*Afterthoughts & Addenda* *Weight loss/gain across the course of this exercise* - I didn't measure. *Multiple reheats* a few people noticed that the sausages in the leftover steamed buns had been reheated multiple times and wondered if it is safe. The thing to be most concerned about is the total time at which the food was in the temperature 'risk zone'. As long as this is controlled, it's more or less the same safety as food that has spent that time in one continuous session. There are aesthetic concerns with multiple reheats as some foods may start to break down into less pleasant components (which is really just like being severely overcooked if it happened in one go). Because it is difficult to keep proper track of these factors, the rule of thumb advice is sensibly condensed to 'don't reheat more than once'.
I love all these challenges you set yourself, perhaps in a future video you could do a time budget instead of a monetary one. Just to see if you could cut down on food preparation or cooking time. Keep up the content, I love all your videos.
Thanks, Shrimp. I'd be interested to know if you gained, lost, or maintained your weight after one of these multiple day challenges. Looking forward to the next one.
I'm quite sad that this mini series is over. It blended together some of the best parts of the channel very well. We got some great recipes with limited ingredients, preparing and cooking, lovely dog walks and (what you could have been) foraging.
What about the times he goes back and challenges himself to a redux of select recipies and what normal people without restrictions could do to make it better..
The genius thing about this series is that it emulates to some degree or other the small food-based dramas and questions many of us experience every day. Firstly - Not having quite enough money to buy everything we'd like to from the supermarket... Can I afford the fillet steak? Maybe I'd better stick to sausages this week. Second - Not quite having the makings of a meal... What on earth am I going to cook with this weird assortment of things I have in the fridge/cupboard. I can't just have bangers and mash again or I'll go crazy. I know, I'll make a sausage cottage pie! And lastly - Not quite knowing what you're doing but forging through and either triumphing or failing and then moving on... Is what I've just spent 20 minutes 'creating' even going to be edible? OMG sausage cottage pie is the greatest! As Atomic Shrimp himself says, it's not about pretending to be poor or preaching to others about how to save money, it's a microcosm of our lives. Well done, Mr. Shrimp.
honestly the longer challenge perfectly showed one of the problems i always have when cooking for me as a single person: repetition its often not feasible to buy and prep just a single meal. especially if you try to buy cheap / best value. you want some sausages? well be prepared to have some kind of sausages for the rest of the week. making soup? a single decent sized potato one carrot and half an onion will give you at least 2 servings... first thing i bought when i moved in my own apartment was a fridge with a proper freezer unit and a 200 pack of freezer bags and a bunch of small tuppers. every time i buy meat i go for the family packs and split them up into single serving baggies.
first of all you will do shit if you cant cook, have 2 left hands. like 99% of modern hoes, single mother cancer, also there is difference between those who look for work and cant find it, and those who dont want to work and just play victim.
@@andrewreaney well thats reality, british roses can only ready meals put in oven or microwave. just read how she complains that her whole family went to sleep hungry cos pizzahut didnt deliver. look at mess in kitchen on her profile. they have no shame. selfie in toilet where paint falls from walls and door
@@tomaszszupryczynski5453 that is quite a lot of hate towards something that isn't even the topic of this video. Why are you so angry you have to spew that bile here of all places?
Really shows how the economies of scale work when you do this over a longer time. There was so much food left, that if you'd stretched this to a £7 for 7 days you could have eaten really really well. That extra £2 could have been spent entirely on flavour. While I don't intend on start living on such a tight budget, this series has really inspired me to start being more frugal and less wasteful in the kitchen.
I was thinking that soupd could have been salvaged by your left over vegetables. You had an onion, carrots, part of a swede, left over. The bitterness of the onion skin broth would have been cut with that vegetable soup.
I've been using veg scraps and bones from meat I eat to make stock for about a year now and the quality of anything using stock, or even my rice, has increased exponentially. Plus it's is also less wasteful and saves me on buying stock. Luckily, my local grocer recently put out a "eat today" veg cart for $1 and I visit almost everyday. Saves money, saves produce from wasting, helps me eat more veg.
I actually suggested this when he did the £1 a day video. Doing your weeks shopping with your £1 a day budget allows for a much farther stretched variety especially if you get your hands on a reduced box like he did in this video.
Same here! The challenge mindset he so often shows us is really inspiring - I love the creativity, resourcefulness, and ingenuity and would love to emulate it. I imposed a budget of £2/day on myself (with full use of anything I already had!) which is far, far easier than any of these challenges, and found that it made me much more creative in what I could get to combine with what I had. It's also actually pretty fun if you're getting into the mild discomfort zone!
I started keeping a vegetable stock box recently, inspired by this channel. My first stock was good, but this last stock had a lot of jalapeño and ended up _way_ spicier than I thought it'd be. Cooked it down into a thick sauce, added a little balsamic vinegar, some other seasonings, and it turned into a really tasty hot sauce
I love that I learn the different terms we use between dialects of English when watching these videos. I've never heard reedmace before, here in the Southern US we call them cattails
I saw a video of a woman using the cattail fluff as stuffing for cushions. I wonder if Atomic Shrimp does any nature crafts... Like pine needle baskets and stuff
Also from Michigan and I also know them as cattails. I have read that not only can you eat the starchy roots/bases of the plant but in the right season you can collect the pollen from the 'flowers' and use it like flour.
Thank you from Australia. I run a community pantry, which feeds people suffering food insecurity. We provide rescued fruit and veggies and bread for free, and purchase from another charity basic groceries which we on-sell at cost recovery prices. You've given me lots of ideas and especially challenged those hidden assumptions we make about cooking on a budget, such as using spices and herbs to pep things up, without considering their cost. Many of our customers don't have the skill or imagination to cook as you have done (and I'm not imaginative as well), so lots of room for improvement. I love the foraging too. But it takes dedication to do what you did, and I thank you for that.
We run into that here in the States too. The younger folks aren't taught to cook so that cheap box of veg he got would go to waste. My hubby worked with homeless people for many years and we both volunteered in soup kitchens. There is a little cookbook that might be spot on: A Man, A Plan, A Can where the recipes had a fresh ingredient or two an a couple of cans. Easy instructions. Sometimes we thought that kind of book would go a long way to help folks be able to cook for themselves GOOD food.
For what it is worth, what I was taught as a starting point when I had to start to cook at a very, very low budget? Savory and veggies = soup or stew. Sweet and fruity = minced into pulp, and turned into oat cookies (overnight oats, flattened out, and baked until cookies) or porridge. Sprouting was also useful, but requires a bit more effort.
While volunteering with foid commodities distribution in the US I learned that knowledge and experience was a barrier to good eating. So we publish recioes and information in the newsletter that goes out with the boxes. Like "Ten ways to use grapefruit" when we gave out 20 at a time. Grapefruit cake, grapefruit icing, grapefruit seltzer, grapefruit & macaroni salad, grapefruit jam, grapefruit stir fry, fried grapefruit rind (Depression Era!), grapefruit cookies, grapefruit soup, and grapefruit cleaner. There was a lot of zesting and juicing going on. I still have 30 grapefruit ice cubes in the freezer that I use to flavor my water. Zero-waste, use everything. The grapefruit rid that wasn't fried like breaded veal went in plain white vinegar to make a spray cleaner.
Foraging in Australia is also in my opinion a little harder than foraging in Britain. There aren't freedom to roam rules codified into law in quite the same way that there are in Britain. Most foraging guides are written for Britain, America or other countries in the northern hemisphere - there are indigenous ingredients in Australia that can, of course, be used, but they aren't always as well-documented in accessible forms, and many of the European weed type species that can be foraged aren't always safe to pick in Australia because they're extensively sprayed (eg dandelions and blackberries.) The only food I ever foraged in Australia was fat hen/goosefoot/lamb's quarters, which was a weed growing in our potato patch (so I knew it hadn't been sprayed.) Now I'm in Finland I've picked nettles in the wild, and seen plenty of the other plants Shrimp mentions.
I had one goal when I was younger, to be able to go into M&S and buy whatever I wanted without worry. I am fortunate to have gotten a very good job that allows me to do this, and your videos have really made me appreciate that all the more again. Thank you for that, and thank you for this entertaining series.
Loved how you adressed the hardship in the opening episode and now here again towards the end. I don't know how many times you rehearsed what you were going to say for the videos but I think you explained it absolutely brilliantly. In my opinion this series shows that the hardest part on surviving on a budget is the knowledge that you need. Having the knowledge to prepare the different meals from ingridients that you end up with (since you are not flexible at all on a budget) is definetely very challenging. Overall. This is the content the internet was made for. Thanks for sharing!
My Grandparents generation, who lived through a war and rationing, knew all about this and passed it on to my parent's generation. Unfortunately, my generation didn't think they needed to know any of it as we grew up in an era of cheap, processed food and lots and lots of waste.
The time investment, while not impossible, is also something to think about. For someone working multiple jobs with a family it could be difficult to devote much time to cooking. Efficient planning could help, but it's still hard when you don't have a weekend. A lot of people notice generational differences in the people, but miss them in the environment. The purchasing power of the average person (in America anyways, since that's the data that's easiest to find) has not raised significantly since the 70s. The cost of living has though. Housing, education, and health care are all more expensive than they used to be. Wages have not increased in comparison to the cost of living, and things like homeownership are just out of reach for people in the younger generations. Average age of people buying a home has jumped from ~30 to 44.
This is a key problem: 15% of the population has an IQ below 85. They're poor because they don't have the capacity for high-paying jobs, and they aren't as able to solve complex problems (e.g. food budgeting) like AtomicShrimp just did. They deserve dignity and assistance. Many of us forget that we did not make our intelligence - and those who are not as smart aren't just *not* lazy - They actually work a lot harder.
@@cactoidjim1477 Just because their IQ is below 85 doesn't mean they're stupid or unable solve complex problems. IQ tests are flawed and don't take into account a plethora of factors that'd result in a lower IQ. Mental illness, stress, sleep deprivation, and illiteracy can lower your score even though they're not indicative of a lower intelligence. (All of those occur at higher rates in the poor population btw) The issue isn't that they're stupid, it's that they're poor and simply don't have the energy or time to food budget. And ofc the lack of awareness and education in regards to budgeting.
@@brandon9172 That's a good point. I was only meaning to highlight that there is a section of society that cannot get higher paying jobs, and are not as easily able to do quick research for ways to save money. It isn't fair to lump all of the poor together as "lazy" (in response to some of the comments Shrimp highlighted) And we collectively owe them the dignity of work and a living wage - whether they are perfectly frugal or not.
Also, spaghetti is more versatile than you think. In my Soviet family, we would have it for breakfast. You just break it into smaller pieces cook it in milk and add butter, sugar, and salt. It's really comforting! (Craving it now actually!)
Since you have a dehydrator, putting your unripe mango in there until totally dry and then powderising would have yielded amchur powder, which is a powerful way to add complementary sweetness to savoury dishes naturally.EDIT: Unsure if the dehydrator was allowed under these rules.
That is an interesting idea, not sure how I would feel about it if it was in the video though, since dehydrators are very very energy inefficient and since a large part of the viewer base of a video such as this is going to be people who don't exactly have a lot of money to waste I feel like the use of such a machine could get some negative feedback, such as when someone like Joshua Weissman makes a video titled "Easy/Cheap" and then goes onto using extremely expensive or inefficient cooking ware and the comments are full of people calling him out on that.
@@MonsterPumpkin Amchur is traditionally made by sun-drying the mangoes. Considering that the season and his location would have made that difficult for him, I think most of us wouldn't have cared about him using a dehydrator. Alternatively, he could have used his oven. There are plenty of ways to dry things fruits and plant matter
I will totally make steamed buns. Basically everything can go in there. There is even a takeaway that has them filled with chili or kebab. But I think I will go with yeast dough. I still have tons of dry yeast around from a pizza phase last year.
I would have used a lot of black pepper when eating the meals, which would have been allowed as a table condiment. Also, a bit of advice for people when buying spices - those little 30g jars fom supermarkets are VERY overpriced. Find your local asian grocers... they usually have much larger 100g+ bags for the same price, as well as a much wider range of spices.
it still wouldn't have fit into a budget like this not 5 pound for 5 days, if we are talking like 500 pounds for 50 days you can buy spices in bulk kinda thing.. and some more heavy hitting meals.
The problem with those giant bags is that for Western cooking, we don't use nearly as much, so the spices lose their flavour quickly. You probably still get cheaper per weight while they have flavour, but that's a lot of waste.
I didn't want to labour that point, but I really dislike it when people hijack my comfy, silly little leisure experiments to try to reinforce a horrible and antisocial viewpoint
@@AtomicShrimp The awful thing is that the fuel to cook all of these meals probably outweighs the cost of the food so becomes difficult for some people. Providing Free Energy is not thought to be a good business idea. Great shows, Thankyou.
@@46oranges surprisingly cooking doesn’t actually use that much energy neither gas nor electric. If you maximize the use out of your oven and cook multiple meals simultaneously then the cost to cook the food goes down so far as to be negligible on even extremely tight budgets. The fees for having a gas hookup are often more expensive than the gas used if the stove is your only gas appliance as an example. The real savings if you need to save electricity or gas are going to be elsewhere like clothes dryers, electronics, heat, etc;
The thing that surprised me most in the challenge was just how big the portions were that you managed to get out of everything. Over the challenge, the thing I've learned most is that you can indeed make sourdough with self raising flour
If you find yourself in a similar stock-making situation again, roasting the bits and bobs until they're just a little burnt and THEN boiling them into stock will add significant sweetness (and some extra umami). Not that I anticipate you'll have a nearly all-onions budget stock extravaganza again, but I don't eat meat and have most certainly experimented with stocks of various methods. If you want to be particularly economical with your time, clean-up, and flavor maximization, you can even pour water directly into the roasting pan and have the stock finish in the oven, rather than dirtying a pot. Plus, that'll ensure that any fond-like flavor bits get jogged loose and incorporated.
I love the Lidl veg boxes. I recently bought a soup maker and those veg boxes made the most amazing soups. I made one with Cauliflower, desiccated coconut and some curry powder that I had.
Congratulations on finishing this filming, editing and posting marathon! It was very entertaining. My personal favorite was: 'Oh, look, a bird pooped on it - that will help things grow'. Your unfaltering cheerfulness is very endearing 👍
I like these multiple day ones way more. There is so much creativity on display. You take some really basic shopping and turn it into 14 different meals. Love it.
An easier way to make caramelized onion is with a slow-cooker. Low and slow and about 3-4 hours. I honestly would have dove into making stock asap with all that. Even the thinnest of vegetable stocks would have made that rice and the split peas far more tasty (cook them in stock, it's a simple way to add flavor since they soak it up). As for "chicken portions", I normally prefer chicken thighs (bone in or out, makes no difference, but in this challenge chicken bones could be used to make *_more_* stock). They can be very versatile and even just simmering one (cut into strips) in a pan in a little stock with some onion sliced thin can go on rice and make a delicious meal. As for the stock you made, you need to avoid using more than 40% of any one vegetable, and (from experience) no more than 10% onion skins. Given you didn't use any whole vegetables in there, you probably wanted to avoid any of the skins. That last onion and few carrots could have made a great stock.
@@MicukoFelton In a slow-cooker? Not really. With the lid on and with a good crockpot-style inner, they don't tend to use a lot of power when they're up to temperature. EDIT: Just to double-check, I looked up the wattage of my own slow-cooker (5.5L) and it uses 200W of power on low. That's .2kWh per hour. Four hours of that is .8kWh, which amounts to 17c of power used (my current power rates are 22.39996c per kWh). Pretty much, a slow cooker will always be way more efficient at cooking than, for example, an oven (which can vary in cost from about $1 an hour to over $2 an hour for a BIG oven).
I bought a 25 lb bag of onions for $5 (can't resist a bargain)so I expirimented and made caramelized onions in my instant pot and wow it cooked down so much (from 8 cups to 1.5 cups). It worked well for me because I didn't have to baby it stirring constantly. It did make my house absolutely reek of onions.
Very enjoyable and interesting series, thank you. I was quite concerned at the start you would not have enough to eat. Those fears were unfounded, I was quite surprised at just how big the meals were. Your challenge did highlight one thing for me, nutrition. You managed to overachieve on calorie and protein count, however although you were not taking it into account. the carbohydrate content was very high. I can see now how people surviving on a low income long term end up putting on so much weight. I am not criticizing them or fat shaming. For me it was a light bulb moment bringing me to an understanding of yet another issue of poverty.
Oh wow did not expect the weighing in the end, that's really interesting! There was enough leftovers to probably eat a couple more days on sad rice meals. Also loved the commentary in the end, whoever says that people who cannot afford food can survive with little money clearly never had a shortage of anything in their life.
@@WeSombreGhosts well, if you spread the rice in the sun, the weevils will walk away and you can eat the rice. It always amazes me that in a society that produces insect based protein bars people are horrified by a few insects crawling on their grains.
(Not sure freezing bugs always kills them. I froze raspberries from my garden, and bugs crawled out when thawed, yuk. Just consider flour bugs extra protein. 😉
Really enjoyed this series. You're so creative. If that was me i would have made a huge sausage casserole on the first day and eaten that for all five days 😂
Sad that the series was so short, but outstanding work as always! Combined everything I love about your channel: foraging knowledge, cooking, bits of wisdom, bits of calculation and reasoning, and the always wonderful Eva.
I'm sure this series felt plenty long enough for Atomic Shrimp, 100 hours of work for this is serious dedication. But yes, as a viewer all of these were fascinating to see, and I agree that I could keep watching these videos for ages. There are a great mix of topic areas, and useful skills covered here.
I've lived below the poverty line for much of the time I've done the "independent writing" small business deal, and I just wanted to point out that a significant thing that can be a requirement too is preparation time. Other than a couple support people I hire (an accountant and someone to handle the more technical aspects of the web hosting), everything the business does is me, and so my time is very limited. Time I'm spent preparing food is taking time away from the activities that keep that food on the table, and my lights and heat on. Are there ways to do stuff yourself with limited preparation time? Sure. But I'll spring for a delivery pizza on the weekends or something so I can actually steal away some time with my partner rather than squandering more of what already-very-precious time we get together. I appreciate the message that it's not that simple. A quote I once heard is "Only those who have been there know how expensive it is to be terribly poor" - and that takes many forms, that being one of them (lack of being able to buy in bulk for economy, being able to afford longer-lasting tools and clothing, and cheaper stuff being highly-processed being some others)
From Winston-Salem NC: I really enjoyed this series. You demonstrated how important it is to be able to buy a larger amount of food at the outset (economy of scale). It makes a remarkable difference in the amount and quality of food that can be prepared. Kudos for the time and effort employed on this project.
This was so cozy to watch! Thank you. Someone under a previous episode in the comments recommended doing an "apocalypse" a.k.a shelf stable-only challenge. I think that would be really interesting!
I've really enjoyed this series. Just a hint for making your vegetable stock: slow roast your vegetable peelings in the oven first to caramelise them. It will help avoid the bitterness you could taste in the stock.
Another great series! The onion is the hero in this, so versatile and it adds so much flavor. Not only that but it's also cheap, widely available and perhaps most important of all, it stores incredibly well. Something edible from the allium genus will mean that you'll have sustenance, color (with most species) and flavor for your dish. Thank you for your videos!
I've always avoided your budget challenges because I thought they'd be depressing. So glad I succumbed and watched this series. Fun and interesting - like all your output. Good job, Mike!
Hi! I watched all five in one sitting and got to bed really late last night. So interesting thank you. I attend Slimming world and constantly struggle to reduce my intake of food sometimes feeling "hard done by" . Your videos made me so grateful for the way we live. Thank you for making me appreciate the food that I eat.
As a student with limited budget and time I quite like these videos, never knew how inexpensive and low effort dry beans/lentils are to prepare. I live in a studio flat with 2 small hot plates and a sink as a kitchen. I think a minimalist challenge with limited cooking space/supplies/appliances would be very interesting to watch :) Loved the series
Yes! Find a type of lentil/pulse/bean that you like the flavor of and don’t mind eating without much seasoning, and then you can add a new spice/herb each pay period or so to slowly start building up a spice cabinet without breaking the bank. I personally love black eyed peas, and those with rice, sautéed onions, and kale or broccoli on the side is a comforting, inexpensive meal. Also, check out the “ethnic” groceries in your area or the international aisle at your supermarket-they often have bags of herbs and spices that are much cheaper than the bottles in the spice aisle. Edited to add: you can also cook dark leafy greens in the beans/lentils to save on dishes and reduce the number of heating elements you need. Check out the dish Hoppin’ John and all its varieties!
Friend (Lidl Manager) said that the boxes are usually the dying fruit or veg or things that have hit the floor .. they also toss nice stuff to get you to buy the box.
As person with chronic depression and other health problems I appreciate so much you showed "as long you can cook, you can eat" comments. You can't cook when your body hurts and you don't have will to live. Food becomes expensive, specially if your body is alergic/intolerant to some kinds of food (I had to be careful with rice for example). That aside, I enjoyed this series so much. So many food combinations I wouldn't thought of. I hope we'll see more of this kind of videos from you in the future. Not soon, of course, for your sanity 😁. You can try with different rules than in previous videos but stick under 7 days. You sure deserve yourself a pudding now.
I know what you mean. It can be so hard to cook for yourself, for any number of reasons. When we can, it’s a brilliant piece of self care to nourish our bodies. Take care.
George Orwell was not always the most honest of writers, but he did hit the nail on the head when he said (or words to the effect) that after working for very long hours and a tough job 'You want something tasty' in response to people complaining about working class people of his time eating fried potatoes rather than oranges. Thank you for the video!
Always enjoyable to watch these budget days. So many people here in America having a hard time being able to afford good food. A roast in the store was $40 when it normally would've been around $15. Thankfully we have a farm so just about everything we need, but so many people with children especially are struggling.
It would be infinitely more rough to do this challenge in America I think. We don't really have things like the almost-expiring-veg-box-for-cheap or other loose items you can pay pennies for per or a small pack of. It'd be possible to do economy-of-bulk for this price, but to pick up just 5 days of food for $6.75 usd would be quite the challenge
@@travellingslim out of curiosity, a few weeks ago, I tried to see what I could get for $7 at Walmart, (even though a pound is worth more than a dollar) and after a LOT of math and searching I determined that with $7 I could get 16 Oz of dried lentils An 18 count pack of eggs 16 oz frozen spinach One loaf of bread (24 pieces, 88¢ loaf) 2 lbs flour And 3 bananas (this assumes a 25¢ banana, and on average 3 bananas are a pound and a pound is around 67¢, I rounded to 75¢ for three banana so if they were small maybe 4) So I took those numbers and split them up into 7 days to see what you would be able to eat daily and got Half a banana every day (minus first day) An Oz of bean sprouts (actually more once wet but an ounce from dried) An Oz of lentils (or 2 oz lentils from dried if you dont like sprouts) 2 eggs daily (3 on odd days) 2 Oz frozen spinach 3 pieces of bread 4.5 Oz flour Of course you could switch around a few ingredients like swap bread for ramen (if you know how to make your own bread or just prefer ramen), or swap the 18 pack of eggs for a smaller pack of eggs and maybe a piece or two of fruit or veggies…but butter/lard/oil/ is basically out of the budget because even the smallest portions are well over a dollar. In case you were wondering about the viability of trying this in America. It’s definitely vaguely possible, but it’s much harder than in England.
I learned so much in these 5 videos. I feel like this channel improves my cooking versatility and knowledge a lot more than any of those cooking channels
I sincerely appreciate that you put these all out back to back, and I would have been happy to see the videos posted one a week for 5 weeks, or 2 a week perhaps to keep other people's attention. I lived you're method and motive for these videos. I also find these videos spark my culinary creativity. Thank you.
This series made for a very interesting watch. I recognised some of the downsides, bitter vegetable stock, the un-rescueability of cheap sausages.. and I also recognised the creative challenges of using things up, which can lead to both pleasant, and unpleasant surprises. One thing that struck me was that my digestive system would not have coped with all those split peas. Having a robust constitution is certainly an advantage! You have some lovely places to walk too, thanks for taking us along.
Should do a food bank one, especially this time of year. Also over the lockdowns people using Food banks, to show those what food bank provides and ways to maybe stretch the 3 days ingredients. That would be a great help and also maybe show those that think Foodbank is beneath them or too scared to use a food bank. I know lots of people would rather go hungry as they think Food banks are for people with children only. You dont even need to get food from the Foodbank to do this with, just ring your local Foodbank they will tell you what they put in the 3 days worth of food parcels. Or maybe offer them money for a parcel, so they can replace the food you use? Just a thought. These budget vids are not really appropriate to my life or people I know, although still watch them. Thousands are using food banks to just put a hot meal in their stomachs. Think Foodbank is more of a real life situation rather than budget on £5. When my kids were young I had to budget at times, when their dad had stolen the last of the money for drugs, luckily my parents used to help me loads, so my children never went without x
Shrimp doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would exploit a food bank for the sake of a video. He has made it quite clear that he isn't poor, larping as poor, or trying to diminish the hardships of others. Taking food from a food bank would be, quite literally, stealing from the less fortunate.
Outstanding series! We really do appreciate how much time this all takes to put together from start to finish, really gave me plenty of ideas, well done Atomic shrimp👌👍💛🇬🇧❤️
quite a great series of videoes, I think that is probably more than enough money for 5 days for less scarce meals, i.e. you could get away with having more normal meals if you had a stocked pantry/refrigerator. The key to living on cheap food is to have those spices you can go to and just not waste food as you buy them. It's amazing what you can do with a 30lb bag of rice, you just need condiments in quantities that can stretch really far, like soy sauce, vinegar, every day dried spices/herbs, stuff that keeps well.
This series really altered my perspective, made me much more conscious of what I have...we're behind on the shopping and I went to the kitchen last night thinking, what am I going to make? Ended up making what we had stretch so much further because I had this series in mind before I started cooking. Very entertaining, and helpful.
Excellent series. I’ve been buying those veg boxes from lidl for a couple of years now and they do represent excellent value. Because of the random nature of the items you get in the boxes, it does allow you to get creative and come up with new ways of using everything up.
In general I think the limitations were fine. This was a challenge, so obviously some things are very limited on purpose. I can see someone permanently on a tight budget would have most of the herbs and spices they like around, just like you had some random selection. But since things like spices last for a while, a monthly or quarterly buy. As someone who isn't rich myself, that is what I tend do end up with. Things like basil, pepper, hot sauce, noodles, rice, flour, potatoes, beans, etc, are something that are bought every month or more rarely. So a pack of dried beans or lentils bought at the beginning of a month will makes for meals all through the 30 or more days. That is the economy of scale mentioned at the beginning. And those things don't go off quickly, so they are great stuff to have always stocked and can be thrown in when needed. A bit like toilet paper, which also lasts a fair bit and doesn't go bad, but you buy it before you're out. So to all the budget people out there: Preparing meals yourself is cheaper than buying ready-made and keep those basics stocked. Think about making pizza yourself, including the dough. Look up all different kinds of potato recipes. And yes, instant ramen are probably the worst in terms of nutrition. Yes, they are cheap, but neither healthy nor filling. They are basically fast food, and go for fast food prices. Okay once in a while, but not something to live off.
An excellent series of videos which probably helped to open many an eye! As a youngster this is how my family lived, and let me tell you that those little glass jars of spices were the most treasured addition to any meal. Dubbed 'Helen Special' (after my mother), the heavily vegetable-based meals were lifted by salt and pepper, oregano, bright yellow curry powder et cetera. I think a great video from you would be one based on the way in which cheaper dishes can be improved by oh-so-little in the way of herbs and spices.
My mum used to get potatoes and cook home made chips with soup topped on them when money was tight. Or stews, my dad was a whizz with making a stew but keeping it going for days. His mum ( my paternal grandmother) used to raise and butcher her own pig or sheep when my dad was a small boy. My dad used to bake his own bread, make chutney, jam, preserves etc my mum could just about peel a vegetable. My dad could knit, darn and crochet ( born 1929) he taught all of his 5 kids to do stuff he even taught my mum ( born 1941) how to do stuff he was raised doing . Used to love watching my dad in the kitchen, my mum used to go mad due to the mess he would make haha
@@iwantthe1icanthave179 My dad was born in 1930 - sounds like we had similar backgrounds and that people in those days went in for the 'make do and mend' a lot more that today!
I really enjoyed watching this 5 day budget. Makes me want to take a look in my pantry and see what I can do with what’s in there rather than shop for a few weeks. Thank you for doing this, I’d love to see another 5 day budget again!
Incredible amount of good and healthy meals for very little money, and I love your creative thinking. There will always be hits and misses with such limited ingredients. You get a gold medal from me, and hopefully many will use these videos as inspiration!
I really appreciate that you don’t belittle people who struggle with food hardships, just because you were _able_ to do it doesn’t mean it’s actually feasible for people, especially people who are working full time and have kids to feed, rent to pay, etc. That being said, I’m glad people in these positions can still benefit from your videos which show how to make food stretch and what food investments are better than others, something that can’t be experimented on when you’re actually in a tough position but can be when people are in a position like yours. I know I’m definitely going to look back on these videos when I start my masters program, I’m expecting student loans to destroy me and economical tips and recipes like these will definitely help!
Good luck with your future studies. If you possibly can, start being really frugal now. (Do it while you can afford mistakes. ). I went back to school for a masters too and it was financial torture. I had a strict budget to get me through a two year course but there are always unexpected expenses. Anything you can squirrel away now will help. And don’t forget that you don’t start earning money the second the course finishes, have a plan for that too.
I really loved this series. Aside from your cheerful outlook on everything, it gave me a lot of new ideas for making the most of my money. I'm on universal credit right now, living in a very expensive city and learning my lesson about just how much food can cost! I'm glad you addressed the snooty comments that weaponize your hard work against poor people because you're right that people can't simply subsist on beans and rice forever, but equally it has encouraged me to take a closer look at the value of the things I buy, and to be more creative with my leftovers. Thanks for all your hard work!
This was awesome. Time to get into the kitchen and get creative with items I already have. I've joined in Low spend February challenge to see how long I can go without having to shop. Videos like these may have a few negative comments, but I think it sparks creativity.
Thanks, Atomic Shrimp. I've never been into cooking, but these limited budget challenges are the most interesting cooking videos i've ever seen, and they're the first to get me to think creatively about food. Your explanations help me to understand the process. The other day I made seitan out of flour, and i want to do a bit of safe foraging soon as well. I really enjoy these :)
This series may have been hard work, but it has really paid off. Thank you for your efforts. A few suggestions of my own for future challenges: - I said this on another video, but carrot juice (squeezed from carrots used for something else) could function as a "free" sugar substitute, at least in some limited applications. - Tomato puree is an obvious choice, but a small tube would provide a lot of sauce, nutrition, and flavour for very little money. It also opens up recipe options, particularly Italian dishes. - Small quantities of eggs would be an excellent cheap source of protein and flavour, as well as being useful for baking or binding. - I used to live on those cheap sausages at uni, and they're good value. They're far from gourmet, but they're excellent protein for the money. - A greater allowance of spices (maybe one tablespoon per day) would be a good, reasonable adjustment to future challenges. - On a tight budget, fruit is overrated. Rely on whatever the £1.50 Lidl box provides, but don't buy more. Again, use carrots for sweetness, since they're also cheap and versatile. Looking forward to your future videos!
I'm an expat living in Sweden, so the only way I can get a good old fashioned British banger is frozen from an English food shop in one of the bigger cities. Inevitably they are the cheap nasty frozen ones like Mr Shrimp had, but I can confirm they are so much better cold, as they tend to firm up and taste a lot meatier.
Videos like this one really make me appreciate having grown up with parents who could afford living a comfortable life, including good food and stuff not needed.
One of the highlights for me was seeing what you came up with and comparing it to what ideas I had. I made a big pot of pea soup with carrots and potatoes after your first episode. Individual cooking skills/styles are often overlooked in many articles about eating on a budget. The spice limitations also highlighted the importance of minor ingredients. Always enjoy your experiments.
I have learnt a tonne of stuff from your vids, but the main thing that I will take away is the use of flour, particularly flat breads, as I hadn't realised how easy they are to do. Awesome stuff Atomic, thanks a bunch.
Brilliant series! It just goes to show how an informative and entertaining "program" can be made with fairly limited resources by an individual who isn't an egomaniac. The mainstream media companies could learn a lot from channels like this. Once again many thanks for the time and effort you put into this project.
I actually really liked this series. But I also understand that it was SO much work for you. Loved all the details you put in the conclusion (all the tables and analysis of ingredients) I have one idea based on something you said in the 3rd day (if I recall correctly): - 3 days, 3 meals/day, 9 pounds total budget. You have 1 hour/day for the cooking, from preparing ingredients to cook by itself. You can have a lot more of variety because of the higher budget, but you have less time to prepare things so you'll have to plan ahead. If you think an hour a day is too much you can use less, but I think 20 min/meal is just enough time. If you have excess you can prepare something that needs more time for the next day, for example. Or limit the budget to like, 6 pounds total. That's it, thank you! ^^
Great series! How about a 10 - 10 minute meals series. You can take your time for each video, and you can add different constraints on top of the 10mins limit. I’ve really enjoyed these budget series as I’m a student and it’s really helped me find creative things I can do with little budget.
I don't think he wants to be known as a "cooking channel", I recognise the same kind of "engineer thinking" in his videos that I too am possessed with - a lot of the time it's about setting yourself some "strange" goal and then seeing if you can do it, that seems to be the general theme of his channel (and which draws me to it). For the record, I've been "the cook of the house" for more than 30 years now and I can thoroughly recommend Jamie Oliver's "15 Minute Meals" book if you want some great value recipes that are very tasty and quick to prepare. I picked it up about 7 or 8 years ago and even a "seasoned veteran" cook like me learnt a lot of new and interesting techniques from it - particular in how to use herbs and spices in the right ways and right combinations. I think I use that book for meals about twice a week in my house, it is definitely worth picking it up if you want to improve your cooking skills.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 I also own a copy of Jamie Oliver’s 15 minute meals! It’s a great book. I have also started watching Gordon Ramsay’s 10 minute meals series that he is doing on TH-cam! I highly recommend. The reason why I suggest that Atomic Shrimp gives it a go is because he has a really unique way of being able to use ingredients that I think would produce some super interesting quick meals
@@SamBebbington I am not a fan of Gordon Ramsay, I try to ignore people that make careers out of deliberately being confrontational - but if he works for you then so be it. I just don't see Atomic Shrimp as a cook, I see him as an "engineer". (I am a similar age to him and also come from a "techie" background, so I understand the thought processes.) But it's his channel and if he chooses to do more cooking stuff, I am sure it will be interesting.
I struggle a bit with variety bc of the fear of new foods reacting with my ibs - so really this series has been so inspiring in the variety department. I can't eat most of the things you make (wheat and onions being the two biggest no nos for me) and live in a place where the food is a lot more expensive, but I still learned so so much
So this is not a criticism or a 'you should have made x instead of y' comment, but I'd like to point out at the end of day 5 (if you had any of the veggie stock left) you had a nearly perfect list of ingredients for stuffed boiled cabbage rolls - or cabbage stew if the leaves were too small for rolls. Cabbage Sausage and rice mixture (soak the raw rice for a couple hours) Onions Pepper Salt Roll the onion sausage rice mix into the cabbage leaves, arrange in a large pan with stock covering half to two-thirds of the rolls, then simmer until done. If the cabbage is too small to make proper rolls, then you can add all ingredients into the stock to cook and add the cabbage halfway through. Ideally, you'd have some caraway to add into the sausage and some sour cream on the side, but that rather defeats the purpose of the challenge. Love these challenges... I always find it fascinating to watch what you can come up with creatively in severely restricted circumstances.
I suppose you could have made a huge split pea cottage pie at the start of the week and frozen portions ? Serve it with swede and cabbage and onion gravy?
I don't know which insane person has spread the word about not reheating rice but I'm glad you're setting the record straight. It's absolutely fine to reheat. Just make sure the rice is totally cooled down before you refrigerate or freeze it. It'll keep just fine, only add a tablespoon or so of water in the dish when you're reheating so the steam will help the texture.
Yep, Cool it as quickly as possible, chill it thoroughly and store no longer than you would for cooked meat. Perfectly fine. What's weird is that the perception of there being a risk got attached to the 'reheating' part, not the actual place where the risk occurs - chilling and storing.
Apple cores are great for flavour. Add them to a jug of cold water, let them sit in there for an hour or two and you have flavoured water. Tastes fresh & sweet. I also love to add a dash of cinamon to the water. Tastes like Christmas 😋 You could also have steamed them. They release a lot of tasty juice. Love your series! Greetings from Austria 😃👋🏻
This was a great series. I've been eagerly awaiting each episode as I lay down to sleep on the couch (I'm in NZ so they release in the evening). Here in NZ everything is much more expensive. Even with double the budget in NZ dollars (exchange rate), this challenge would be more than impossible. Just for an example, flour is $2, a bag of onions $3.50. Sausages or bacon bits, forget about it (which is weird, since we are a massive exporter of meat products). We do have tax on food, but it's not that much, food is just so expensive down here. Would you consider a similar challenge, but with unlimited dried spices? I feel like it would be interesting to see what you could do on a limited budget when spices are more available. If you are wondering why I'm sleeping on the couch... well, my wife is pregnant with twins, and she needs her sleep more than I do. ;)
Congratulations on the twins! Here in Sweden food is crazy expensive as well (2-3 times the UK prices) so I'm in the same boat. Doing a week on £16 and using what spices are already in the house. I've eaten really tasty for four days and will have a good amount of food left over I think. I went for lots of meat and also potatoes and beans because vegetables don't keep you satisfied for long so they are there for the extra flavour and variety. I'm also living the OMAD diet so it's way more plausible to fit meals like that in the budget when you only eat once a day. And fat, loads of fatty food to keep you satisfied for longer.
In UK we have different levels of supermarket prices, there are the super budget lowest price supermarkets and the regular price or 'expensive' supermarkets. Aldi, Lidl, Asda and Tesco fall into the lower priced bracket and much of their food is as cheap as it can possibly be but also fairly low quality. It is often tasteless and bland, bruised, under ripe and grown with artificial fertilisers and laced with pesticides etc. Waitrose, Sainsburys and Marks & Spencer aim for higher quality produce and this is reflected in their prices, many people prefer the better quality and will only shop at these supermarkets but people on a tight budget cannot afford to. Often big name brands are sold in both types of supermarkets and are much cheaper in the lower priced supermarkets but people shopping in the higher priced shops don't go to the other shops to save a few pennies on store cupboard items. Only Lidl and Aldi sell the large boxes of mixed vegetables at such a low price and they don't have them everyday, they are usually much smaller with less variety too, I suspect (as AS suggested) that his one might have been 2 boxes combined into one because of the quantity and variety included. When I have seen them they did not have a selection of fruit and veg that I thought I would use without adding a few more items to it, they are very hit and miss. AS did an incredible job of finding the lowest of the low priced items which is not easy because these items are often tucked away in hard to reach places or out of stock. I do the shopping and cooking in our house and am fairly conscious of prices but try to avoid the really low quality items and an average evening meal for two costs between £3 and £6 and I think that is reasonable, I am pretty sure I would struggle to eat well on the kind of budget AS can manage on.
Ian C: Aldi's in US is not substandard food! Less variety, food still in boxes, shorter hours and much smaller stores, along with few employees needed are how prices are cheaper.
really appreciate your insistence on the caveats re: "recreating hardship" and you taking commenters to task on their ignorance. love your stuff (hopefully) in the way its intended to be, as a point of intrigue and creativity within a fixed set of limitations.
This was brilliant. Thoroughly enjoyed watching all five days. The time and effort you put in to compiling this video from the editing to the cooking to the spreadsheets was just top class! Thanks for the great content!
these videos are great for learning how to be creative with your cooking at home when your fridge is looking empty and you can't be bothered going to the shop
I really appreciate that you take the time to emphasize you don t suggest poor people could "just live on less". In a society that tries to silence its guilty conscience by poor- shaming and poor-blaming, your social awareness is quite comforting. On the other hand, I still have to deal with being poor. Since I cannot change that for now, treating it like an interesting challenge or a tricky task makes it much more bearable. I feel less helpless and less marginalised. I can feel part of an inventive and creative community, instead of weird and ashamed. So, to me as a poor person, your limited budget challenges are an inspiration. I liked this miniseries very much.
We would look at this collection of food on day 1 for 5 pounds and think it's such a limited struggle, but imagine someone in early 1900s, that bundle of food would have been an utter god send!
Really enjoyed this series - reminded me of the years I had a small holding and trying to live on what I grew/ foraged, with as little as possible bought in. Makes you inventive … still love to see a vegetarian version of this say 7£ for 7 days.
Been binging the set of 5 days now and can only say, there are lots of stuff I thought about after the initial groceries. Banana pancakes, rosti, stir fry, curry, baked potatoes, fruity rice/porridge, some sort of soup/stew. Only thing missing now is sausage, potato and mushed peas with marmite gravy. What I can take away from it, is that I will try some of those recipes, especially these steamed buns.
*Afterthoughts & Addenda*
*Weight loss/gain across the course of this exercise* - I didn't measure.
*Multiple reheats* a few people noticed that the sausages in the leftover steamed buns had been reheated multiple times and wondered if it is safe. The thing to be most concerned about is the total time at which the food was in the temperature 'risk zone'. As long as this is controlled, it's more or less the same safety as food that has spent that time in one continuous session. There are aesthetic concerns with multiple reheats as some foods may start to break down into less pleasant components (which is really just like being severely overcooked if it happened in one go). Because it is difficult to keep proper track of these factors, the rule of thumb advice is sensibly condensed to 'don't reheat more than once'.
was it the food processor?
I love all these challenges you set yourself, perhaps in a future video you could do a time budget instead of a monetary one. Just to see if you could cut down on food preparation or cooking time. Keep up the content, I love all your videos.
Chad LMAO
funi
Thanks, Shrimp. I'd be interested to know if you gained, lost, or maintained your weight after one of these multiple day challenges. Looking forward to the next one.
I'm quite sad that this mini series is over. It blended together some of the best parts of the channel very well. We got some great recipes with limited ingredients, preparing and cooking, lovely dog walks and (what you could have been) foraging.
Now it just needs some way for him to add scambaiting into these and it would be a whole smorgasbord. : )
What about the times he goes back and challenges himself to a redux of select recipies and what normal people without restrictions could do to make it better..
He better do another one .10 p. for 1 month 😅
@@ErisstheGoddessofmanhwas You could barely get a sweet for 10 p.
@@DavidMarvin Really? But i bet many students would appreciate it if he did made it somehow
You know the feeling you get when you binge a netflix series, then it comes to an end.. thats how i feel about these 5 episodes
Same. Only found them today and I'm empty inside now
You know that!!
Absolute same.
Amen
True
The genius thing about this series is that it emulates to some degree or other the small food-based dramas and questions many of us experience every day. Firstly - Not having quite enough money to buy everything we'd like to from the supermarket... Can I afford the fillet steak? Maybe I'd better stick to sausages this week. Second - Not quite having the makings of a meal... What on earth am I going to cook with this weird assortment of things I have in the fridge/cupboard. I can't just have bangers and mash again or I'll go crazy. I know, I'll make a sausage cottage pie! And lastly - Not quite knowing what you're doing but forging through and either triumphing or failing and then moving on... Is what I've just spent 20 minutes 'creating' even going to be edible? OMG sausage cottage pie is the greatest! As Atomic Shrimp himself says, it's not about pretending to be poor or preaching to others about how to save money, it's a microcosm of our lives. Well done, Mr. Shrimp.
honestly the longer challenge perfectly showed one of the problems i always have when cooking for me as a single person: repetition
its often not feasible to buy and prep just a single meal. especially if you try to buy cheap / best value.
you want some sausages? well be prepared to have some kind of sausages for the rest of the week. making soup? a single decent sized potato one carrot and half an onion will give you at least 2 servings...
first thing i bought when i moved in my own apartment was a fridge with a proper freezer unit and a 200 pack of freezer bags and a bunch of small tuppers.
every time i buy meat i go for the family packs and split them up into single serving baggies.
first of all you will do shit if you cant cook, have 2 left hands. like 99% of modern hoes, single mother cancer, also there is difference between those who look for work and cant find it, and those who dont want to work and just play victim.
@@tomaszszupryczynski5453 Wow. Didn't expect that kind of comment on this channel.
@@andrewreaney well thats reality, british roses can only ready meals put in oven or microwave. just read how she complains that her whole family went to sleep hungry cos pizzahut didnt deliver. look at mess in kitchen on her profile. they have no shame. selfie in toilet where paint falls from walls and door
@@tomaszszupryczynski5453 that is quite a lot of hate towards something that isn't even the topic of this video. Why are you so angry you have to spew that bile here of all places?
Really shows how the economies of scale work when you do this over a longer time. There was so much food left, that if you'd stretched this to a £7 for 7 days you could have eaten really really well. That extra £2 could have been spent entirely on flavour.
While I don't intend on start living on such a tight budget, this series has really inspired me to start being more frugal and less wasteful in the kitchen.
Absolutely, thats the lesson I took from this. . .Going to try to be less wasteful
I was thinking that soupd could have been salvaged by your left over vegetables. You had an onion, carrots, part of a swede, left over. The bitterness of the onion skin broth would have been cut with that vegetable soup.
I've been using veg scraps and bones from meat I eat to make stock for about a year now and the quality of anything using stock, or even my rice, has increased exponentially. Plus it's is also less wasteful and saves me on buying stock.
Luckily, my local grocer recently put out a "eat today" veg cart for $1 and I visit almost everyday. Saves money, saves produce from wasting, helps me eat more veg.
I actually suggested this when he did the £1 a day video. Doing your weeks shopping with your £1 a day budget allows for a much farther stretched variety especially if you get your hands on a reduced box like he did in this video.
Same here! The challenge mindset he so often shows us is really inspiring - I love the creativity, resourcefulness, and ingenuity and would love to emulate it. I imposed a budget of £2/day on myself (with full use of anything I already had!) which is far, far easier than any of these challenges, and found that it made me much more creative in what I could get to combine with what I had. It's also actually pretty fun if you're getting into the mild discomfort zone!
I started keeping a vegetable stock box recently, inspired by this channel. My first stock was good, but this last stock had a lot of jalapeño and ended up _way_ spicier than I thought it'd be. Cooked it down into a thick sauce, added a little balsamic vinegar, some other seasonings, and it turned into a really tasty hot sauce
Depending on how long the box will stay, keep it in the freezer.
How do you keep a stock box? Do you keep the trimmings in the fridge?
@@nefertitimontoya I put them in a plastic container in the freezer
@@Thatonedude917 thank you!!
Wow, what a fantastic way to fix that stock and turn it into something even better! 👏
The levitation callback!
I need this explaining please. 🤣
Awwww i didn't see it, i thought he'd not used levitation!!
Same here 😜
@@flinty8121 At the beginning of the first episode he sneaked levitation in the allowed list and at the end of this one he was levitating
Thank you, Abdurazaaq! Very clever stuff.
I love that I learn the different terms we use between dialects of English when watching these videos. I've never heard reedmace before, here in the Southern US we call them cattails
I especially love and appreciate that you didn't just say 'Ummmm... actually, those are called..."
I saw a video of a woman using the cattail fluff as stuffing for cushions. I wonder if Atomic Shrimp does any nature crafts... Like pine needle baskets and stuff
We call them cat tails in Michigan too 🐈
I always love learning different terms too.
Bulrushes - I thought everyone called them that!
Also from Michigan and I also know them as cattails. I have read that not only can you eat the starchy roots/bases of the plant but in the right season you can collect the pollen from the 'flowers' and use it like flour.
Thank you from Australia. I run a community pantry, which feeds people suffering food insecurity. We provide rescued fruit and veggies and bread for free, and purchase from another charity basic groceries which we on-sell at cost recovery prices. You've given me lots of ideas and especially challenged those hidden assumptions we make about cooking on a budget, such as using spices and herbs to pep things up, without considering their cost. Many of our customers don't have the skill or imagination to cook as you have done (and I'm not imaginative as well), so lots of room for improvement. I love the foraging too. But it takes dedication to do what you did, and I thank you for that.
We run into that here in the States too. The younger folks aren't taught to cook so that cheap box of veg he got would go to waste. My hubby worked with homeless people for many years and we both volunteered in soup kitchens.
There is a little cookbook that might be spot on: A Man, A Plan, A Can where the recipes had a fresh ingredient or two an a couple of cans. Easy instructions. Sometimes we thought that kind of book would go a long way to help folks be able to cook for themselves GOOD food.
For what it is worth, what I was taught as a starting point when I had to start to cook at a very, very low budget?
Savory and veggies = soup or stew.
Sweet and fruity = minced into pulp, and turned into oat cookies (overnight oats, flattened out, and baked until cookies) or porridge.
Sprouting was also useful, but requires a bit more effort.
While volunteering with foid commodities distribution in the US I learned that knowledge and experience was a barrier to good eating. So we publish recioes and information in the newsletter that goes out with the boxes. Like "Ten ways to use grapefruit" when we gave out 20 at a time. Grapefruit cake, grapefruit icing, grapefruit seltzer, grapefruit & macaroni salad, grapefruit jam, grapefruit stir fry, fried grapefruit rind (Depression Era!), grapefruit cookies, grapefruit soup, and grapefruit cleaner. There was a lot of zesting and juicing going on. I still have 30 grapefruit ice cubes in the freezer that I use to flavor my water. Zero-waste, use everything. The grapefruit rid that wasn't fried like breaded veal went in plain white vinegar to make a spray cleaner.
Foraging in Australia is also in my opinion a little harder than foraging in Britain. There aren't freedom to roam rules codified into law in quite the same way that there are in Britain. Most foraging guides are written for Britain, America or other countries in the northern hemisphere - there are indigenous ingredients in Australia that can, of course, be used, but they aren't always as well-documented in accessible forms, and many of the European weed type species that can be foraged aren't always safe to pick in Australia because they're extensively sprayed (eg dandelions and blackberries.) The only food I ever foraged in Australia was fat hen/goosefoot/lamb's quarters, which was a weed growing in our potato patch (so I knew it hadn't been sprayed.) Now I'm in Finland I've picked nettles in the wild, and seen plenty of the other plants Shrimp mentions.
I had one goal when I was younger, to be able to go into M&S and buy whatever I wanted without worry. I am fortunate to have gotten a very good job that allows me to do this, and your videos have really made me appreciate that all the more again. Thank you for that, and thank you for this entertaining series.
i love this comment
Loved how you adressed the hardship in the opening episode and now here again towards the end. I don't know how many times you rehearsed what you were going to say for the videos but I think you explained it absolutely brilliantly.
In my opinion this series shows that the hardest part on surviving on a budget is the knowledge that you need. Having the knowledge to prepare the different meals from ingridients that you end up with (since you are not flexible at all on a budget) is definetely very challenging.
Overall. This is the content the internet was made for. Thanks for sharing!
My Grandparents generation, who lived through a war and rationing, knew all about this and passed it on to my parent's generation. Unfortunately, my generation didn't think they needed to know any of it as we grew up in an era of cheap, processed food and lots and lots of waste.
The time investment, while not impossible, is also something to think about. For someone working multiple jobs with a family it could be difficult to devote much time to cooking. Efficient planning could help, but it's still hard when you don't have a weekend.
A lot of people notice generational differences in the people, but miss them in the environment.
The purchasing power of the average person (in America anyways, since that's the data that's easiest to find) has not raised significantly since the 70s. The cost of living has though. Housing, education, and health care are all more expensive than they used to be. Wages have not increased in comparison to the cost of living, and things like homeownership are just out of reach for people in the younger generations. Average age of people buying a home has jumped from ~30 to 44.
This is a key problem: 15% of the population has an IQ below 85. They're poor because they don't have the capacity for high-paying jobs, and they aren't as able to solve complex problems (e.g. food budgeting) like AtomicShrimp just did.
They deserve dignity and assistance. Many of us forget that we did not make our intelligence - and those who are not as smart aren't just *not* lazy - They actually work a lot harder.
@@cactoidjim1477
Just because their IQ is below 85 doesn't mean they're stupid or unable solve complex problems. IQ tests are flawed and don't take into account a plethora of factors that'd result in a lower IQ. Mental illness, stress, sleep deprivation, and illiteracy can lower your score even though they're not indicative of a lower intelligence. (All of those occur at higher rates in the poor population btw)
The issue isn't that they're stupid, it's that they're poor and simply don't have the energy or time to food budget. And ofc the lack of awareness and education in regards to budgeting.
@@brandon9172 That's a good point. I was only meaning to highlight that there is a section of society that cannot get higher paying jobs, and are not as easily able to do quick research for ways to save money.
It isn't fair to lump all of the poor together as "lazy" (in response to some of the comments Shrimp highlighted)
And we collectively owe them the dignity of work and a living wage - whether they are perfectly frugal or not.
Also, spaghetti is more versatile than you think. In my Soviet family, we would have it for breakfast. You just break it into smaller pieces cook it in milk and add butter, sugar, and salt. It's really comforting! (Craving it now actually!)
Sure, it's got a handful of uses, but in comparison to rice, probably fewer, and flour more so.
May I know the name of that food? I'd like to try it!
That sounds awesome!!!
That sound nice , i guess a bit like a rice pudding
The fruit could have been stewed and added to the rice. You could also have made a sort of flat bread as well. So interesting
Since you have a dehydrator, putting your unripe mango in there until totally dry and then powderising would have yielded amchur powder, which is a powerful way to add complementary sweetness to savoury dishes naturally.EDIT: Unsure if the dehydrator was allowed under these rules.
Sounds like you're making amchur.
I think he just wanted to stick to basic kitchen appliances
That is an interesting idea, not sure how I would feel about it if it was in the video though, since dehydrators are very very energy inefficient and since a large part of the viewer base of a video such as this is going to be people who don't exactly have a lot of money to waste I feel like the use of such a machine could get some negative feedback, such as when someone like Joshua Weissman makes a video titled "Easy/Cheap" and then goes onto using extremely expensive or inefficient cooking ware and the comments are full of people calling him out on that.
What is amchur powder
@@MonsterPumpkin Amchur is traditionally made by sun-drying the mangoes. Considering that the season and his location would have made that difficult for him, I think most of us wouldn't have cared about him using a dehydrator.
Alternatively, he could have used his oven. There are plenty of ways to dry things fruits and plant matter
I would love to see you make more varieties of those steamed buns without the limitations
Pulled pork in black bean sauce is my favourite.
as someone who is allergic(intolerant) to pork - I'd love to see some varieties of steamed buns using different meats
I’m making steam buns first time today after watching this.just happened to have some teriyaki pork leftovers.
@@malexandrep6276 You can make them with beef or chicken as well, and there are a few recipes with shrimp.
I will totally make steamed buns. Basically everything can go in there. There is even a takeaway that has them filled with chili or kebab.
But I think I will go with yeast dough. I still have tons of dry yeast around from a pizza phase last year.
I would have used a lot of black pepper when eating the meals, which would have been allowed as a table condiment. Also, a bit of advice for people when buying spices - those little 30g jars fom supermarkets are VERY overpriced. Find your local asian grocers... they usually have much larger 100g+ bags for the same price, as well as a much wider range of spices.
it still wouldn't have fit into a budget like this not 5 pound for 5 days, if we are talking like 500 pounds for 50 days you can buy spices in bulk kinda thing.. and some more heavy hitting meals.
Good point if you are lucky enough to have one, unfortunately we don't anyone 😥
The problem with those giant bags is that for Western cooking, we don't use nearly as much, so the spices lose their flavour quickly. You probably still get cheaper per weight while they have flavour, but that's a lot of waste.
@@Asdayasman put them in a jar, problem solved...
@@calibrax They still offgas and decompose, even faster in the light too.
I am astonished how honest you are about food you have cooked yourself. Most people can't have any criticism after an hour in the kitchen.
Glad to see you call out the people trying to shame people in poverty
I didn't want to labour that point, but I really dislike it when people hijack my comfy, silly little leisure experiments to try to reinforce a horrible and antisocial viewpoint
@@AtomicShrimp The awful thing is that the fuel to cook all of these meals probably outweighs the cost of the food so becomes difficult for some people. Providing Free Energy is not thought to be a good business idea.
Great shows, Thankyou.
@@46oranges surprisingly cooking doesn’t actually use that much energy neither gas nor electric. If you maximize the use out of your oven and cook multiple meals simultaneously then the cost to cook the food goes down so far as to be negligible on even extremely tight budgets. The fees for having a gas hookup are often more expensive than the gas used if the stove is your only gas appliance as an example. The real savings if you need to save electricity or gas are going to be elsewhere like clothes dryers, electronics, heat, etc;
I don't know much about food but this was so lovely and relaxing to watch! really enjoyed this journey. Thanks!!
The thing that surprised me most in the challenge was just how big the portions were that you managed to get out of everything. Over the challenge, the thing I've learned most is that you can indeed make sourdough with self raising flour
I finished binging days 1-4 just at the right moment, loving these series!
The data in this series was SO satisfying. The colour coded columns!
If you find yourself in a similar stock-making situation again, roasting the bits and bobs until they're just a little burnt and THEN boiling them into stock will add significant sweetness (and some extra umami). Not that I anticipate you'll have a nearly all-onions budget stock extravaganza again, but I don't eat meat and have most certainly experimented with stocks of various methods. If you want to be particularly economical with your time, clean-up, and flavor maximization, you can even pour water directly into the roasting pan and have the stock finish in the oven, rather than dirtying a pot. Plus, that'll ensure that any fond-like flavor bits get jogged loose and incorporated.
Also maximise surface area - chop fine/blend before cooking to maximise extraction
Also straining through a muslin cloth would have strained out the gritty bits.
I love the Lidl veg boxes. I recently bought a soup maker and those veg boxes made the most amazing soups. I made one with Cauliflower, desiccated coconut and some curry powder that I had.
Congratulations on finishing this filming, editing and posting marathon!
It was very entertaining.
My personal favorite was: 'Oh, look, a bird pooped on it - that will help things grow'.
Your unfaltering cheerfulness is very endearing 👍
I like these multiple day ones way more. There is so much creativity on display. You take some really basic shopping and turn it into 14 different meals. Love it.
An easier way to make caramelized onion is with a slow-cooker. Low and slow and about 3-4 hours.
I honestly would have dove into making stock asap with all that. Even the thinnest of vegetable stocks would have made that rice and the split peas far more tasty (cook them in stock, it's a simple way to add flavor since they soak it up).
As for "chicken portions", I normally prefer chicken thighs (bone in or out, makes no difference, but in this challenge chicken bones could be used to make *_more_* stock). They can be very versatile and even just simmering one (cut into strips) in a pan in a little stock with some onion sliced thin can go on rice and make a delicious meal.
As for the stock you made, you need to avoid using more than 40% of any one vegetable, and (from experience) no more than 10% onion skins. Given you didn't use any whole vegetables in there, you probably wanted to avoid any of the skins. That last onion and few carrots could have made a great stock.
3-4 hours? Woah, that would cost a lot of electricity.
@@MicukoFelton In a slow-cooker? Not really. With the lid on and with a good crockpot-style inner, they don't tend to use a lot of power when they're up to temperature.
EDIT: Just to double-check, I looked up the wattage of my own slow-cooker (5.5L) and it uses 200W of power on low. That's .2kWh per hour. Four hours of that is .8kWh, which amounts to 17c of power used (my current power rates are 22.39996c per kWh).
Pretty much, a slow cooker will always be way more efficient at cooking than, for example, an oven (which can vary in cost from about $1 an hour to over $2 an hour for a BIG oven).
I bought a 25 lb bag of onions for $5 (can't resist a bargain)so I expirimented and made caramelized onions in my instant pot and wow it cooked down so much (from 8 cups to 1.5 cups). It worked well for me because I didn't have to baby it stirring constantly. It did make my house absolutely reek of onions.
Very enjoyable and interesting series, thank you. I was quite concerned at the start you would not have enough to eat. Those fears were unfounded, I was quite surprised at just how big the meals were. Your challenge did highlight one thing for me, nutrition. You managed to overachieve on calorie and protein count, however although you were not taking it into account. the carbohydrate content was very high. I can see now how people surviving on a low income long term end up putting on so much weight. I am not criticizing them or fat shaming. For me it was a light bulb moment bringing me to an understanding of yet another issue of poverty.
Oh wow did not expect the weighing in the end, that's really interesting! There was enough leftovers to probably eat a couple more days on sad rice meals.
Also loved the commentary in the end, whoever says that people who cannot afford food can survive with little money clearly never had a shortage of anything in their life.
Rice is Sad , I got a bag recently and there was Rice Weevils in it threw it in the bin !!
@@WeSombreGhosts well, if you spread the rice in the sun, the weevils will walk away and you can eat the rice. It always amazes me that in a society that produces insect based protein bars people are horrified by a few insects crawling on their grains.
@@susanamariapereirasoares7188 Good Tip .
I routinely put flour, grains etc, in the freezer when I bring them home. Just to wipe out any hitchhikers
(Not sure freezing bugs always kills them. I froze raspberries from my garden, and bugs crawled out when thawed, yuk. Just consider flour bugs extra protein. 😉
Really enjoyed this series. You're so creative. If that was me i would have made a huge sausage casserole on the first day and eaten that for all five days 😂
Honestly, nothing wrong with that idea if the objective is just a practical one, rather than a weird exercise
Sad that the series was so short, but outstanding work as always! Combined everything I love about your channel: foraging knowledge, cooking, bits of wisdom, bits of calculation and reasoning, and the always wonderful Eva.
so short? theres like 2 and a half hours of it...
I'm sure this series felt plenty long enough for Atomic Shrimp, 100 hours of work for this is serious dedication.
But yes, as a viewer all of these were fascinating to see, and I agree that I could keep watching these videos for ages. There are a great mix of topic areas, and useful skills covered here.
I've lived below the poverty line for much of the time I've done the "independent writing" small business deal, and I just wanted to point out that a significant thing that can be a requirement too is preparation time. Other than a couple support people I hire (an accountant and someone to handle the more technical aspects of the web hosting), everything the business does is me, and so my time is very limited. Time I'm spent preparing food is taking time away from the activities that keep that food on the table, and my lights and heat on. Are there ways to do stuff yourself with limited preparation time? Sure. But I'll spring for a delivery pizza on the weekends or something so I can actually steal away some time with my partner rather than squandering more of what already-very-precious time we get together. I appreciate the message that it's not that simple. A quote I once heard is "Only those who have been there know how expensive it is to be terribly poor" - and that takes many forms, that being one of them (lack of being able to buy in bulk for economy, being able to afford longer-lasting tools and clothing, and cheaper stuff being highly-processed being some others)
You should do a meal plan where with an unlimited budget, you 're-cook' everything from these five days. And try pancakes with a split-pea batter 😁
I usually go for a followup video where I pick one or two of the worst scoring meals and try to 'redeem' them
@@AtomicShrimp my favourite moments are...
Let's try that again...
Haha 😂
It'd also be cool to see 5 videos where you cook the same things every day, tightening the budget or time constraints or both, each day
@@AtomicShrimp looking forward to this actually :)
From Winston-Salem NC: I really enjoyed this series. You demonstrated how important it is to be able to buy a larger amount of food at the outset (economy of scale). It makes a remarkable difference in the amount and quality of food that can be prepared. Kudos for the time and effort employed on this project.
This was so cozy to watch! Thank you. Someone under a previous episode in the comments recommended doing an "apocalypse" a.k.a shelf stable-only challenge. I think that would be really interesting!
Shrimp, all of your videos mean a lot to me, they're really interesting and thought provoking. Thank you for taking your time to make them.
I've really enjoyed this series. Just a hint for making your vegetable stock: slow roast your vegetable peelings in the oven first to caramelise them. It will help avoid the bitterness you could taste in the stock.
You dont know how much this information has helped
Another great series!
The onion is the hero in this, so versatile and it adds so much flavor. Not only that but it's also cheap, widely available and perhaps most important of all, it stores incredibly well. Something edible from the allium genus will mean that you'll have sustenance, color (with most species) and flavor for your dish.
Thank you for your videos!
I've always avoided your budget challenges because I thought they'd be depressing. So glad I succumbed and watched this series. Fun and interesting - like all your output. Good job, Mike!
I binge-watched day 1 - 4 last night and I'm so sad the series is over. But I've picked some great tips and tricks from it. Thanks!!!
These challenges are always so informative. You show basically how food works, which is much more useful than just reciting recipes. 👍
Hi! I watched all five in one sitting and got to bed really late last night. So interesting thank you. I attend Slimming world and constantly struggle to reduce my intake of food sometimes feeling "hard done by" . Your videos made me so grateful for the way we live. Thank you for making me appreciate the food that I eat.
As a student with limited budget and time I quite like these videos, never knew how inexpensive and low effort dry beans/lentils are to prepare. I live in a studio flat with 2 small hot plates and a sink as a kitchen. I think a minimalist challenge with limited cooking space/supplies/appliances would be very interesting to watch :) Loved the series
Yes! Find a type of lentil/pulse/bean that you like the flavor of and don’t mind eating without much seasoning, and then you can add a new spice/herb each pay period or so to slowly start building up a spice cabinet without breaking the bank. I personally love black eyed peas, and those with rice, sautéed onions, and kale or broccoli on the side is a comforting, inexpensive meal. Also, check out the “ethnic” groceries in your area or the international aisle at your supermarket-they often have bags of herbs and spices that are much cheaper than the bottles in the spice aisle.
Edited to add: you can also cook dark leafy greens in the beans/lentils to save on dishes and reduce the number of heating elements you need. Check out the dish Hoppin’ John and all its varieties!
Friend (Lidl Manager) said that the boxes are usually the dying fruit or veg or things that have hit the floor .. they also toss nice stuff to get you to buy the box.
You have a rare gift for making something as simple as cooking a meal, be so interesting, thought provoking, and educational.
Thank you.
This chap is a total legend. Bravo, I salute you.
As person with chronic depression and other health problems I appreciate so much you showed "as long you can cook, you can eat" comments. You can't cook when your body hurts and you don't have will to live. Food becomes expensive, specially if your body is alergic/intolerant to some kinds of food (I had to be careful with rice for example). That aside, I enjoyed this series so much. So many food combinations I wouldn't thought of. I hope we'll see more of this kind of videos from you in the future. Not soon, of course, for your sanity 😁. You can try with different rules than in previous videos but stick under 7 days. You sure deserve yourself a pudding now.
I know what you mean. It can be so hard to cook for yourself, for any number of reasons. When we can, it’s a brilliant piece of self care to nourish our bodies. Take care.
George Orwell was not always the most honest of writers, but he did hit the nail on the head when he said (or words to the effect) that after working for very long hours and a tough job 'You want something tasty' in response to people complaining about working class people of his time eating fried potatoes rather than oranges.
Thank you for the video!
Always enjoyable to watch these budget days. So many people here in America having a hard time being able to afford good food. A roast in the store was $40 when it normally would've been around $15. Thankfully we have a farm so just about everything we need, but so many people with children especially are struggling.
It would be infinitely more rough to do this challenge in America I think. We don't really have things like the almost-expiring-veg-box-for-cheap or other loose items you can pay pennies for per or a small pack of. It'd be possible to do economy-of-bulk for this price, but to pick up just 5 days of food for $6.75 usd would be quite the challenge
@@travellingslim out of curiosity, a few weeks ago, I tried to see what I could get for $7 at Walmart, (even though a pound is worth more than a dollar) and after a LOT of math and searching I determined that with $7 I could get
16 Oz of dried lentils
An 18 count pack of eggs
16 oz frozen spinach
One loaf of bread (24 pieces, 88¢ loaf)
2 lbs flour
And 3 bananas (this assumes a 25¢ banana, and on average 3 bananas are a pound and a pound is around 67¢, I rounded to 75¢ for three banana so if they were small maybe 4)
So I took those numbers and split them up into 7 days to see what you would be able to eat daily and got
Half a banana every day (minus first day)
An Oz of bean sprouts (actually more once wet but an ounce from dried)
An Oz of lentils (or 2 oz lentils from dried if you dont like sprouts)
2 eggs daily (3 on odd days)
2 Oz frozen spinach
3 pieces of bread
4.5 Oz flour
Of course you could switch around a few ingredients like swap bread for ramen (if you know how to make your own bread or just prefer ramen), or swap the 18 pack of eggs for a smaller pack of eggs and maybe a piece or two of fruit or veggies…but butter/lard/oil/ is basically out of the budget because even the smallest portions are well over a dollar.
In case you were wondering about the viability of trying this in America. It’s definitely vaguely possible, but it’s much harder than in England.
@@awkwardsity i wonder what percentage of those comments that throw shade at the poor are americans
@@kaiseremotion854 I mean, I grew up a poor American, so I’m not throwing shade if that’s what you’re suggesting
I learned so much in these 5 videos. I feel like this channel improves my cooking versatility and knowledge a lot more than any of those cooking channels
I sincerely appreciate that you put these all out back to back, and I would have been happy to see the videos posted one a week for 5 weeks, or 2 a week perhaps to keep other people's attention.
I lived you're method and motive for these videos. I also find these videos spark my culinary creativity. Thank you.
This series made for a very interesting watch. I recognised some of the downsides, bitter vegetable stock, the un-rescueability of cheap sausages.. and I also recognised the creative challenges of using things up, which can lead to both pleasant, and unpleasant surprises.
One thing that struck me was that my digestive system would not have coped with all those split peas. Having a robust constitution is certainly an advantage!
You have some lovely places to walk too, thanks for taking us along.
Should do a food bank one, especially this time of year. Also over the lockdowns people using Food banks, to show those what food bank provides and ways to maybe stretch the 3 days ingredients. That would be a great help and also maybe show those that think Foodbank is beneath them or too scared to use a food bank. I know lots of people would rather go hungry as they think Food banks are for people with children only. You dont even need to get food from the Foodbank to do this with, just ring your local Foodbank they will tell you what they put in the 3 days worth of food parcels. Or maybe offer them money for a parcel, so they can replace the food you use? Just a thought. These budget vids are not really appropriate to my life or people I know, although still watch them. Thousands are using food banks to just put a hot meal in their stomachs. Think Foodbank is more of a real life situation rather than budget on £5.
When my kids were young I had to budget at times, when their dad had stolen the last of the money for drugs, luckily my parents used to help me loads, so my children never went without x
Shrimp doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would exploit a food bank for the sake of a video. He has made it quite clear that he isn't poor, larping as poor, or trying to diminish the hardships of others. Taking food from a food bank would be, quite literally, stealing from the less fortunate.
Maybe I should have read the whole post before responding lol i retract much of my statement.
@@GruntBurger hence why I stated maybe just ask what they put in the food parcels. But also did read your other comment
Outstanding series! We really do appreciate how much time this all takes to put together from start to finish, really gave me plenty of ideas, well done Atomic shrimp👌👍💛🇬🇧❤️
Mike I've been watching and enjoying this series while self isolating. Thank you for killing 30 minutes of my day with something to do!
quite a great series of videoes, I think that is probably more than enough money for 5 days for less scarce meals, i.e. you could get away with having more normal meals if you had a stocked pantry/refrigerator. The key to living on cheap food is to have those spices you can go to and just not waste food as you buy them. It's amazing what you can do with a 30lb bag of rice, you just need condiments in quantities that can stretch really far, like soy sauce, vinegar, every day dried spices/herbs, stuff that keeps well.
Levitating permitted 😂 Such a good series this week!! Thanks for putting in so many hours!
I had to go back and check but you are correct levitating was indeed permitted.
@@MachinaOpus also telepathy was not allowed 🚫
This series really altered my perspective, made me much more conscious of what I have...we're behind on the shopping and I went to the kitchen last night thinking, what am I going to make? Ended up making what we had stretch so much further because I had this series in mind before I started cooking. Very entertaining, and helpful.
Excellent series. I’ve been buying those veg boxes from lidl for a couple of years now and they do represent excellent value. Because of the random nature of the items you get in the boxes, it does allow you to get creative and come up with new ways of using everything up.
I can't believe what lovely weather you had for January. I live in NY and can't remember the last time I saw any green outdoors (save for evergreens).
Yeah right in time to watch it on my way to work! Thank you for this series, I greatly enjoyed you coming up with all this creative dishes 😃👏🏻
In general I think the limitations were fine. This was a challenge, so obviously some things are very limited on purpose. I can see someone permanently on a tight budget would have most of the herbs and spices they like around, just like you had some random selection. But since things like spices last for a while, a monthly or quarterly buy.
As someone who isn't rich myself, that is what I tend do end up with. Things like basil, pepper, hot sauce, noodles, rice, flour, potatoes, beans, etc, are something that are bought every month or more rarely. So a pack of dried beans or lentils bought at the beginning of a month will makes for meals all through the 30 or more days. That is the economy of scale mentioned at the beginning. And those things don't go off quickly, so they are great stuff to have always stocked and can be thrown in when needed. A bit like toilet paper, which also lasts a fair bit and doesn't go bad, but you buy it before you're out.
So to all the budget people out there: Preparing meals yourself is cheaper than buying ready-made and keep those basics stocked. Think about making pizza yourself, including the dough. Look up all different kinds of potato recipes.
And yes, instant ramen are probably the worst in terms of nutrition. Yes, they are cheap, but neither healthy nor filling. They are basically fast food, and go for fast food prices. Okay once in a while, but not something to live off.
An excellent series of videos which probably helped to open many an eye! As a youngster this is how my family lived, and let me tell you that those little glass jars of spices were the most treasured addition to any meal. Dubbed 'Helen Special' (after my mother), the heavily vegetable-based meals were lifted by salt and pepper, oregano, bright yellow curry powder et cetera. I think a great video from you would be one based on the way in which cheaper dishes can be improved by oh-so-little in the way of herbs and spices.
My mum used to get potatoes and cook home made chips with soup topped on them when money was tight. Or stews, my dad was a whizz with making a stew but keeping it going for days. His mum ( my paternal grandmother) used to raise and butcher her own pig or sheep when my dad was a small boy. My dad used to bake his own bread, make chutney, jam, preserves etc my mum could just about peel a vegetable. My dad could knit, darn and crochet ( born 1929) he taught all of his 5 kids to do stuff he even taught my mum ( born 1941) how to do stuff he was raised doing .
Used to love watching my dad in the kitchen, my mum used to go mad due to the mess he would make haha
@@iwantthe1icanthave179 My dad was born in 1930 - sounds like we had similar backgrounds and that people in those days went in for the 'make do and mend' a lot more that today!
I really enjoyed watching this 5 day budget. Makes me want to take a look in my pantry and see what I can do with what’s in there rather than shop for a few weeks. Thank you for doing this, I’d love to see another 5 day budget again!
Incredible amount of good and healthy meals for very little money, and I love your creative thinking. There will always be hits and misses with such limited ingredients. You get a gold medal from me, and hopefully many will use these videos as inspiration!
I really appreciate that you don’t belittle people who struggle with food hardships, just because you were _able_ to do it doesn’t mean it’s actually feasible for people, especially people who are working full time and have kids to feed, rent to pay, etc. That being said, I’m glad people in these positions can still benefit from your videos which show how to make food stretch and what food investments are better than others, something that can’t be experimented on when you’re actually in a tough position but can be when people are in a position like yours. I know I’m definitely going to look back on these videos when I start my masters program, I’m expecting student loans to destroy me and economical tips and recipes like these will definitely help!
Good luck with your future studies. If you possibly can, start being really frugal now. (Do it while you can afford mistakes. ). I went back to school for a masters too and it was financial torture. I had a strict budget to get me through a two year course but there are always unexpected expenses. Anything you can squirrel away now will help. And don’t forget that you don’t start earning money the second the course finishes, have a plan for that too.
I really loved this series. Aside from your cheerful outlook on everything, it gave me a lot of new ideas for making the most of my money. I'm on universal credit right now, living in a very expensive city and learning my lesson about just how much food can cost! I'm glad you addressed the snooty comments that weaponize your hard work against poor people because you're right that people can't simply subsist on beans and rice forever, but equally it has encouraged me to take a closer look at the value of the things I buy, and to be more creative with my leftovers. Thanks for all your hard work!
Been there done that Daisy, wish I'd have known about this channel back then.
This was awesome. Time to get into the kitchen and get creative with items I already have. I've joined in Low spend February challenge to see how long I can go without having to shop. Videos like these may have a few negative comments, but I think it sparks creativity.
Thanks, Atomic Shrimp. I've never been into cooking, but these limited budget challenges are the most interesting cooking videos i've ever seen, and they're the first to get me to think creatively about food. Your explanations help me to understand the process. The other day I made seitan out of flour, and i want to do a bit of safe foraging soon as well. I really enjoy these :)
This series may have been hard work, but it has really paid off. Thank you for your efforts.
A few suggestions of my own for future challenges:
- I said this on another video, but carrot juice (squeezed from carrots used for something else) could function as a "free" sugar substitute, at least in some limited applications.
- Tomato puree is an obvious choice, but a small tube would provide a lot of sauce, nutrition, and flavour for very little money. It also opens up recipe options, particularly Italian dishes.
- Small quantities of eggs would be an excellent cheap source of protein and flavour, as well as being useful for baking or binding.
- I used to live on those cheap sausages at uni, and they're good value. They're far from gourmet, but they're excellent protein for the money.
- A greater allowance of spices (maybe one tablespoon per day) would be a good, reasonable adjustment to future challenges.
- On a tight budget, fruit is overrated. Rely on whatever the £1.50 Lidl box provides, but don't buy more. Again, use carrots for sweetness, since they're also cheap and versatile.
Looking forward to your future videos!
The thing that surprised me is how healthy some of the food was. And them frozen sausages, while not the world’s best, are certainly ok for 5p each.
I'm an expat living in Sweden, so the only way I can get a good old fashioned British banger is frozen from an English food shop in one of the bigger cities. Inevitably they are the cheap nasty frozen ones like Mr Shrimp had, but I can confirm they are so much better cold, as they tend to firm up and taste a lot meatier.
Videos like this one really make me appreciate having grown up with parents who could afford living a comfortable life, including good food and stuff not needed.
What a fantastic mini series. One of, if not the best I’ve watched on TH-cam. I’m grateful for the amount of effort put in to these, thanks
One of the highlights for me was seeing what you came up with and comparing it to what ideas I had. I made a big pot of pea soup with carrots and potatoes after your first episode. Individual cooking skills/styles are often overlooked in many articles about eating on a budget. The spice limitations also highlighted the importance of minor ingredients. Always enjoy your experiments.
I have been enjoying this series, so glad to see more of these budget challenges
I have learnt a tonne of stuff from your vids, but the main thing that I will take away is the use of flour, particularly flat breads, as I hadn't realised how easy they are to do. Awesome stuff Atomic, thanks a bunch.
Really enjoy your food challenge videos. It's so... Comforting to watch
These challenges are my favorite part of your channel, it really shows creativity, hope we can see more of this on the future !
Brilliant series! It just goes to show how an informative and entertaining "program" can be made with fairly limited resources by an individual who isn't an egomaniac. The mainstream media companies could learn a lot from channels like this. Once again many thanks for the time and effort you put into this project.
I actually really liked this series. But I also understand that it was SO much work for you. Loved all the details you put in the conclusion (all the tables and analysis of ingredients)
I have one idea based on something you said in the 3rd day (if I recall correctly):
- 3 days, 3 meals/day, 9 pounds total budget. You have 1 hour/day for the cooking, from preparing ingredients to cook by itself. You can have a lot more of variety because of the higher budget, but you have less time to prepare things so you'll have to plan ahead. If you think an hour a day is too much you can use less, but I think 20 min/meal is just enough time. If you have excess you can prepare something that needs more time for the next day, for example. Or limit the budget to like, 6 pounds total.
That's it, thank you! ^^
Great series!
How about a 10 - 10 minute meals series. You can take your time for each video, and you can add different constraints on top of the 10mins limit.
I’ve really enjoyed these budget series as I’m a student and it’s really helped me find creative things I can do with little budget.
I don't think he wants to be known as a "cooking channel", I recognise the same kind of "engineer thinking" in his videos that I too am possessed with - a lot of the time it's about setting yourself some "strange" goal and then seeing if you can do it, that seems to be the general theme of his channel (and which draws me to it).
For the record, I've been "the cook of the house" for more than 30 years now and I can thoroughly recommend Jamie Oliver's "15 Minute Meals" book if you want some great value recipes that are very tasty and quick to prepare. I picked it up about 7 or 8 years ago and even a "seasoned veteran" cook like me learnt a lot of new and interesting techniques from it - particular in how to use herbs and spices in the right ways and right combinations. I think I use that book for meals about twice a week in my house, it is definitely worth picking it up if you want to improve your cooking skills.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 I also own a copy of Jamie Oliver’s 15 minute meals! It’s a great book. I have also started watching Gordon Ramsay’s 10 minute meals series that he is doing on TH-cam! I highly recommend.
The reason why I suggest that Atomic Shrimp gives it a go is because he has a really unique way of being able to use ingredients that I think would produce some super interesting quick meals
@@SamBebbington I am not a fan of Gordon Ramsay, I try to ignore people that make careers out of deliberately being confrontational - but if he works for you then so be it.
I just don't see Atomic Shrimp as a cook, I see him as an "engineer". (I am a similar age to him and also come from a "techie" background, so I understand the thought processes.)
But it's his channel and if he chooses to do more cooking stuff, I am sure it will be interesting.
I struggle a bit with variety bc of the fear of new foods reacting with my ibs - so really this series has been so inspiring in the variety department. I can't eat most of the things you make (wheat and onions being the two biggest no nos for me) and live in a place where the food is a lot more expensive, but I still learned so so much
nice work! I appreciate all the effort that goes into making these and the analysis that you provide after the challenges.
So this is not a criticism or a 'you should have made x instead of y' comment, but I'd like to point out at the end of day 5 (if you had any of the veggie stock left) you had a nearly perfect list of ingredients for stuffed boiled cabbage rolls - or cabbage stew if the leaves were too small for rolls.
Cabbage
Sausage and rice mixture (soak the raw rice for a couple hours)
Onions
Pepper
Salt
Roll the onion sausage rice mix into the cabbage leaves, arrange in a large pan with stock covering half to two-thirds of the rolls, then simmer until done.
If the cabbage is too small to make proper rolls, then you can add all ingredients into the stock to cook and add the cabbage halfway through.
Ideally, you'd have some caraway to add into the sausage and some sour cream on the side, but that rather defeats the purpose of the challenge.
Love these challenges... I always find it fascinating to watch what you can come up with creatively in severely restricted circumstances.
I suppose you could have made a huge split pea cottage pie at the start of the week and frozen portions ? Serve it with swede and cabbage and onion gravy?
I don't know which insane person has spread the word about not reheating rice but I'm glad you're setting the record straight. It's absolutely fine to reheat. Just make sure the rice is totally cooled down before you refrigerate or freeze it. It'll keep just fine, only add a tablespoon or so of water in the dish when you're reheating so the steam will help the texture.
Yep, Cool it as quickly as possible, chill it thoroughly and store no longer than you would for cooked meat. Perfectly fine. What's weird is that the perception of there being a risk got attached to the 'reheating' part, not the actual place where the risk occurs - chilling and storing.
Apple cores are great for flavour.
Add them to a jug of cold water, let them sit in there for an hour or two and you have flavoured water. Tastes fresh & sweet.
I also love to add a dash of cinamon to the water. Tastes like Christmas 😋
You could also have steamed them. They release a lot of tasty juice.
Love your series!
Greetings from Austria 😃👋🏻
Thanks for the tip, I'm certainly going to try that.
Thank you so much for addressing the hatred that poor people get.
This was a great series. I've been eagerly awaiting each episode as I lay down to sleep on the couch (I'm in NZ so they release in the evening). Here in NZ everything is much more expensive. Even with double the budget in NZ dollars (exchange rate), this challenge would be more than impossible. Just for an example, flour is $2, a bag of onions $3.50. Sausages or bacon bits, forget about it (which is weird, since we are a massive exporter of meat products). We do have tax on food, but it's not that much, food is just so expensive down here.
Would you consider a similar challenge, but with unlimited dried spices? I feel like it would be interesting to see what you could do on a limited budget when spices are more available.
If you are wondering why I'm sleeping on the couch... well, my wife is pregnant with twins, and she needs her sleep more than I do. ;)
Congratulations on the twins!
Here in Sweden food is crazy expensive as well (2-3 times the UK prices) so I'm in the same boat. Doing a week on £16 and using what spices are already in the house. I've eaten really tasty for four days and will have a good amount of food left over I think. I went for lots of meat and also potatoes and beans because vegetables don't keep you satisfied for long so they are there for the extra flavour and variety.
I'm also living the OMAD diet so it's way more plausible to fit meals like that in the budget when you only eat once a day. And fat, loads of fatty food to keep you satisfied for longer.
In UK we have different levels of supermarket prices, there are the super budget lowest price supermarkets and the regular price or 'expensive' supermarkets.
Aldi, Lidl, Asda and Tesco fall into the lower priced bracket and much of their food is as cheap as it can possibly be but also fairly low quality. It is often tasteless and bland, bruised, under ripe and grown with artificial fertilisers and laced with pesticides etc.
Waitrose, Sainsburys and Marks & Spencer aim for higher quality produce and this is reflected in their prices, many people prefer the better quality and will only shop at these supermarkets but people on a tight budget cannot afford to. Often big name brands are sold in both types of supermarkets and are much cheaper in the lower priced supermarkets but people shopping in the higher priced shops don't go to the other shops to save a few pennies on store cupboard items.
Only Lidl and Aldi sell the large boxes of mixed vegetables at such a low price and they don't have them everyday, they are usually much smaller with less variety too, I suspect (as AS suggested) that his one might have been 2 boxes combined into one because of the quantity and variety included. When I have seen them they did not have a selection of fruit and veg that I thought I would use without adding a few more items to it, they are very hit and miss.
AS did an incredible job of finding the lowest of the low priced items which is not easy because these items are often tucked away in hard to reach places or out of stock. I do the shopping and cooking in our house and am fairly conscious of prices but try to avoid the really low quality items and an average evening meal for two costs between £3 and £6 and I think that is reasonable, I am pretty sure I would struggle to eat well on the kind of budget AS can manage on.
Aww .. congratulation for the twins. It warms my heart just knowing about it.
Congratulations. Twins in our family, boy,girl. WONDERFUL.
Ian C: Aldi's in US is not substandard food! Less variety, food still in boxes, shorter hours and much smaller stores, along with few employees needed are how prices are cheaper.
really appreciate your insistence on the caveats re: "recreating hardship" and you taking commenters to task on their ignorance. love your stuff (hopefully) in the way its intended to be, as a point of intrigue and creativity within a fixed set of limitations.
This was brilliant. Thoroughly enjoyed watching all five days. The time and effort you put in to compiling this video from the editing to the cooking to the spreadsheets was just top class! Thanks for the great content!
these videos are great for learning how to be creative with your cooking at home when your fridge is looking empty and you can't be bothered going to the shop
this series has been incredible
Amazing the amount of food you bought for 5p, the huge meals, and the amount of food left over, and of course reusing the bits Bob's and leftovers
You waited all the way to the end to use levitation! I was wondering why that was on the 'allowed' list lol. I just thought I misread it. 😂
You win!
I really appreciate that you take the time to emphasize you don t suggest poor people could "just live on less". In a society that tries to silence its guilty conscience by poor- shaming and poor-blaming, your social awareness is quite comforting.
On the other hand, I still have to deal with being poor. Since I cannot change that for now, treating it like an interesting challenge or a tricky task makes it much more bearable. I feel less helpless and less marginalised. I can feel part of an inventive and creative community, instead of weird and ashamed. So, to me as a poor person, your limited budget challenges are an inspiration. I liked this miniseries very much.
Thank you. I really value your feedback on this. I hope things improve for you
Did you just repost this comment from another account called 10 out of 10, or is that a spambot I see?
Thank you for this series! really love it.
We would look at this collection of food on day 1 for 5 pounds and think it's such a limited struggle, but imagine someone in early 1900s, that bundle of food would have been an utter god send!
Really enjoyed this series - reminded me of the years I had a small holding and trying to live on what I grew/ foraged, with as little as possible bought in. Makes you inventive … still love to see a vegetarian version of this say 7£ for 7 days.
Been binging the set of 5 days now and can only say, there are lots of stuff I thought about after the initial groceries.
Banana pancakes, rosti, stir fry, curry, baked potatoes, fruity rice/porridge, some sort of soup/stew.
Only thing missing now is sausage, potato and mushed peas with marmite gravy.
What I can take away from it, is that I will try some of those recipes, especially these steamed buns.
This was an amazing series. Taught me loads about how to shop both economically and nutritionally. Cheers for all the hard work!