This is dinner on 2 days on the No Power Meal Plan. Use this same amount on both days, using the tin of blackeye beans on one day and the kidney beans on the other.
Serves 2
half a tin hotdogs, Asda 49p, 25p
30ml oil, Asda £1.25/litre, 4p
100g carrot, Asda £1.18/2kg, 3p
50g onion, Asda 78p/kg, 4p
100g cabbage, Asda 58p/kg, 6p
blackeye beans or kidney beans, Asda 4 for £1, 25p
half a lemon, zest & juice, 15p
Total cost 82p, 41p a serving
Per serving – 391 cals, 17g protein, 35g carbs, 21g fat
Open the hotdogs and take out half of them. Leave the brine in the tin to help keep them. Chop the hotdogs into coins. Open and drain the beans, mix in with the hotdogs.
Grate the carrot, no need to peel. Peel and slice the onion finely. Chop the cabbage as fine as you can get it. Mix all the vegetables in with the hotdogs and beans.
Zest and juice the half lemon and mix in. Season with salt and pepper.
I had this for lunch today. It was filling and tasty. I couldn’t really taste the lemon zest or juice at all, so you could keep the entire lemon for the hoummous if you like, or use more here and less in the hoummous. Up to you. I’m not a great fan of raw onion, so I left it to marinate together for half an hour before I ate it, and that process mellowed it out beautifully.
If you aren’t following the No Power Meal Plan, this would make a good packed lunch. You could use any of the beans in the 4 for £1 offer, it wouldn’t make any difference at all to the cost or the nutrition. This mix was just about the right balance between veg and beans. You could add more hot dogs if you have the funds, or replace them with pepperoni, chorizo, cooked bacon pieces, chicken etc, or a combination. Or use a veggie/vegan substitute if that is of interest to you. The hotdogs contain wheat, so if you need gluten free, replace them with some bratwurst.
The bean and veg combination are very variable. With some kind of meat flavouring, I am going to try red kidney beans, beetroot and red cabbage for a red lunch. Chickpeas, fennel, white cabbage and peas. Blackeye beans, grated raw parsnip, date and orange. White kidney beans, feta, skinned broad beans and fine sliced green beans.
Pleased with this one – now for the sardines……
Yes, we used to re-boil the soup every day. We kept the milk and butter in a biscuit tin, buried to its lid in the garden
Take away our gadgets, and how hard life gets
I’m glad they seem ok after a week in the fridge. I think keeping them cold is probably the most important and difficult thing. I must say my experiments with evaporative cooling have been rather disappointing. If things aren’t cold to start with (like opened tins), it’s not really possible to cool them down very much in hot weather. I have noticed, however, that the night temperature is getting down to about 6 degrees centigrade (not sure for how long) so hanging things outdoors over night is probably the way to go. If you have milk for breakfast, you can’t really forget to bring it inside.
All these things do add stress to life though, so it’s probably best to have the hot dogs on successive days if they have to be stored open.
A lot of food hygiene in the days before refrigeration depended on boiling things: scalding the milk pails and putting them in the sun, reboiling the soup or stock every day and boiling dishcloths to kill germs so a no-power plan is quite hazardous.
I’ve just checked the tin, it doesn’t say anything one way or the other. I have had had them sat in the tin in the fridge all this time and they are still fine. But as you say, best decanted really.
Maybe I’m straining at a gnat because I don’t know how well hot dogs keep out of the fridge. Does it say on the tin how long they keep in the fridge after opening?
In general, transfer tinned food to a clean, dry glass jar with a screw top and keep as cool as possible.
Lesley,
I admire how you have leapt into this nightmare of budgeting and food safety. It really is coming together.
Washing up without hot water is a problem but people should not store food in opened tins. An NHS website and other sources say that once open, the metal in the tin may contaminate the food. It is also better to keep food in containers with tight fitting lids to reduce deterioration from oxidation and moulds. Transferring to an old mayonnaise or coffee jar would probably be best.