To achieve the scale of cooking needed to reach such a miserly goal I resorted to cooking vats of food and freezing it down into portions. The majority of these meals were vegetable, lentil, and potato curries of different flavours. Eggs and free bread (thanks do David's brother) also made notable appearances. As noted above, this was fine for around two weeks. However, even having cooked around five different meals, variety became a problem. Furthermore, I discovered that frozen then microwaved rice doesn't have a very nice texture. I started leaving the regime for take-away food more, and more often.
Because my life seems to be governed by waves of apathy and enthusiasm, I am once again considering an ascetic diet. This time I expect it will still be mostly made up of vegetables, lentils, potatoes, and rice. In fact, I still have a bunch of rice and lentils left over from the last endeavour. I'm not sure how to overcome the tedium of such a diet, but I have some ideas that I think will help.
- Salads (skeptical here, not cheap to make a decent tasting salad)
- Noodles
- Some meat, perhaps a roast chicken every week?
- Tofu/tempeh
- No frozen then reheated rice
- Try and fit in some fruit into the budget
I'll think more this conundrum through the week, before I go shopping at the markets for cheap fruit, vegetables, eggs, and cereal. I'll also have to think up some way of making cheap and tasty lunch, because that's the most likely time I'm going to ditch the rigour and grab a burger instead.
I currently eat a similar diet that's relatively unconstrained budget-wise.
ReplyDeleteI've got a couple of quality dal recipes if you're interested. In particular one that's heavy on spice, tomatoes, cloves and curry leaves that I really like. I find lentils are a bit dull without lots of flavour.
The other thing I'd suggest is soup. I'd be interested to hear what you come up with, anyway - I'm expanding my repertoire at the moment.
Lentils and rice for the win!
ReplyDeleteIn terms of salads have you considered growing your own salad and tomatoes? They're pretty straight-forward and that'll bring the cost of a simple lettuce + tomato + olive oil + vinegar salad way down.