50p a day til Christmas - healthily?! Weezl's next challenge...

Plum_Pie

r.a.i.n.b.o.w wrote: »

Could I politely request that anyone managing less than £1 per day per person please post a typical day's menu?

I was very inspired by Weezl's first challenge and have cut my food bill down by loads. I reckon my eating averages out at £1 per day and sometimes less. At weekends, I don’t really have a pattern, but in the week, I'm quite regimented. See below:

Breakfast
1 slice toast/half large pitta bread and 1 egg (fried in oil or scrambled in butter or boiled but with butter on the toast.)

Throughout the day at work:
2 pieces fresh fruit
10 nuts (various)
40g (dry weight) pasta or 2 slices of bread with lentil pate (see recipe index) and a few salad leaves (I grow my own baby ones.)

PM Meal.
Meat may be included but will usually be one of the following:
1.cheap cut made into stew/curry
2. expensive cut (e.g. frying steak, chicken breast) reduced for quick sale (I bulk buy when I see these bargains and freeze in portions)
3. Small amount of something strongly flavoured e.g bacon added to veggie dish.
Plenty of rice, spuds or noodles.
Plenty of veg (am happy to eat frozen for some things)

At some point, almost every day (!):
2 squares of chocolate or 1 piece of home baking

I was vegetarian for years so eat quite a lot meat-free dishes. I feel (and look!) best when not eating loads of protein so that keeps the bills down. I make the most of markets and ethnic shops, as well as Lidl and Mr Ts. I eat out regularly which gives me lots of ideas, although tonight's dinner is an experiment based on a Tesco Finest ready meal I saw yesterday , I'll report back if it’s a success!

Lesley_Gaye

Have got some friends coming round tonight and have been doing some Indian food. We are having poppadoms with green chutney, raita, chopped salad, mango chutney (jar)

Then pea and potato samosas, spinach dumplings with a creamy tomato sauce, kofka patties, soy, honey and sesame paneer, some left over veggie scotch egg outer casing, tamarind chick peas, chole and butter bean curry. YUM YUM.

If anyone has any room left over, there is ginger and rum dark chocolate pud. I will post the other recipes shortly, meanwhile here is the newest one I have found.

This is the recipe for the Kofka patties
250g toor dal soaked for several hours
Small onion, chopped small
2cm fresh ginger, squished
2 cloves garlic, squished
Chick pea (gram) flour to bind
Chillies if you like
Handful coriander leaves

Yogort sauce
I used a large pot of greek yogurt, but you could use any mild creamy base, so long as it will warm through without splitting
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp turmeric
half cup coconut, I used coconut powder from an Indian store
2cm fresh ginger squished
3-4 tsps dark brown sugar
1tsp pomegranate molasses
1 tsp sea salt
Chillies if you like

Put the drained toor dal and all the other pattie ingredients except the gram flour in a food processor and blitz until you get a coarse paste, you may need to add a tiny bit of water. Add enough gram flour so that when you squeeze the mixture together you can form patties. Make 12 smallish, flattish patties. Steam them for about half an hour. They will firm up nicely.

For the sauce. Put all the spices into a little oil and sizzle for a bit to release their flavour, not too hot or they will burn and be bitter, you may need to add more oil as they soak it up. Add the remaining ingredients and warm gently. I used the dark brown sugar and pomegranate because it was what I had and fancied using, just use whatever you have so that the sauce has a nice sweet flavour to go with the coconut, add enough coconut so that the sauce thickens.

I have started pricing up the recipe but there are so many spices it is taking ages, does anyone have spices costings I could use? It looks like the patties will be 80p’ish and the sauce £2.40’ish, but I got the yogurt from the co-op and it would have been a lot cheaper elsewhere.

You could have a tomato sauce with the patties, and maybe some of the spinach dumplings I posted earlier, that would be a yummy combination, may be with a naan or some rice.

foxy-tigger

thanks for that Leslie! I would be interested in the Spinach Dumplings recipe?
Sounds Delish. Wish I was invited for tea!!!! Lucky peeps!

Lesley_Gaye

foxy-tigger wrote: »

thanks for that Leslie! I would be interested in the Spinach Dumplings recipe?
Sounds Delish. Wish I was invited for tea!!!! Lucky peeps!

Hi foxy, it was in post 2082


I have found out how to do the links now, so you can get the recipe
here

or here is post 2082

This is from the BBC Good Food site
Indian Spinach Dumplings with Yogort Sauce
500g frozen spinach, defrosted and squeezed out. I used frozen as it was the first time I had done this recipe, but I don't see why you can't use the tinned stuff.
170g gram flour (chick pea flour)
1 finely chopped red onion - could use ordinary, don't think you would taste the difference
3 crushed garlic cloves
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander

yogort sauce
oil
2 tsp black or brown mustard seeds
a handful of curry leaves or corainder leaves
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 tsp turmeric
1-2 finely chopped green chillies
1 x 250g pot Greek Yogort

Mix all the dumpling ingredients together to make a softish paste. You need to be able to mould it, so add more flour or water if you need to. Roll the mixture into walnut sized balls and shallow fry until browned - about 6-8 minutes.

Sizzle the spices for the sauce and stir in the yogort.

I didn't do the yogort, as I was combining them with 2 other dishes that had sauce, but I reduced a little leftover tomato soup right down and sizzled some spices and topped them with that. They are really scrummy

In_Search_Of_Me

munchki wrote: »

ISOM - just a quick one if I may.....I am just about to do your chutney and wondering if I can use another type of vinegar instead of malt as at the moment I have every flavour under the sun in the house except for malt!! Was thinking about using a wine or balsamic one. What do you think?

Thank you very much in advance!!

kathxx

oo sorry munch only just saw this I recon you can use anything - I used rasp vinegar and it still tasted yummy! Let me know if you think its as yummy as I do...I have to do another batch for mums birthday pressie!

munchki

In_Search_Of_Me wrote: »

oo sorry munch only just saw this I recon you can use anything - I used rasp vinegar and it still tasted yummy! Let me know if you think its as yummy as I do...I have to do another batch for mums birthday pressie!

ohhhhhhhhhh i have some strawberry vinegar with not a clue what to do with it!!!

Think I will use balsamic vinegar for the chutney. Trying to decide if I want to mess with it tonight or wait and do it in the morning

Thank you for getting back to me:T

In_Search_Of_Me

I'd leave it for tomorrow munch - takes a while!

munchki

I agree, going to do some stitching instead tonight. Been a rough day today. Will do the chutney tomorrow morning

BigMummaF

Hope you don't mind my jumping in, but I realised that if No2 offspring had anything with orange or other citrus flavour, life would be unbearable! Arguementative; sulky; stroppy...& later on that was on top of the usual teenage trumpts too:eek: Pure orange juice was--surprisingly--the worst culprit, so we stuck to the red-coloured fruit squashes instead. HTH Shaz but be warned...it's still the same now we have reached adulthood :cool:

cw18

Took son to Asda today - he wanted to get some new clothes before starting college on Monday - so while there I picked up a few bits I generally find cheaper there than at Mr T (going to Mr A means I have to take a car so happens a lot less frequently).

Went to get some of there cheapy, cheapy frozen bangers -- and nearly died. A bag of 20 has gone up from 89p (5 weeks ago when I last bought some) to £1.00 !! That's a 12.4% increase :eek:

I know I've seen earlier posts suggesting that Weezl and AM need to increase their budget from 50p a day just to cover increases in costs, and am in total agreement that this couldn't possibly be seen as cheating. This is just the latest increase I've seen -- and is on a product I know I've seen Weezl mention using.