Food Club Challenge

I promised a new food challenge, in which I show you the meals I make from Food Club for two weeks, and here is the first entry.

Food Clubs are the new breed of help for households; unlike food banks, they aren't free and you don't just get handed a parcel and wished on your merry way. You do still need to qualify for them by being of low disposable income. I am someone who works close to full-time, but as my lovely club will tell you once they saw my bank statement, there is not much money left in the tank each month. Mine is funded by my local council, but also gets some of the food donated by local supermarkets - as I will explain with my pictures.

Here's what I picked up this week. This shop cost me £5 and consisted of 30 points. Each item has a point value - for example, tinned vegetables are only one point, but a box of washing powder is three points. There are certain things which I don't usually get here, like fruit, salad vegetables, yoghurt, cheese and some frozen foods. But I think it's fair to say that I now spend half as much on my food and the Food Club has really helped me tremendously. 💗

This first picture is what I like to think of as my "go to" dinner bases. Particularly if I have worked a late shift, these are really easy to put together when I am tired. I simply microwave the (small) potato for four minutes, break it up with the spoon and throw on half a tin of one of these. Delicious. I also tend to add a good handful of frozen mixed vegetables, or whatever fresh or tinned vegetables I happen to have at hand. This week I've got carrots (which appear below) and also some left over frozen mixed veg and stir fry veg (around 80p-£1 a bag from ASDA) so I will probably use up some of those. Potatoes are also great with half a tin of beans, or tuna mixed with mayo, or even a chicken curry tin. 

This second picture is a mix of lunches, potato-swaps and cheater's meals. Tonight, for example, I got home late, and when I don't feel like standing around in the kitchen I treat myself to Irish Stew. If I don't have salad fixings or I feel like a zombie in the morning, I sometimes take a cous cous or pasta packet to work, with or without some frozen veg to make it a bit more interesting.

There are some hot dog rolls in my freezer and I also got a lovely baguette today, so that's why I picked up the hot dog tin. As you can see there was also a delicious pecan plaît (that was my breakfast, along with a croissant). The three-cheese bloomer has featured with lunch (tomato soup - hot tip, add a dash of ketchup and salt & pepper). Bread is a bit tricky, it takes up a lot of freezer space and since it's donated, it's all free, but this also means it's best by yesterday and needs to be eaten quickly.

The three-cheese bloomer also starred in my dinner for this evening with my cheat meal, because tonight I treated myself (for the first time in a year!) to a night out seeing a show at the theatre, and I arrived home late, tired and soaked through. I would like to now apologise for just how un-photogenic Irish Stew is in general. In fact, many of my dinners are some variety of beige, so I will do my best to describe them rather than take multiple ugly photos of the latest slop-looking food which is actually delicious. 

This is a pic of some basic cupboard staples I picked up. I am butterly disappointed in the fake butter (did you see what I did there?). It's got a weird, margarine-y off taste that I associate with some of the awful brands I've bought in the past. It's the first time I've seen them stock this particular brand, so maybe the nice brand will return. If not, I'll go back to buying it from my work, which has the massive 1kg tubs that taste nice.

The pineapple tin does double-duty. I try to eat two servings of fruit every day. Usually that's a banana with breakfast and some other fruit either as a snack or after dinner. So that large tin is four desserts and I also save the juice to add a dash to my water bottle for work - it's delicious and actually makes me drink water.

Everybody needs a treat, right? The crisps were a no-brainer, the biscuits I am not even sure will get opened (I've still got a pack of custard creams from two weeks ago) and the chocolate gingerbread just looked sad and unloved. It might, even so, sit here in my cupboard for another few months being sad and unloved. We'll see. And although crisps aren't the healthiest thing in the world, I tend to take a pack to work with my lunch. It somehow stops me looking at my salad-lunch in disgust and walking out to buy something else!

Mostly free, left: the carrots were one point for the bag, but the rest was free as it was donated. I have some lettuce and cucumber in the fridge, and some tinned beetroot, so that's a few salads for work this week. I'm really grateful for the bananas too as I haven't been able to get any in the past few days and they're so much nicer than apples (controversial, I know).

All the packets and tins here were free as they are past their "best-before" dates and I think you know exactly what I think of best-before dates. I have some pasta in my cupboard from my last visit, and kidney beans work well in salads too. The stuffing balls are also a lovely change from the usual potato or rice with a meal.

Not from Food Club: a few salad bits, fresh fruit, jam etc, condiments, coffee (although most of these are actually available - I just didn't need them this week). I haven't completely emptied my kitchen in preparation so there might be a few things here and there that I eat seemingly from nowhere. For instance today I ate a chocolate brownie while sat in the the theatre and I'm not ashamed to say I bought it from Bargain Shop last week. It's realistic to say that this haul only provides about half the food for an adult each week. While it'd be possible to live on Food Club alone, if money were that tight I would be heading for a food bank so that I had a few pounds spare each week for, say, fruit.

So that's the starting point. I will try to update each day on what I prep for food, although I might space the posts out so that you don't fall asleep 😛