The 3 Meals a Day for £1 in 2026 Food - Part One

 

The Aldi Shopping Trolley

So, following on from the last post, today I am starting to show you the way that I used the foods that I bought.  If you missed the first post in this series explaining what I'm doing and why and showing the receipts and the rest of the food ... it's HERE.

I'm keeping it simple and just showing the food and some of the preparation photos.  I am well out of practice with challenges and I have to admit to forgetting to take some photos, so I am simply going to use the same photo over and over when necessary.  

Breakfast was a particular forgetful moment!!

MONDAY

Breakfast - Porridge

I thought that as I had a full kilo of porridge oats, I would try to eat 75g each day instead of my usual 50g.  It was way too much for me, so some was saved to be used the next day in a slightly different way and I stuck to 50g for the rest of the week.

As I am not usually a big fruit eater and yet I wanted to keep this challenge as healthy as possible, I decided that rather than make myself eat an apple a day I would simply cook up all six of the little apples that I bought from Aldi. I do love stewed apple/apple sauce and I thought it would be a brilliant addition to my morning porridge each day.

On the worktop in the kitchen were these sorry looking specimens that had fallen off the tree in the garden the day before so I decided rather than waste them I would peel, chop and add them to the Aldi apples.

Dinner - Banana and Coffee

After all the chopping and sampling of the stewed apple I just wasn't that hungry at dinner time, so I simply had one of the bananas and a cup of coffee. 

The makings of a good old vegetable stew, with lentils for a bit of added protein.

Almost ready on the hob, but it looked sadly lacking in 'green'.

So you might think this is cheating a bit, but I went to the vegetable bed in the garden and picked three of our spring onions.  We have so many left and I do want to try and use them before the first frost gets to them.

The green tops went into the stew pan and the white ends were saved to be used in another recipe.

Tea - Vegetable Stew

I pulled out two portions of stew and then whizzed up the rest of the pan to make almost a litre of vegetable soup.

TUESDAY

The leftover porridge from the day before had been popped into the fridge overnight, but rather than just reheating it I decided to try frying it.

Breakfast - Porridge Patties and Stewed Apple

It didn't work very well, usually I would have added a spoonful of flour to bind it better but I didn't have any, yes I could potentially have whizzed up some of the oats to make oat flour but we are talking about 7.30 in the morning here!! 😄

It was tasty in it's own way and the apple sauce was delicious.

Lunch - Vegetable Soup

Lunch was half of the soup made on Monday ... yes I forgot to take a photo!!

Straight after lunch I started making the dahl for my tea.  Dahl is always best when cooked slowly and left to stand before eating.

It doesn't look much in my large pan but it made a lot.

Tea - Dahl and Rice

Four more single-serve sized pots of dahl went into the fridge, and two others were put straight into the freezer along with six portions of rice.

My £1 challenge ready meals at their best. 😁 

I always find that it's good to get ahead and make large portions of things at the start of the week before my enthusiasm begins to run out ... and of course it makes for less washing of pots later in the week too.

I'll be back with more days worth of food next time.

Any questions just ask away in the comments, but to nip any portion size comments in the bud, I have made all the portions that I am eating this week to suit me and my usual meal sizes.  If I had wanted bigger portions I could easily have had more porridge oats and a lot more rice, but I cannot physically manage any more than is photographed in these pictures.

Sue xx