Budget food/living

http://www.unicef.org.uk/Fundraise/Community-Fundraising/live-below-the-line/

My (says tentatively) girl friend works for UNICEF and she's doing this living on a £1 a day thing.

Anyone tempted?

£5 for 5 days. No free stuff. No stock from your kitchen.
I'm impressed!

http://www.unicef.org.uk/Fundraise/Community-Fundraising/live-below-the-line/

My (says tentatively) girl friend works for UNICEF and she's doing this living on a £1 a day thing.

Anyone tempted?

£5 for 5 days. No free stuff. No stock from your kitchen.
Shoot! Have you seen their 'menu' suggestions?! https://www.livebelowtheline.com/system/resources/BAhbBlsHOgZmSSItMjAxMi8wMy8wMi8xMC8xMC8xMi84MzcvUmVjaXBlX0d1aWRlLnBkZgY6BkVU/Recipe%20Guide.pdf

Shit. "I'll take the Menu number 4 please waiter, and heavy on the bangers and eggs."
5 days for a £5er, with free added colesterol.

Me and a friend did this as a thought experiment the other day, but budgeted for a month.
I'm probably going to try it out after my exams/ end of the exercise trial (where I get free protein shakes which aren't exactly fair).

It's not easy, but we have better access to food-frozen especially- So is unfair anyways.

(and of course a thought experiment is one thing- pulling it off another.)

You could do it for less if you had rice congee for breakfast, and you'd actually be full for more than fifteen minutes.

Ever have left over beer from having friends round?
Make beer soda bread.
Handful of oats
Two handfuls of Plain flour (or thereabouts).
1 teaspoon baking powder/ soda.
pinch of salt.
About 1/4 of an eating apple sliced.
1 teaspoon of yoghurt (probably optional)
about a tablespoon of oil (rapeseed, olive, veg, whatever you have to hand)

Heat oven to 180.
Combine oats, powder, salt, (about 2/3 of) flour and apple in bowl. Chuck in oil, yoghurt and enough beer (stout's luxurious, cheap lager is sugary and delicious) to bring the dough together. Make a thick, not sticky dough-adding the rest of the flour if sticky- don't bother to knead it, make a cross in the bread almost to tray level with the back of a spoon. Whack in oven. About 25-30 mins later pull out an incredible treat. Serve with the apple and some spread (I used bacon jam on half and fake butter on the other).

(I used carlsberg just now, left from last night and it was delicious)

bacon jam

You can't just throw that in at the end there. Details of this magical sounding treat please!

http://www.notquitenigella.com/2009/10/08/bacon-jam-your-wildest-dreams-come-true/
I added an apple and reduced the sugar amount.
Its incredible.

Shit yeah.

Ever have left over beer from having friends round?
Make beer soda bread.
Handful of oats
Two handfuls of Plain flour (or thereabouts).
1 teaspoon baking powder/ soda.
pinch of salt.
About 1/4 of an eating apple sliced.
1 teaspoon of yoghurt (probably optional)
about a tablespoon of oil (rapeseed, olive, veg, whatever you have to hand)

Heat oven to 180.
Combine oats, powder, salt, (about 2/3 of) flour and apple in bowl. Chuck in oil, yoghurt and enough beer (stout's luxurious, cheap lager is sugary and delicious) to bring the dough together. Make a thick, not sticky dough-adding the rest of the flour if sticky- don't bother to knead it, make a cross in the bread almost to tray level with the back of a spoon. Whack in oven. About 25-30 mins later pull out an incredible treat. Serve with the apple and some spread (I used bacon jam on half and fake butter on the other).

(I used carlsberg just now, left from last night and it was delicious)

sounds yummy, how many fag butts do you leave in?

Ideally 17.
It doesn't have to be left over. You can just open a beer and then drink the rest.

And obv. best not to use any beer that had been drunk from the bottle/ can etc.

sounds yummy, how many fag butts do you leave in?
Ha! You got in there before me :)

Ok.

Thinking about this a bit more I recon in the uk £5 is easily doable if you're happy to have a shit diet, and eat pretty much the same/similar stuff every day.

Plus if it's only five days, then it's not going to have any effect on your health. Although I love food, I am perfectly capable of living on the same stuff for a week.

...SO, I am going to modify the challenge for my self:

Five days, £5, with five fruit or veg a day.

I will be happy with four, and I will allow myself a very loose definition of "portion". My understanding is that you're meant to use a handful as a guide.

Secondary aims/challenge:
1/ Meat three times (at least one must be red), and
2/ Fish twice.

All this is based on my memory of the general media/governmental blurb of what you're meant to eat.

I'm going to give myself some further wiggle room by not restricting myself to fresh fruit and veg - I won't be including rice, but things like beans and lentils count. I've already pretty much written off fruit.

Also although I'd have to include things like salt and oil, if I can find someone to share the cost, that's ok. Free stuff isn't though.

I'm going to need to do a bit of a recey of the local supermarkets, but I'm thinking kidney beans, carrots, swead, tin tomatoes, as being my base. Initial thoughts on trying to achieve fish is via fish fingers (and finding someone to share the cost) or tinned sardines/similar.

Meat is easier, chicken livers, or a peice of bacon from the butchers. The hard bit is going to be red meat...

...anyway those are bonus goals.

Time to get cracking on excel.

£5 for 5 days is harder, as you can't really afford the oil in the budget- if you buy the bacon you could dry cook it and save the drippings?
I wouldn't include meat at all- maybe some fish.
For me it would be classic arabic dishes all the way because they're pretty cheap to cook and very nutritious.

If it's a long term effort, you can get 3L of Olive Pommace oil quite cheaply. Not quite extra virgin but it's better than using rape seed oil or sunflower for Italian recipes.

So I saw a simple chickpea curry recipe in River Cottage Veg, and changed it a bit- cheap and super awesome.
Fry an onion and 2 cloves of garlic, chuck in a green pepper. Add 2 tsp of turmeric, cumin and coriander, and mix till incorporated/ slightly pasty. (salt to taste). Chuck in a tin of chickpeas and cook for a little bit. 2 big squeezes of HP and Ketchup into the pan, and mix till cooked. Then add about 1/3 pint of milk and reduce till sauce is thick and yellow.
Tastes like a Korma.

Serve with home made naan bread.
Either the yeast version or the yoghurt version.

Ever have left over beer from having friends round?

You're doing it wrong! Students these days ...

The crock pot never boils, but it does amazing things to rough cuts of meat.

Today it was lambs breast, I sliced some Moroccan preserved lemon and rolled that along with anchovies into the breast. Studded it with garlic and then threw it on top of a bed of spuds.

Cooked for 10 hours.

When I got back from the gym, the spuds were pulled out and put into a hot oven.

Meat was left to stand, and the cooking juices reduced. They felt a little fatty on the tongue so some of the preserving juices from the lemons was added and further reduced. This cut through the grease.

10 hours cooking, about 30 seconds eating.

I went for my version of Ribollita as my meal for the next few days.
So
1/2 bag each of Tesco's Soup and Broth mix (dry bean stuff- bag is 59p)
1/2 bag of Morrison's Exotic Bean Mix (£1 here)
3 or 4 Sainsbury's Basic Veg cubes (10p for 10)
A fair bit of Oregano and Paprika, and ground black pepper (the expensive part of the meal- I think I used about 3 teaspoons of Oregano/ Paprika- but make it to taste I guess)
2 onions
4 cloves of garlic
4 carrots
6 radishes
1 tin Kidney beans

Saute the garlic, onion, radish, carrots (all diced/ minced) med heat for 10-20mins. Add spices in, cook for a couple more mins. Add the Broth mix and bean mix and cook for 5 more mins. Crumble in stock cubes. Add enough water to more than cover (like 2/3 inches above the beans- you want a soup, not a stew). Cook for 90+ mins till everything is soft and crumbly. Blitz the Kidney beans in a blender, and then add to the soup. Cook for another 60 mins or so.
Let Cool.
Reheat and enjoy a sweet, semi-spicy Italian treat. Ideally with some home-made foccacia.

In an ideal world I'd have brought more Kale from home and just added that into the bowl at serving, but I don't have any left!

That sounds lovely eyebrows. When you say meal do you mean lunch?

I have about 4L of the stuff I think so it should be dinner for the next 5/6 days.
Breakfast and Lunch are currently meal replacements.

bubble and squeak tonight, using up leftovers

no doubt from the pie®

spring greens and mash, with a little bacon

i was revolted by bubble and squeak as a child, but it works really well