Day 14: Live below the poverty line – £1 a day

• Breakfast: porridge + office milk
  
• Lunch: skeleton soup + tiger bread
• Dinner: stir fry + noodles + hot dogs
• ‘Treat’: value yoghurt, value cheese puffs 

2 weeks into the challenge a further two pounds lost, taking my challenge total to just shy of seven pounds.

In monetary terms by my reckoning I’ve spent £6.55 on food this week, including:

• Grapes – 5p
• Scotch eggs – 4p
• Doughnuts – 15p
• Lettuce – 25p
• Dip – 10p
• Yoghurts – 66p
• Grated carrot – 10p
• Casserole vegetables- 10p
• Meatballs in gravy – 35p
• Fish fingers – 60p
• Green salad – 10p
• Tiger loaf – 10p
• French stick – 10p
• Chicken bones – free
• Meal in Skipchen – £1
• Stir fry veg – 15p

I’ve not let any items from last week’s budget go to waste – using up leftover hotdogs, penne, onions and crisps over the course of the week.

Tonight’s dinner is another woopsie aisle winner – stir fry and noodles (coming in at 35p) with the last two remaining stumpy hotdogs (bet you’d forgotten about those!).

Bit of soy sauce would set this little lot sizzling a treat but sadly it’s not in my budget and perfectly delicious with flavours infusing from a ‘well used’ frying pan!

I’ve got a huge vat of soup that will last me a week, thank you again for that cracking suggestion. As promised here is the recipe:

Skeleton soup

1. Chicken bones
2. New potatoes 
3. Carrots
4. Onions
5. (Any other vegetables in your budget – celery would be good and some garlic and parsley)

• Cover chicken in water (a few centimetres grace above), add a splash of acid (apple cider vinegar is reportedly best but regular Sarsons or lemon juice will work) and bring to the boil. 
• Reduce and leave to bubble away on a low heat for 6 hours.
• Peel and chop the carrots and onions and add them to the cauldron, cackling as you do.
• Chop but don’t peel the potatoes and repeat cackle, only with more gusto.
• Leave on a low heat for a further 90 mins to 2 hours (depending on length of the film).
• Remove any bones you can by hand and then use a siv and spoon to separate the good stuff into a blender/food processor (with some of this goodness straining through the siv into the stock). 

• Once in blender, blitz it up to desired smoothness adding a cup of stock to assist whizzing process.
• Note: If blades don’t turn, first check you’ve turned it on at the plug (schoolgirl error don’t worry) if that still doesn’t fix problem give the plastic a wiggle and use your favourite vintage curse words. Here I used “heavens to Betsy” but “gadzooks” and “fiddlesticks” will also work a treat.

• Add the good stuff (hopefully it looks like the paste below) to a new pan and warm through, adding ladles of stock until you are happy with the consistency. 
• An optional yodel as you ladle will improve both flavour and mood “yodel-ladle-yodel-ladle-yodel-ladle-hoo”.

• Serve with a grin and hearty wedge of reduced bread – the bigger the reduction the better the taste!