We usually cook more for dinner than we will eat at that sitting, so that we have enough for one or two day’s lunches too. I often take a stack of tupperware boxes into work with various components of lunch. So running through our dinners gives a pretty good idea of what we’ve eaten in a week. (We’re very routine at breakfast time, homemade muesli for Tim and porridge or cereal for Rosie, porridge this month as it’s cheaper). So, what did we have for dinners in our second week of the ‘budget challenge’? Mon: quinoa (which is a quick cooking grain, imagine couscous with more flavour, also a very good source of protein) with vegetables and tinned tuna – we made this up and it was really yummy, see this week’s recipe
Tue: our housemate cooked a lovely vegetable lasagne
Wed: shared meal, including delicious carrot soup, potatoes in a tomato sauce, and egg frittata
Thu: veg curry, green lentil dahl and rice – we usually cook a curry once every week or two, and Tim is very good at remembering to put green lentils on to soak before we go to work in the morning
Fri: squash stuffed with nuts, roast potatoes – vegetables, e.g. peppers, courgettes, stuffed with nuts is a standard dinner for us
Sat: scrambled eggs, boiled new potatoes, tomatoes with basil
Sun: beetroot, pearl barley (another dried item that pre-soaking significantly speeds up the cooking of, and also means you use less gas to cook) and red lentil stew
Most meals were accompanied with sweetcorn and runner/French beans which we still have loads of from the allotment.
Because we don’t eat much fish or meat, we often try to decide what to cook each evening by deciding what the protein will be. For us this is usually nuts/seeds, lentils, eggs, and less often cheese or tinned fish. And then the other deciding factor will be if there’s anything that urgently needs using up!
This week we spent:
£7.80 on yoghurt, bananas, tinned tomatoes, pasta, vinegar, baked beans at Arjuna whole foods
£3.80 on fruit at Hilary’s greengrocers
So most of our food was from dried goods, veg from the allotment/last week’s veg box, and the eggs we bought last week.
And we reckon our meals cost: £41.59
Will upload the recipe shortly…
Til next week!
Posted by Rosie and Tim