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!