This week, our final week, we’ve been trying to clamp tightly down on our budget.

We got our veggie and fruit box from North Aston Organics again, but I’m going to see if I can book a different box from a different location each week as they have all been fantastic, and I want to support them all.

We visited the Monday Shop and bought some beautiful Kale and coriander for donation only which we made Kale aloo with. I also indulged in some Cornfield bakery Rye Sourdough bread – this ancient method of baking with natural yeasts is much easier on the digestion and I’m a huge fan. We’ve been missing bread this month but I’m planning on getting into some baking of my own!

We made hummus out of sprouted chickpeas and enjoyed it on the bread, and I baked some chocolate pumpkin brownies using the roasted pumpkin instead of butter as we had run out! The results were delicious and moist – a wonderfully successful experiment.

We’re getting a bit bored of home made peanut butter so I’m planning some almond butter next month.

If you’re interested in seeing what we’ve been eating all week, here’s our complete menu and budget breakdown. We eat porridge (I bought bulk oats in the first week but we’re now running low) with peanut butter and sugar for weekday breakfasts. At weekends we eat eggs of some kind either with bubble and squeak or in pancakes. Lunch is provided by either dinner leftovers, soup or hummus and bread. The pumpkin brownies and fruit have been fulfilling our sweet tooth this week too, and we’ve even eaten out of the food waste bin when we made potato peeling crisps!

Sunday
Bubble & Squeak with poached eggs and beans
Roast chicken, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, cabbage.
Monday
Chicken Curry & Rice
Tuesday
Cabbage anchovy spaghetti
Wednesday
Kale aloo & rice
Thursday
Carrot soup & rye sourdough bread with hummus
Friday
Children over for tea – sausages, rice & peas
Pumpkin Risotto – for myself & Alex
Saturday
Bubble and squeak with eggs and beans
Nettle pesto pasta (using our kale pesto recipe but with Nettles from Shotover)

Here’s the breakdown for the week

1 small chicken = £4
Dried chickpeas = 28p
Tinned tomatoes = 34p
Creamed coconut = 50p
8 eggs = £1.60
Veggie & fruit box = £14.50
Chocolate = 30p
Kale & coriander = £1
Rye bread = £3
Almonds = 40p
Baked beans x 2 = 50p
Rice = 80p
Spaghetti = 35p
Sugar = 40p
Cheese = 75p
Lemon = 25p
Anchovies = 50p
Sausages = £1
Frozen peas = 10p
Olive oil, garlic, chilli, spices = 30p

Total for week 4 = £30.62

Total spend for 1 month = £124.22

Paid for but still to use = £8.20
Leeks, beetroot, mushrooms and a few carrots = £4
Dried Yellow Split peas = £1.50
Dried Chickpeas = £1.50
Rice Wraps = £1.20

Final adjustment = £116.02 total spend!

January has been a long month, and I don’t think we’ve done too badly for our first attempt. In truth I really didn’t think that we’d make it, so I’m pleasantly surprised that we’re not far off. As logged, we’ve still got some leeks, beetroot, mushrooms and a few carrots from our veggie box to eat this week, as well as a huge amount of dried chickpeas, yellow split peas and rice wraps left over too!

Now I’m getting more efficient I’m sure we’ll manage to eat within budget the following month. We could have gone vegan this week to cut back the budget further and I really shouldn’t have bought the bread, but it was so temping and we were feeling deprived. I vow to make my own next month.

What have I learned from this month?

I’ll never buy Supermarket meat again. From now on I’ll be making my own nut butters, and hummus and I will value every fruit and vegetable that comes into the house. By keeping our stocks low, we’ve managed to reduce our food waste and our recycling bins contents too. Better for our purse, our health and the planet!

Thank you to everyone that has followed our journey and supported us, and also to all the wonderful people we have met along the way. I feel totally inspired by you all to continue, and hope to discover even more amazing local Oxfordshire produce in February.

If you haven’t heard us talking on BBC Radio Oxford this week please have a listen, and do please feel free to contact me or leave comments with local deals and frugal recipes, I love hearing from you –  carolinementzer@gmail.com

We’re nearing the end of our journey. We’ve completed over 3 weeks of eating all our food for just £100 a month using as much local Oxfordshire produce as possible.

But how have we done?

Whilst we’re coming in a little over budget, I think that we have learned an awful lot about how to keep the cost down. If we continue for another month or two I reckon we could manage to consistently keep with in budget. I’ve also noticed that our plastic waste has been reduced a great deal – this is because we’re now buying all our vegetables covered in soil rather than cellophane, which has become my new motto! And because we’re now eating 100% organic I no longer peel but scrub our fruit and vegetables instead. This saves on food waste too!

Highlights of the week were home made chicken, leek and mushroom pie made with chicken thighs from Alder’s butchers on Cowley Road, Mackerel and beetroot salad, French onion soup and home made chocolate brownies.

We also learned how to sprout chickpeas which were a delicious addition to our salads. I even attempted making falafels and raw hummus which is said to contain very high amounts of many vitamins and minerals – read more here.

I appeared on the mid-morning show at BBC Radio Oxford talking to Howard Bentham about how we can reduce food waste in the UK. Please click here to listen.

Our vegetables and fruit came from North Aston Organics. It arrives on a Thursday at a secret location in Cowley Road. The shift of delivery day meant that we had to eke out the previous weeks veggie box, which actually helped us reduce the budget.

As a result I still have quite a few vegetables left for next week including leeks, carrots, pumpkin, lettuce and half a cabbage.

Here’s the breakdown

Veggie and fruit box = £14.50
Yoghurt – £1
Butter = £1
Chicken thighs = £2.50
Stock bones = £1
Mackerel = £1.60
Cheese = 75p
8 Eggs = £1.60
Anchovies = 50p
Chocolate = 30p
Tinned tomatoes x 2 = 64p
Pasta, rice, flour, olive oil & sugar from the larder = £1
Avocado = 50p
chickpeas & yellow split peas = 28p
Lemon & lime = 50p
Garlic & herbs = 20p

Total for the week = £29.87

Total spend over 3 weeks = £93.60

I can see we’re going to be eating plenty of rice and dahl next week to try and reduce our budget even further.

Thanks very much for reading and following. Your emails, tweets, facebook messages and comments are very welcome. Please continue to drop me a line if you have any frugal recipes or know of any hot deals around Oxfordshire.

Since feeding the family on a tight budget, I’ve become more concious about making sure we’re getting all the recommended amounts of vitamins and minerals in order to stay healthy.

No longer can I afford to top up on vitamin C by buying a punnet of blueberries, or buy expensive supplements to make sure I’m getting enough minerals. It’s become more about making the most of what I’ve got at hand, and in this process I’ve discovered many ingenious ways to get more vitamins and minerals WITHOUT changing your diet. Here’s what I’ve discovered….

1) Scrub don’t peel!
If you’re buying organic, there’s not need to peel fruit and vegetables including potatoes, parsnips and carrots. After all, most of the vitamins and minerals lie just below the surface, and the skin contains lots of soluble fibre to aid digestion. I find a good scrub is all that’s needed!

2) A squeeze of lemon on your green leafy veg
Adding vitamin C from lemon or lime juice to your spinach, greens, kale, lettuce, rocket etc aids in the absorption of Iron. If you’re not eating red meat regularly you may be low in Iron. Iron is needed to carry oxygen around the body and a deficiency could make you feel tired.

3) Put butter or olive oil on your vegetables.
By adding fat to your vegetables you absorb more of the fat soluble vitamins – A, D, E and K. So dress your salad with olive oil, put a knob of butter on cooked vegetables or yoghurt in your soup. It tastes better too.

4) Soak your beans over night
Soaking dried beans, lentils and pulses overnight before cooking increases the availability of B and C Vitamins.

5) Sprouting
Better still, once you’ve soaked your beans over night, allow them to sprout for a few days. Sprouting can increase the vitamin and mineral content of a legume by as much as 30 times! This is because sprouting (see how to sprout here) reduces phytic acid which can block the absorption of certain nutrients. Sprouts are therefore a fantastic way to stock up on vitamins and minerals.

6) Steam rather than boil
Steaming vegetables results in a more nutritious food than boiling, because fewer nutrients are leached away into the water, which is usually discarded.

7) Keep the boiled water for gravy
If you do boil vegetables for instance potatoes or parsnips, keep the boiling liquid and use it for gravy. You’ll make good use of the vitamins that have leached into the water.

8) Cook meat on the bone
When cooking a stew or roast, make sure you use meat on the bone. The minerals from the bones leach into the stew making it extra nutritious and tasty.

9) Cook your Carrots
Beta carotene (the orange pigment in carrots that makes vitamin A) is more available to the body when cooked. Other vegetables that are more nutritious when cooked include – tomatoes, broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables like brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale and bok choy .

10) Chew your food thoroughly
Chewing your food well aids in digestion so you’ll end up absorbing more nutrients.

You see, there are many ways to increase vitamins without taking expensive supplements or eating specialist super foods. As a friend just told me (thanks Christine) – you don’t have to be wealthy to be healthy!