Food challenge week 1

And the shopping list:

the pineapple, lettuce, aubergine and brussel sprouts were in the reduced section...pineapple has been cut up and frozen, the rest will keep ok in the fridge for now....

so that's a grand total spend of.......drumroll......£43.49

Now, "how on earth is she going to stick to £100 for a whole month if she has spent almost half in the first week?"  I hear you ask.... well, my plan was to stock up on certain items that were on offer at the start, and just topping up each week with fresh fruit, veg, bread and milk.  So I now have a budget of £18.83 to spend each week for the next 3 weeks.  It also means that our total meat for the month consists of: a whole chicken (approx 1.4kg), 2 packets of chicken drummers and thighs* (containing approx 4 drumsticks and 2 large thighs each), a packet of pork loins steaks (5 in the packet) and a packet of minced beef (777g).  Meat is now a luxury and I will be using it as an ingredient (as I have said before).  I will be making a little stretch a very long way.....

* I was on rota to cook a meal for a lady at church who has just had a baby.  I therefore used 3 of the large thighs from the two packets and deboned them.  I then chopped them up and made a caribbean chicken and potato curry, and some rice and aduki beans cooked in coconut milk (from storecupboard items).  It looked pretty substantial and would easily feed us four, so I think it'll be plenty for her and her husband and toddler.  As for the other thigh, I also deboned and chopped it up, marinated  it in soy sauce, ginger, garlic and oyster sauce, then used to make saturdays meal for us.  It was more than enough with the beansprouts and chopped veg (even some leftovers actually!)

As for the rest of the meat I bought, I divided the mince into 3 portions of approx 250g each and froze them seperately.  The pork chops are in the freeser and I will use the chicken to make 2 meals and some stock (to freeze for soups etc).

As you can see from the menu above, we will be eating leftovers for our lunch (me and Nick).  This is usually what we do anyway.  I haven't got a lot of bread in my shop, so I will bake some by hand from the bread flour I already have.  Snacks will be either cheese and crackers (already got the crackers), or homemade cake (already got flour, bought the eggs, sugar and margarine), fruit or veg sticks.

Anything else mentioned in the menu that I haven't bought whilst shopping, is stuff I already have in my cupboard/fridge/freezer.  I planned the menu around those items to keep the shopping bill low.

So anyway, I think that covers it.  This week the fridge and cupboards are overflowing, it remains to be seen if we will have such bounty available when the budget shrinks next week.......