Payday was Friday 24 January, because the 25th fell on a Saturday, and by Thursday night the current account said £23.60 and the cupboards looked like a stage set. It's the longest week of the month in this house, every January.
I plan on Sunday on the fridge whiteboard, and that week I did one Aldi shop on the Sunday afternoon, with a pint of milk from the Co-op on the Wednesday. Five teas had to come out of it, for four people, on the table at 5:30. This is what they were and what they cost, counting everything on the plate:
- Monday: sausage and mash, peas and onion gravy, tinned peaches and custard after. £8.35, or £2.09 a plate.
- Tuesday (Brownies night, so early): slow cooker chilli with rice and grated cheese. £9.85, or £2.46 a plate.
- Wednesday: tomato pasta bake with grated courgette and carrot in the sauce, garlic bread. £7.95, or £1.99 a plate.
- Thursday: chicken thigh curry with rice and naan. £10.55, or £2.64 a plate.
- Friday: fish finger sandwiches, oven chips and peas. £8.20, or £2.05 a plate.
Counting everything
That's £44.90 for five teas, £8.98 a night, so call it £9, or £2.25 a plate. My usual figure for tea is £1.65 a plate, £6.60 for the four of us, and I've always been rather smug about it. But it's a main-ingredients number: the mince, the chicken, the pasta. It leaves out the oil, the stock cubes, the gravy granules, the bread and butter, the tin of peaches and the rice already in the cupboard. This week I wrote everything down as I used it, down to the tablespoon of oil, and the real figure is bigger. Not a shock, exactly. More of a correction.
Where the money went wasn't a mystery. Only about £12 of it was meat and fish. The extras (naan, garlic bread, oven chips, peas, grated cheese, the tinned peaches and the custard) came to £9.60, which is just over a fifth of the lot, and I wouldn't have guessed that without the list in front of me.
It was £44.90 out of a £105 week, which is 43%, and the rest has to cover breakfasts, Isla's lunchboxes, Alfie's yoghurts and the weekend. That sounds tight written down, and it was. I was making decisions in the Co-op about whether a second pint of milk was a good idea.
The one Alfie pushed round his plate
Wednesday's pasta bake. Alfie doesn't eat "bits", and I had grated a courgette and a carrot into the tomato sauce, which a five-year-old can detect from across a room.
"There's bits in it."
"It's sauce, Alfie."
"It's sauce with bits."
He ate all the pasta, built a small wall of sauce round the edge of his plate, and announced he was full while the plate was still two thirds covered. Isla finished hers, as she does. Rob ate the wall. I should have blitzed the veg, and next time I will.
What I'd keep and what I'd change
The curry was the dearest, £10.55, because chicken thighs and naan add up, and Isla asked for seconds and then asked what the green bits were (coriander, which she then decided she liked). I'd swap the naan for extra rice and take about £1.40 off. Friday's fish finger sandwiches were the hit with everyone, and at £2.05 a plate it's the one I'd do again before the next payday. The chilli was quiet and reliable, and the slow cooker earned its place again because the kitchen smelled like a proper tea from the moment I walked in at ten past three.
Thursday sleeted, and the curry steamed up the kitchen window in a way that made the whole house feel like a tea room. That counts for something on the longest week of the month.
On Friday the payment landed at 6:02 in the morning, and I stood in the kitchen in my dressing gown looking at the app and felt about a stone lighter. Then I went and put the oven on for the fish fingers, because Alfie had been told that it was fakeaway Friday and he does not forget.
The sums: five teas, £44.90, £8.98 a night, £2.25 a plate, against a usual £1.65 that I now know leaves things out.
