Day 23 - Finally going bananas ....

Porridge again for breakfast.

Porridge + cuppa - 11p

Mary was working from home so I nipped back for our soup alternative .... boiled egg and toast. The toast was from the bread we got reduced yesterday and was loads better than the 45p skinny slices we'd had for the rest of the month.

Egg and Toast - 8p

We were also able to finish off the pancakes from yesterday with a wee cuppa.

Pancake + cuppa - 3p

Tonight's dinner was the turkey (pork?) and penne pasta.

Turkey and pasta + diluting juice - 47p

After dinner we had our first banana since January. It's amazing the things you take for granted like a banana.  We tend to think nothing about sharing a bunch between 2 people over a week. Tonight we shared one banana and half a packet of custard between us. I cooked it with some butter and butter as it was till a bit hard. Was nice but I can't wait to be able to enjoy a whole banana to myself next week. We've totally missed the fresh fruit. Such a simple thing and something a lot of us take for granted every week.

With the custard.

Banana + custard - 13p

We did feel a bit peckish later and although we probably didn't need it we had the portion of nuts we had allocated ourselves for tonight.

Peanuts - 4p (actually 3.4p)

Total for the day 86p each.

Please use this link if you'd like to donate to Fairshare Just Giving Page.

Total raised so far £915.18. Thanks again for all the support.

Paul & Mary

Day 22 - Doughnuts and Peanuts

This diet is effecting my dreams. Last night's included me having a pint with David Cameron. He was getting a hard time from a group of people and I ushered him away to a quieter bit of the bar to avoid the hassle. More of a nightmare than a dream I guess!!!

Had my week 3 weigh-in and have lost 16 lbs since we started. Happy with the weigh lose but would not recommend the diet as a good approach to weight lose. Mary and I decided not to go with the woman's magazine agent and her offer to place our story in a number of woman's magazines as we were worried it might have become a fad diet!!

Back to porridge for breakfast.

Porridge + cuppa - 11p

After breakfast we met friends and their new puppy and went for a walk round Arthur's Seat.

Lunch was sausage baguette.

Sausage Baguette, pancake + cuppa - 14p

Afternoon, again was catching up with some work while Mary read her book with Bails keeping her warm on the sofa. Once I got work out of the way we checked our budget and planned what to spend the remainder of our monthly budget on. We had a total of £2.52 to spend!!!

We wanted to get some fresh fruit and a few other things we hadn't had yet. We visited Lidl and Tesco. There were a few fruit options at around a £1 but that's a full day's budget. Interestingly you can get a whole bag or pears from Lidl for 99p and for 1p more a little plastic container of mixed fruit for £1. Also, I've no idea what a "fun size" pear is.

So here is our last shop. We did the vulture thing in Tesco when we saw they guy marking things down. We don't normally eat doughnuts but 6 for 23p was too good a deal to pass on.

We also bought some peanuts as we just got a craving for them as soon as we saw them. Once we got home we weighed the nuts and gave ourselves a 14th of the bag each so we can have a wee portion each day over the remainder of the week. Here is the portion we had each. I'd say it was equivalent to a handful you might eat in one go then have a swig of a beer. I had them 2 at a time and licked the salt of them. I was genuinely excited having these.

Peanuts - 4p (actually 3.4p)

Dinner was pizza with mozzarella this time.

Pizza - 44p

While having dinner we watched Countryfile where they covered a story about milk prices and how it's now cheaper than mineral water in most supermarkets. How can that happen and what is the impact on dairy farmers. Supermarkets are constantly squeezing farmers margins to the point we will force them down a battery style approach to farming. None of the supermarket chains seem to be paying a reasonable price to farmers but the following are probably the best - Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. On the other hand Lidl, Asda, Aldi and Iceland have recently dropped prices further so please try and use one of the better suppliers if you can.

Read more about it here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/13/milk-cheaper-than-water-what-happens-cows

Tonight we treated ourselves to one of the doughnuts each and we froze the rest for later in  the week.

Doughnut + cuppa - 5p

Total for the day 78p each.

Please use this link if you'd like to donate to Fairshare Just Giving Page.

Total raised so far £895.18. Thanks again for all the support.

Paul & Mary

Day 21 - The death of the hunter gatherer

Our clever clogs friend Colin Cadden came up with a solution for the lack of fingers which has made me redundant. Mary has moved to countdown mode this morning when she woke and presented me with 8 fingers to represent 8 days left.

Being the weekend we had a break from the porridge.

Bacon, beans & toast - 29p

After breakfast Mary made some more pancakes to do us for treats over the weekend.

I was working today while Mary took Bailey for a haircut. Lunch was the tomato, lentil and spaghetti soup (made with the cheaper chicken stock cubes from a few weeks back).

Tomato, lentil and spaghetti soup - 11p

... and a wee afternoon treat.

Pancakes + cuppa - 4p

Some domestic chores in the afternoon then a walk at Newhails with Bails. The walk did involve a discussion about what we felt we had taken from doing this so far and how we are going to rethink our eating and drinking habits. It certainly makes you realise how fortunate most of us are to eat when we like to but has left us wondering how much we really enjoy our food as it's no longer something that involves the effort it used to for our forefathers. Hunting and gathering is a thing of the past but for a lot of people these days the gathering bit has gone and its now online and then a person turns up and chucks it in the fridge for them.

Dinner was the last of the bolognese I made a few weeks ago. We have loads of pepper left so I went a wee bit mad on mine.

Penne bolognese - 51p

I had thought I might be hankering after a wee cheeky beer after a long week but to be honest the though of a cuppa with a pancake seems just as rewarding.

Pancake + cuppa - 4p

Total for the day 99p each.

Please use this link if you'd like to donate to Fairshare Just Giving Page.

Total raised so far £895.18. Thanks again for all the support.

Paul & Mary

Day 20 - A tale of two curries

Every morning since we started Mary has woken up and pushed her hand(s) out of the duvet with the number of fingers held up that represent the number of days in we are. I obviously joined in after day 10. Today we ran out of fingers having reached the 20 day point. Either Bailey is going to join in or one of us is going to have to pull a yoga move off and use a foot.

Anyway, early start today as Mary was out at the Gyle. Porridge was done by 07:30am.

Porridge + cuppa - 11p

Another morning of sifting through more food photos from a shoot from last week with a cup of hot water. In my mind I had about 10 courses!!!

11:46am  I got the "I'm craving wine already ...." text from Mary.

Lunch was the tomato, lentil and spaghetti soup again.

Tomato, lentil and spaghetti soup - 18p

The afternoon was again sifting through more food photos from the shoot on Wednesday. 13 courses this time with 2 cocktails thrown in for good measure.

While arranging to pick Mary up I got the following text "Okidoki beer?". She seems to have developed alcohol related tourettes in the last 24 hours.

Dinner was curry minus the fish (it's been banned for the next week) with veg to replace it. Here's the frozen veg.

And the finished dish.

Veg Curry and Rice - 29p

We had been invited to the opening of VDeep the new Indian Street Food and Graft Beer bar in what used to be The Vintage. Indian food is probably my favourite food. Luckily or unluckily depending how you look at it I still had work to finish off so couldn't go. This is a photo taken by me at VDeep of what we could have been eating washed down by a cold beer (sigh....).

More photo editing and uploading for the rest of the evening for me while Mary takes Bails for his evening walk.

Tonight's treat later will be this wee beauty halved between us and a cuppa.

1/8 apple pie + cuppa - 8p


Total for the day 77p each.

Please use this link if you'd like to donate to Fairshare Just Giving Page.

Total raised so far £850.18. Thanks again for all the support.

Paul & Mary

Day 19 - Throwing your ethics out the window

Porridge ... porridge... porridge... porridge!!!

Porridge + cuppa - 11p

Lunch was another standard from the soup we made a few weeks ago. Lentil soup with the funny chicken stock cubes. Interestingly we're not taking anything in to work apart from the soup  these days and we're coping a lot better and not feel so hungry. Our bodies must be adjusting to the lack of calories during the day.

Lentil Soup - 14p

Less tortuous day today for me doing headshots of young actors and not food related although I did have to do a bit of processing of some food shots late afternoon which got me thinking of dinner by 3pm. Tonight's plan was to use the frozen fish for a curry as we still have a jar of curry sauce left which will do 2 meals. Mary wasn't keen on the idea of fish curry and to be honest neither was I. We've both kind of put ourselves off the fish.  Even when I suggested veg curry I could tell she had gone off the idea of a curry. Plan B was to swap tonight's and tomorrow night's dinner.

So tonight's dinner was fried eggs, beans and chips.

... and the finished dish with another cameo from my thumb.

Interestingly the chips are pretty cook and even more so when you give them a sprinkle of chilli powder which I think I have used in every dinner since we started. The consideration with the chips is a bit like a lot of the other food we've bought in terms of the impact on the environment, the welfare of the animals before they were slaughtered and is the supplier been screwed over by the big supermarkets. The chips for example had palm oil in them. The supply of palm oil in a lot of cases comes from deforested areas which have caused the displacement of endangered species like Orangutan.

Some links on Orangutan and palm oil
http://www.orangutan.org.uk/
http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/

Eggs, beans and chips - 29p (plus a dead Orangutan on our conscious)

And standing down off my environmentalist's "sustainable wooden box" we're now about to head off for our nightly walk with Bails so we can get back in for "Eat Well for Less" and see if this week's family can outdo the ridiculous £300 a week shop of last week's family of four.

Our treat tonight though is a real treat .... toasted cheese with the wee big cheddar we have left.

Toast n cheese + cuppa - 21p 

Total for the day 75p each ... one of our cheapest days yet!!!

Please use this link if you'd like to donate to Fairshare Just Giving Page.

Total raised so far £850.18. Thanks again for all the support.

Paul & Mary

Day 18 - Boozy cravings

Both of us were pretty tired when we got up today. It might have been due to getting up 1/2 an hour earlier and it still being dark when went out for our walk with Bails. Back for a surprise breakfast. Unfortunately not .... Porridge again for breakfast.

Porridge + cuppa - 11p

Today I had another day long food shoot with magical aromas wafting around me all day long. I also didn't feel great at one point. I suspect it was my sugar levels!!! I had one of the pancakes from last night and a water and felt better half an hour later. Today's lunch could have been anything from the 15 dishes I had to shoot but was instead pea and ham soup from 2 weeks ago.

Here's a quick shot of the view I had for most of the day.

 

Pea and ham soup + a pancake - 26p

I had to work on at the studio after the shoot to catchup on some work and Mary was at a pilates class so we didn't get dinner until 8:20pm. Both felt very hungry by this point. Dinner was chilli and rice.

Chilli + rice - 45p

Feels like a long day. Both Mary and I could have had a wee glass of wine or a beer tonight. It's long days like this that I miss a drink to relax with.

Finally sitting down with a cuppa and our last pancake.

Cuppa + pancake - 4p


Total for the day 86p each.

Please use this link if you'd like to donate to Fairshare Just Giving Page.

Total raised so far £840.18. Thanks again for all the support.

Paul & Mary

Day 17 - Mary Queen of Pancakes

Sorry folks standard breakfast again today.

Porridge + cuppa - 11p

Another standard for lunch. Tomato, lentil & spaghetti soup. We've made 2 pots of this so it's going to figure heavily for lunch over the remainder of the month. It's made me realise that our diet is revolving round a lot of tinned tomatoes, lentils, beans and pasta. I do love a tomato sauce but we're getting pretty tried of the sight of it now and tinned tomatoes figure in most of the remaining meals.

Tomato, lentil and spaghetti soup - 18p

You've seen what it looks like a few times now so didn't take a photo of the soup. Here's a photo of some water instead. Between no booze and the amount of water we are drinking I'm hoping our livers are in the best state they've probably been since we were in our teens.

The afternoon brought confirmation that I'll be appearing on Castle FM 98.8's Off the Eaten Track on Thursday 26th February between 7-8pm. I was contacted by Lea Harris the presenter of the show after she had seen a post on about this challenge. I'll be talking about the challenge itself and food photography.

Dinner was a return to an old favourite. Turkey Milanese and more of those pesky tinned tomatoes and pasta again.

The finished dish with a bit too much pasta. We were hungry tonight and don't need the rest of the spaghetti  for the rest of the month so we decided to use it all. This time the turkey was turkey!!!

Turkey, tomato sauce and pasta + glass of diluting juice - 54p

Shrove Tuesday so Mary was back in the kitchen knocking out these wee beauties.

We didn't eat all of these and kept some back for tomorrow and Thursday ... hopefully!!!

3 pancakes + cuppa - 11p

Total for the day 94p each.

Please use this link if you'd like to donate to Fairshare Just Giving Page.

Total raised so far £840.18. Thanks again for all the support.

Paul & Mary