{"id":850,"date":"2012-06-10T17:07:43","date_gmt":"2012-06-10T17:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/?p=850"},"modified":"2012-06-10T18:26:37","modified_gmt":"2012-06-10T18:26:37","slug":"cheap-cheerful-and-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/?p=850","title":{"rendered":"Cheap, cheerful and healthy!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love a bargain, I really like food and I especially like baking and cooking. So, this week when I was looking through the reduced item shelf in the supermarket I was really pleased to see a bag of ripe bananas (about 9 of them) for about 50p. Most people would have left them, but I saw this as a great opportunity for some batch baking.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_851\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-06-10_16-35-48_962.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-851\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-851\" title=\"2012-06-10_16-35-48_962\" src=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-06-10_16-35-48_962-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-06-10_16-35-48_962-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-06-10_16-35-48_962-1024x576.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-851\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Banana batch baking<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Today I have made Banana and Raisin Muffins, Banana and Date Loaf and Banana and Pine Nut Brownies. I&#8217;ll freeze the majority of them into portion sized pieces and then we can take one out as and when a packed lunch is necessary. Also when they are frozen they travel better and can&#8217;t be eaten randomly when you&#8217;re making a hot drink or folding the washing! They are all adapted recipes using only wheat free flours, natural sweeteners and nothing nasty.<\/p>\n<p>This &#8216;cost&#8217; me 6 bananas, the others I peeled and popped in a freezer bag. I&#8217;ll use them in smoothies when it eventually gets hotter. They add an ice-cream like texture without the sugar and dairy. I also froze a punnet of strawberries that were looking OK, but not brilliant for the same reason.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_852\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-05-24_10-58-21_328.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-852\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-852 \" title=\"2012-05-24_10-58-21_328\" src=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-05-24_10-58-21_328-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-852\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Banana, Strawberry and Coconut Smoothie<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Other items I&#8217;ve bought cheaply in bulk and cooked up this week:<\/p>\n<p>5 x bags of watercress for 15p each and made a batch of watercress soup for 4 people.<\/p>\n<p>Made French Onion Soup with not nearly enough of the onions I have in a sack in the kitchen. We&#8217;ll be on this for a while me-thinks!<\/p>\n<p>A bag of mini cucumbers from the market for next to nothing and pickled them (so preserving them).<\/p>\n<p>Used 10 bulbs (yes bulbs!) of garlic from a huge bag we got from the market for under \u00a33 and <a href=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/?p=862\">pickled those too<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Food waste is a huge problem not only in this country but globally and food prices continue to rise. I see no reason not to use everything I buy and also to buy wisely so I can cook in advance and bake or freeze or pickle. Go to it people!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_853\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-06-05_22-10-58_639.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-853\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-853\" title=\"2012-06-05_22-10-58_639\" src=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/2012-06-05_22-10-58_639-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-853\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pickled Garlic Cloves<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love a bargain, I really like food and I especially like baking and cooking. So, this week when I was looking through the reduced item shelf in the supermarket I was really pleased to see a bag of ripe &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/?p=850\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/a-healthier.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}