So I chopped up two aubergines. one red pepper, some red onions, a sweet potto, and a butternut squash, and cooked them down in a little olive oil. Added garlic and ginger, and a tin of coconut milk, and then enough water to cover the veg, and simmered until they were cooked – about 40 minutes, I think. Then I added the tub of Moroccan lentils, and warmed the lot through thoroughly

it was surprisingly nice, and made eight portions, six of which have gone in the freezer.

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So on Sunday I made a *huge* tray of roast veg, and we had it with a gorgeous piece of lamb neck fillet which mugged me when I’d popped into Normans for some bacon. And a red wine sauce.

And on Tuesday, for lunch, we had roast veg with a coriander naan from the Indian shop (4 for £1). And on Tuesday, we had the last of the roast veg with fennel sausages.

All in all, a remarkably cheap and extremely nice thing. I shall go back in a couple of days and stock up again.

So last night I fashioned it into a quick pasta dish. I cubed the pork and fried it off in a little olive oil, then set it aside. Put chopped onion, courgette, garlic and mushrooms in the pan and sweated them down, then put the pork back in with some salt and pepper. It was a bit … blah, so I rummaged on the spice shelf for inspiration, and added some aniseed. When the pasta quills were cooked, I added them to the mix, with about three dessert spoons of creme fraiche, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

About 454 calories per serving.

Ideally, for onion gravy, you should cook the onions slowly, but by the time I thought of it, it would have been too late to cook them properly at all. So, in a bit of a rush, I devised a quick version. Please don’t revile me.

I made a roux with a small knob (25g, maybe?) of butter and a tablespoon of plain flour. Added about half a glass of red wine, left from a bottle opened about three weeks ago (!), and not finished – whatever is wrong with us? Whisked that until there were no lumps,  then added a little stock pot thing that I picked up in Morrisons yesterday, 8 for a quid. Then water until the consistency was right. And then – oh the shame – I added a couple of spoonfuls of crispy dried onions.

And, do you know, it was perfectly acceptable. Not as nice, of course, but did quite well enough for the job. One to remember.

Yesterday it was -2C, and frosty paths, but a beautiful sunny day. And on the way home, I noticed that the inestimable T L Norman of Princes Ave was actually open at 8.30 a.m. So this morning, I added a shopping bag and my purse to the iPhone, and set off round the park (less cold, but chill wind and very grey, thank you for asking), and called in on route for home.

I bought:

1 huuuuge chicken (which will have been scratching about in the dirt outside)
about 1kg of pork shoulder, skinned and diced for me
8 fat rashers of back bacon (no water in that, no sirree Bob)

And then he informed me that he had venison “in the back”. And brought me out a selection of cuts. I picked a leg roast, which I could slice into steaks if we wanted, but I suspect it’ll go in as is. Well, it’ll almost certainly go in the freezer first, but you know.

That little lot came to £25.40. And we will get at least 5 meals off the chicken, plus soup. At least 3 from the pork, probably 4. And at least 2 from the venison. Which comes to 22 portions of cracking good meat for just over a quid a throw. Which is nice.

Diced up the chicken, and fried it off in a very little olive oil. added three cloves of garlic, some sliced chestnut mushrooms, and a chopped red onion. Stirred it about for three minutes or so, then added the lemon juice, and a small slug of white wine from an open bottle in the fridge. We seem to be slightly overrun with white wine – no idea why, because we don’t buy or drink white.  I think people bring it, and then decide they like the red on offer better!

Put a lid on the pan, and let it simmer down while the fusilli cooked. At the end, stirred in about half a tub of ricotta and some torn basil leaves. 

About 210 calories, plus pasta. 

So we chopped an onion, some garlic and a bunch of chestnut mushrooms, and fried them off in the smallest amount of olive oil possible. Mushrooms are horrors – they just slurp up all the oil and don’t give it back for a while so I had to stand over the cooker; the horrors of being on a diet :)

When the veg were cooker, I added some penne pasta that had been simmering at the same time, ⅓ of the cheese, and some basil leaves. It really was very nice. And very quick.

377 calories, by my best estimate.

I won’t tell you how to make an omelette – you’ll all have your own way, and anyway, I’m not very good at them :) But I made a 4-egg omelette, scattered the salmon, spinach and  about a quarter of an Aldi goat’s cheese over the mix, folded it, and we scoffed it. And it was dead good.

About 410 calories, as far as I can tell.

Finely chopped the mushrooms and set them to cook down slowly in some olive oil. Put the wraps on individual plates, and scattered some raw spinach leaves on them. Chopped the mozzarella quite small. When the mushrooms were done, added salt and black pepper and the rest of the spinach, and stirred till it wilted. Then added the mozzarella.

Bunged the resultant gloopy mess onto the wraps – as always I’d made to much, so some of it oozed out, but that didn’t affect the fab flavour one iota!

About 360 calories, I reckon.

I know how to cook, and I can produce cheap and nourishing meals. But I doubt I could rival the price of a couple of 12 pence burgers, some cheap oven chips, and a can of beans.

As an example, yesterday we had roast belly pork. To my shame, I cannot tell you how much the meat cost, because I bought a chunk from the butcher, he divided it up into three smaller chunks, and it went in the freezer. My best guess is about four quid for this piece, which will do us at least four portions.

With it we had red cabbage and apple; those two ingredients cost £1.34 in the greengrocer, and will do at least eight portions. We also had root mash – four carrots, three potatoes, two thirds of a swede. About – what – £1.50? £2? I don’t even know, to be honest. And there were two meals’ worth there. Tonight we will repeat the meal with the leftovers. And I’m pretty sure it doesn’t compete with the cost of a £1.30 Findus frozen lasagne.

So, you might say, that’s a cheap meal. And indeed it is. But it doesn’t include the cost of cooking it, or the time to do it. Or buying for the first time, the store cupboard stuff I used – cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, red wine vinegar in the cabbage; Fennel seeds, olive oil, sea salt for the pork. Or the pots to cook it in, or the knives to chop it up. I’m nearly 60 years old – I’ve been building up my skills, my confidence, my batterie de cuisine for forty years, and I’m still learning. And we’re lucky – we don’t have kids to look after, or a commute.

I heard a head honcho from Morrisons on the radio on Saturday, saying how “the food supply had become so complex”, and indeed it astonished me that meat was being shipped all over the place before it landed in the factory. In part, it’s complex because the major supermarket chains are constantly driving down the cost of food to the customer, while making the suppliers pay for that price drop. Most people spend less and less of their income as a percentage on food, while UK farmers are going out of business because they cannot get a fair price for their produce.

Those people in our society who are out of work, or ill, or elderly, are seeing their benefits cut, in real terms, while inflation goes up and up. If you are really struggling to heat your house, or buy your children’s school shoes, “decent” food is something that’s likely to be beyond your reach. So can we stop demonising everyone who eats this stuff, please?