The fun has begun - Simon and I struggle to get out of bed in the morning. We're used to eating between 6 and 12 veggie/fruit servings a day (this 5-a-day b.s. just doesn't cut it). We eat delicious whole grains, make our own sauces and herb mixes, have soymilk in our morning coffees, and have several snacks throughout the day. We eat a lot of food! But we also eat quality food. Pancakes for breakfast with bananas, lemon and sugar (we're out of maple syrup), and cinnamon raisin rolls with coffee for lunch (ah yes, nutritionless calories). I feel just awful, am a total space cadet all day, and Simon has to be dragged through the evening, while we sip on cup-a-soups for dinner. We spent nothing on food, eating leftovers, with no energy to plan a meal, and being too stubborn to run out and get a take-out (waaaay over budget). Finally at about 9:30 pm, we decide to grab a ready-made quiche from the shop before it closes at 10. wolf that down with a pint of water...ah yes...a filling, yet not really satisfying dinner. total spend for the day : £6.42.
I grab an apple before bed cause i'm super hungry. it helps, but my eyes have glazed over and Simon decides, RIGHT! Tomorrow we are eating properly. No more of this, my body can't take it, I feel awful, and I have no energy!!! After 4 days! I just don't see how this can work.
People need nutririous food, several times a day. Not just for their bodies, but for their minds and their souls. I need food. More than £5 a day. Maybe £10 a day. Maybe more.
Day 5 (Wednesday) rolls around and we are a mess as we try and get out of bed. an hour and a half goes by, and we realize we've slept in for waaay too long!
Simon's off to the store to get the ingredients to cook up the most delicious breakfast ever (the one we had on Sunday), and today we're going to eat properly. Breakfast sets us back just over £11, and damn is it worth it. We're going on a little camping trip tonight, and if we don't eat some good food, then it'll be way too dangerous to drive. That's just not worth it.
Time to pack! :)
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Days 2 and 3...
Right, Day 2 rolls around, and everything is looking peachy.
Simon wakes up early to a glorious, sunny day, church bells ringing, and surprises me* with a super-delicious fry up breakfast. I'm talking sauteed spinach and mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, baked beans, veggie sausages and toasted pita breads with soya spread. We had most of the ingredients, supplemented by a couple purchases yesterday. Oh and massive coffees (I believe I ordered the large cappuccino, HELLO!) We ate outside in the garden with the birds chirping, sun shining and wonderful warm weather we hope for every time we roll out of bed in the morning. *(It was a surprise that Simon cooked the breakfast for me, as I thought I was cooking it!)
I begin work in the garden, Simon goes to work in his little wood working shop and before you know it, lunch time rolls around. It's important to note here that I messed up the bread baking session yesterday, and even though the loaf looked wonderful and edible...it really wasn't. Pitas originally planned for lunch were used up in the delicious breakfast, so we were left with sandwich fillings and no sandwich. Carrots, hummous, cucumber, tomatoes, mustard, red and yellow peppers and lettuce. Great. Hmmmm...the wheels start turning, and voila! solution: eat dinner for lunch and lunch for dinner - therefore giving us some time to cook up a speedy soda bread. That makes lunch a super easy and quick pasta and pesto with peppers and broccoli. Simon does the cooking, while I rescue some strawberries and mint from the fridges downstairs (did I mention we live in/over a pub?) and create a yummy jug of soda water with mint and strawberries. All deliciously enjoyed outside once again.
So far, so good!
After we do some more work outside, have a coffee break every so often and begin to clear up for the evening, I head to the kitchen to get dinner started - I've got everything I neeeeeeeeeed.......oh.....I used up the remaining parchment paper yesterday on the failed bread, soda bread calls for buttermilk and strong white flour. Simon runs off to the shop, spends £2.76 and gets the things we need to get production up and running again. The soda bread seems easy enough - I read instructions, tell Simon what instructions say, he does what I say, voila! (have I really used "voila!" twice already?), edible bread at the end. The key here is read instructions. Accurately. I read 500 ml of buttermilk, and the recipe says 400 ml of buttermilk, so we end up with a slop of a concoction that ends up looking like a flatbread, never really cooks inside, and there you go. Bread disaster number 2. (May I say here, that I have successfully baked bread before, and Simon actually spent a few months learning the art of bread-baking, so that we had a delicious supply of fresh bread in our pantry). So sandwich fillings for dinner, with the edges of a half-cooked loaf of a flatbread soda loaf hybrid. Needless to say, we didn't really finish our dinners, but we did feel full up.
Day 2 - a success, but with some food-related stress involved.
Day 3 - the dreaded Monday. We've got a budget of £19.54 for today.
Monday begins with cravings for pancakes as we lie in bed thinking of breakfast ideas (it was suppose to involve leftover bread and peanut butter and honey). Simon's off to the shops again and grabs some soy milk, eggs and 5 bananas setting us back £4.06. The bananas are actually not ripe enough to eat with the pancakes, but were apparently the ripest in the shop?! Salvaged strawberries from the pub downstairs make up at least one serving of fruit for breakfast, and we use up the last of the Maple Syrup (*tear). We know that though we may have pancakes many times in the future, Maple Syrup drizzlings will be few and far between at £5 for 500ml.
This weekend we have a little trip planned for my Birthday weekend. I'll be turning the glorious age of it-doesn't-really-matter-because-you're-as-old-or-as-young-as-you-feel-inside. ;) We're headed up to the Isle of Skye and surrounding areas of Scotland to do some exploring and wild camping. We have most of the things we need with a couple things here and there being supplemented with our meagre savings. This is, afterall, a super budget trip. We don't expect to spend anything on accommodation or overnight parking, so that leaves food, drink, fuel and incidentals. We're still trying to stick to the £10 a day budget for all our food for our trip (though a sneaky meal out might make it's way into our itinerary - it's my birthday afterall!) Meal planning and having a look through the pantry helps us come up with a partial list of what we need and as we head out to the store, we suddenly get really hungry - 2 Noodle Pots and £3.98 later, we can concentrate on the trip food, and dinner.
Dinner is ready-made ricotta and spinach stuffed pasta (£3.00) and a pot of sauce (£2.60). Not too bad as it means for day 3 we've used up £16.40 with £6.86 left over to add to tomorrow.
From now until our trip is over we have a budget of £80 or £90 depending on if we get back on Tuesday or Wednesday. We are therefore basing our next week's purchases on this amount, as we have to buy and prepare for our trip.
We grab a cart, and fill it up with £31.09 worth of food. Pasta, rice, nuts and seeds, sauce, nacho chips, etc. We therefore are left with (working with £80) £48.91 for the rest of the trip food. I have a feeling this just isn't going to happen, but we'll try!
Saturday, May 18, 2013
A new challenge...
It's been a couple years since I set out to live on $5 a day in Vancouver, Canada. Needless to say you know (if you followed my ordeal back then), I failed miserably. I always wanted to try again.
I'm now living in Reading, England. I'm not alone either. My boyfriend eats more than I do. We sit and chat in the evenings about our dreams and things we want to accomplish by the time we're such-and-such an age. The funny thing is, it all seems so possible, until we look at the numbers. The cold, hard facts. We spent how much on food last month?! I just don't see how it all adds up. Whether it can be justified or not, our eating habits will have to change if we want to get to where we want to be by the time we want to be there. Serious, drastic changes.
He knows all about my "living on five" challenge, and when I mentioned it to him last night before bed, we both started thinking. We worked out some numbers. We decided that the only way to save money, and to reach our goals is to live, not like "we've worked hard and therefore deserve that bottle of wine, dinner out, night at the movies" couple that we've become, but to spend less, think more about our needs and not our wants and buckle down and "get 'er done". I think the term is "live simply". We really need to keep eating healthfully though, as that's something I just will not give up. So, cheap and healthy living - it must be achievable. There must be tons of "extras" we're consuming that we're just unaware of.
This new challenge is upon us now, as a partnership, to exist from day-to-day on £10 a day (a parallel to my $5 a day in Vancouver). £70 a week. It is two years on, and prices have gone up, but we're going to stick strict to this £10 a day.
That's for everything - food, toiletries, etc.
We are going to try shopping and budgeting weekly, rather than daily, as this lends itself more to leftovers and buying stuff in bulk rather than single serve. But we'll see how it all goes.
The idea came up last night, we chatted a bit, decided to go for it, and that's it. We've begun. We didn't plan this, so what we've got is what we've got. Luckily we bought a new tube of toothpaste the other day, there's a couple bags of flour in the cupboard, and I had already made a chili and froze half of it. We also started a small roof-top veggie garden in containers last week (total spend on plants and soil £43, we got containers from Simon's parents) - though we won't reap real benefits from that until later on in the summer. Those were the positives I held in my mind as I drifted off to sleep last night.
As I woke up to stale bread, peanut butter and jam and a cup of tea for breakfast, the doubts started flooding in. Can we actually do this? What will we eat!? What about when we need shampoo or toothpaste or a new pair of socks? What about our "date nights" that we truly cherish as escapes from the world around us. How will we actually live and be happy through all this!?
As with any survival situation, the initial panic fades away and you start taking stock of everything around you. Things you can take advantage of (like our free coffee maker downstairs - more on this later), food in the cupboards, coupons you've stuffed into your wallet, or stamps collected from the local burrito place (YES! we have two free burritos - there's a date night right there!) There were three bananas on the counter which made a great morning snack which I needed badly, but Simon's wolfed down one already and run away with the other for nourishment on his bike-ride. I think the three apples are still there though, and I'm sure we've got a half-used pack of ready rolled puff pastry in the fridge (dessert is definitely an essential).
Mid-day on the first day and it's time to make some bread as we already have all the ingredients. Loaves of bread run anywhere from £0.75-£3 around here, so a 3-loaf bag of flour (£1.8-£2), enough fast-action yeast for 12 loaves (£0.65), salt for 36-40 loaves (£0.75-£1) and a dash (maybe 1/20 of a bottle) of olive oil (£2-£4) are all we need to make bread whenever the desire arises. That's only about 85p per homemade loaf. It's so much more tasty to make your own as well. Oh and healthy! No artificial preservatives, colours, sugars, flavour enhancers, or anything else they add to bread to make it travel to the stores, and have a long shelf-life. Gross. I tried to buy some tortillas the other day to make sandwich wraps - one look at the ingredients and I opted for whole-wheat pitas instead (I actually could identify each ingredient on the list). A stir-fry I had organized for yesterday carried over to today - that's lunch, and left-overs for dinner mean we should be in good shape when all is said and done today. That's £0 spent on food today. Amazing - just from using what we had in the cupboard and fridge.
For example this is a regular loaf of sliced bread from the shop:
.JPG)
Just some of the ingredients:
E471 - According to Wikipedia "E471 is mainly produced from vegetable oils, although animal fats are sometimes used and cannot be completely excluded as being present in the product. The fatty acids from each source are chemically identical. However,vegetarians and vegans, not wishing to consume any animal products, generally avoid products containing E471 unless they are certain that it is derived from vegetable oils. Also, because there is a chance of pork fat being present, Muslims and Jews will also avoid products containing E471 unless they know that it is made from vegetable oils."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E471
E472e - According to Wikipedia it is "DATEM (diacetyl tartaric acid ester of mono- and diglycerides) is an emulsifier primarily used in baking. It is used to strengthen the dough by building a strong gluten network. It is used in crusty breads, such as rye bread with a springy, chewy texture, as well as biscuits, coffee whiteners, salsa con queso, ice cream, and salad dressings".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E472e
And of course:
Calcium Propionate - a mould inhibitor. Sounds like something only added to solve the problems of transport, storage and shelf-life. Gross.
So, I think we shall start making our own bread, and it just so happens that Simon bought the "How to Bake" book by Paul Hollywood. It looks awesome, and there seems to be a lot of good information in there for the first-time baker, or even someone who's looking to make more advanced breads like a plaited loaf. I'm sure we're going to try many things from this.
Here's my first attempt at a wholemeal loaf of bread:
.JPG)
Looks great, but a bit under-done, as I had trouble with the rising stage. Simon says it's edible, but I think he's just being kind. :)
A quick chat about tomorrow's food and we're off to the shop to get some supplies for tomorrow. Because of what we've got already, we only need mushrooms and some veggie sausages and we can have a great fry-up breakie in the morning (as tomorrow's Sunday). Lunch will be a combination of left-over pitas from the other day, hummous and veggies. Dinner will be a simple pasta, pesto and sweet peppers. Bam - another day sorted out. We bought an extra tub of hummous as it was 20p cheaper for two, and we'll definitely eat it with some carrots (which we already have) - and that's a snack for tonight or tomorrow sorted too.
Here's the breakdown for days 1 and 2:
Day 1: spent £0 on food consumed for this day as we used all stuff we already had. Awesome. :)
Grocery shop for coming days:
Veggie Sausages: £2.00
Pesto: £1.50 (cheaper to buy than to make)
Mushrooms: £1.00
Hummous x2: £2.00
3 Peppers: £1.75
Gluten free pasta: £1.40 (we could buy the cheap stuff here which is 39p a package, but we've found the gluten free stuff doesn't make you feel all bloated and gross).
Tomatoes (a tub of 7): £0.81
Grand Total...............£10.46
Out of £20 that leaves £9.54 left over from days 1 and 2. We'll need some olive oil soon (I'm using up the last of the Hemp oil we have, and we've been using our Sesame oil for stir-fries), so that'll be at least 1/5 of a day's food. The days we don't spend £10 will be very important for re-stocking the pantry with things like olive oil, flour, salt, sugar, spices and herbs to get us through. I'm also dreading the days when I run out of things like my face cream. The one I'm on at the moment is just over £11 a tub (lasts about a month or so), but the ones I usually get are much more than that. It'll be interesting when I run out (I've got about half left).....
I'm now living in Reading, England. I'm not alone either. My boyfriend eats more than I do. We sit and chat in the evenings about our dreams and things we want to accomplish by the time we're such-and-such an age. The funny thing is, it all seems so possible, until we look at the numbers. The cold, hard facts. We spent how much on food last month?! I just don't see how it all adds up. Whether it can be justified or not, our eating habits will have to change if we want to get to where we want to be by the time we want to be there. Serious, drastic changes.
He knows all about my "living on five" challenge, and when I mentioned it to him last night before bed, we both started thinking. We worked out some numbers. We decided that the only way to save money, and to reach our goals is to live, not like "we've worked hard and therefore deserve that bottle of wine, dinner out, night at the movies" couple that we've become, but to spend less, think more about our needs and not our wants and buckle down and "get 'er done". I think the term is "live simply". We really need to keep eating healthfully though, as that's something I just will not give up. So, cheap and healthy living - it must be achievable. There must be tons of "extras" we're consuming that we're just unaware of.
This new challenge is upon us now, as a partnership, to exist from day-to-day on £10 a day (a parallel to my $5 a day in Vancouver). £70 a week. It is two years on, and prices have gone up, but we're going to stick strict to this £10 a day.
That's for everything - food, toiletries, etc.
We are going to try shopping and budgeting weekly, rather than daily, as this lends itself more to leftovers and buying stuff in bulk rather than single serve. But we'll see how it all goes.
The idea came up last night, we chatted a bit, decided to go for it, and that's it. We've begun. We didn't plan this, so what we've got is what we've got. Luckily we bought a new tube of toothpaste the other day, there's a couple bags of flour in the cupboard, and I had already made a chili and froze half of it. We also started a small roof-top veggie garden in containers last week (total spend on plants and soil £43, we got containers from Simon's parents) - though we won't reap real benefits from that until later on in the summer. Those were the positives I held in my mind as I drifted off to sleep last night.
As I woke up to stale bread, peanut butter and jam and a cup of tea for breakfast, the doubts started flooding in. Can we actually do this? What will we eat!? What about when we need shampoo or toothpaste or a new pair of socks? What about our "date nights" that we truly cherish as escapes from the world around us. How will we actually live and be happy through all this!?
As with any survival situation, the initial panic fades away and you start taking stock of everything around you. Things you can take advantage of (like our free coffee maker downstairs - more on this later), food in the cupboards, coupons you've stuffed into your wallet, or stamps collected from the local burrito place (YES! we have two free burritos - there's a date night right there!) There were three bananas on the counter which made a great morning snack which I needed badly, but Simon's wolfed down one already and run away with the other for nourishment on his bike-ride. I think the three apples are still there though, and I'm sure we've got a half-used pack of ready rolled puff pastry in the fridge (dessert is definitely an essential).
Mid-day on the first day and it's time to make some bread as we already have all the ingredients. Loaves of bread run anywhere from £0.75-£3 around here, so a 3-loaf bag of flour (£1.8-£2), enough fast-action yeast for 12 loaves (£0.65), salt for 36-40 loaves (£0.75-£1) and a dash (maybe 1/20 of a bottle) of olive oil (£2-£4) are all we need to make bread whenever the desire arises. That's only about 85p per homemade loaf. It's so much more tasty to make your own as well. Oh and healthy! No artificial preservatives, colours, sugars, flavour enhancers, or anything else they add to bread to make it travel to the stores, and have a long shelf-life. Gross. I tried to buy some tortillas the other day to make sandwich wraps - one look at the ingredients and I opted for whole-wheat pitas instead (I actually could identify each ingredient on the list). A stir-fry I had organized for yesterday carried over to today - that's lunch, and left-overs for dinner mean we should be in good shape when all is said and done today. That's £0 spent on food today. Amazing - just from using what we had in the cupboard and fridge.
For example this is a regular loaf of sliced bread from the shop:
.JPG)
E471 - According to Wikipedia "E471 is mainly produced from vegetable oils, although animal fats are sometimes used and cannot be completely excluded as being present in the product. The fatty acids from each source are chemically identical. However,vegetarians and vegans, not wishing to consume any animal products, generally avoid products containing E471 unless they are certain that it is derived from vegetable oils. Also, because there is a chance of pork fat being present, Muslims and Jews will also avoid products containing E471 unless they know that it is made from vegetable oils."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E471
E472e - According to Wikipedia it is "DATEM (diacetyl tartaric acid ester of mono- and diglycerides) is an emulsifier primarily used in baking. It is used to strengthen the dough by building a strong gluten network. It is used in crusty breads, such as rye bread with a springy, chewy texture, as well as biscuits, coffee whiteners, salsa con queso, ice cream, and salad dressings".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E472e
And of course:
Calcium Propionate - a mould inhibitor. Sounds like something only added to solve the problems of transport, storage and shelf-life. Gross.
So, I think we shall start making our own bread, and it just so happens that Simon bought the "How to Bake" book by Paul Hollywood. It looks awesome, and there seems to be a lot of good information in there for the first-time baker, or even someone who's looking to make more advanced breads like a plaited loaf. I'm sure we're going to try many things from this.
Here's my first attempt at a wholemeal loaf of bread:
.JPG)
Looks great, but a bit under-done, as I had trouble with the rising stage. Simon says it's edible, but I think he's just being kind. :)
A quick chat about tomorrow's food and we're off to the shop to get some supplies for tomorrow. Because of what we've got already, we only need mushrooms and some veggie sausages and we can have a great fry-up breakie in the morning (as tomorrow's Sunday). Lunch will be a combination of left-over pitas from the other day, hummous and veggies. Dinner will be a simple pasta, pesto and sweet peppers. Bam - another day sorted out. We bought an extra tub of hummous as it was 20p cheaper for two, and we'll definitely eat it with some carrots (which we already have) - and that's a snack for tonight or tomorrow sorted too.
Here's the breakdown for days 1 and 2:
Day 1: spent £0 on food consumed for this day as we used all stuff we already had. Awesome. :)
Grocery shop for coming days:
Veggie Sausages: £2.00
Pesto: £1.50 (cheaper to buy than to make)
Mushrooms: £1.00
Hummous x2: £2.00
3 Peppers: £1.75
Gluten free pasta: £1.40 (we could buy the cheap stuff here which is 39p a package, but we've found the gluten free stuff doesn't make you feel all bloated and gross).
Tomatoes (a tub of 7): £0.81
Grand Total...............£10.46
Out of £20 that leaves £9.54 left over from days 1 and 2. We'll need some olive oil soon (I'm using up the last of the Hemp oil we have, and we've been using our Sesame oil for stir-fries), so that'll be at least 1/5 of a day's food. The days we don't spend £10 will be very important for re-stocking the pantry with things like olive oil, flour, salt, sugar, spices and herbs to get us through. I'm also dreading the days when I run out of things like my face cream. The one I'm on at the moment is just over £11 a tub (lasts about a month or so), but the ones I usually get are much more than that. It'll be interesting when I run out (I've got about half left).....
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