Meticulous record-keeping! I tried to get everything onto one spreadsheet on one side of A4, so I could fold it up and carry it with me. I found the notebook in one of my project bags, that'll do.
This is part of bigger life-style changes, or perhaps refining life-style changes with an eye on a healthier, stronger, happier future, coming fast at me. It's been quite a long journey already, it was about three and half years ago when I started to learn about the gut microbiome, and then beginning to change the way I eat - which was already pretty healthy, home-cooked etc.
I'm setting myself a little challenge, just for fun really, to see if I could do it, and whether there was improved health outcomes. Tania, my guru, had a bit of a wobble last week, but after a week off from social media, she's back and I'm glad, because she's full of tips and great entertainment.
Tania's doing a challenge for a year of living on her UK State pension and saving her civil service pension to re-build her emergency fund. I'm doing a much smaller 30 day, 30 foods, 30 pounds (a week) food shopping challenge. My previous post sets out the food challenge in full, including my ambition to improve cholesterol results because I don't want to take statins. More of that in a later post.
Weeks 1 and 2 - Spending
I've got to the end of week 2 with 22p left in the kitty. Week 1 was fine because the fridge was still well stocked from the previous week and I spent a total of £11.26 on topping up perishables - milk, yoghurt and beetroot - and snaffling some reduced items - I fancied a white toastie loaf one day - but this was a mixed bunch of bargains.
Reduced cut herbs and salad leaves went off before I could use them. Another time, I would cook them straight away. On the other hand, there were delicious tomatoes and a lovely avocado which went into one of my highlight meals of the week: a rough-cut guacamole salad with sweetcorn, black beans and cottage cheese.
If you're a member of the Co-op, it is the cheapest place to buy milk and Greek yoghurt (amazing at 94p for 500g - long may it last). And I also got some sweet potatoes reduced, so I don't feel so bad about the salad leaves that disintegrated into mush before I got to them.
Having £18.74 burning a hole in my pocket, I decided I could afford to buy some coffee from White Rose Coffee Roasters. I went for a 500g bag of Shibden Blend, quite strong and bright and lovely with a dash of hot milk. With postage, that came to £13.63, comes in at 23p a cup with milk and will probably last me about eight weeks.
So at the end of the week, I had £5.11 to carry over.
The second week, I bought a bargain from the Co op when I went to get cheap yoghurt which they didn't have: a big punnet of cherries with about eight servings, ate the last of them yesterday; but ended up buying expensive yoghurt, so I'm not sure the cherries were a bargain!
Now I had visitors this weekend, so I bought a few things I wouldn't normally buy - microwave rice, new potatoes, fresh red pepper (I had a roasted jarred one in the fridge already I had forgotten about), avocados on offer (one was rotten). And then a few replacements for the store cupboard and more fresh vegetables than you can shake a stick at.
So from £35.11, I ended the week with .22p.
Lessons Learned
- I'm definitely buying too much fresh food at a time. I need to restrict myself to six items or something like that!
- Discounted items are not always a good buy. Don't get tempted!
- My simplified logging spreadsheet works perfectly.
- You can make some nice dishes from the store cupboard.
- I like spontaneity, I'm not big on batch cooking.
- Although roasted and steamed vegetables ready for meals or snacking are great.
I did check whether making bread at home was cheaper than shop-bought. I use ingredients from Leicester Wholefoods, so probably more costly than similar items from Asda or Lidl. Ingredients come in at £1.23 a loaf, plus .77p for energy. One loaf costs about the same as Lidl's sourdough wheat and rye loaf at £1.99, and 50p less than the Co-op's seeded sourdough. Baking three loaves at a time is the best option - they come in at £1.49 each.
However, I don't have a freezer at the moment, so I'll probably go for two loaves at £1.61 each and no additives. It's good if there's other things to bake at the same time, as that reduces the energy cost per item. I'll get more organised with that. I did use heels of bread to make a spiced fruit compote charlotte (like a crumble, only made with breadcrumbs instead of flour), using dried fruit from the pantry.
I've been experimenting with different flavoured home-made hummus (beetroot, red pepper, sweet chili sauce) and @ deirdyweirdy introduced me to this delicious vegan pesto recipe, which is lovely because I have all the ingredients already including the fresh basil from the garden.
Next week, I want to keep my food shopping to less than £15, as the following week I want to do an order from Leicester Wholefoods and the minimum spend for free delivery is £30. That's very good to still have free delivery, and the minimum spend has been the same for nearly ten years now. I prefer to support small independent shops where I can.
So, I'm in my budget, but I think I could do better!
