Showing posts with label £15 Charity Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label £15 Charity Challenge. Show all posts

13.3.15

A frugal feast

I keep peering hopefully in the fridge, which is a bit mad.
Last day of the Challenge though, and even with an empty, echoey fridge, no one's gone hungry.
I thought I'd quickly whisk through how we've managed to stretch out our £15 supplies this week.

One of the first things I made was a tomato sauce, using the tinned toms, onion, sugar and a squeeze of ketchup (plus the end of a carton of passata). Very handy for pizzas and pasta, and I'm hanging on to what's left for the grand finale pizzas tonight.

Bread. Such a joy. We wouldn't have got through the week without homemade bread. I mixed the plain cheaper flour I bought with half a bag of strong white and some wholewheat flour from the cupboard. Worked a treat I've got to say. One kilo for each batch - enough for two decent sized, (flattish-looking) loaves. I did all the kneading before school pick up, and by the time we got home they'd risen, and were ready for the oven. Warm bread with a (rationed) slither of butter. So good.


The oat cookies kept the kids happy on the way home from school. We all decided they were better than my usual ones; probably because the porridge oats from Lidl are a bit finer than the oats I normally use. 39p a bag too - definitely be buying those again.

AND the 30p a bar dark chocolate. Of course no one noticed a change in the brownies; they disappeared just as quickly. No cries of, 'Mummy, I simply can't eat brownies with such a low cocoa content!'
Can you imagine.

A few spoonfuls of mango chutney livened up the mild chicken curry, so that's worth doing again too. We could have managed without splashing out 40p on rice - we didn't use much and I had a little left in the cupboard. The 40p could have gone towards getting some more milk…. I had to buy extra after the 10 year old (the only milk drinker) knocked the bottle over at breakfast. I hate cleaning milk off the floor, especially at 6.30 in the morning.

Making pancakes is another thing I don't really want to be doing at 6.30 in the morning - but the kids loved them, and for about 10 minutes I was the best mum ever.

The gnocchi was a revelation. I've never made it before - there only appears to be 3 basic ingredients (potato, flour, egg), but, frustratingly, ever recipe I found was different. So, I just mashed some spud, added an egg and mixed in flour until it looked sort of like dough. It was messy- even messier than my bread making, which is saying something, but everybody liked it. Even the fussy one.

I suppose I've missed fruit and a bit of green - our meals have been a rather samey yellowy orange colour… you've probably noticed. But we've all had plenty to eat; it's just meant more planning and more making for me. I've liked being one step ahead - though, as I've learnt from previous years, not quite enough to change my bumbling-along ways!

Still, I've picked up a few useful ideas and we've raised money for Comic Relief, so that's all good.

Fish and chips tomorrow.


9.3.15

Let them eat bread….Day 3

One of the things I said after the last Challenge was I'd try to make bread a least once a week; but as time trundled on, that good intention slipped away to join all the others... So I felt a bit rusty when I made the first batch on Friday - though got stuck right into the dough pummelling… hadn't been the best week ever.

Of course as soon as I took the bread out of the oven and that tempting fresh-baked smell wafted around the kitchen, I had a groundhog 'been here before' moment: Why don't I do this more often? The kids love it - in fact it's how we get through the Challenge week, because my fussy, FUSSY eater would happily munch bread until it comes out of his ears, which is pretty much what I'm letting him do right now. He won't eat spuds, and can be tricky about pasta and rice, and vegetable have to be heavily disguised. So, bread often saves the day. It's not ideal, I know, but I've spent too many years stressing about it. Now I just go with the flow and try to get a bit of goodness into him. Thankfully he seems to like carrots...

The first few days have gone pretty well I think, but I've lulled everyone into a false sense of security by giving them plenty to eat - cheese and ham pizza, garlic pizza, soup, bread, pasta, a roast dinner, more bread - even stodge pudding!


A few extras I swiped: finished off a bag of peas, the end of a tin of golden syrup and some flat cider I've been holding onto for ages. I'll use up the split lentils left in the cupboard too. No point buying another bag.

Just have to keep things ticking along through the week now. A lot more making and baking for me...

SATURDAY
Breakfast   homemade bread/coco pops/porridge
Lunch         penne arrabiata/baked potato and cheese
Dinner        cheese and ham pizza, garlic pizza/chocolate mousse

SUNDAY
Breakfast   homemade bread/coco pops/boiled egg
lunch          carrot, lentil and cumin soup with cider bread/ peach muffins
Dinner        roast chicken, roast potatoes, carrots, peas and gravy/stodge pudding

MONDAY
Breakfast    peachy porridge/coco pops/homemade bread
Dinner         pesto pasta with grated carrot and cheese/peach muffins

TUESDAY
Breakfast     boiled egg and soldiers/coco pops/porridge
Dinner          mild chicken curry with rice/ oat cookies

WEDNESDAY
Breakfast     pancakes
Dinner          homemade gnocchi with pesto and grated cheese/carrot muffins

THURSDAY
Breakfast     peachy porridge/ bread/coco pops
Dinner          cheese frittata with spicy(ish) potato wedges/chocolate brownies

RED NOSE DAY!
Breakfast     possibly pancakes…or bread/porridge/coco pops
Dinner          margarita pizza, garlic bread pizza/baked potato/chocolate

The kids have school dinners and are under strict instructions to fill their boots. The first year we did the Challenge I had to make them packed lunches as well - not sure how I managed that on twelve quid. Though to be fair, they didn't eat quite as much as they do now.

I'll be having a lot of soup.


6.3.15

£15 Charity Challenge - The List

Yep, I never learn… Not a great deal of interest in basically starving your family for a week. Funny enough. It's a hard sell! Though I have managed to persuade a great friend here to keep me company. So, no longer a team of one

I've been better organised this year and had a bit more time to shop around, which helped squeeze every penny out of the £15 grocery budget (not losing sleep over the extra 10p...)

I park the car in the Marks and Spencer's car park at the bottom of town every morning and walk the kids to school (to avoid the horrendous traffic and stay sane) - so, I often wander through the shop to get back to the car…which isn't the most sensible thing to do when you're hungry. Or when you're not, to be honest. I'm pretty good though, considering - and because I'm there just about every day I've picked up some great bargains. Always scanning for yellow labels. My best find this week was a 300g block of Ayrshire cheese reduced to a pound. Looks interesting, and it's going to come in handy over the next 7 days…

So, apart from finishing off a few stray tomatoes, half a cucumber, 2 slices of ham, a little butter and some soft looking apples left in the fridge, this is what we'll be eating.


Doesn't look like much, does it…
The only thing missing from the photo are the chocolate mousse/mousses?  Mousses sounds wrong somehow - anyway, 18p for four - not bad.

Lidl
Chicken                           £3.04
Flour 3kg                         £0.90
15 eggs                             £1.19
sugar                                £0.49
tinned tomatoesx2            £0.62
porridge oats                    £0.39
rice                                   £0.40
pasta 500gx2                    £0.58
milk 4pts                           £0.89
Tesco
butter                                £0.86
potatoes  2.5kg                 £1.00 (half price offer)
choco pops cereal             £0.83
3xonions                           £0.22
carrots 1kg                        £0.53
tinned peaches                  £0.50
4xchoc mousse                 £0.18
Asda
pesto                                 £0.88
chocolate 100g x2            £0.60
Marks and Spencers
Ayrshire cheese                £1.00

Total                                £15.10

I'll post our meal plan at the weekend.

Off to make some bread!