I made this soup for lunch today, Raw Carrot & Bramley. It is from Hugh’s latest book, Light & Easy. I’m a bit of a fan, as you know, so I will be doing lots of recipes from here. Mum and my brother came over for a visit yesterday. Mum likes cookery books as much as I do, so she had the 2nd copy I accidentally ordered. My brother is coeliac, and Hugh has written this book to be mainly gluten and dairy free, so lots of ideas in it for him too.

I used

200g carrots, peeled, Asda 75p/kg, 15p
a medium sized eating apple (from the garden), about £1.60/kg,  100g. 16p
50g value salted cashews, Asda 75p/125g, 30p
lemon juice from a bottle, Asda 79p/250ml, 30ml, 9p
Total of 70p, 2 portions, so 35p each

served with walnut bread
some magic bread dough, maybe using 250g flour, 7p
80g walnuts £1.69/150g, 90p
spread with 15g butter each, value butter £1/250g, 6p each

Loaf, total of 97p, 4 portions, so 24p each, plus 6p of butter each

Total meal,  soup, bread,  and butter 65p

For the soup, you just put everything in a blender, with about 350ml water and blend until very smooth, adding more water if it needs it.  I had  a few cashews in the end of a packet, so I tipped that in along with the salt that collects at the botoom of a packet, then topped it up to 50g using a new packet. Because of the salt in the old packet, I didn’t need to add any extra salt at all.

I first tried to do this with the food processor, but it just didn’t do it fine enough.  So I had to go on a hunt for the blender. Both the food processor and the food mixer came with a blender attachment, and which was the only one I coud find? Yes, the one for the machine that wasn’t out and being used.  Disregarding the faffing about with the processor and the blender, this takes very little time at all to make. You really do need a blender for it, I didn’t even attempt to use the stick blender, it wouldn’t be man enough for this.

Hugh says to serve the soup cold, so that is how I had it. It was creamy from the nuts, fresh from the lemon and apple, and the whole thing was a lovely balanced dish. DP did try a spoonful cold, but he didn’t like the idea of it and heated it up in the microwave. I tried a spoonful of that one and it tasted just as nice, but different. Hot or cold, with a good chunk of crusty bread and some butter, this would travel well for a packed lunch.

The walnut bread we had with it used some of the magic dough I keep in the fridge. I dolloped some on the worktop, added half a tsp of salt and some more flour to make it a loose’ish dough and kneaded in the chopped walnuts. Then tucked it round and round to make a round loaf shape and left it to rise for about half an hour on a greased baking tray. Meanwhile, I heated the oven up to High and when ready, baked it for about 45 minutes. It needs to have a good colour and sound hollow when you rap the bottom.

Fresh crusty bread, straight from the oven, what a wonderful thing that is.

This costs more than I usually do on here. It leaves just 35p for the rest of the day. It could be done on £1 a day however. Plus, I used an apple from the garden, so if you can do the same, and maybe carrots too, that would reduce the cost.

Using your remaining 35p, and looking through the archives, there are lots of options to stay on budget.

You could have beans on toast for breakfast, 11p, raisin pancakes 8p or porridge 5p
And for dinner, amongst many other things, you could have bacon and sweetcorn pie, mash and peas, 32p, balti spring green pancakes, 15p, broccoli pesto and pasta 28p or  butter bean and vegetable curry 24p.

So a relatively expensive lunch, without blowing the budget