Day Eighteen - Meals

Breakfast - Two slices of my lovely new loaf with spread and marmalade ... and of course a cup of coffee.  

The extra 30p on this loaf was money very well spent  :-)

Lunch - The last portion of my leftovers/peelings soup,with a slice of toast.  (1)

Tea ... was a delicious, and simple pasta bake.   (3)

One of my tubs of Pasta Sauce from the freezer with 100g my penne pasta cooked in it in the oven, with added dollops of pesto from the jar in the fridge and a little sprinkle of this weeks cheese allowance.  

4 of my 5 a day

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Day Eighteen - Peelings and Portions

Everything I use I seem to weigh these days, it's becoming second nature ... the veggies for yesterdays pan of Vegetable Stew were first weighed before being cooked.  It has it's plus side I know of course how many I'm getting of my five a day as seemingly your five a day consists of five portions of fruit or vegetables weighing 80g each.  

So on this dish are almost 5.5 portions.  

You should also vary the colours you eat, I'm missing red and purple here, a squirt of tomato ketchup and a few slices of beetroot would have solved that if I had any beetroot.  It's no big deal because I've read that as long as you balance things out over a few days everything should be fine.  

But I'll not dash out to buy anything purple just yet!!

Nothing is wasted either ... all the peelings from yesterdays vegetables were washed, patted a bit dry and then popped into a bag in the freezer.  Along with my spinach stalks and my baby leeks I now have the makings of my final weeks pot of soup.

Just ten days left of this Challenge, it's looking hopeful for me being able to finish.  I have all the foods in the cupboard, fridge and freezer and the grand total of £4.28.

What would YOU buy with the remaining £4.28?

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Day Seventeen - Meals

Breakfast - Porridge

Mid morning my final glass of orange juice. (1)

I wasn't hungry at lunchtime so I just had my final portion of peach slices.  (1)

I was hungry at tea-time so I used my last three potatoes, my last two carrots, my last little bits of celery and two of my last three onions. 

You could call it a last supper ... but I'll just call it a pan of Vegetable Stew  ;-)

It was very tasty, and even after sharing a dish with Alan ...  (2)

... there were leftovers.

I also ate my last two slices of my original loaf of bread with my soup, so there's just the crust left from that now, which I think is destined to become breadcrumbs.

And of course I have plans for both the vegetables and the stock.

But just 4 of my 5 a day managed.

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Day Seventeen - Shopping

I'm back, but even though I've been away I've still had my Challenge head on, deciding what to buy and what I really needed to keep myself on track and help myself feel better about what I'm eating.

With this in mind I decided to 'splash out' an extra 30p on a loaf more like my usual favourite seeded type, so I chose a Tesco own brand multigrain loaf for 85p instead of the value 55p loaf I bought last time.

I also got four bananas off the market while I was away, so I could freeze them once they had ripened a bit more ready to make into a morning smoothie with the apples I also bought from Tesco as shown above.  I figured that along with the homegrown spinach that was one of this week's choices, I would be getting at least three of my five a day into to me first thing in the morning, making it less of a struggle later with the foods that I have got left.

I also splashed out another 35p on these reduced price baking potatoes from Booths when I was in there, everywhere I go I have my eyes scanning for yellow stickers ... perhaps that could be another Challenge further down the line!!

So a total of £2.33 spent this week ...

... leaving me with just £4.28 to see out the final eleven days of the Challenge.

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I've Gone Again

Sorry I've had to vanish again.  The Challenge will continue as soon as I get back.

 In the meantime I leave you with a photo of two of my most used items during this last few weeks.  My scales and my spatula.  I've had this green spatula for years and I can honestly say it's the best thing for anyone who wants to make sure that every last little bit of food or juice is scraped out of every pan or bowl.  It must have paid for itself a hundred times over.

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Day Sixteen - Meals

Breakfast - Baked beans on toast, the last of my last tin of beans.  (1)

For lunch I fancied something a bit salady.  So I fished a couple of the apple slices out of my 'trays of apples waiting to be crumbles' in the freezer, chopped up a bit of celery and peeled off a couple of the Iceberg lettuce leaves.

Then I added a squirt of  mayonnaise and stirred the celery and thawing apple pieces together.  The plan had been to wrap the poor man's Waldorf Salad in the lettuce leaves and eat it like a wrap, but because they were so close to the heart of the lettuce there was just no peeling them off as a whole leaf, so I added the pieces to the dish instead.  (1)

It wasn't overly tasty but it was nice and fresh and crunchy.  I don't like the cheap mayonnaise very much ... it's definitely not a keeper!

Mid afternoon I had a glass of orange juice.  (1)

Then my tea was the roasted tomatoes, onion and celery that I posted about earlier.  (1)

5 a day - sorted.

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Day Sixteen - Three From Home

For once this week's three from the tunnel aren't all from the tunnels ... I thought as a one off I would include half a dozen of our eggs, so two things from the polytunnel and half a dozen eggs from the hen-house.

  I don't eat many eggs these days, just the odd one now and again, but I thought six eggs over the remaining two weeks of the Challenge would be good to have in.

I weighed out the spinach stalks and then bagged them and put them into the freezer, they will be a welcome nutritional addition to a pot of soup.

The spinach leaves were also washed and then spun dry before being weighed, and then they were wrapped in kitchen paper and bagged.  At the back of my mind was maybe buying a couple of apples and bananas and having a breakfast or mid-morning Nutriblast to try and improve my veg and fruit intake.

The tomatoes from the polytunnel needed using straight away as some of them were getting a touch squishy, so they were chopped, weighed ...

... added to some celery ...

... and some chopped onion ...

... and roasted in the top oven of the Aga for forty or so minutes.  Then they joined some brown rice to become my tea, you can't get much fresher than that can you.

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