OH! Before I write a single word I am OFF TO THE SUPERMARKET with my £20!! I usually do two trips - I can’t carry everything home in one go - one in the morning for essentials and then one near closing time for the super marked down bargains. Will post haul later!

Round One: £12.26. One 35l backpack and one bag for life being walked home before heading back for Round Two.

Didn't want to get the tins AND veg in the same run but beans, pulses, tomatoes and fish were decimated so didn't fancy my chances leaving it another 2 hours. Oooft.

BTW I 'save the change' from the £20 shops, literally roll it into a small savings account. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, it's the princely sum of about £28 so far!

Just got home and weighed my backpack out of curiosity. 36lbs. Think I've worked out where I get my weird upper body strength from! And praying for a winter that doesn't get into my joints too much this year, seeing delivery slots are buggered for the foreseeable.

Made the fatal error of sitting on the sofa.

Oh no.

PS seems the most natural thing to spend that little accrued savings pile on would be a little Nan trolley!! Anyone got any recommendations?

Quite tempted by one of those heavy duty festival wagons actually. If only to level up my butch eccentricity points with the locals.

My ovaries can pipe down and all, underbuggy space is extremely useful but not a suitable primary motivator for expanding the family.

It's a very good job this is out of my budget because

Fond memories of moving a flytipped sofa across town in a wheelbarrow while about 8 months pregnant have just resurfaced

(I really should embark on my second trip, I need eggs and cheap things.)

Twitter. I am heading home with my Second Haul. Exactly £7.74, which brings this week's total to exactly £20 (nothing for the #SholleyFund but a very satisfied feeling at the roundy number) but the self service checkout DIDN'T PRINT A RECEIPT OUT and this messes with me system

I did contemplate asking a store colleague to try to get me one but there was a queue behind me and my reasoning 'its to show off my roundy number on twitter' didn't seem good enough to hold a queue up for. I'm taking it surprisingly well but I am a bit grumpy.

Gonna write meself one out when I get home. Markdowns hadn't moved since the earlier perusal either, AND they were clear out of chicken livers and cooking bacon. Readers, I'm gonna need a cup of tea and at least two different biscuits when I get in.

Sorted into fruit and veg, proteins, and carbs as can’t fit it all in one shot. £20 on the nose. The mushrooms were 42p reduced but the plastic was all smooshed up so I took it off as it spoilt my shot

Already got: dried red lentils, coconut milk, various dried beans and pulses, minced garlic purée, anchovies, very old but seemingly bombproof black olives, some pastas, rice, oats and some frozen veg and fish to add to this lot. And some other bits and pieces in the freezer.

Also, didn’t get a receipt for the second shop, but did snap this off my online banking pending transactions:

And the first receipt, for posterity:

Off to pop it all away now, as nice as it looks on the table, that yoghurt etc should really be in the fridge.

Ooh also the blueberry juice, tea and sugar are for kombucha - apparently doing the second ferment with a dark red or purple juice helps make the nutrients in it more bioavailable (easily absorbed by the body) so I’m going to give that a go this week and see if I like it.

PS one of the reasons I am avidly and publicly documenting my £20 food shop every week is not just for frugal points on Twitter, but it will be a very clear visual change when Brexit kicks in, and a potential second wave of austerity that I have a feeling is on the horizon.

I’ll do the maths later or tomorrow on what my original £10 shop in 2013 would cost now, 7 years on. I’m tired of the government peddled lie that food has never been so cheap when three quarters of the basic and value ranges have disappeared entirely.

I still have some of the receipts from my original shops somewhere, but every now and then I re-cost some of my old recipes on my site to bring the prices up to date and some of them TRIPLE in cost at today’s prices. So this is partly resource but partly a time capsule type thing

I might thread them all together by pics only when there’s a few more of them, so the basket shrinking or increased cost becomes obvious over time. Buckle up folks, because I think we have a rocky ride ahead. Rockier, even. God help us.

PS - I also sort my food cupboard out the same way as I sort my shop - carbs on the top shelf, any ambient fruit/veg and ‘flavour’ stuff on the middle shelf, proteins on the bottom shelf. Yes the fridge is also sorted like this too. It’s my system for building balanced meals

It says a lot about who I am as a person that the ‘vinegars, hot sauces, salts and oils’ cupboard next to it is the same size, and has more in it! Good old days of OFM awards goody bags and the like. Gonna miss my annual top up this year.

Just roasting the marked down chicken thighs to then strip down and chill - putting in the fridge to make into meals tomorrow that will then be frozen, and any not used tomorrow will go in the freezer until needed. Am generally relaxed about dates on anything except meat & fish!

And then the bones and skin are going in the slow cooker overnight with a sad old leek, an onion, last weeks leftover carrots, plenty of salt and pepper and bay from the garden. I’ll wake up in the morning with the house smelling like my Aunty Helens, and a few litres of stock

I’ll try to remember to thread my tweets this week so you can follow the shop if that would be useful I wouldn’t recommend buying the same stuff and cooking along in real time as I often take a few days to post things, because, life and ADHD and all that jazz.

But do feel free to use them as guides and inspiration! I’m just managing expectations - there’s no way I’m ever going to have the time to post 5 full recipes a day (SB and I have different lunch/dinner a lot) and maintain my workload as well. I think I’m worrying too much now!

Stock on from the thigh bones and skin, 3 last-weeks-carrots, 1.5 onions, sad dry leek from God knows when, celery leaves from today's shop, plenty of salt and pepper, garlic puree.

4 teabags and 160g sugar used to top 80% of this back up. My SCOBYs always go a bit Titanic when a new batch goes in, but they right themselves by morning.

...and the 80% that was drained out of the first jar went in here for the second ferment (hence no snotbiscuit and loose lid instead of muslin - first brew needs to breathe, second needs to trap the natural gases to carbonate and make the fizz!) along with the blueberry juice.

Now just finishing the devilled eggs recipe, will post in the morning as I tend to make mistakes when tired so want to proof read it first, and then off to bed. Night night - I'll be back in the morning! Thanks for keeping me company today!

Porridge for breakfast, made with water, brown sugar, and grated pear (it’s fine if you stir it, the oats release their own creamy milky stuff that pulls it all together)

Second go at the puttanesca soup for lunch

Beetroot, spinach, red lentil and kidney bean curry for dinner

Because I shoot in my porch, I lost the good light in the drizzly grey day - still got pics but not happy with them, so will reshoot with the overs tomorrow. Also snacked on bread and anchoïade and radishes, because of course

SBs dinner was one of the freezer meals from last weeks overs: the tuna, spinach, red lentil and pasta, with mixed frozen veg on the side. Obvs cooked, not frozen at point of consumption

It’s been a bit of a bruising day. Business as usual should resume tomorrow.

Pics for now, but will try to reshoot curry one tomorrow. Plenty of it left - this one doesn’t do it justice

BREAKFAST! Vegan apple, cinnamon and brown sugar porridge. Two very happy Mama and Boy Bears this morning.

Also couldn't work out why the Boy was giggling all through breakfast... Turns out he'd been taking sneaky pics of me taking pics of the porridge (Told you I shoot in my porch!)

FIRST LUNCH (I was up stupidly early and it’s deffo a two lunches kind of day). Two warm boiled eggs, three slices of bread, 1tbsp leftover anchoïade mixed with mayo, two thinly sliced radishes, grated carrot, thinly sliced cucumber, more mayo. Oosht this is a Very Good Sandwich.

(And before you ask, of course I did.)

Actually now I’m on the outside of that - with added cheapsticks - I’m not sure a second lunch will be necessary

PS cheap white bread is DELICIOUS but it’s also an absolute pig to photograph. It just looks like it’s tired of my shit

Better pic of the sandwich of dreams. Not sure why I didn’t clock this in my camera roll earlier, but here it is in all its eggy, crunchy vegetabley, anchovy mayo-y glory. Obvs you could use garlic mayo instead, or hummus, or chilli mayo, if anchovies aren’t your thing.

Take three of the Puttanesca-flavours inspired soup. Turns out I did have space for a second lunch.

My dinner tonight. Onion, courgette, pea and soft cheese risotto, with plenty of black pepper, a smudge of mustard, a dash of bottled lemon juice, and some of that bombproof cupboard hard strong cheese sawdust stuff that looks extremely suspicious and tastes absolutely fine.

SBs dinner - same base risotto, no mustard, added bacon to his and extra stock and cheese as he likes his risotto soupy whereas I like mine with a bit of bite and to stick - momentarily - to an upturned spoon...

And the blueberry juice, black tea, brown sugar, snotbiscuit thing is going WELL. I made those bubbles! With science! And maths! And patience!

(If I thread all our meals for a week to demonstrate what to do with a £20 shop I may end up with the longest twitter thread ever? Probably should have done a hashtag. You can tell I don’t have a social media manager. You...could probably tell that anyway... )

Should I stick to the thread or switch to a hashtag? You know I love to crowdsource decisions when I don’t know what to do with myself

Breakfast for SB this morning was a bacon and egg sandwich and an apple - we were running late so I didn’t photograph it but I’m sure you can imagine it!

I made his lunch last night and photographed it in a moment of organisation - this is his fave sandwich right now (he also puts his crisps in it because I have taught him well). Soft cheese, cucumber and grated carrot. I mix the carrot with mayo so it doesn’t fall out.

May I interest you in a Butter Sausage, Kale & Pea Curry? SB is gonna love this I think... (all from the freezer, so not from this weeks shop, the sausages are the last of the ones from a few weeks ago!)

And for me there’s a #vegan ribollita with sage and onion stuffing crumbs in place of the bread. I have bread, but I have packed lunches still to do for the week and I keep idly munching it from the bag, so I used stuffing instead for this. And it’s DELICIOUS.

Heated up a portion of the beetroot and kidney bean curry with some rice for lunch but didn’t fancy it (pesky ADHD meds mess with my appetite sometimes) so blended two thirds of it with a little tomato purée to make a soup instead. Worked like a dream. Weird how bodies work innit

And my late breakfast (from this morning, not now - not THAT late!) - was apple porridge leftover from yesterday mixed with yoghurt to make a sort of Bircher, with salted peanuts and syrup on top. Can recommend. I’m sometimes late posting pics because I do lots of things at once!

SBs breakfast from the £20 shop: brown sugar porridge, the last of the streaky bacon, and a caramelised sticky pear. I had the same but without the bacon.

SBs lunch was the soft cheese, cucumber, carrot and mayo sandwich again, a bag of cheesy puff snacks, and a banana.

My lunch was this spiced carrot, celery, red lentil and coconut milk soup

SBs dinner is chicken (from the thighs I roasted), baked bean, carrot, squash and rosemary casserole

And my dinner is pasta with the last of the anchoïade, squash, mushrooms, chard from the garden, and that bombproof hard dried sprinkly cheese.

A note on the chicken - I roasted it on Sunday evening as that was it’s Use By date, and then stripped the meat from the bones, chopped it up, bagged it in portions, and froze it. It can’t be refrozen now so in hindsight I should have frozen it raw but next time! Anyway...

...I defrost it thoroughly in the microwave a portion at a time when I want to use it, to save the conundrum of refreezing it or eating the same thing for days. It just gets stirred into SBs dish to serve. It’s an efficient way of cooking for two different diets as well.

(Or would be an efficient way of cooking for two different diets, if I weren’t currently in this mad recipe writing frenzy making six different sodding meals a day )

GOOD MORNING.

Spiced carrot and lentil soup for one lunch... I made a base carrot and lentil and coconut soup yesterday (or the day before? Time is a blur right now!) so I can vary the spices each time so it doesn’t get repetitive

...and that puttanesca inspired soup for the second lunch. Its possibly my new favourite thing, I ~never~ have something this often!

SB had his fave soft cheese, grated carrot and cucumber sandwich, onion ring maize snacks, and a banana. And a bottle of squash!

One of the things about shooting in the (free, natural) porch light means I have to have dinner done and plated to shoot before 5pm at the moment because of the shorter days, which actually works really well! I much prefer to eat early anyway So dinner pics incoming shortly!

(Eating early means all the washing up Is done before the evening slump hits, AND a legitimate handful of biscuits before bedtime, I can highly recommend it!)

Sausage, kale and pea curry from the freezer...

...and a biiiiiig bowl of piping hot ‘stuffing ribollita’, with extra bombproof hard strong cheese , also from the freezer from this weeks meals Might as well give myself a tiny break - I’ve cooked a LOT this week!

Going to round up everything that’s left - including bits from previous weeks shops - and batch cook up a storm tomorrow. Am eyeing up a beany ratatouille, a garbage risotto, a berry bircher with grilled banana and maybe the base for a shakshuka...

...Also have a lot of canned spaghetti hoops, because they’re 13p so I usually tag them on the end of a shop if I have a tiny amount of cash left, so might do a pasta e ceci from #TinCanCook as that freezes well! And there’s scope for a creamy garlicky mushroom orzotto too. Phew!