Hello Dear Reader,
We love to eat well. We also like to take care of our finances. Sometimes, it's difficult to eat well and watch the pennies. We also need to push the boat out and stack up on high levels of nutrition; it's as if our bodies tell us to eat more protein or higher levels of anti-oxidants. Today, I felt as if my nutrition levels needed an energy boost.
To make four portions you will need - 2 for our supper and another 2 potions for our lunch tomorrow.
2 Chicken breasts - £2
250g of smoked lardons - 89p
2 avocado pears - £1.50 - (TBH one would have done, but they go off so quickly that it's not economical to keep them)
1/2 punnet of cherry tomatoes - cut into halves - 45p
1/4 of a cucumber - 10p
1 onion - 3p
3 tablespoons of olive oil - 14p
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar 3p
2 little gem lettuce - 39p
Total £5.53 and £1.38 per serving.
Prepare the salad and arrange on two plates and two lunch boxes.
Diced the chicken breast and finely chop one onion.
Add to a hot frying pan with a pack of lardons
Fry until the bacon is crispy and the onions have started to become sticky
Arrange on top of the salad
Add three tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard and a small squirt of runny honey to a jam jar. Secure the lid and shake - drizzle over the salad.
£1.38 a head is a lot for us but totally delicious and after a week of hard exercise...........I needed to say heck to the diet tonight. Don't even ask how many calories are in this!!!!!!!!!
Over to you Dear Reader, who else is finding it increasingly expensive to eat a high level of nutrition on an every shrinking budget? And let's face it, no one's salary has increased so we're all doing more with less.
Until tomorrow,
Love Froogs xxxxxxxx
Well, you've cheered me up no end cos I went totally over budget on tonight's meal. Bit sick of turkey almost every night (and lunchtime) and also want to start eating more fish (which was a luxury while clearing debt) so I went to the fish van and bought 2 large salmon fillets for the family meal (£4!! and not very frugal, I know, but we have been eating free turkey since Christmas and also had a meal of cheesy beans - beans were half price, as was the cheese - on home made toast one night). The salmon was absolutely delicious with pasta and fresh vegetables! x
ReplyDeleteWe are at that stage in our lives where eating better makes a real and huge difference in how we feel, so I've been trying to serve my family organic, fresh and humanely raised food for several years now, even as our income has continued to shrink. We also like good food. We never eat out, for cost and taste reasons. I grow a big fruit and veg garden every year.
ReplyDeleteCooking from scratch (the NYT's no-knead bread recipe is a huge favorite for taste, ease and cost) helps hugely.
Here in Colorado, I'm lucky to be able to buy meats directly from small producers and know I"m getting meat from healthy, well-cared for animals. It's expensive (our half a cow runs us a bit under $6 a pound, with maybe 60 percent of that being ground beef and the rest steaks, roasts and stew meats) but not as expensive as buying grass-fed beef or organic chicken from a grocery. We have a large chest freezer we fill to the gills.
I do watch for sales on organic chicken that's getting near it's sell-by date in the grocery and when I find it, I snap it up and freeze it.
We also buy green coffee beans from Sweet Maria's and have learned how to roast them ourselves using an air popper. Waaay better than any coffee we can get anywhere else and we end up paying, with shipping, about $5.50 a pound (buying 20-40 pounds at a time).
Buying bulk vanilla beans online and making my own vanilla extract lets me cook with really nice ingredients while paying less than I would for grocery store quality products.
I'm always on the look out for other products I can buy in bulk at high quality or make myself.
We cut back in many other areas of life so that we can continue to eat as healthily as possible. That's the one realm that I don't ever want to have skimp on, and hopefully we never will.
Gutted to find out today that I may be facing a paycut :-( I squeeze every bit of value out of my food budget as it is.
ReplyDeleteWe are eating lots more vegetarian food, which is cheap and healthy. Chick pea curry is a favourite. I also stock up on yellow stickered stuff when I see it and can put it in the freezer. I make great use of the Aldi specials on fruit and veg. Tonight I bought lettuce, cucumber, celery, spring onions and cabbage all for 39 p each, which was excellent value.
I also have a great veg patch and greenhouse in the summer, although there is nothing much out there at the moment except a few leeks and sprouts.
So no pushing the boat out here, but I think we eat well anyway! You don't need to spend that much to eat well if you plan your meals and shop carefully.
Jane
shoestringcottage.wordpress.com
Fresh fruit and fresh vegetables are very expensive....and along with that I am diabetic...so it's always a catchy situation with our meals and spending. I'm usually fixing one thing for my husband and another for me. Occasionally there are things we can both eat as in one meal.
ReplyDeleteFroogs, less and less meat on our plates, more stretchy meals, this time of year always finds me turning to stored produce over fresh, as it is expensive, often imported. I grew up and continue to eat seasonally. We make more ourselves, continue to reduce/eliminate what little "junk" and convenience foods I do purchase. Agree that sound nutrition is essential, I just have to do so with a tight budget.
ReplyDeleteFroogs I converted the price of the avocado and according to my figures you have two avocado for the price of one. I am quite frustrated at present as fruit is so expensive. On Monday we paid almost $9 (Aus) for 5 oranges. No wonder people do without. I am back to searching for new suppliers.
ReplyDeleteBTW your salad sounds absolutely delicious.
I always look at your meal pricing and think that everything is so cheap But I am mentally converting your prices to Au$ and cents which is not at all realistic.
ReplyDeleteI have just done a very quick and rough add up substituting prices I would pay. $16 total for this meal divided by 4 serves equals $4 per serve, not too bad.
Often I cant convert ingredients ie we don't have gammon, pork would probably be the next best substitute.
I actually can get avocados, Lichis, and blood oranges very cheap right now!! It's very weird, the same produce is so much more ecpensive in the same supermarket but in the city! We live in a small mountain village. Probably they get to much produce to sell and need to take down the price to sell it more quickly..even organic stuff is always on offer here..must be that people here don't buy much organic..
ReplyDeleteCould not be' happier! Making a list and going back monday for a quick check on the situation..
Loving your recipes at the moment, good wholesome winter food. Thanks for sharing :-)
ReplyDeleteLove your recipes at the moment, good wholesome winter food :-)
ReplyDeleteI just spent £10 on fruit and veg today, carrots, oranges, bananas and grapes. I checked the potatoes in Aldi 89p a kilo and was ever so glad I bought those 25kg at 30p a kilo, they will lasts us 3 months. Still I think the cost of bad health would be much higher and we don't spent our money or cakes or biscuits. In the winter I don't bother with expensive salad veg and instead have a large variety of recipes using winter veg to cook with and make salads from. On our trips to Europe I also stock up with cheap sauerkraut as a great source of vit C, cod liver (to make spreads) and hemp oil (the best combination of Omega 3 and 6) for salads. However as our family started to eat more healthily and control portions to loose weight I actually find that our food spent shrunk a little just because we eat less!
ReplyDelete