Be Excellent To Each Other

Here we go then:

http://www.pimpthatsnack.com/eat/

I've alluded to this a couple of times recently, but here we go. For the month of July I'm going to eat as cheaply as is reasonably possible while varying my meals and getting a fair bit of nutrition.

Hopefully you chaps will enjoy following my progress on this stupid quest as I see just how little I can spend on food for 31 days. It's worth noting I won't be buying any food this week either so I'm currently surviving on the little you can see in the pictures I took earlier tonight.

Get a job in catering. The snackier the food, the better - I would probably hae starved without making a spare couple of sandwiches for myself for 6 months when I was a sandwich maker.

Downside: Everyone in catering is a cunt.

Herbs help - a bowl of pasta becomes less than deathly depressing if you throw some basil and oil into it. They can be expensive, though. Supermarket value chips (sainsbury's used to be good for this, they may still be) are often about £1 for 3 kilos. Handy side dish and a tolerable meal if you throw some salt and pepper on. Get chatting to supermarket and corner shops taff and find out how their bargains work and when things get marked down for quick sale.

If you do the food shopping by hand and carry everything, always buy spuds. They're cheap, and heavy, and always by the door, so that you end up getting your arms knackered before you can buy anything you don't need. Plus, they're versatile - slice and fry them and sprinkle with salt and pepper (and rosemary if you have it) for a last-ditch meal. Bake them and add beans and, if available, cheese, for a filling and tasty meal.

Sausages are your friend. Don't go ultra-bottom of the barrel, but do go cheap. You can get some surprisingly tasty and un-fatty ones (that aren't necessarily all bread) for not much. Sliced and fried with onion and sage, they can go in a sandwich or in pasta, or be eaten as is. Baked with potato, bread, garlic, mushrooms and olive oil, they can be lovely.

Pasta is your friend. Rice and peas are your friends. Tinned fruit is cheap, nutritious, keeps, and can be snacked on at least at home when sugar cravings strike. Yoghurt is good value for money - add fruit and/or honey and/or cinnamon for a very nutritious treat (good for warding off colds, this). Be extremely pleasant and fairly flirtatious with checkout staff. They're bored, underappreciated and will seldom miss an opportunity to just shrug and say "don't worry about that" if the machine's dicking about when they scan your bread if you earn it. Avoid the really young ones - they'll be more likely to toe the line out of inexperience and lack of general disillusionment and hatred of their job. Don't get me wrong, weekend and part time staff are the best thing about retail, but they are often terrified of going "ah, fuck it" and often bullied by their managers and customers alike.

Buy flour. Baking is cheap and easy and you can get a lot of variety out of a few ingredients. Mashed potatoes with loads of flour and a bit of butter make potato cakes - filling and, with butter, quite nice. You can also throw any ham or spronions or mustard or cheese in, too.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to blag into conventions, business presentations and mass interviews to score free biscuits and juice. This can require a bit of research, though. Depends what's near you.

Re-use teabags - even if you like it strong - each can make one and a half cups of moderately strong tea.

Round up everything you buy to the nearest pound. Don't buy anything you don't need two of.

Browse moneysavingexpert.com - there are some excellent cheapskates on there and they've an eye for a bargain.

Visit nearby friends. Crash barbecues.

Have fun!

If your in it for the long term, growing your own herbs is easy and doesn't take up much space.

Predictotron:

4th July, 2008, 9pm

All excellent suggestions Sinister. I'll be noting down all the advice I get and start working through it when the month starts. I particularly like the idea of making my own potato cakes, nomnomnom.

One point though - free food is a no no. It must be food I buy, as cheap as possible, but I must buy it all the same. If I go to somewhere that's dishing out free food I need to estimate the cost and note it.

I'm not poor or owt, I'm just curious. I read a fascinating if slightly nazi-like article from a nazi-like survivalist a while ago who bemoaned heavily that a lot of people who claim food poverty are only poor in the sense that they don't have the knowledge of how to cook cheap meals with basic ingredients, which sounded about right to me.

going in the afternoon for shopping in a supermarket means you can get a fair bit chopped off the fresh bread price.

Oh, I forgot - most supermarkets are really inconsistent with herbs. The prices are all over the place and there's no guarantee that Schwartz branded stuff will be less or more expensive than the sainsbury's own, regardless of what it was last week.

Buy refills instead of pots if possible (though they rarely stock more than a few kinds of refill) - you can sprinkle herbs just as effectively from the little sachets, and they keep as well and don't even look messy, so there's really no point.

Fresh bread won't last as long, but it can be frozen. If it's significantly cheaper, buy fresh from the bakery (in the afternoon, as suggested), chop off what you'll use today and tomorrow and freeze the rest. Bread rolls can be thawed in the microwave, and they're usually dirt cheap. They can vary in terms of how well they survive the microwaving process, though.

Black pepper and a bit of olive oil will make a massive bowl of wholewheat pasta go down much more easily, too.

(Although I could happily scoff half my own bodyweight in plain brown spaghetti without gurning once.)

Predictotron did miss out part two of the prediction : "I AM SO ANGRY I WANT TO KILL PEOPLE"



I find bread, fresh or otherwise, never lasts long enough to go off if I'm around*. I am the king of eating baked goods. I am the king of walking past a bakery and coming away with 10 doughnuts, a bag of cookies, 4 muffins, some cakes, and some bread. And then eating it all in a day. I have no self restraint.

* - Except frozen bread, as it's just wrong and sits in the freezer indefinitely.

Oh, and don't trust the supermarkets' own "50p per 100g" or whatever bits. They're 'accidentally' wrong a fair bit - plus working them out yourself helps keep the motor running upstairs. Don't always buy more for special offers/better value unless it's stuff that'll last forever like rich or tinned food.

Cream crackers can go a long way. They're surprisingly good to snack on, being filling and cheap, and not fatty or sugary. Whack some butter on them and they can make a passable snack. Add cheese or ham or mushrooms if you can spare them.

Ooh, this'll be fun.

Also, dessert/breakfast of choice: milk+flour+tinned pineapple slices. Fry in oil. Yum. Add honey if you have any/want to.

Buy tomato puree, or, if it'll be cheaper, tomato suace or barbecue sauce. Make pizzas - water and flour, a little olive oil. Make into a dough, roll out flat, spread tomato x over it, grate some cheese over and add whatever. It won't be gourmet, but it'll taste nice and it's cheap. If you have the herbs, add oregano, pepper, garlic and basil.

Look at the posh, expensive sections every time you pass. Sometimes you can find bargains in weird places, and however much money you need to save, everyone needs some sort of treat now and then or the pressure will build up and you'll just go nuts and blow everything (I'm personally looking forward to buying a £3 cheesecake on my birthday, if all goes well).

Take the opportunity to try some of those weird things you looked at but never bought because they were too weird or suspiciously cheap. Some people look at frankfurters and think they must be dodgy, but I find them tasty and often on offer, and they're actually better than a lot of sausage meat. They also keep well, and can be a good substitute for bacon with a smokier, fuller flavour than cheap ham.

Nuts and seeds can be good for snacking, and good for protein. They range from cheap to stupidly expensive, though. Look around parts of town you don't normally go to - you'll probably find a chinese/thai/malaysian/indian/ethiopian place you had no idea existed with insanely good deals (Indian places are particularly good for this). Bring a chef-y friend if you don't really know what to look for - they'll enjoy helping out.

Generally, keep an eye on prices, even of regular stuff, and at other shops. Food prices are all over the place at the moment. Our bills seem to keep growing even when we're careful.

/orders

If you don't care about social conventions and aren't that squeamish, I think you can get a pig's head for a pound, which is ridiculous value. Get some trotters and bones thrown in for a pittance, and that's enough meat for ages right there. That'd go great with some pulses, which you can get obscene amounts of for cheap.

To be honest, just cooking your own food saves you tons, and you can easily afford to buy relatively high quality ingredients if you do, provided you don't mind eating the same thing a few days in a row. I'd definately recommend this for lunches- you could buy the most expensive sausages there are and have cold sausage sandwiches for a week, and you'd still spend a massive amount less than you would buying pre-made ones. This is more or less what I intend to do now I've found a brilliant sausage shop.

If you live near a 24 hour supermarket, you can pick up stuff like whole, cooked chickens for a pittance, if you go just before they shut down that part of the store (they very rarely run those parts all night) sort of half 10ish (depending on store). A whole chicken for a quid or so.Stick it in the fridge, and it'll last a day, cut the meat you don't eat off, chuck it in a big pan, water, potatoes, carrots, peas, herbs and a stock cube, and make chicken stew.Make more than a meals worth, and stick the excess into tupperware (or large margerine tubs) in individual portions, and freeze it.

Look for tins of carrots, new potatoes and peas (and other veggies you like, beans are good. Avoid tinned spinach though.), because (although more expensive than fresh) they keep forever, and the nature of the stuff is that you can go for the absolute cheapest you can find, as they're all the same.

Note down what sort of tins stuff comes in, a lot of veggies now come in plastic-lined tins. These aren't as susceptible to dent caused nastiness, but they still get discounted for being dented.

Frozen chips: there are very generic bags of frozen chips, put out by the company that owns the factory (all frozen chips basically come from one place). What they actually contain are chips that failed the QA for other brands, but are entirely consumable. This means that often, the only thing that is wrong with them is the colour. (McCains and M&S are really picky over stuff like that)They are sold really cheaply, yet contain top quality product, which is better than own brand stuff. (The last time I saw any they were in a light blue pack, but it changes often, along with the name)

Oh, check out the 'ethnic' places as SA says... you can get some great stuff at Polish places, for not a lot of cash. Chinese supermarkets can be good too.

Go down to your local Lidl and have a poke around.

Shoot squirrels.

Please go to the weekend fruit market where they sell 3lb of bananas for £1, or 2lb of apples for £1 so you aren't eating just carbs and pigs heads, though

Take a calculator with you and add it up as you go. Also, take an amount of cash and leave your credit cards at home. We've been doing this and it makes a huge difference.

500g of turkey mince is 1.79*. You can get four stir fries from that.

Sainsburys Taste The Difference sausages are excellent - recently on a 3 for a fiver offer. That would make 6 meals, combined with a Dolmio pasta sauce and put in the oven for 45 mins.

Buy fresh fruit and veg. Cheap doesn't have to mean not tasty.

Cous cous and rice make good substitutes for potatoes. Flavour cous cous by sticking an Oxo cube in the water, Flavour rice by mixing it with a bit of wild rice.

If you have a Costco near you, join it.

Tescos bread rolls are 3x6 for £1.20. Buy them, stick the excess in the freezer.

To see what can be done, last night I did a turkey mince stir fry, with chillis, yellow peppers, spring onion, baby leek, accompanied by spinach and cous cous for the two of us. The total cost worked out at three quid.

*Used to be 1.39. Shot up in price recently.

Buy live chickens - you can get "rescue" chickens for about 50p each, and you can build a run for them for about £10. You will get at least an egg per day per bird, so over the course of 31 days you're saving money. And eggs is lovely. And, of course, you can kill the chickens and eat them.

Actually, you could just buy rescue chickens at 50p each and then butcher them yourself, saving about £1000000 on the cost of a whole chicken from Sainsbury's. Buying live animals is always the cheapest way to go (e.g. my wife's uncle the farmer was selling his lambs at a fiver each last year. This year they're 80 each due to the food shortages and that, which isn't as cheap - but you'll still get a fudge of a lot of meat off it and save money), but you have to be entirely unsqueamish.

I like the idea of 'rescue chickens' = specially trained in negotiation and hostage situations. Even more useful when accompanied by SAS chickens or ninja chickens.

You could do a sweeny tod...

Although a simple tomato sauce (Onion, Garlic and tin of tomato + seasoning + plus any other veg) on pasta is great and you must also remember that these things can be eaten cold the next day if you make too much. Two meals for the price of one... almost.

I also buy bags of frozen chicken breast. Just an arse remembering to defrost them.

Become a Freegan.

No-one has mentioned bacon yet, specifically streaky back. It keeps a long time, and a small amount cut into lardons and shallow fried can be sprinkled into just about anything to add tons of flavour. Combine with tomato passata and you have a very reasonable alternative to a Dolmio-type pasta sauce.

I've subbed to your RSS feed, it'll be interesting to see how this goes!

My mum was a huge one for using beans and peas for bulking out food - I'm willing to bet you can get vast amounts of dried pulses from some wholesale place for next to nothing. They're tasty and they make you fart - what's not to like?

How comes you can't buy rabbit in the supermarket any more? It's a bit chewy, but it used to be a nice cheap meat for casseroles and the link.

Someone's never kept chickens

Or, if he has, he's been a lucky bugger.

I've subscribed to the RSS feed too (haha, 'feed').

Great, this seems to have sparked a bit of interest with some great suggestions. It's a threefold plan, to keep me occupied form the fact I'm living along again (the dog is going too ), it'll help me save cash on the increased expense of living alone, and, of course, the main one, which is the interest in just how cheap I can eat!

I'll note down all of the above suggestions. I don't think I could happily eat a pig's head though, and while the idea of a chicken is supercool I think I'd be too upset if it died, and I certainly couldn't decapitate the poor innocent little bugger for a bit of meat either. I like to save my violent urges for those that are truly deserving

Also, I feel like shit today, I'm blatantly unwell with something or other. cough cough, hack, etc.

A mate of ours gets at least one per day per bird, and has done with the previous lot of rescue chickens she got. Once they'd fed them up a bit and got them healthy again, of course. She may well be jammy, or it could be the hippy chakra-healing she did to them.

My brother kept chickens for a while, but he lived next to some woods and badgers really, really like eggs, apparently. He spent so much money on chicken wire and fencing and so much time repairing the fence and digging trenches so the fences went down 6" underground and planning elaborate badger scares that he probably ended up paying about £5 per egg.

I read this as:

Beans are great, and tinned ones are cheap and easy.

A tin of mixed beans, a tin of tomatoes, a few herbs and spices, a pint of stock, cook down for an hour or two and you've got a big healthy tasty casserole.

Can you scrounge a breadmaker? Flour is very cheap, even if you cheat and buy premade breadmaker mix it's no more expensive than normal bread -- but it's easier to make a half loaf, and because the bread is very tasty it can become much more a focal point of the meal. E.g. Craster's super cheap casserole up there with some nice crusty bread would make a very satisfying meal, I think, without adding any expensive meat.

I'm shit with money, and so spend a fortune. Iw ill be following your adventures to see if I can pick up some tips and stuffs.

One thing I like is tinned mackerel on toast. It's filling, has a good amount of flavour, and is pretty cheap. Not as cheap as a bowl of rice, perhaps, but it's a meal for well under a quid.

Perhaps ringing channel 4 should be in order... the next big thing on TV!

You could be the new Danny Wallace.

FTFY

Sounds like a fun project. I predict you can eat pretty damn cheap, in fact.

Be interesting to know if leaving out meat would make it cheaper or dearer.

Lidl for cheap veg any time and Tesco for cheap bread at about 7pm on a weekday.

I have a bread tin for the oven!

The useful bit about breadmakers isn't the baking, it's the kneading and prooving.

Not the same. For a start, kneading, and finding somewhere warm for the dough to rise is tedious. Secondly, it precludes slamming the mix in the maker the night before and waking up to fresh baked bread. Which is acebestness.

Given how they usually follow the sandwich toaster model, I bet some relative or friend will donate you a only-used-twice breadmaker.

That reminds me, I have a sandwich toaster.

I actually really like sandwich toasters, and even I go for a year at a time without using mine. Or at least I did. I actually broke my last one.

I really want some of those toaster pocket things, but I keep forgetting to buy them.

You can get toasters that fit in your pocket? Why have I not heard of these before? I'd never go hungry again!

Just remember to unplug it before you eat it.

ooooh pinini's made in george foreman thing with that bake your own bread with cheese and tomato and wedges!

The only 'food' item I paid for yesterday was a can of Diet Coke from the machine in work. I scrounged the leftover sandwiches off the platter from the meeting rooms, then someone came around having bought a bag full of random pasties and slices from Gregg's and invited us to all take one, and then someone ELSE came around with those little face cookies that have cream and jam inside, and then someone ELSE ELSE had a whole package of welsh cakes they were sharing.

This was a lovely conincidence, as I'd arrived so late for work I hadn't had time to stop and pick up something.

So, my top tip is to get a job somewhere where you can just pick on leftovers from overpaid executives.