Over recent years one of the regular excuses voiced about poor eating habits is that healthy food costs more than unhealthy. Since we decided on our alternative eating programme [yes there is a deliberate hint of silliness in the name] I have made one major discovery in that regard: by spreading butter thinly, and almost banning it from cooking, one uses less and thus spends less. Who knew?
Same applies to oils and dressings. I think a general rule can be discerned here: if you use thus buy less of something, it is cheaper than buying and using lots.
As we are eating less meat and more veg, the sums are in our economic favour there too.
Last night's meal was pork tenderloin marinated in ginger, cumin, pepper and cassia bark all ground up, the six little slices (£3.15 for the piece) popped in a sealable bag with that mix and some scrunched up bay leaves and lime leaves from our own trees, then left in the fridge for about seven hours before being beaten with a mallet and griddled. Result: loads of flavour to make up for the relatively small amount. It was as the divine HFW says 'meat as spice.'
What was more important to the meal was the brown rice (I used to hate it, but this stuff is almost perfumed - and I swear it used to be browner, but then Wagon Wheels used to be bigger, and all this used to be fields too) served mixed in with a pile of lightly steamed veg - carrot, mange tout, frozen broccoli, ditto peas, ditto okra, doused in soy sauce and pepped up with five-spice. Say 35p for the rice, £1.65 for the veg and soy, so the meal for three of us £5.15. Not cheap, not dear.
I'll do the same thing without the meat next time, but adding a few mushrooms and more veg - a pepper, and definitely garlic. The substitutions would bring the cost down to about £3. Which to fill three stomachs healthily (three people rather than one ruminant - or do they have four?) seems like a bargain.
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