Monday, March 03, 2014

Thriftuary 2014 - Part Four


£80.77.  That's the final tally for our Thriftuary spending.

That's just over £40 per person for a whole month, which isn't bad at all.

Now, there is an important consideration.  For various reasons there were a number of meals that we got for free. Some of them were on expenses or were generously donated by friends in some form or another (Dr K was invited to a birthday party where there was chicken.  She brought me a doggy bag). One of them was a stag do meal that I couldn't get out of. Those haven't been included in the final figure. Nor have the occasional freebies: office cakes, office sweets, donated Twixes and so-on.

If we were to assume that we'd had the scheduled meal instead of the free meal, we would have spent an additional £7.30, which makes the final total £88.07. That's still £9.53 less than last year, and still only around £44 per person. I still haven't included the twix!

There's a few of interesting things that have become apparent as a result of this years challenge:

  1. A little bit of planning means that you don't need to go hungry. As long as you like mince based meals.
  2. In the event that my boss finally notices that I never do any work and sacks me, I will be able to afford to eat handsomely on just £40 per month.
  3. I have a lot of very excellent friends, who wouldn't let me go hungry!

Here's a chart showing the daily totals for the entire month, with 2013's chucked in for comparison.

Date 2013 2014 2013 Total 2014 Total
1-Feb £2.30 £2.28 £2.30 £2.28
2-Feb £4.12 £3.79 £6.42 £6.07
3-Feb £3.08 £2.37 £9.50 £8.44
4-Feb £0.63 £3.44 £10.13 £11.88
5-Feb £4.09 £3.52 £14.22 £15.40
6-Feb £2.21 £3.21 £16.43 £18.61
7-Feb £3.05 £3.74 £19.48 £22.35
8-Feb £7.31 £3.96 £26.79 £26.31
9-Feb £3.99 £3.69 £30.78 £30.00
10-Feb £3.79 £1.22 £34.57 £31.22
11-Feb £1.39 £0.88 £35.96 £32.10
12-Feb £3.70 £1.22 £39.66 £33.32
13-Feb £4.63 £3.13 £44.29 £36.45
14-Feb £5.48 £2.88 £49.77 £39.33
15-Feb £2.69 £3.79 £52.46 £43.12
16-Feb £5.45 £2.34 £57.91 £45.46
17-Feb £6.69 £3.26 £64.60 £48.72
18-Feb £2.38 £3.41 £66.98 £52.13
19-Feb £1.76 £1.93 £68.74 £54.06
20-Feb £2.12 £1.09 £70.86 £55.15
21-Feb £2.94 £2.84 £73.80 £57.99
22-Feb £6.32 £0.83 £80.12 £58.82
23-Feb £1.75 £2.13 £81.87 £60.95
24-Feb £3.25 £3.51 £85.12 £64.46
25-Feb £2.06 £3.24 £87.18 £67.70
26-Feb £4.46 £6.70 £91.64 £74.40
27-Feb £3.92 £2.37 £95.56 £76.77
28-Feb £2.04 £4.00 £97.60 £80.77

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Thriftuary 2014 - Part Three

Another week, another chart!

I know, I know. You've immediately noticed that I've made a minor upward adjustment on most of the days, compared to last week. That's because Dr K made fun of my adding up and felt the need to point out that my milk was all wrong. Consider this a milk adjustment.

Still, it hasn't made a massive difference. At this point in 2013 we had spent £73.80 on food, whereas this year we've only spent £57.99. That's nearly £16 less!  For anyone that cares, our daily average spend is £2.76.

I have a few fascinating observations on how we've achieved that, but I'm going to save that for next week.

I'm hungry...

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Thriftuary 2014 - Part Two


Here you are. An updated Thriftuary chart!

Lovely, isn't it?

The good news is that we're a full £12 below the same time last year (£52.46 vs £40.21). We're also averaging 81p a day less (£3.49 per day vs £2.68 per day). Mostly I put that down to planning our meals out in detail, something we didn't do last year. But I can't deny the fact that this last week has also been a festival of free food (how do you like my alliteration?).

Dr K was away with work for a couple of days, which meant that her meals were paid for by the company. And then I had a couple of working lunches that meant I was able to take advantage of free sandwiches and other goodies. Awesome.

There are no free lunches planned for next week, so it will be interesting to see how that affects our budget.

Sunday, February 09, 2014

Thriftuary 2014 - Part One

Welcome to Thriftuary. Again.

 You'll recall that last year, Dr K and I engaged in an outrageous, radical and, some might say* insane challenge to subsist on as little money as possible for a whole month.

You'll also recall that we succeeded in doing for the grand total of £97.69 which was enough to beat my challenger, Ben.

It was not, however good enough. We decided that we could definitely do better then that. Loads better.

And because just trying to beat the previous year is not challenge enough, we decided that we weren't allowed to go food shopping during Thriftuary at all. So, all of our food had to be bought and in the cupboards by February 1st.

This was going to need some serious planning. Spreadsheets and everything. God I love spreadsheets...

Here is my lovely Thriftuary menu plotted out on a spreadsheet.


There are a few unpopulated cells on there, because I hadn't worked out quite how much stuff was going to cost at the time I took the screenshot, but it's pretty much there. Seven days of meals, cycled round 4 times to make the whole month.  We may or may not get sick of some things by the end of this.

In practice, we didn't stick precisely to the menu. Rather then making a stew this last weekend, I served up a rather ill-advised experiment with Szechuan Beef, which Dr K advises me tasted like the arse of a badger that has been dead for three weeks. In a ditch.

Anyway, here we are at the end of the first week (actually it's nine days in because I've been poorly-sick with a cold and am also lazy) and I have a table and a chart to show you. Tables are good, but charts are awesome:



I've plotted this year's figures against last year's for your entertainment. As you can see, in general, we're spending less this year than we did last year. In fact at the end of day 9, we've spent nearly £2 less than last year and we're averaging £3.10 a day (or £1.55 per person, per day), compared to £3.49 a day in 2013. 

There were a handful of freebies: I had a paid-for lunch on Monday as I was at a work conference (and took full advantage of both my own pockets and friend's handbag, to liberate a few items of fresh fruit). By pre arranged mutual agreement, Ben and I took part in an undocumented Nando's on Monday evening in order to facilitate some essential work based networking. Unfortunately we were unable to find a loophole that meant that our boss had to pay for it, but we agreed that it was exigent and unavoidable circumstances.  We have our own loopholes, for stuff like this.

There were a few slightly more expensive items left over from January in our fridge - things like yoghurts and cheese. We've used most of these over the last week and included their actual cost in the figures, which means that next week, where we have no expensive, creamy luscious cherry yoghurts, should be even cheaper.

If this trend continues, we're set to beat last year's figure by around £10.

I'm so hungry...

For anyone that's interested, here's the detail of what we've put in our faces over the last few days:



Date
Item Volume Cost Total
01/02/2014 Tea bags 6 0.06 2.14

Milk 120ml 0.1

Chicken 300g 1.2

Rice 300g 0.2

Peas 50g 0.1

Pepper 50g 0.1

Oxo 1 0.01

Goat yoghurt 32g 0.17

Onion 1 0.2
02/02/2014 Tea bags 6 0.06 3.65

Milk 120ml 0.1

Eggs 4 0.4

Onion 1 0.2

Bacon 125g 0.25

Braising steak 176g 1.3

Onion 1 0.2

Carrot 200g 0.2

Potato 300g 0.2

Peas 50g 0.1

Oxo 1 cube 0.01

Yoghurt (activia) 1 0.46

Yoghurt (goat) 32g 0.17
03/02/2013 Oats 50g 0.04 2.15

Milk 100ml 0.1

Tea 6 bags 0.06

Milk 120ml 0.12

Can of sardines 1 0.5

Satsuma 1 0.08

Cream cheese 50g 0.22

Almonds X10 0.1

Sweet potato 170g 0.22

Cauliflower 1/4 0.22

Cheese (value) 20g 0.12

Pork 70g 0.31

Butter 5g 0.06

Buffet lunch Expenses 0

Nando's 'Expenses' 0
04/02/2013 Tea bags 6 0.06 3.18

Milk 120ml 0.1

Bread 2 sl 0.2

Peanut butter 20g 0.1

Spread 10g 0.05

Carrot 100g 0.1

Pear 1 0.2

Oats 50g 0.04

Milk 100ml 0.08

Almonds 12g 0.1

Avocado 1 0.44

Liver 1 pack 0.73

Bacon 125g 0.2

Onion 1 0.2

Potato 300g 0.2

Carrot 200g 0.2

Yoghurt 1 0.18

Biscuits from yesterday buffet 2 shortbreads 0
05/02/2014 Tea bags 5 0.05 3.28

Milk 100ml 0.08

Bread
0.2

Peanut butter 20g 0.1

Apple Free 0

Pork mince 364g 1.4

Tinned tomatoes 1 0.34

Onion 1 0.2

Peas 50g 0.1

Pasta 100g 0.06

Oats 50g 0.04

Milk 100ml 0.08

Almonds X10 0.1

Ryvita X1 0.06

Cream cheese 25g 0.11

Satsuma X1 0.08

Egg X1 0.1

Yoghurt 1 0.18
06/02/2014 Tea bags 6 0.06 3.07

Milk 120ml 0.1

Bread 2 slices 0.1

Spread 10g 0.1

Peanut butter 20g 0.1

Pear 1 0.2

Oat biscuits X3 0.1

Cream cheese 25g 0.11

Avocado X1 0.44

Satsuma X1 0.08

Almonds X10 0.1

Activia Yoghurt X1 0.5

Eggs X4 0.4

Bacon 125g 0.2

Pepper 50g 0.1

Onion 1 0.2

Yoghurt 1 0.18
07/02/14 Tea bags 3 0.03 3.67

Milk 60ml 0.05

Bread 2 slices 0.1

Spread 10g 0.1

Peanut butter 20g 0.1

Pear 1 0.2

Carrot 100g 0.1

Almonds X10 0.1

Avocado Free 0

Cream cheese 25g 0.11

Oat biscuits X3 0.1

Egg
0.1

Nuts Free on table 0

Beef mince 300g 1.4

Onion 1 0.2

Kidney beans 1 tin 0.3

Tomatoes 1 tin 0.34

Pepper 50g 0.1

Chillis 5 0

Oxo 1 cube 0.1

Rice 100g 0.04

Peas 50g 0.1
08/02/14 Tea bags 1 0.01 3.62

Milk 20ml 0.02

Chicken 300g 1.3

Rice 200g 0.8

Peas 50g 0.1

Oxo 1 cube 0.01

Pepper 50g 0.1

Avocado
0.44

Greek yoghurt 100g 0.22

Activia yogurt 1 pot 0.46

Oats 100g 0.08

Milk 200ml 0.08

Almond snickers Free 0
09/02/14 Oats 50g 0.08 3.19

Milk 100ml 0.1

Tea bags 2 0.02

Eggs 4 0.4

Bacon 125g 0.2

Cheese 20g 0.15

Biscuits (free at a friends) 4 0

Braising steak 176g 1.34

Onion 1 0.2

Carrot 50g 0.05

Pepper 50g 0.1

Oxo 1 cube 0.01

Yogurt 1 0.46

Apple Free 0

Orange 1 0.08

* No-one said it.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Movie Posters: Seven Salami

Rather than come up with a whole blog post to entertain you today, I've prepared an elaborate movie poster parody based upon a bad pun. Here is the classic Japanese movie Seven Salami:



Sunday, March 03, 2013

Thriftuary (Part 5)

This is it!  What you've all be waiting for: the grand finale of Thriftuary. Today, all your questions will be answered*.

It actually ended a couple of days ago, but I thought I would hold off 'til the weekend to get some lovely graphs and statistics ready for you.  Graphs and statistics are ace.

Lets start by getting the spending chart out of the way:

Ahh. Lovely.

As you can see, I spent considerably less than our Ben over the month. £38.09 less, in fact. That's almost a 30% difference.

So what went wrong?

Pizza.  That's what went wrong.  Pizza and then curry.

For anyone planning to subsist on a tiny budget, here's a hint: don't go to Pizza Hut! While you gobble up their lovely pizza, they'll be gobbling up your lovely money! In all fairness, Ben and his missus did go for a relatively cheap pizza - the whole meal only came to £13.  I expect it was the nasty pizza at the bottom of the menu that only students order because it's made with questionable cheese and pubic hair!  Yum.


You can tell by the shape of his cumulative line that he lost quite a lot of enthusiasm for Thriftuary around about Pizza Day.  Even with those two huge spikes though, he still came out at an average daily spend of £4.85, for two people which I think is pretty good!

Enough about Ben, anyway. This blog is my vanity project, not his. How did I get on in Thriftuary? Here are some bullet points:

  • Total monthly spend for two people: £97.69
  • Average daily spend for two people: £3.48
  • Most expensive day: £6.69 (We had a joint of pork!)
  • Cheapest day: 0.63 (Hooray for edible Christmas Presents!)
  • Cheapest day what didn't involve edible gifts: £1.39 (Pancakes for the win!)

Yesterday, by sheer coincidence, I read that Labour MP Helen Goodman decided to spend a week living on a food budget of £18 in order to protest about how the bedroom tax wasn't going to leave her constituents with enough to live on.  You can read about it here and see her video diaries here.

At the end of the week, she had only a small swede and a can of kidney beans with which to construct a sumptuous meal! In an article here, she is quoted as saying "I had to eat the same food over and over and over again. [...] I made a stew at the beginning of the week, and I ate the same food four nights a week [...] It was completely impossible to have meat or fish; that was out of the question [...] I found myself waking up in the middle of the night absolutely ravenous, having to make cups of tea and eat biscuits. I had a headache for five days in that week, and I was completely lethargic and exhausted by 4 pm."

While her protest was an interesting and well meaning stunt that doesn't seem to be getting the media attention it deserves, I suspect her problems were due more to bad planning and too many midnight biscuits than her budget. After all, I was living on £12.21 a week for a month and had varied meals.  Yes, I was kinda hungry for a lot of it, but not even remotely ravenous, despite my intermittent complaining.

But we had plenty of vegetables and it was very possible to have meat, although I would not recommend they very cheapest frozen mince - I found myself hoping that the news would declare that it contained horse  as that would mean that there was, at least, some meat in it! I soon started cutting it with slightly meatier meat.  My final food list is at the bottom of this post.

Now for some additional bits and bobs.  Dr K very kindly did a few sums for me using a calorie counting app on her ipad.  This gave an approximate calorie count for each day:

  • I ate an average of 1382 calories a day. This is a fair bit below the average recommended intake for a big, hairy man like me, but as I am fairly sedentary, it didn't cause any problems.  In fact it had a somewhat predictable and beneficial side effect, which I'll get to in a moment.
  • Highest day's calories: 1909
  • Lowest day's calories: 805
Of course, all those calories I wasn't eating caused a bit of of weight loss.  Now, instead of being very fat, I'm just quite fat.
  • Weight at start: 113.1kg (17st 8lbs)
  • Weight at end: 106.95kg (16st 8lbs)
  • Total weight loss: 6.15kg (1st)
So that's nice.  Here's another chart with calories and weight and shit** on it:


I gave blood on the final day of Thriftuary. I was actually a little bit worried, because I'd been under-eating for  a month and wondered if this would have any effect on my iron count or my ability to stand up afterwards. It did not. I did, however get some free biscuits, with which I was very pleased. I'm not sure how much a pint of blood weighs, but I'm guessing it didn't make a significant difference to my final weigh in as I was pretty much the same weight this morning.

A final set of bullet points, because bullet points are cool, mostly because they have the word 'bullet' in their name:
  • Best purchase: £3.80 for a piece of beef skirt that made two very tasty stews. I initially pooh poohed Dr K for coming home with this, but as always she was right and I looked like a fool.
  • Second best purchase: Cooking bacon. 81p for shit loads of bacony goodness!
  • Tastiest dinner: Liver, bacon and onions. So cheap and so tasty.
  • Nastiest dinner: Chilli made with cheap frozen mince. Even making it bastard hot didn't mask the greasy, horrible taste of Soylent Green made from chavs.
So the conclusion to all of this nonsense is that it seems to be perfectly possible for two people to live on £25 a week. Although we were generally under-eating, I suspect better planning and a bit more experience would fix that.

To celebrate the end of Thriftuary, Dr K and I went to Nando's on March 1st. One meal Nando's cost an entire week's food in Thriftuary. It would have made me pause for though if I hadn't been shovelling hot chicken wings into my mouth as fast and as greedily as I could!

Here's my food list for the final few days of Thriftuary.





25/02/13 7x tea 0.21 2.06

2 weetabix 0.08

100 ml milk 0.06

1 can of sardines 0.47

10 almonds 0.11

2 banana cookies 0.18

Tin of beans 0.25

Leftover lasagne 0

slice of Victoria sponge (office cake) 0

2 yoghurts 0.5

1 apple 0.20








26/02/2013 2 slices bread 0.04 4.46

27g cheese 0.13

Ready salted hula hoops 0.11

1 small apple 0.20

2x weetabix 0.08

100ml milk 0.06

8xtea 0.24

Avocado 0.37

10 almonds 0.11

2 Finn crispbreads 0.12

30g cream cheese 0.12

150ml milk 0.09

1/3 pack liver 0.71

150g cooking bacon 0.23

1/3 bag spring greens 0.33

1/3 bag green beans 0.33

100g sprouts 0.20

379g spuds 0.31

2 small onions 0.16

16g gravy granules 0.04

Knob of butter 0.05

1x yoghurt 0.25

2x banana cookies 0.18




27/02/13 2x weetabix 0.08 3.92

100ml milk 0.06

4x tea 0.12

2 slices bread 0.04

1 apple 0.20

1 bag hula hoops 0.11

11g 'meat' paste 0.05

246g beef skirt 1.72

Leftover liver & bacon 0.00

16g gravy granules 0.04

100g sprouts 0.20

2 small onions 0.16

161 g carrots 0.16

154g spud 0.36

1 tin tomatoes 0.31

1tsp chilli powder 0.02

1 tsp oregano 0.04

1 yoghurt 0.25

4x free hotel biscuits 0.00

Buffet food 0.00








28/2/2013 2 weetabix 0.08 2.04

100ml milk 0.06

2 slices bread 0.04

1 apple 0.20

1 bag hula hoops 0.11

11g 'meat' paste 0.05

Avocado 0.37

10 almonds 0.11

2 Finn crispbreads 0.12

30g cream cheese 0.12

6 teas 0.18

100g sprouts 0.20

1 tin tomatoes 0.31

Yesterday's stew. 0.00

Banana cookie 0.09

2 lotus biscuits from blood van 0.00

Handful of chocolate buttons from Hannah. 0.00

2free lemon curd biscuits 0.00







* By 'all' I actually mean few. Or none.
** Not actual shit... just lines and stuff.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Thriftuary (Part Four)

Here we are again.

It's that time of the week when I update you on the latest exciting goings on in the Thriftuary challenge.  Once again, I'm in the lead, thanks to a couple of meals paid for on expenses when I visited London for a couple of days for work.

Here are some handy tips:

  1. Pick a hotel with an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet.  It's all about quantity, not quality. A mountain of dead pig and aborted chicken will go a long way to alleviating your hunger later in the day. Also it's delicious.

  2. The average suit can hold approximately four muffins from aforementioned breakfast buffet. These will make an excellent pudding later on!

  3. Your workmate's handbag is also an excellent place to hide food. You never know when you're going to need a low fat strawberry yogurt, so you may as well be prepared.

Poor old Ben was unlucky when his planned overnight stay in London fell through. That meant that he had to pay for the curry he'd agreed to join us on, which accounts for one of the two enormous spikes in his spending. The other is a sordid tale of intrigue, betrayal, revenge, revolution and... Pizza Hut. Mostly Pizza Hut.

No pizza for me though.  Well, actually, there was a pizza, but it came from the freezer and I shared it with Dr K. They were 3 for £4, which is slightly cheaper than Pizza Hut.

I have declined several free meals this week, including one that both my boss and my boss' boss wanted to pay for when we went to a local cafe. I sat there drinking a cup of tea (which I did let them pay for), while everyone around me scoffed fry-ups and lasagne and chicken wings. There was a brief moment when I seriously considered murdering them all with a fork and stealing their lunch. And then possibly eating them as well.

In other news, Dr K and I may be suffering from  some sort of nutritional deficiency as we seem to have developed signs of a minor case of scurvy.  Here's a picture:


What's that? You want to see my food list for the week? You want to scrutinise it and pick holes in my terrible diet? Sure, go ahead:





18/2/2013 3 Finn crispbread 0.18 2.38

30g cream cheese 0.12

10 almonds 0.11

7x cups of tea 0.21

2 pears 0.42

2 value weetabix 0.08

100ml milk 0.06

Last night's pork 0.00

1 small carrot 0.05

4 leaves of spring greens 0.10

3 value wraps 0.30

1 value pitta 0.10

1/2 teaspoon of cumin 0.02

1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder 0.02

1/2 teaspoon of turmeric 0.02

1/2 teaspoon of ground coriander 0.02

2x yoghurts 0.50

4x free oreos (donated by Ben!) 0.00

1 mini pork pie 0.07








19/2/2013 4 x tea 0.12 1.76

1 morrisons avocado 0.25

Leftover pork 0.00

10 almonds 0.11

1 tin of morrisons baked beans 0.25

35g of cheese 0.16

50g oats 0.04

100ml milk 0.06

1mini pork pie (reduced from Asda) 0.07

1small apple 0.14

2x weetabix 0.08

100ml milk 0.06

1 pitta bread 0.10

Sunday pork 0.00

Hula hoops 0.11

Pear 0.21

2x free tea from hotel 0.00

Chicken shazlik (on expenses) 0.00

Special fried rice (on expenses) 0.00

Onion bhaji (on expenses) 0.00

2x apple juice (on expenses) 0.00




20/2/2013 2x tea (free from hotel) 0.00 2.12

2x sausages (free from hotel) 0.00

3 rashers bacon (free from hotel) 0.00

Scrambled egg (free from hotel) 0.00

Apple juice (free from hotel) 0.00

2x blueberry muffins (free from hotel) 0.00

1x strawberry yoghurt (free from hotel) 0.00

1x tea (paid for by boss) 0.00

Avocado 0.25

10 almonds 0.11

Leftover pork 0.00

5x cups of tea 0.15

Mini pork pie 0.06

Spinach and ricotta stuffed pasta 1.20

Tin tomatoes 0.31

1/2 teaspoon paprika 0.02

1/2 teaspoon crushed chillies 0.02




21/2/2013 10 almonds 0.11 2.94

7 cups tea (1 free) 0.18

2 Finn Crispbreads 0.12

20g pepper pate 0.28

2 x blueberry muffin (free) 0.00

1 pizza 1.33

1 can of beans 0.25

1 free pear from work fruit bowl 0.00

paprika 0.02

chilli powder 0.02

2 weetabix 0.08

100 ml milk 0.06

2 slices 50p bread 0.04

20g peanut butter 0.05

2 banana 0.40




22/12/13 2 weetabix 0.08 5.82

100ml milk 0.06

2 slices of 50p bread 0.04

Peanut butter 0.05

Hula hoops 0.11

banana 0.20

2 free marshmallows 0.00

7x tea 0.21

250g shit mince 0.75

250g nice mince 1.30

200g onion 0.34

leek 0.50

avocado 0.25

10 almonds 0.11

30g cream cheese 0.12

2 Finn Crispbreads 0.12

1 free hotel muffin 0.00

1 value pepper 0.12

1 tsp chilli powder 0.04

1 tsp cumin 0.04

1 tsp turmeric 0.04

1 tsp coriander 0.04

85g flour 0.21

85g spread 0.23

350ml milk 0.21

3 pasta sheets 0.15

4 free chillies! 0.00

2 yoghurts 0.50

1/2 pint cola (paid for by Paul Reynolds) 0.00




23/02/13 6x tea 0.18 1.75

2x sausage 0.42

3x egg 0.25

212g cooking Bacon 0.34

1 tin beans 0.25

2 portions of yesterday's lasagne 0.00

3 banana oat cookies 0.27

2 slices of 50p bread 0.04

















Cookie recipe:


2 bananas 0.40

Drop of vanilla extract 0.02

50g ground almonds 0.50

Knob butter 0.05 per cookie

100g oats 0.08 0.09












24/02/13 9x tea 0.27 3.25

2 weetabix 0.08

100ml milk 0.06

200g cooking bacon 0.30

1 bread roll 0.02

1 avocado 0.25

1 pear 0.21

1 banana cookie 0.09

4 sausages 0.84

114g self raising flour 0.04

2 eggs 0.16

125 ml milk 0.08

138g spring greens 0.33

3 small carrots 0.15

1/3 bag green beans 0.33

16g gravy granules 0.04

4x oreos (from ben!) 0.00