Day 8 - weekend so relaxing a bit

Thank you for comments....you're probably right about the salt content of the cappucino sachets, Snoskred.  But we don't have many manufactured foods and I don't use much salt in cooking, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Yesterday, Day 7, we had a tub of previously-made soup out of the freezer for lunch, it was beef and vegetable, I'd made a huge pan of it a few weeks back and froze it in portions, there are still 2 tubs left.  It's delicious, once it's all used up I'll be making more.  I made it using just 200g of minced beef, a whole 1kg pack of frozen diced mixed veg, a couple of leftover rashers of smoked bacon, a large onion, couple of big handfuls of pearl barley.  For the stock I used 2 beef cubes, a squirt of tomato puree and heaped tsp Marmite.  Husband had a slice of homemade bread with his.  Dinner was cod baked in a foil parcel with lemon, dill and a splash of olive oil, on a bed of a little wholewheat pasta (half the portion size we'd normally have) topped with green beans, peas and sweetcorn.  

As it's Saturday we're not being so strict.  Breakfast was a slice of homemade bread toast with Marmite and sliced Cheddar.  For lunch we had bubble and squeak using up some leftover veg, with a fried egg.  For dinner tonight we're having smoked haddock fishcakes with oven baked sweet potato chips and homemade mushy peas....a bit carby but hey ho.  I've also made an apple crumble, with the last few useable apples from our disappointing crop this year - we had quite a few but they just didn't store well at all, going yellow and soft very quickly unlike previous years, I think it's because of all the rain we had.  I've put cinnamon in with the apples, the crumble mix is made with brown flour, oats and chopped walnuts, with just a little demerara sugar.  The crumble will do us for today and tomorrow, topped with Elmlea.

We were running low on milk so had to buy a couple of cartons at £1.09 each yesterday.  But that's all we bought!

So the running total on Day 8 is £8.54, which I'm pretty pleased about.

Day 6 - Getting on with new diet

A couple of you commented that I'm doing so well with a very small spend....the reason we're doing so well though is that we had very full cupboards, fridge and freezer to start with.  It'll be more challenging as time goes on and more food gets used up though.  I'm doing this as an experiment, to see how long we can go before we really need to go shopping again, and to get me out of the habit of going shopping every few days and ending up buying things we don't strictly need.

The barley and roasted veg salad was really yummy, we're having it again today for lunch, with some added vinaigrette dressing as I think it needs a bit more sharpness.  Husband will have a tin of fish, probably mackerel, with his, I'll add some olives and nuts to mine.

Dinner tonight will be a couple of pre-made things out of the freezer that need using up, as I still want to make a bit of space in there.  Husband's having a chicken curry, I'll have some leftover veggie lasagne, there's a small portion of it.  Both have been in the freezer for several months, so it's about time they got used.  We'll have them with some frozen veg.

I've decided that we'll eat a very healthy low fat diet Mon-Fri, then relax it a bit on Saturdays and Sundays....that way we won't feel deprived and go off the rails if we know we can perhaps have something a bit naughty at the weekends.  It will be strictly Sat/Sun only, no extending it to a long weekend including Fridays and Mondays!

I'm also cutting down on my coffee consumption - I drink those cappucino sachets, they are unsweetened, allegedly, but do contain some glucose and fat, so not strictly unsweetened.  I did start off with 2 a day but it's crept up to 3 for the last few weeks.  I'm not going to cut them out completely as I do really like them, but will go back down to 2 and sometimes just 1, drinking more redbush or herbal teas instead, which obviously I have without milk.  I've found a herbal tea I really like, Sainsburys Echinacea and Rosehip, it's delicious - most of them, whatever flavour, smell delicious and taste disgusting.  Or maybe that's just me lol.

Didn't go out yesterday, hence no spending, so the running total of £6.36 remains the same for Day 6.

Day 5 and a new diet

The salmon crustless quiche was lovely, there's half left for lunch today.  I did a small jacket spud each and homemade coleslaw to go with it.

Have just been told by the GP that my worsening NAFLD is in danger of escalating to fibrosis or even cirrhosis if I don't lose weight, well there's an incentive!  Googled for fatty liver diet advice, which is basically low fat, moderate carbs and protein, plenty of veg and fruit (not so much fruit for me because of the sugar content), no sweet things (I rarely do anyway) and no baked goods.  Lean protein such as chicken, turkey, lean pork and fish, or legumes, nuts and eggs.  

Luckily, we have all the above in, it's now a case of proper planning of healthy meals (so I won't be doing the slow cooker savoury mince and dumplings we were going to have tomorrow!).

For lunch today we'll be having the other half of the salmon quiche with a barley salad, I've just cooked the barley and roasted some veggies to stir through it with a vinaigrette dressing.  Dinner tonight will be roasted chicken thighs (minus the skin!) with the rest of the roasted veggies and Brussels sprouts.

Day 5 - nothing spent.  Running total £6.36  

Day 4, using up leftovers

Husband cooked the dinner again (2 days running!), fried liver & bacon with onions for him, mash, cabbage and peas, and gravy.  It was all lovely.  Loads of veg left over, so that's gone in the freezer for bubble and squeak at a later date.  I chopped up the last of the roast lamb from Sunday and froze that too, it'll be added to the B&S veggies in due course.

Today it'll be porridge for breakfast, with some of the frozen fruit.  Lunch will be leftovers from yesterday's lunch, the remainder of the tuna mayo for me, I'll have it with crispbreads, husband will probably have a sandwich.  

For dinner tonight I'm going to make a crustless salmon quiche, using a tin of salmon, onion and sweetcorn.  I have some feta cheese to use up so that'll go in too.  We'll have it with a jacket potato and homemade coleslaw.

Day 4 - nothing spent.  Running total £6.36

Day 3 and roast lamb cooked for me

Day 3 went alright, no spending as we didn't go in any food shops. 

Breakfast was a sausage bap - husband's homemade quick sourdough seeded roll, with a couple of leftover cooked sausages out of the freezer.  I had brown sauce in mine....lovely.  

Lunch was a bowl of beef and vegetable soup, homemade and frozen, there are several more pots of it in the freezer.

Husband cooked the roast for dinner....a small lamb shoulder joint, he did roast potatoes, cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli and even made Yorkshires, under my direction.  They rose beautifully and it was all blimmin gorgeous, even more so for having it cooked for me.  He doesn't do a lot of cooking, but is good at roasts (perhaps we ought to have more of them!).

Having said that, he's cooking dinner again this evening - he volunteered, and who am I to say no?!

Breakfast was cereal, lunch will be a tuna mayo and tomato sandwich.  Dinner is going to be fried liver and bacon, husband will do fried onions for himself separately (they don't agree with me).  We'll have it with mash, cabbage, carrots and peas.  

We'll have something fishy and lighter tomorrow.

Day 3 - nothing spent.  Running total £6.36

Day 2 - oops

Today we went to buy our Christmas meat from Tesco, they had good value gammons, beef and a boneless pork leg crackling joint on offer (thank you for the heads up, WendyT) at just £2.50, half price.  So 2 pork joints, a gammon and a small beef joint are now in the freezer, following some reorganisation to squash everything in.  I'm not including any of this meat in my No Shopping challenge, as it's for Christmas and new year.

However....whilst in there I also managed to buy a few other things (see, this is why I want to NOT go shopping - it's too easy to buy stuff if you do!).  I got another dozen eggs, a Savoy cabbage, some blue Stilton and 2 bars of chocolate, spending £6.36 on those few things.  Ok, so I've used quite a lot of eggs this past week and would probably have run out of them very soon, and I wanted the Stilton to add flavour to a few veggie and pea & ham soups I'm planning to make.  Another green veg will be useful, plus I want to make coleslaw for tonight's tea.  And the chocolate is not to eat as a bar, both bars have been put in the baking cupboard for when I want to bake something chocolatey.  So nothing frivolous or unnecessary, although I dare say I could have managed without them, well, except for the eggs.  Bad me.  That's it though, I'm not planning on going shopping again for at least a fortnight and hopefully longer.

We had one of my homemade sausage rolls each with cheesy beans for lunch.  For dinner tonight we're having sandwich steaks in husband's homemade quick sourdough mixed grain rolls, with sweet potato fries topped with grated cheese and the homemade coleslaw, I'll mix a spoonful of grainy mustard into the mayo.

Day 2 - Total spent on No Shopping challenge: £6.36.

Day 1 of a no shop challenge

I'm doing a kind of experiment to see how long we can survive on our present food stocks before having to go shopping again....we want to save money for next year and the best way to do that is not to go shopping!  We have full cupboards, fridges and freezers (a tall fridge freezer in the kitchen, tall larder freezer and under counter spare fridge in the utility room), so in theory if using up what we already have, we shouldn't have to go shopping for 2 or 3 weeks, or even longer.  We'll probably run out of fresh green veg fairly quickly, but have plenty of other fresh veg (onions, leeks, potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash) and loads of frozen, plus tins of beans, other pulses, sweetcorn, tomatoes etc, and some dried pulses, peas and beans.  We have several cartons of milk in the freezer and lots of cheese and butter, but once the dairy stuff runs out we will have to go shopping then.  

The idea is to use up what we have without resorting to going out and buying anything....if I run out of something I'll either improvise or go without, there's sure to be an alternative.  It might mean some 'interesting' meals further down the line!

I need to use up some things in the freezers first, as I need to make space for some meat joints for Christmas and New Year.  I'm using Mysupermarket to keep an eye on the cost of meat joints, once they're a good price then we will be going out to buy them, but only the meat.  We'll probably get a large gammon, leg of pork and possibly a beef joint, we rarely have turkey as we're not really fond of it.  I'd like to buy the meat from a local butcher, but can't afford to.

Having said I need to make space, I've made sausage rolls to freeze today.  About 2 dozen small ones, and 4 large ones for us to have for lunches a couple of times.  I also made a large veggie pasty, using some leftover lentil & cheese mixture I made for something else.

The sausage rolls were made using a pack of Cumberland sausages.  I deskinned them then mixed the meat with some chutney, a big squirt of tomato puree and some grated Cheddar.

So today is the first day of no shopping or spending on food.