I hate Sundays. Last night wasn’t the first time I’d been stuck hungry at 6pm with only the “Express” and “Local” shops open. Even worse, these little stores don’t tend to stock the kind of student food I’m looking for. They’re fine if you want pot noodle. But if you’re cooking from scratch you’re stuck with popular middle range products.

The best I could get my hands on were a couple of pork chops for £2.19. They were pretty big but had a bit of fat on them. They would have to do. I thought pork chops, apple sauce and mash would be possible. I had half a savoy cabbage left too. 

For some reason I hadn’t noticed that, since moving out of my last house, I had no potato masher and no potato peeler. The trials of living in halls! So the mash had to be replaced with rice.

The breakdown should have gone like this:

With rice it turned out a little bit cheaper. Some of the cream was replaced with milk and butter. This was the result. Again i was having issues with my camera- but nevermind. You can just about see it.

I hadn’t wanted to spend this much at this stage- but the Sunday trading laws had made frugality impossible. Still, at approximately £1.70 per portion it wasn’t the end of the world. It was fairly good. Mash would have been better but I couldn’t really nip out and buy equipment on a Sunday. Recipes will follow for all of these eventually. 

Well, I’m a bit over half way through the experiment so I thought this would be a good time for a progress check. The first post is here for those of you who don’t know what i’m talking about.

There are two reasons for the date discrepancies. On Thursday I fell asleep really early without eating and I was away over the weekend so got a lot of food for free. Even though scrounging is considered a typical student activity, I thought it wouldn’t really be fair to include these days in my budget. 

The weekly food bill so far stands at £14.06. That includes all the breakfast and lunch items i mentioned from the first day, my dinner costs, two large bottles of diet coke and 3 packs of crisps from the college vending machine. I believe that leaves me with another 3 days worth of dinner to produce plus sandwich fillings for the rest of the week. I think I can still do this in under £20!

To be honest, this has almost been too easy. Lunch has been boring but I tend to just eat over work anyway. Evening meals haven’t been much of a problem, except when I’ve been to Tesco and found they’ve shut half it down for refurbishment .

I’m not sure where the BBC’s average budget of £29 per week came from. What are these students eating? Venison? I guess they are like the guys I lived with in my first degree and live off sirloin steak.

But it’s these things here that really scare me. How do you manage to make 2 portions of pasta, sausage, onion and soup cost that much?! I can’t see how it could be more than £2.50 unless you buy fresh pasta, shallots and wild boar sausages! And it doesn’t look that healthy to me either.

When I started out on this experiment I really thought it would be hard. With all my swanning around at the farmers’ markets, I was spending about £60 on food per week.  But it turns out that there are actually really nice, healthy things you can eat for around £1.50 per meal. I’ve still got some more to try before the week is up.  

Liver is one of the cheapest forms of meat protein you can buy. Unfortunately lots of people really can’t stand it. I guess this is because, when it is overcooked, it is dry and horrible!   On the other hand, lightly cooked liver has a very nice texture and works wonderfully with tomatoes and red wine. Each time i have had it cooked ‘rare’ like this, it has been really tasty.  It makes an incredibly cheap and healthy main meal.

For yesterday’s dinner, I cut lamb liver into small pieces which I flash fried. I then served them on top of tagliatelle tossed with a sauce made from tomato, onion, garlic and herbs. I added some pan-fried diced courgette too. At roughly £1.10 per portion, it is difficult to get a cheaper more healthy balanced meal.

Here is the breakdown for two portions.

To be honest, I was being extravagant when I added the courgette. Leaving it out would make each portion cost less than a pound. Also, if you have any red wine going spare, you could add it to the sauce to make it even better. Here is the full recipe.

Well, this has brought my average spending down quite a bit! Hopefully I’ll find more offal recipes!

Yes I am being serious. It’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

When I noticed that 2 duck legs from Tesco cost a mere £2.15, I thought I had to fit them into the experiment. The only problem is that duck is often cooked with red wine, port or expensive fruits like cherries and blackcurrants. I needed to think up a recipe that used less expensive accompaniments. In the end I produced this. 

That is a duck leg slow cooked in honey and ginger sauce served with rice boiled in vegetable stock and seasoned savoy cabbage. Only the cabbage was on special offer and the whole thing came to £1.63 per portion. I reduced costs by using powdered ginger. It is a useful storecupboard item if you like cooking. A 47p pot from Tesco would probably last you about a year! 

Ok, the portions aren’t as big as when I made the meatballs, but it was a decent size for an evening meal. It is potentially a good dish for a budget dinner party or if you are out to impress someone.

I cooked for two again and halved the cost but it is easy to just halve the quantities for this recipe. Here is the breakdown.

I guess no one expects duck to be cheap! It is true that duck breasts cost about £15 per kilo but the legs are not very popular. This is because they need to be cooked slowly for a long time or they end up really tough. It seems a bit silly to me because you can leave them in the oven unattended while you go down the pub. Just make sure your flatmates know what is going on! In a way these cheap cuts demand less of your time than the more popular ones, which need careful attention if they are to be cooked to your liking.

The dish is simple to make too. The full recipe is here. In hindsight, I think that instead of using vegetable stock to cook the rice, it would have been a good idea to add some lemon zest and juice. It would make the dish about 10p more expensive overall. Let me know if you try it and it works!

Yesterday evening I attended a drinks party at the Carlton Club. It was good fun and had some interesting American themed canapes like little pastry cups with Caesar salad and mini hot dogs. Since I knew it would finish rather late and I’m not too keen on walking home on my own at night, I’d arranged to stay in Hammersmith and make my experiment meal for two.

The kitchen in this flat certainly lives up to the student cliche. No washing up had been done in weeks and the floor was slippery with grease. You’d need a hammer and chisel to find out what colour the hob was. Nevertheless, I set about making that evening’s meal.

The idea was simple. I made meatballs from beef mince, garlic, onion and random dried herbs and spices. I cooked them in a tomato based sauce with aubergine, chilli, more garlic and herbs and lamb stock. I think using lamb stock is a nice cheat to make beef or turkey mince based meals taste richer. I intended to use turkey or pork mince for this, but there didn’t seem to be any available.

And now for the cost of the meal. This made too much for two people!

If you include the eggs (which I bought yesterday), it is £3.20 so £1.60 per large portion- and when I say large I mean too much for a hungry 16 stone man! The meatballs were really nice and soft! I’ve had trouble with them being dry before but I think the slightly fatty beef mince helped this. The aubergines were lovely with the tomato, herbs and lamb stock.

This is a very temperamental camera. All the photos has the weird blurring to the left. But the important thing to notice is how much food there is! Those were big plates too! See the comparison with the knife and fork.

There is a definite advantage to cooking for several people and splitting the cost. If I was doing this experiment on my own, I couldn’t buy an aubergine! I wouldn’t want to eat it four days in a week and, if I left it longer, it would go off.  By cooking for two, I used half my aubergine. I’ll probably do this again to get rid of the rest. 

I’ve not been specific about the herbs and spices because I used things that were lying around. Cayenne pepper went in with a little chilli and oregano. You can improvise with the things you have in your kitchen.  A couple of squares of dark chocolate would be nice with the chilli. Here’s a basic recipe.

So after splitting the cost of the food, my total so far has risen by £1.45 to £8.76. I’m still on target …for now… but I’m beginning to struggle for ideas. I think it might be time to try out some offal.

For those of you that didn’t see, it all started here.

For the first time I’m on a food budget. It felt a bit strange walking through Tesco and not being able to pick up everything I wanted. In the past I might have been described as frivolous. If I couldn’t find what I wanted easily, I’d grab the organic version, just because it would save time. Not this week. This week I’m hanging around the bargain bin and calculating cost per portion.

Last night I bought these perishable foods which will go on the shopping bill regardless of whether I finish them.

So that is breakfast covered. I got 4 tins of tuna and some mayonnaise and half a cucumber to go with it. That, in my experience, will cover four lunches at least and came to £2.12.  I was left with sorting out that evening’s dinner.

This time I thought I’d take advantage of special offers. I won’t do this regularly as I’d like to put up recipies for things that are always cheap. But I guess it is an important point that you can live quite well off a bargain bin. I found 2 large portions of  nice undyed smoked haddock for £1.77, so I made smoked haddock florentine with new potatoes. Sounds extravagant, but it still costs less than £2.

This cheap version uses frozen leaf spinach. I didn’t get value eggs, but you could knock 5p off the price by doing that. I also was careful with the cheese sauce, making only just enough to go with the meal. Again, if you want to replace store own brand cheddar with “value white cheese” it wouldn’t be a huge problem.

This time no lasagne was involved. It was just haddock on top of spinach topped with an egg, covered with cheese sauce and served with a side of potatoes. I already had some of the ingredients covered so it is just a case of adding on the cost of the haddock (90p), spinach (12p), potatoes(22p), cheese (25p) and flour(5p).The rest of the haddock has gone in the freezer.

Including the things I already bought, I think dinner itself came to about £1.80.  I’m afraid it wasn’t the most photogenic thing in the world but it contained a lot of food and is very healthy so long as you don’t go overboard with the cheese sauce.

Not bad for under £2, is it? The running shopping bill total is £7.31. I’ll be cutting down from now so hopefully, going on what I had before, 6 more dinners should be about £9. Thet leaves me about £3.50 to cover any other lunch items and snacks. A little bit tight but not impossible I think.

After nearly three years of living in and around the Goldhawk Road, I have now uprooted and moved all the way to Fulham. It might only be a few miles but now I’m no longer withing walking distance of what used to be my favourite restaurants. It was a difficult step to make. No more take aways from the Ajanta or the Damera for me.

Of course, you can’t walk very far in any area of London without finding an enormous selection of eateries. I’ve found  myself near an interesting looking Tapas bar, one of the Jim Thompson Oriental restaurants and an Indian called “Chutney Mary”.

Going in the other direction, I found more delights. A new development called “Imperial Wharf” appeared by Chelsea Harbour earlier this year and brought with it a selection of very stylish riverside restaurants. Last night I gave one of them a try.

Memsaab was quite an experience. Full review here. In short the restaurant was beautiful, the menu was exciting and original and the service was excellent. It has only been open for five months and at the moment is quiet as it is a little bit out of the way. However, when the Wharf development is complete, this place will be buzzing. I’d recommend you give it a try soon before it gets to the stage where you need to book weeks in advance. 

Now that I’m (nearly) settled in my student halls for the summer, I can start the student budget experiment properly. For added authenticity I currently have nothing in the fridge, no plates and no cutlery. However I do have about £150 worth of alcohol. Everything else apart from pots and pans will be bought on the way home from a 24 hr Tesco.   

I have no idea what to do so it looks like the bargain bin will be my main source of inspiration. Fingers crossed ….

During the last week I’ve been trying as hard as I can to get through everything in my freezer in preparation for moving out. I’ve done pretty well - by last night all that was left was a bad of frozen sweetcorn and an octopus. The sweetcorn can go - no one can eat that much in three days -  but I thought it would be a shame to waste the octopus.

The problem was I’d not had much luck with octopus before. This one was one of a pair. I’d had the other back in February and it was something of a disaster. I tried to tempura batter it but the batter fell off and sweet chilli sauce didn’t really work with it. I’d expected it to taste like squid but it is much more meaty!

I needed inspiration on how to cook it. Fortunately, Gaynor on the BBC food boards came to my rescue with a great idea of simmering the octopus in red wine, tomato, garlic, chilli  and cognac.

It tasted very good indeed ,although I overdid the chilli a bit. But the best thing about this is, you can’t see it is octopus.

Not a tentacle in sight. This is the way to introduce squeamish eaters to new things! Hide iit in a richly coloured sauce!  You could probably convince them it was chicken until they’d taken a couple of bites.  I’m sure most red meat eaters would like the flavour. I thought about trying this on my “no fins or wings” housemate but he’d already seen me cutting its legs off. I don’t think he was too impressed. Never mind, I’ll try it another time!

It looks like the full student experiment will have to go on hold for a week or so. This is because I’m moving on Saturday and I still have a freezer full of food to get through. Besides, my new surroundings in student halls will make the experiment feel all the more appropriate.

In the mean time I thought I’d try out one of my ideas to give you  taste of what is to come. I bring you my “students’ turkey and leek pie”.

I was a bit too stingy with the pastry so it leaked at the sides little. Apart from that, it worked and was really very nice.

The important question, of course, is “how much did it cost?” The breakdown goes like this (sorry about the bad formatting - I’ll sort it out later).

• 570g Tesco diced turkey thigh 1.69
• 2 leeks (loose from Tesco) 0.58
• 150g Tesco closed cup mushrooms 0.35
• 300ml Tesco semi skimmed milk 0.13
• salt and pepper (maximum price) 0.05
• approx 170g Saxby’s puff pastry 0.26
• 1 cube oxo chicken stock 0.08
• flour and oil (maximum price) 0.05
• Total  £2.99  (approx £1.50 per massive portion)

That makes enough to serve two very hungry people or possibly three normal people. Almost 600g of meat went into that along with two leeks. The pie would make a balanced meal in itself, but I served it with a side of sweetcorn. I estimate that this added about 5p per portion.

Admittedly it isn’t much to look at but it was genuinely very nice and disturbingly healthy. So much for pasta with tomato sauce!

Here is the student turkey and leek pie recipe.

Look! I made a bad, almost topical pun! I bet James is proud of me now.

Last night, whilst browsing in Sainsbury’s, I found and bought a veal escalope for my dinner. When I got home Tanya, who is my housemate’s girlfriend and a very keen cook, enquired what I was making that evening. When I gave my answer she raised her eyebrows slightly. Like a lot of people she has been brought up to believe that veal is an unethical meat.

I’m not going to go into what I think about veal production. However I’m really bothered by the lack of decent unbiased information about this. I searched for an hour or so on the internet and I couldn’t find a single article that wasn’t a propaganda-laden emotive load of rubbish.

How are we supposed to know what is really going on when most of the articles are calling for a worldwide ban on meat and the others  are claiming that the animals are gleefully running into the slaughterhouses of their own free will? It is very frustrating.

Anyhow, I made a veal escalope with a parmesan and sage crust. It was very tasty. Tanya thought so too. She even helped me flatten the escalope. It is nice to have someone around who is at least open minded about trying new things. Shame the pictures didn’t come out this time.