As mentioned in the earlier posts this month, I aimed to do minimal food shopping in January: mainly fruit and vegetables, as we had a lot of food in the freezer. I did also buy some minimally processed other food, but wasn't sure how long that could continue.
Since the previous post I did three more trips to the fruitaria: last Friday, Monday and yesterday. On Friday last week, I bought what has turned out to be my normal fruit and vegetable selection, with minimal variation, plus some packets of passata and a few tubs of tomato puree.
I know I could make those at home, and did attempt to do so at one point. I regularly stew and freeze tomatoes, to use instead of canned tomatoes, and that's well worth doing. But to simmer them down to puree level without letting them burn is a task that I found almost impossible. And I had to use so many tomatoes that it was barely worth it financially.
So this was what I bought on Friday 23rd:
I made tuna pizza (with a scone dough) one evening that week. Usually I would have bought and grated some commercial vegan cheese. But, keen to keep using 'real' foods, I made a recipe for vegan 'mozzarella' using almond meal as the base. It worked pretty well, and melted nicely.
On Sunday a week ago we were entertaining in the evening so I made the dairy-free version of our favourite brownie recipe, which turned out very well.
But that used up the last of the eggs which I'd bought at the end of December. So on Monday's trip to the fruitaria, I bought another dozen free-range eggs, in addition to the usual oranges, bananas and other produce.
We still had some processed food in the freezer, as well as meals I had previously prepared. Richard really likes meatballs in sweet and sour sauce, so I cooked some Lidl brand meatballs for him. Usually I would buy ready-made frozen falafal for me, but we didn't have any of those left, so I made myself some lentil-balls, which turned out well:
Of course, I made the sweet and sour sauce from regular ingredients, but I would always do that.
And so to yesterday, my final grocery shop of January. For the first time in the month, I bought some meat: about 1100g chicken, to make into a lemon chicken dish in the slow cooker for tomorrow. We are expecting some guests arriving early evening - friends we have not seen in nearly thirty years - and I want to have a hot meal ready for them. Most likely there will be at least three two-person meals left over to freeze for the future. So although this is all for February I bought it in January since I try not to shop on Sundays.
So, to summarise the whole of January, in addition to plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, I bought:
- 60 euros' worth of nuts, seeds and dried fruit
- eight toilet rolls
- six litres of pure grape juice
- 800g frozen peas
- 1 litre olive oil
- 1 litre sunflower oil
- 2kg flour
- 1 litre Greek yogurt
- 1 pack greasefree paper sheets
- 1 bottle of dried parsley
- 3 packs passata
- 4 small tubs tomato puree
- 12 free-range eggs
- 1100g boneless chicken thighs
All those extra food products count as 'minimally processed', in my understanding, as none of them have anything extra added to them. The entire grocery bill for the whole of January came to just over 212 euros. I'm quite pleased with that.
It was possible to do this because I had so many meals made previously in the freezer, and leftovers from Christmas, as well as some products bought previously. And we didn't do much entertaining. In February I will be buying rather more meat and frozen fish. I'll also be buying cat food, something we stocked up on in December.
But I hope to continue avoiding ultra-processed foods. I won't continue posting photos of what I buy, but will try to update the results at the end of each month. If I remember...
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