T Minus One - Part One

It's Sunday morning. I should have written this last night but I wasn't feeling 100%. I woke this morning feeling a lot worse. But that's just part of the challenge and I will just spend all day pumping myself full of drugs, hot lemon and honey and anything else I can think of before we kick off our five days from midnight tonight.

How am I feeling other than a cold? Quietly ill-prepared to be honest. I had a busy day yesterday and today really is about the last day fine tuning that will make the difference between tricky and impossible.

But first - a followup from my previous post... I mailed the organiser of the event and received a reply. I really appreciate their time, as they are undoubtedly swamped at the moment. Here's what they said:

The basic principal is that all food items need to be costed for the week including gifts, recoveries or home grown within the 11.25. The only exception is spices/oil that we allow an itemised costing because it's nearing on impossible without. So you can't buy a 10kg pasta/flour etc and itemize the cost per meal - you would have to use it all. If you have spices and oil then you can figure out a per use costing. 

So that means herbs, spices, salt, pepper and oil can be priced per use - for everything else we have to accommodate the full purchase price. I'm really pleased that's been resolved.

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With this in mind, yesterday morning I created a list of things I needed to do:

1. Price up garden produce - silverbeet and lemons
2. Price up salt, pepper, oil, herbs and spices
3. Go shopping!

One thing that is really important to remember is that the challenge is to eat on $2.25 a day for five days. The challenge is not to eat for five days for $11.25. For me its a very important distinction - because it means you have to get as close to $2.25 in a day as you can... which means planning each meal each day in advance.

I can either eat one large meal once a day or several smaller meals per day. But whatever I decide I have to get the daily amount as close to $2.25 because that money isnt rolling over!

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 Silverbeet and lemons

Pricing up my garden produce is not an easy task - I bought these plants with months or years ago. But I'll applying what little logic I can muster today and came up with the following

Aaah my poor old silverbeet. I bought these in January - a punnet of 6 plants for 99c. Since then its supplied dozen of meals and just continues to keep on giving. My mum steals several meals worth everytime my parents visit. Conservative estimates would say we have had 40 meals off them - so I will price using silverbeet in a meal at 5c per meal

The lemons are even trickier to calculate. I planted this tree 6 years ago and every year it produces more and more lemons (funny that!). There are at least 30 lemons of the tree right now and I've used as many already this season. Since it was planted we've had hundreds of lemons off it. The plant cost $25 - so I've priced the lemons at 5c each

Summary

Silverbeet - 5c per meal

Lemons - 5c per lemon

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Pricing up salt, pepper, oil, herbs and spices

This is less tricky.

1. Spices - rarely use, so wont use this week

2. Mixed herbs - $1.99 for 15g (which I can only estimate at at least 100 'pinches') - 2c per pinch

3. Salt - $1.50 for 300g - 1c a pinch

4. Pepper -$1.79 for 50g - 1c per pinch

5 Canola Oil - $6.99 for 2 litres. 1 tablespoon = 15ml. 5c per tablespoon

Summary

Herbs - 2c per pinch

Salt and Pepper - 1c per pinch

Oil - 5c per tablespoon

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So then I went shopping. And shortly once I've done all my final calculations I will go shopping again. But lets start with yesterday.... T-Minus One - Part Two