Chinese takeaway for £1

Once upon a time, in the far distant past; we used to live in Plymouth and on the same street as a fantastic pub and a variety of takeaways. Like many people, Friday night was our takeaway night. We would walk to the 'Chinese', order dinner for the family, take ourselves over the pub, order and drink a pint each and then collect our takeaway and go home. If it wasn't a 'Chinese', it would be fish and chips or a pizza. For the average family, this habit will cost at least £15 a week, if not more. As a family, we would spend around £750 a year on take aways. We saw it as a simple treat, we didn't eat out, but we did have a take away.

I wouldn't dream of doing that now. Not only is it a pile of crap, but an expensive pile. Huge amounts of salt and additives. Now my frugal treats are much lower in calories, salt, fat and additives. I am trying some 'roasting bags' that I saw in Morrison's, for 85p for 10, which are much cheaper than I have seen else where. I used 3 belly pork slices, which were just £1, a third of a sachet of Chinese spice mix, a chopped pepper and a chopped onion and placed the lot, with a desert spoon of water, into one of the roasting bags. I baked this on 150 degrees for one hour in my mini oven. We had Tesco value noodles with this and they are only 10p. So our Chinese takeaway was within my £1 a meal. In true frugal style, this was washed down with orange squash.

So, I'll wake up tomorrow, no poorer and without that dreadful feeling of being poisoned by MSG, which always left me thirsty for about a fortnight and unable to sleep.............I think I slept more in my raving days than I did after eating a brightly coloured takeaway!

Until tomorrow, Froogs xxx