Friday 14 April 2023

The Eat for £3.50 a Week Challenge - The End of Challenge Round Up ... and What I Did With the Leftovers

 


Well it's the end of Challenge week and here are my leftovers.

One slice of Bread
Half a can of Peaches
One portion of Carrot Soup
and
About 2/3 of a jar of Marmalade

I guess at a pinch another day when you wouldn't starve.  Peaches for breakfast, soup for lunch and then marmalade on toast for tea.  Not a good day, but at least it's food.

Or, you could roll this forward and have a starting point for another week on £3.50.  One where you wouldn't be starting with absolutely nothing like on the first one ... and this is how a store cupboard is built up.


I had printed out my Sainsbury's supermarket basket, then neatened and edited it to make sense, changing the price of the onions as they had cost me more in the shop than the online basket had said they would.


These are my notes for the week. 

Using the rough notes that you saw the other day as a starting point and to keep me on track, I filled in each days meals on the righthand page as I ate them, and added up the ingredients as I used them.  Seeing it in black and white on paper helps me make sense of things and saves me having to keep going on the computer to fill in a spreadsheet.  I'm old school ... forever. 😀


I didn't actually eat the leftovers as I suggested that on an extra day they might be used. 

 I had the final slice of bread as toast and marmalade for my breakfast, I ate the soup with a lovely fresh crusty roll from the freezer for my dinner and then I had a pizza for my tea ... a celebratory whole Falafel pizza bought from Sainsbury's, and yes I ate it all in one go, something I rarely do.


And then for breakfast this morning I finished off the peaches.


With a peach crumble and yoghurt ... well it was breakfast time, and a little bit early for ice-cream.  😄

So what are my thoughts after living on just £3.50's worth of food for a week?

1.  It shouldn't have to be done by anyone in this day and age.

2.  It is possible with lots of planning and imagination, and you can do it it many ways.

3.  The same ingredients can be used to make lots of different meals.

4.  It was more interesting than I expected it to be.

5.  It's weird how making smaller meals seems to make for more washing up.


My favourite meal, and one that stood out head and shoulders above all the others, was the roasted carrots and mashed potato lunch.  

Next time you have your oven on for something else, just wash and halve a carrot or two and put them in a baking dish with a drizzle of oil and some mixed herbs and any spice that you love, oh and maybe a wedge of onion or two ... and you will see what I mean.

After doing this challenge for the week I am sorely tempted to go BIG and eat for a week on £1 a day, but my common-sense is telling me to have a break, eat more protein and greens and carry on with my eating my way through the store cupboard long term challenge.  Something that obviously wasn't touched at all for the past seven days.

Maybe in a few weeks ...


If you have any questions about the past week and the challenge I will be happy to answer them in the comments section of this post.

Thank you so much for following along, there has been an average of about 500 people reading the posts each day so hopefully you have found it interesting and entertaining, and maybe I have managed to give you a few ideas. 

 Is there anyone out there in blogland doing any sort of similar challenge that I can read about?  I do love reading other peoples challenges.  If anyone wants to read any of my older ones they are all listed on the right-hand sidebar.  And as the instructions above them say: 

Clicking on any of these Challenge photos will take you to the first post of that particular challenge. You can then read on in chronological order by clicking on 'Newer Post' at the bottom left hand side of each post.

This way you will be able to read them in the order that they were written.


Sue xx



22 comments:

  1. Thanks for doing this one, Sue. I won't be copying you but you have made me think - and give thanks that I don't have to .

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    1. Oh you don't have to copy. :-)

      I like doing a challenge as it makes me think more about things and sometimes takes me out of my comfort zone for a while ... and I usually learn something new from every challenge that I do.

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  2. Very interesting challenge, as always Sue, thanks. I've got the glimmer of an idea for a challenge for husband and I - I'll think about it and work it out during the coming week at the van. £3.50 a week wouldn't work for us - husband just wouldn't be happy (he'd refuse to do it point blank) with having no meat, and the carb-heavy (because unfortunately that's what the cheapest foods are) meals wouldn't suit me, because too many carbs just make me feel ill. I consider us very fortunate indeed that we have no need to exist on such a small amount though.

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    1. We are very fortunate aren't we and I think this sort of challenge only goes to highlight that. I will be interested to see what you come up with. xx

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  3. Fantastic! I think you made great use of the ingredients/food you bought. I'm thinking though it's our/your knowledge of how to cook things that makes a difference as budgeting/cooking from scratch is a skill built up over years. The nursery at my school often has loads of free food to give out to families but it's often rejected as they literally don't know how to cook for example potatoes. This is where I think politicians (don't get me started!!) who say stuff like it's easy to live on x amount a week have no idea what's it's really like living below the poverty line. Either no cooking skills or no cooking facilities. Or sometimes both :-( Well done Sue for highlighting this through your challenges! :-) xxx

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    1. Exactly that, yes!!

      If I had chosen to do this challenge back in the early 80's and 90's when my boys were small I would not have been able to manage anywhere nearly as well. We ate reasonably back, then but the meals were simpler and I remember rejecting recipes because I didn't have say the right spice or flour in my cupboards or enough meat. These days with more knowledge I can make substitutions at the drop of a hat, something that luckily Jamie Oliver has been highlighting in his latest series and reading the comments on the Facebook groups a lot of younger folk are at last taking this on board.

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  4. Well done for completing the challenge and I agree that you need to have plenty of greens and some protein now to reset your body to a healthier diet. I went to Lidl today for a top up shop of fresh foods and bought absolutely nothing from the midloflidl which is my downfall. I feel so blessed that I am old enough that I can cook, and make do both in food and clothes. I am about to attempt a new headboard for our bed using the old one and some fabric to quilt it. There may be bad words in this house today! Catriona

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    1. Some fresh foods were definintely on my radar immediately after this challenge, and just being able to help myself to anything I fancied out of the fridge or freezer was a great novelty. I hope the headboard making went okay ... and not too many swear words. ;-)

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  5. Like the others, I think you are wise to spend a bit of time catching up on your Fruit, veg and protein before attempting another frugal challenge but it's been so very interesting and informative. Again, many thanks. xx

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    1. Yes, it's been nice to have some 'normal' foods again, it only reinforces how lucky I am to be able to do this. Maybe a £1 a day challenge next, now that would be a double budget after this week.

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  6. Well done on completing the challenge and how thoroughly you tackled it. It highlights how impossible it would be to sustain for any length of time and how someone would be quite deprived of certain vitamins, minerals and the good fats in nuts, seeds and fish that keep people healthy. This diet would certainly put a strain on the NHS after a while. Scientists are already finding that many people today are short of iron, magnesium and vitamin D as well as iodine and is looking like it is one reason some people had Covid and became very ill. A project like this would be quite informative for secondary school kids to attempt - I don't mean to actually try it like you have but to work out the healthiest way of doing it and cooking it to see what they would come up with.

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    1. Yes, I agree. I think that Covid wreaked so much damage was because of lots of people's poor diets. Teaching secondary school kids to budget at different levels and work out menu plans would be a really good start to better food eating in the future.

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  7. You are absolutely right Sue, NO-ONE in a supposedly wealthy Western country should have to even consider doing this.

    I like Viv's idea of having school kids attempt to plan menus for a week in this way. But with a mandated curriculum that does not seem to prepare young people for their future with an understanding of money, being healthy and a sensible diet there is no chance of it happening.

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    1. Unfortunately, any additional funding that schools get for food education comes from the fast food industry and companies like Coca Cola who all have their own agendas. It's the same with advertising, the money spent on advertising healthy foods is microscopic compared to the big boys advertising their fast food.

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  8. You did so well to finish the challenge but it would be good to get back to more fruit and veg now. You deserve some treats too.

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    1. More veggies for sure ... and maybe a fish finger butty!!

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  9. “Very well done”to you for carrying through this challenge, it highlight all sorts of interesting things - and especially the need for knowledge about how to cook and plan weekly meals to be taught to as many people as possible
    Country Cook

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    1. I think we are nearly all agreed that teaching the next generation good food planning and management is the right way forward. Doing this sort of challenge teaches me something new every time I do it.

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  10. Amazing what you did with such restricted ingredients, another interesting read.
    Alison in Wales x

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed it, thanks for following along. xx

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  11. Thankyou for doing this Sue, it's been very thought provoking. As a result I spent some time this week costing out a day's food for myself and was surprised by the price of proper coffee. A £3.90 packet from Sainsbury's is a lot but it does 32 fills of my cafetière giving me a 12p pot of coffee each day which was far less than I'd imagined.

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    1. I think this sort of challenge and reading about it makes you think about lots of things doesn't it, I know it does for me ... and finding out that your coffee is a reasonable price is a very happy bonus. :-)

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