A social experiment - Day 2

Having spent double the budget on day 1 I was quietly optimistic that I could do something to redress the balance on day 2, not least because of my cunning plan...

So, nice and early in the morning I took the kids down to the weekly market and had a word with the guy who runs the fruit and veg stall. I told him about our aim of living on £1 per person per day for a week. "A pound!?" he exclaimed. Then I put it to him that we would be delighted to take some of the broken,bruised and otherwise less than perfect fruit and veg off him that he puts aside as unsaleable each week if he could let us have it at a low price...

"That's what my wife and I eat" he said. "And anyway, we've got pigs and chickens so we feed that stuff to them." he added. "And anyway, the only stuff we really have that needs getting rid of is stuff you wouldn't really want anyway, like a box of over-ripe mangoes". So that was that idea scuppered.

However, one thing he said that was helpful, after I'd mentioned the £1 a day thing, was "So you'll be making your own bread then?" Well, I had hoped that I might still be able to afford to buy something as basic as bread within the budget, if not the white loaves that we normally buy from the Sainsbury's bakery counter for £1.35 each. In my mind I somehow thought that there would be sliced white loaves available for about 40p, but those days it seems are gone - at least in Sainsbury's. The cheapest white loaf that they do is still 85p. So I thought that I would have a go at making my own. With help from Delia Smith I managed to produce a white and a wholemeal loaf each of which cost, I reckon about 45p. And to use up a bit of Feta cheese that was lingering in the fridge (usual story - too expensive to buy if I'd really been on the £1 budget during the preceding weeks - but I didn't want to waste it) I made some Feta, rosemary and potato bread, which we had at lunchtime with the leftover soup from yesterday. Yum.

Feta, rosemary and potato bread

So anyway, making one's own bread is a massive money saver (relatively speaking and under the terms of the experiment) although in real life it's hard to imagine spending probably an hour every other day baking bread to save £1.80 a time. OTOH, it was fun and the bread is lovely. In particular (I now know as I'm writing this the day after) the wholemeal bread makes amazingly good toast. It is quite dense and becomes even more nutty and chewy with a really crisp crust once toasted - really, sublime!

Bread!

One slight (huge in £1 a day land) indulgence during the morning was coffee made with ground coffee. I wouldn't have had this but Nic decided that she would forgo breakfast if she could have nice coffee instead. Our stove top pot takes about 25 gm of coffee, which costs about 30p, but we also added about 10p worth of hot milk and some sugar. The pot makes a bit more than one cup so I had to help out there. Total cost 45p.

I was determined that tea wouldn't be a bowl of slop and Nic suggested another recipe (or at least a modified version of a recipe) that we had tried before, namely Gardener's Pie, from an old Cranks recipe book that we've got. Gardeners pie is a vegetarian version of Cottage Pie, with a filling made from onions, carrots, brown lentils,tomato puree, mushrooms and walnuts. The budget woudln't run to mushrooms and walnuts, so I left those out, but to add flavour I added fennel and cumin seeds and a splash of Worcestershire Sauce. After some sautéing and simmering I had poured off the juices from the filling, added a splash of white wine vinegar and a little water then thickened with flour to make an amazingly nice gravy.

I wanted to serve the pie with some green veg and having looked at all the options in Sainsbury's the cheapest I could find was "basic" frozen peas at £1.20 per kg (compare fresh broccoli at £2.20 a kilo)

Gardener's pie with peas

Also whilst at Sainsbury's I found a tin of cheap Marigold stock powder and a tin of kidney beans - both severely dented, but 30% off. I thought I would include the beans in a veggi chill, the recipe of which I was yet to invent, but the stock is a staple as far as I'm concerned and hard to imagine doing without, so that was a bit of a find, allowing me to bring down my spend by a few pence over the week.

Dented cans - cheap!

Pudding was left over crumble from day 1, but with another batch of custard.

So costs for the day were breakfast, about £1.15 because of the coffee. Lunch was partly free as it was mostly yesterday's left over soup, but the feta bread cost about £1 (would have been about 30p without the feta in it).

Tea was £1 of potatoes, 30p red lentils, 10p onion, 40p carrot, 30p tom puree, 10p stock powder + a third of the peas, so about £2.20. Custard was 40p.

Once again there were teas and instant coffees to account for which cost 20p.

I won't add the cost of the bread yet as it will be accounted for as it is used, tomorrow and the day after.

So overall the spend for the day was about £4.95, a bit nearer our £4 target + we have enough Gardener's Pie left over for tomorrow's tea.