What I ate in a day for £2.13

 

In tomorrow's Foodie Friday vlog, I'm sharing the costs of what I ate in a day.  I explain how I work out the cost of the veggies in a Lidl veg box simply by dividing the £1.50 cost by the number of items (6) so each item/pack is 25p.  Then within that 25p I work out what each single piece of veg costs.  For example a single pepper would be 25p divided by 3, a single banana would be 50p divided by 13.  And so on.

I had 6 Wagyu beef sausages that were reduced to £1.99 making each sausage 33p.  These were cooked in home made onion gravy and portioned into 3 servings.  I ate one and froze the other two.  Honestly, they weren't the best sausages I've ever had despite the fancy Wagyu content!

I have a load of butter in the freezer made from reduced cream so when I add butter to a meal/recipe it doesn't cost as much as shop bought.  

And so you get the gist of how I calculated the cost of what I ate in a day.  Here's the breakdown of each meal.

Breakfast: 42p

• 50g oats 6p (from a 2kg bag costing £2.45)
• 50g frozen raspberries 33p (from a 300g bag costing £2)
• Banana 3p 
• Peanut butter, no cost bought with a voucher
• Jam, free as was a gift

Morning snack: Free

Scone with jam and clotted cream, free gift

Main meal: £1.37

• 2 sausages 66p
• Instant mash 45p
• 1/3 of the sweetheart cabbage 8p
• 1/3 of onion gravy 18p (made from 2 onions at 32p, butter 10p, seasonings 10p)

Supper: 34p

• 1 slice home made sourdough bread 6p
• Butter 10p
• 30g cheese 18p (from a 900g block costing £4.99)

Grand total: £2.13

If I'd had fresh potatoes at the time or mash in the freezer, it would have been cheaper as the instant mash was just a storecupboard standby.  

It's not something I'll do regularly as it's faffy to work out the costs but it was an interesting exercise nonetheless 😊

Using up bits and bobs to make mincemeat

 

After recently making dumplings/doughballs and a steamed pudding, I still had about 25g of Atora suet (beef) left and I didn't want it to go to waste.  So I made a small batch of mincemeat based on this recipe HERE.  I just scaled it down by a tenth and added a bit of more of what I had.

I used up some of the frozen apples I got free from my mum's garden.  Plus some of the slightly candied lemon peel from making the lemon syrup.  And some orange juice I had frozen in ice cubes made with oranges I got in a Lidl box ages ago.  I didn't bother doing the whole sterilising jars etc as I'll be using it soon. It smells absolutely like Christmas!! 🎄

I quite often do small batches of preserves if I only have a small amount of something.  You don't always need to make 20 jars of it!!

And for some reason this week's sourdough loaf was rather holey!!  The next few slices had even bigger holes! But that's part of the fun adventure with sourdough 🍞

Whisky tea loaf recipe and baking tools

 

Recipe from today's video

• 350g mixed dried fruit
• 30g soft brown sugar
• 150ml hot black tea
• glug of whisky
• 2 large eggs
• 50ml milk (or water)
• 1 grated apple
• 225g SR flour (or 225g plain flour + 2 and 1/4 tsp baking powder)
• 1 tsp mixed spice

Method

Soak fruit/sugar/tea/whisky overnight.

Add egg and milk mixture then apple.

Stir in flour and spices.

Bake in a lined 2lb loaf tin for about 60 to 90 mins at 170C or 150C fan.  Check after 50 mins and cover with foil to prevent burning.  Check middle of loaf is cooked through.  Cool and slice as required 😋

This is my go to 'fruit cake' recipe.  I'll use it for my Christmas cake this year but add different types of dried fruit and maybe some nuts as well.  I'll also add more spice and maybe some treacle to deepen the flavour and colour. 

Here are the baking tools mentioned in the video. Silicon bread sling HERE.  Bread scoring tool HERE. Other bread stencils HERE.

It was interesting reviewing the baking tools.  I wouldn't have done it if I genuinely didn't already like Sourdough by the Sea!  I hadn't used the tools previously so what you see is my genuine first reaction 😊

Thanks again Tammy for telling them about me and my channel 😊