2022 £1-a-day Food Challenge - Day #1

Yesterday was Day 1 of my little food challenge. Sadly, I don't seem to be able to access that website that generated those rather fun little library cards that I used before. So I will have to use continuous text. Apologies if that makes it a bit less clear to read.  Editorial update 15/5/22: Happily, I've now been able to get the library card generator app to work again so I've updated this with the format I used in 2017. 

Breakfast was, (and will continue to be) more or less the same as the breakfasts I had on the 2017 challenge. Porridge and a little home-bottled or preserved fruit. I've taken to drinking much more of my tea black though these days so it isn't such a shift to move to mint tea using herbs from the garden and that saves me some useful extra room within my £1-a-day budget.

Lunch  - I was out at lunchtime delivering some rather sumptuous chocolate brownies I'd been requested to make for some refreshments at a church event so I didn't actually get to eat lunch nor did I have time to make anything frugal enough to fit the bill beforehand so when I got back, I substituted a cup of homemade masala chai with frothy milk and a tiny sprinkle of ground cinnamon on top. 

I love masala chai, or spiced tea and often make a homemade version of what you can get in coffee shops. It is not a cheap make, generally because of the spices. Spices have always been some of the most expensive items in the world and, per gram, they still are so I had to make a scaled down version with far fewer spices and a rather lower grade variety of tea than I normally use. It needs some sugar just to bring out the flavour of the spices but it's used here as more of a spice itself than to deliver a lot of sweetness. Even though I have a sweet tooth, I find commercial masala chais in this country are often very over-sweetened. I never make mine that sweet as a rule.

What you can see on the plate and in the tea caddy in the pic is what I used ie

44g grated fresh ginger (from a loose piece from Sainsbury's 23p) 
5g crushed cassia bark (a cheaper version of cinnamon - East End from Ocado 5p)
½g cardamom (3 pods) - one of the most expensive spices in the world - the weight of one cardamom pod is said to be the origin of the measurement of carats for gold and diamonds (East End from Ocado 3p)
½g cloves (East End from Ocado 1p)
4g fennel seeds (East End from Ocado 3p)
1g star anise (East End from Ocado 1p)
21g soft brown sugar (Aldi 2p)
12g tea leaves (Sainsbury's Red Label Loose Tea 7p)
2 litres water (nil)

Total cost 45p. Makes approx 2 litres ie 6 portions of 250ml costing 7p each.

I boil up the spices on their own first and then add the sugar and tea leaves and leave to steep for an hour or so. I then strain the chai and store in bottles in the fridge where it keeps for about a week. The taste of this frugal version is not wonderful but OK; for the price anyway. I greatly prefer my usual recipe which is heavier on all the spices and uses a good quality Assam tea. I hadn't tried Sainsbury's Red Label Tea before and discovered that it's not for the fainthearted - it has quite a brutal flavour and a heck of a caffeine hit! In the absence of any other lunch, however, it was just fine.

Tea - my eating pattern has not fundamentally changed and, as in 2017, I need something to eat around 4.00pm in the afternoon so I have had to factor this in to my £1-a-day menus.

The scones are made from an old-fashioned recipe that was my great-grandmother's.

500g self-raising flour (Aldi 18p)
10g cream of tartar (Sainsburys 7p)
8g bicarbonate of soda (Ocado 2p)
30g granulated sugar (Sainsbury's 2p)
84g cold salted butter cubed (Marks & Spencer 500g pack 53p)
120g unstrained yoghurt, buttermilk or plain milk (I used homemade matsoni from Ocado 4pt bottle of whole milk 6p) 
105g whey / water (nil)

Total cost 88p. Makes 11 scones ie 8p each.

Of course, my great-grandmother made them entirely by hand but I whizz them in the food processor. Whizz the flour, cream of tartar, bicarbonate of soda and sugar together. Add the butter and whizz again briefly until the consistency of breadcrumbs. Tip into a bowl and chill, if you have time. Then mix to a dough with the yoghurt / buttermilk milk and whey or water. Pat out into a disc about an inch deep and cut out approx 11 scones with a 2½" cutter. 

Brush the tops with a tiny bit more milk and bake on a lined baking tray at 220℃ for about 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and freeze any you don't consume the same day. 

Supper - spiced yellow split pea soup and flatbread. I broke my own rule about not trying out new recipes on a food challenge but this spiced yellow split pea soup has turned out very well, I must say. The ingredients for 2 litres (ie 4 portions of 500g each) are as follows:

approx. 120g walking onions* and a couple of small leeks that hadn't gone woody from the garden (nil)

1 stick of celery (Aldi - 2p)

120g carrot (Aldi - 5p)

20g grated fresh ginger (Sainsbury's 10p)

2g toasted and ground cumin seeds (East End from Ocado 1p)

2g toasted and ground coriander seeds (East End from Ocado 1p)

5g turmeric (East End from Ocado 4p)

1 bay leaf from the garden (nil)

a grind or two of black pepper (nil)

200g yellow split peas (Sainsbury's 22p)

3 pts of homemade vegetable stock made from vegetable trimmings, herbs and 6g salt (nil)

8g Puglian olive oil (Aldi 6p)

a bit of parsley from the garden to go on top (nil)

*Walking onions are a bit like spring onions and are very easy to grow - they seed themselves by bending down their seedheads to the earth next to them and taking root there, hence their name. 

Total cost 51p. ie 12p per portion.

I cooked the vegetables and spices in the oil in the base of my pressure cooker to begin and then added the rest of the ingredients and pressure cooked everything for 12 minutes before fishing out the bay leaf and whizzing the rest up. It's delicious and I shall definitely be making it again. 

The flatbread is made using a simple white bread dough flavoured with fennel seed and topped with sesame seeds.

Ingredients:

1 tsp dried yeast (2g) (Dove's Farm from Ocado 2p)

500g strong white bread flour (Ocado 35p)

8g Puglian olive oil (Aldi 6p)

50g homemade matsoni (from Ocado 4pt bottle whole milk 2p)

300g whey (left over from yoghurt making nil)

1tsp salt (6g) (from 1.5kg Sainsbury's Cooking Salt - less than 1p therefore nil)

1 tsp (2g) ground fennel seed (East End from Ocado 1p)

½ one egg white (from Clarence Court eggs from Ocado 10p) - I freeze left over egg whites for glazing bread in little silicone baking cups. For this challenge I went further and beat some left over egg whites to loosen them a bit and then poured them into an ice cube tray to freeze. I decided only to defrost 2 cubes which amounted to just half an egg white and the quantity was perfect. Enough but with no waste at all. You can brush bread dough with cold water before sprinkling with seeds but I never find this satisfactory - the seeds always fall off and are wasted. Egg, either whole, or just the white, is best, if you want your seeds to stay in place and the extra protein is good too.

12g sesame seeds (Ocado 12p)

Total cost 68p.

Once the dough has proved, divide into eight pieces, roll out on a floured surface, brush with beaten egg white, sprinkle with sesame seeds and bake on lined baking trays at 220℃ for 10-12 minutes. Makes 8 flatbreads costing 8p each.

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