Rationing: A few days in

It's almost a week and its been interesting.

Firstly, the shopping came in at a 1/3 of the normal price!!! Hopefully, the normal shopping for 10 days should roughly pay for the whole of January.

The first day was deceiving, we had cheesy breaded potato and a raw root veg salad that was gorgeous. There was plenty of cheese (4oz.) for the 1lb of mash and the grated parsnip, turnip, carrot and watercress with an interesting dressing was also delicious. The dressing was made from a mix of milk and vinegar and was arguably better than modern vinaigrette.

I had a hard time over day 2 and 3 as the meals were lacking in meat and I went through a protein obsession. It was a bacon hotpot with only 3 rashers of bacon followed by a vegetable stew. I honestly considered buying a tin of Spam to eat straight from the tin! I stuck with it though and since I've not felt deprived at all.

It helps that we are able to have a dessert most nights and there are plenty of bulky carbs to fill up on. The most interesting dessert was the chocolate cake. This had half the sugar and less than half of the fat you'd normally use. It was instead bulked out with grated raw potato and bulky is definitely the word I'd use to describe the eating experience.

Overall, I'm realising how many empty calories I was adding to meals before and how, with a little effort, I can think more about my weekly meal planning and create tasty healthy meals.