£7 challenge - day two

I never thought I would be so pleased to see a swede and a parsnip. Today we spent a further £1.35 on a loaf of bread (35p), 6 oranges (50p) and a 'stew vegetable pack' consisting of 3 carrots, a swede and a parsnip, for the amazing price of 50p. And we still have £1.15 left of our £14 - although this is in reserve for more milk.

One of the things that was clear as I made my first cup of coffee of the day, to go with my porridge, was that we had used too much milk and too much coffee yesterday - so now I am rationing my coffee intake to the two cups that go with breakfast, and maybe one more before lunch.

As I went for a 7 mile run today, which apparently used almost 800 kC, I had an extra bowl of porridge and one piece of toast with peanut butter, straight after my run. Then two more slices of toast and peanut butter and a whole banana for lunch - that's the end of the week's bananas. And it's only Monday.

This evening's meal was a vegetable and bean curry with rice. We have plenty of rice and now a few more vegetables, so we could include 1/2 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1/4 of the swede, 1/3 parsnip, a whole carrot, a tin of kidney beans, 9g tomato puree, 30ml olive oil, 15g curry powder with 240g of rice (uncooked). No stock cube required as we made vegetable stock from the vegetable peelings - the stock cube is being saved for a potential vegetable soup later in the week.

With the extra loaf of bread we can look forward to a slice of toast before bedtime.

The bread was reduced (from 69p to 35p) because it had to be sold by today, and as we have a freezer we can put it in there, and only take out slices as and when we need them. Of course without a freezer we would not be able to make the most of such deals, and without a fridge we would be even worse off in terms of not being able to store food. Of course most of those who are living off $1 or $2 a day, every day, for real, don't have the luxury of fridges and freezers - making their lives even harder. We really do have so much to be thankful for.

The extra porridge and bread and the rice have boosted the amount of food we were able to eat today.

Calories............1800kC...(2500)..72% (54% if run included)
Protein..............52g..........(55)......95%
Carbohydrates.....280g.........(300)...93%
Fat....................55g...........(95)....58%
Fibre.................31g...........(25)....124%

Back to lentils tomorrow. Check back for some lessons that we're learning...