweetcorn in mine. I have made pea fritters too and added a little mint.

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  3. You certainly have far more discipline than me DC, though I am looking at ways of cutting our costs in general.

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    1. Less meat with protein from other sources helps.

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  4. You are doing extremely well and showing that its possible to include fresh fruit and veg in a low budget diet which is what most people complain they can't do on a low income. I think it would be extremely difficult though if a person had to start from absolute scratch with none of the little extras like tea, coffee, sugar, herbs etc in the cupboard. Trying to build up a little stock of such things would take time on such a low amount.

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  5. Thank you. That is why I think £25 a week would be better as there would be some spare for those things then eventually, the store cupboard could be built up.

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  6. I love your posts about saving money on food. I am about to start my own food challenge, and you have been an inspiration! Please keep posting more on this.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, will do so as and when. Food challenge stops this week, back to normal after that but hopefully spending less!

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