The Food Cupboard Challenge, Austerity August ... and Re-registering my Ration Card

 

It's the first of August, my gosh how quickly the months are passing by at the moment and it doesn't even feel like Summer.  I've been sleeping under my summer-weight duvet but with an added quilt on top, it's the only way to stay warm.  I've spent most evenings watching television wearing my fleecy jacket for warmth and days dashing out between showers to pick what vegetables are still growing to add to my meals. 

And talking about food, at the top is this months photo of the top part of the food cupboard.

Last month it looked like this.

Suddenly there are proper gaps appearing, helped a little bit by me taking a jar of jam and a tin of lentils to the flat ... not to be eaten together I hasten to add.

I decided that it was now time to look at what I have in the lower cupboard and start to include these things more in the day to day eating to go alongside the freezer stash.

And the reason for this is that I have decided on an 'Austerity August'.

I am determined to spend no more than £10 each week on food, and with that I will get any absolute essentials that I need while I work my way through the foods that I already have.

The fridge is sparse ...

... very sparse!!

After my thoughts and post on retirement the other day, and then sitting and thinking about all the Challenges I have set myself both this year and in previous years, I've come to the conclusion that they were all leading me to this point.  I love that in every single Challenge I have ever done I have learnt something new, either about myself, about how to do things or how to change things going forward.

So, I am giving myself just over eighteen months to get myself to a position whereby I can retire a year early and have enough in my savings account to still be able to draw down a similar amount as though I was earning wages.

When I put together my recent findings about ultra processed foods, my desire to live cheaply and simply, my food cupboard challenge whereby I have been eating down the excessive stores that I had built up, and then thought about my previous limited times living on the rationing amounts available in the UK during WWII, when food was limited and expensive but mostly natural ... it was almost as those had been practice runs.

So I think I am going to go back on rations, and I'm not going to mess about.  

I will have Austerity August to get me in the right financial mindset and start my bank account feeling a bit healthier and then I will go straight back to basics, paying with cash, buying and eating simple foods in the WWII quantities that made us healthy as a nation ... and see what it can do for me.

I guess it's time to register my Ration Card then.

Sue xx

Tiny Garlic Breads and Tiny Jars

 

I had some of these in the freezer last week and decided to eat them over a couple of days.  

One is supposed to be a serving size ... but one little garlic bread really, they are diddy!!  I like at least two any time I have them

The first day I had them with some pesto spaghetti, Tenderstem broccoli  and peas.

The next lunchtime I decided to turn them into two tiny pizzas, gosh they were good this way. 

INGREDIENTS: Fortified Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (16%), Garlic (4%), Flat Leaf Parsley, White Wine Vinegar, Rapeseed Oil, Salt, Grape Must, Yeast, Black Pepper.

The ingredients for the little garlic breads are relatively good too, although I don't understand why there is 'Grape Must' in them.  😕

This photo shows the Basil Pesto that I was using up from the food cupboard and it highlighted to me why it's been taking me so long to work my way through everything, this tiny little jar lasted me for four different meals.  

First use on the spaghetti and then on these miniscule pizzas.

A couple of days later it was used as big blobs dotted all through a cheese, onion and tomato quiche.

 I love using it this way as it adds a real depth of flavour to the whole quiche, it works well dotted onto a pizza too, whether it be a homemade one or a store bought one and it's something that I do regularly.

And finally I finished it off on another bowl of penne pasta, which I don't seem to have taken a photo of.  Four days to get one little jar out of my cupboard.  It will be Christmas before my cupboard is empty at this rate!!

Sue xx

Food Cupboard, Challenge 2023 ... and Tomatoes

 

I was asked the other day how the main Challenge for this year is going.  Is the food cupboard emptying nicely?  Well to be honest it's not emptying much at all, it's rejigging continually and I've not really been giving it my best effort to streamline things much.

I must do better!!

The top photo is how it looks this morning ...

... and this is how it looked earlier in January before I re-jigged the foods into more date friendly order and moved the large jars to the bottom cupboard.

I need to go back to menu planning, why do I let this slip so frequently when I really like doing it and love the ease it brings to meal times.  I really must do better. 😏

I think for next week I will make a concentrated effort to pick something from the food cupboard as the basis for each meal.  The fridge is a pretty sparse place at the moment so I can just add what is left in there to whatever meals I decide to make.  I also need to stop shopping when I really don't need anything, my Challenge money has almost run out, and at the end of this month I will work out what, if anything, I have left.

It would be nice to make it at least halfway through the year on the cash that I started out with in January.

Talking about the fridge, look what I almost lost out on thanks to my £3.50 week.  Even after I finished eating from my £3.50 shopping total I completely forgot that these tomatoes were languishing in the salad drawer.  Luckily even though they are over a month 'out of date' they are in lovely condition.

So I enjoyed two of them on toast for my breakfast this morning with a couple of slices of onion and some garlic granules.  Very tasty. 

Do you menu plan ... and more importantly do you actually manage to keep it up all the time?

Perhaps I should do Menu Plan Monday on here every week and try and keep myself on track.

Sue xx

Shopping, Pizza Dough and a Question

 

This weekends purchases:  Eggs £2.90 and pizza dough 99p from Aldi.

Alan went shopping and asked me if I wanted anything and as the dogs had worked their way through all my eggs I asked for the eggs.  Later on I had to go out myself and I was tempted by the Pizza Dough.

I'm so easily tempted.

But in my defence I had a plan for all the fridge vegetables yesterday,  and I thought that once I had chopped and cooked everything a nice simple tea with some of the rewards of my labours would be just the ticket for a Sunday evening.  And it really was.

The fridge drawer before I began chopping.

The results of the chopping.

And here is all that is currently left in the vegetable drawer.  I thought it best not to cut up all the onions, so I saved the best of the red ones to be eaten raw or in dishes this week.  I was supposed to save one of the carrots so that I could make some coleslaw with the heart of the lettuce that I have left, but oops I sliced and froze all but two of them.

The spare two were cut in half and put in a tray with oil, cumin and garlic granules to have as a little treat.

They were not pretty to look at after half an hour in the oven ... oh, but they tasted like heaven.  The splodges on the top are one of the squeezed out garlic cloves that I roasted with the other vegetables.

And of course these days it is almost compulsory to fill every gap in the oven if you are putting it on for half an hour, and the carrot tray filled the last gap nicely.  😊

Once cooled the container of vegetables went into the fridge for use all through this week.   They were smelling glorious with seven of the eight roasted garlic cloves squeezed in and stirred through.

I have been setting myself a little side-challenge which I nicknamed Stretching Food to see how much use I can get from various things with just a little extra thought.  Up to now I have done 1 tin of peaches, 2 tins of salmon and this week it is going to be the turn of my roasted vegetables.  

The first meal was using a handful of them on half of the pizza dough to have that nice easy tea that I promised myself.  I have to say that I'm not impressed with the ready made pizza dough, I would have been better using that sheet of ready rolled puff pastry that I bought last week, but I had forgotten all about that.  

 I will use the other half of the pizza dough in a different way I think  

How would you use it?

Sue xx