This week I am eating mostly

toast.

I have kept all my food receipts so far this month, and in the first two weeks my shopping has cost £275.  Zut alors.  I feel I should point out that this does include alcohol and soft drinks, which account for around £40-ish.  I feel I should also point out that I was not making any fast and furious attempt to shop terribly carefully - the exercise was to discover exactly what I am spending the shopping budget on. 

Still, this week I have drawn out the cash I have left from my personal earnings and my intention is to make that last - as - far - as - possible.  Payday is binocular-distance away at the moment, but I really would prefer not to dip into our joint account.

In discussing this at length with my SiL yesterday, I feel I am thwarted in my attempts at any serious frugality by these things:

- The sort of cooking I like to do, bakes, casseroles, pasta sauces, curries and chillis and 'interesting' stuff, is made difficult by the ingredients I can/cannot use and who will/will not eat them for various reasons.

- Oliver will not eat spicy foods.

- Mark is vegetarian and a fussy one.  He will eat lentils and pulses - but not more than once a week and still views them with suspicion.  Oliver is horrified by the prospect but can be bullied once in a while to partake. 

- At the moment, with Oliver's evening clubs, my work shifts and Mark's badminton, we are lucky to sit down and eat together at most once a week.  This means either preparing food/having easy to do food available for Mark to cook when he comes home for him and Oliver, or cooking something in advance which can be reheated and considered 'nice' to both of them. (virtually impossible).

- This year (thankfully) Mark has started to eat fish, and although this has helped with variety, he will not eat tinned tuna (the most inoffensive way to eat fish ever, surely) thereby blocking tuna bakes and tuna mayonnaise.  And fish smells and I hate cooking it.  Sorry. Thank the Lord for fish fingers I say.  (another super-inoffensive way to consume fish).

- Although Mark does eat the food I cook, he has some funny unwritten rules and ideas about meals which cause me great irritation:  baked potatoes are a only acceptable no more than once a fortnight, soup is a cop-out meal and therefore just not worth even trying to dish up.  Any meal should not be dished up again within two days of the last time.  To be fair, he is pretty happy with 'meat' and two veg, but I find this sort of meal-making to be dull, dutiful and depressing.  Not to mention uninspiring. 

At present, it seems easier to feed us all different meals at different times.  No wonder my bloody shopping bill is so high and I am frazzled with the idea of feeding us.

I am determined to make baby steps - I have pre-cooked some baked potatoes and frozen them, because as a side dish, baked potatoes are exempted from the once a fortnight only rule.  These can be pulled out and cooked alongside other frozen staples like fish fingers or vege burgers in the oven, thereby giving me two or three nights of cheap, stress-free meals.  I will start squeezing in a curry and casserole here and there, therefore making it possible to use up lentils and pulses clogging up the tin cupboard in order to make way for more tinned tomatoes (how did people ever manage without them) and baked beans (a food loved by all to which I am deeply indebted).

I also intend to buy a load of chicken breasts to freeze and use for Oliver because I think I need to control the fish finger habit.  I know that this will not be a very economical way to buy chicken, but buying a whole one, or pieces means there is too much chicken for his teeny appetite in one meal, and he baulks at having it two days on the trot.  I resent giving edible leftovers to the cats, so at least by cooking one chicken breast - it will be eaten and enjoyed fresh with no waste.  While I'm at it, I will buy bags of frozen fish (lidl seem to do these cheaply enough) which can be cooked from frozen and wrapped up in foil to minimise fish stink which permeates every corner of the house and clings to clothing for weeks.  Who knows, this way I may even be able to feed two of us at the same time....