It is true that if one wants to eat cheaply one has to make the most of lots of carbohydrate foods. Sadly even these are getting more expensive. Basic supermarket pasta is about double the price it was 3-4 years ago, and bags of flour are about 3 times more expensive. All the beans and pulses have risen in price - as has rice, but I think rice hasn't risen as much as the others. I have invested in large bags of arborio rice from the wholesaler, and lots of basmati too, so rice may be going to feature quite a lot in the next few weeks.
My only quibble with this is that carbs are not exactly an ideal diet for me. I need to try and ensure there are plenty of veg in the diet too... to cut down the carbs, and perhaps I should refrain from pasta more than once a week.
Polenta is a good new thing we can now eat without annoying Ned - Finn and Mark both like it and it doesn't seem quite so pernicious as other carbiforms. So we can have that in various ways, bean stew enlivened with some sausage and pimenton eaten with a slab or two of grilled polenta seems a likely forthcoming attraction. We can eat more couscous (another pet hate of Ned's sadly), and of course all the Spanish and Italian rice dishes we like - Ned for some reason is not keen on these, although in fairness, I got him round to bolognese sauce, so I expect he will eventually like the aroz amb forn sort of dish that I sometimes make. Finn likes the leftovers turned into arancini di riso - so there's lot of potential there.
The ultimate frugal carbfest is the Arabic dish called megdarrah (spelling?) or Food of the Poor - a mix of lentils and rice, topped with friend onions. As long as I can still get good cheap farm shop onions, all will be well.
Flour based foods - well, mostly pizza in our case, home-made bread of course - and occasionally scones. I am eschewing pies on the whole - all that fat in the pastry... lethal!
And then potatoes - these have also almost doubled in price at the farm shop recently - a huge bag used to be about £7 - it's gone to £10 - but the half bags are now £7 and sometimes they don't have the cheaper whole bags - which are I think about 25kg - does that sound right? I don't know, but they normally take about 3 months to get through. But there are plenty of potato options... various sliced potatoes with attitude - i.e. ingredients to zing them up - anchovies (no!), bacon, onions, cream, gruyere etc.
One of the policies this autumn is not just to be frugal but deliberately to eat less meat - to ensure we have at least one meatless meal, and work towards two, although I think meals like pizza which don't use much meat are permissible, or at least count towards meatless if not actually achieving it.
The challenge is to find lots of frugal food which is meatless, very delicious and also not too fattening. I do not wish to undo all my good work. I want to get down at least one dress size by the spring and lose about a stone by Christmas.
My only quibble with this is that carbs are not exactly an ideal diet for me. I need to try and ensure there are plenty of veg in the diet too... to cut down the carbs, and perhaps I should refrain from pasta more than once a week.
Polenta is a good new thing we can now eat without annoying Ned - Finn and Mark both like it and it doesn't seem quite so pernicious as other carbiforms. So we can have that in various ways, bean stew enlivened with some sausage and pimenton eaten with a slab or two of grilled polenta seems a likely forthcoming attraction. We can eat more couscous (another pet hate of Ned's sadly), and of course all the Spanish and Italian rice dishes we like - Ned for some reason is not keen on these, although in fairness, I got him round to bolognese sauce, so I expect he will eventually like the aroz amb forn sort of dish that I sometimes make. Finn likes the leftovers turned into arancini di riso - so there's lot of potential there.
The ultimate frugal carbfest is the Arabic dish called megdarrah (spelling?) or Food of the Poor - a mix of lentils and rice, topped with friend onions. As long as I can still get good cheap farm shop onions, all will be well.
Flour based foods - well, mostly pizza in our case, home-made bread of course - and occasionally scones. I am eschewing pies on the whole - all that fat in the pastry... lethal!
And then potatoes - these have also almost doubled in price at the farm shop recently - a huge bag used to be about £7 - it's gone to £10 - but the half bags are now £7 and sometimes they don't have the cheaper whole bags - which are I think about 25kg - does that sound right? I don't know, but they normally take about 3 months to get through. But there are plenty of potato options... various sliced potatoes with attitude - i.e. ingredients to zing them up - anchovies (no!), bacon, onions, cream, gruyere etc.
One of the policies this autumn is not just to be frugal but deliberately to eat less meat - to ensure we have at least one meatless meal, and work towards two, although I think meals like pizza which don't use much meat are permissible, or at least count towards meatless if not actually achieving it.
The challenge is to find lots of frugal food which is meatless, very delicious and also not too fattening. I do not wish to undo all my good work. I want to get down at least one dress size by the spring and lose about a stone by Christmas.
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