A miserly budget but a feast to eat!

Tonight's macaroni cheese supper on one of the "new" plates

Today's menu was surprisingly good, if I do say so myself! I was pleased at how much of the food we or our friends and relatives had produced.

Scarmbled egg (from our girls) was on the list for breakfast, served with wholemeal rolls from the freezer, courtesy of Mr Hovis via Sainsbury's reduced shelf.

Lunch was another risotto but one quite different from the one before as the veggies were changed: onions we were given and runner beans, courgette and tomatoes from our garden, with the addition of the rice and stock from the cupboard. We followed that up with some home-made lemon madeira cake.

Tonight's meal was home-made macaroni cheese with some grilled bacon chopped and put in the pan with it (almost out of date bacon needed using up!), served with next-door's baby tomatoes and some cucumber, and another bread roll. We didn't need pudding then and there so we had some apple crumble (neighbour up the road's trees) a little later on.

It has been as local a day's food as I could do today - I could have made it a little better if I had grown the cucumber, but ours are finished now, and I could have made the bread rolls, but although there were some home-made bread rolls in the freezer, they hadn't had wholemeal for a while and I thought that the change would be nice for them. We have also munched our way through a few mandarin oranges between us, which are obviously not grown locally, but all in all, I'm pleased with today and hope I can do something similar again tomorrow; I know that there is another apple crumble on the menu as I made two!!