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How to spend ten pounds
I laid out my £10 Cost of Living voucher on groceries as follows (over two separate shopping trips):
I got two meals out of the bean sprouts and one out of the crumpets, eaten sweet and savoury; the rhubarb I am still using, and I have been mixing the rocket in with various other things. The rest of it is store cupboard material, though I have used two portions of the cheese, one on top of a rather successful vegetarian Moscovskaya solyanka which, contrary to what I wrote previously, does not in fact use mushrooms as the meat substitute! (Unexpectedly it actually tells you to stir beaten egg into the thickened casserole, though the result when baked isn't particularly quiche-like...)
Then after being so very prudent with my ten pounds, I proceeded to go out and spent £2 on a packet of currants so that I could experiment with home-made Garibaldi biscuits... (My first attempt, using chopped mixed dried fruit -- which is cheaper! -- had been surprisingly successful.)
- Vegetable oil, £1.85
- Grated mixed cheese, £2.80 (I never normally buy pre-processed cheese, but as it was going into storage in the freezer anyway and was actually cheaper by weight than the normal blocks, instead of being more expensive -- I think someone had the bright idea of grating up all the random odd bits and selling them off instead of throwing them away -- and I always end up using it grated in recipes rather than slicing it and eating it as a delicacy in its own right, this time I did! We shall see if it is actually strongly flavoured enough to be of any use)
- Red lentils, £1.89 (horribly expensive for a small bag, but they didn't have the large 'ethnic' bags that I usually get, and it was free food)
- Small (200g) lard, £0.50
- Reduced packet of crumpets, £0.14 (a treat to myself that night! There is nothing wrong with a stale crumpet once toasted)
- Bag of plain flour, £0.79
- Cheap and nasty white rice, £0.52 (I usually get the big bags of basmati from the Indian grocer's, but as I can't store a big bag at the moment I thought I might as well see if I could actually detect the difference...)
- Plastic bag of rocket leaves, reduced to £0.28 (a little luxury for my salads)
- Bashed-up rhubarb, reduced to £0.63
- Date-expired bean sprouts, £0.25 (I can grow these myself, and even have some mung beans in my sprouter at this very moment, but the sprouts are never anything like as long and thick as the commercial ones)
- Single sachet of instant Ovaltine £0.39 (bought as a treat -- and in order to use up the remaining pence on the voucher, since nothing else, not even lard, is under 50p any more)
I got two meals out of the bean sprouts and one out of the crumpets, eaten sweet and savoury; the rhubarb I am still using, and I have been mixing the rocket in with various other things. The rest of it is store cupboard material, though I have used two portions of the cheese, one on top of a rather successful vegetarian Moscovskaya solyanka which, contrary to what I wrote previously, does not in fact use mushrooms as the meat substitute! (Unexpectedly it actually tells you to stir beaten egg into the thickened casserole, though the result when baked isn't particularly quiche-like...)
Then after being so very prudent with my ten pounds, I proceeded to go out and spent £2 on a packet of currants so that I could experiment with home-made Garibaldi biscuits... (My first attempt, using chopped mixed dried fruit -- which is cheaper! -- had been surprisingly successful.)