Congrats on your loss, just been having a nosy through your diary
I know the feeling about not being able to afford to eat what you would think is healthy, but honest, it isn't so bad. I try to keep our food spending as low as possible as our finances are getting a battering each week it seems with various unexpected bills turning up and my bankruptcy looming. I work from home so it is a little easier, but I usually stick to cereal for breakfast (supermarket own brand), jacket wedges or pasta for lunch (served with either beans, salad or frozen veg with the wedges; pasta pack or basic tinned tomato sauce for the pasta), and tea is something like cottage pie, stew, chicken burgers, SW style cooked full English, sausage and mash, pasta bake or the like. I say usually, as I have been unable to stick to the plan for a couple of weeks now, so I feel a bit of a hypocrite saying all that and ignoring it myself!
I scour the reduced section like something possessed, and if anything interests me, I usually get it and freeze it, which enables me to only do 'major' shops about once a fortnight, and in the mean time live off the frozen meats etc in the freezer. I also use frozen veg a lot, as the rate in which fresh goes off is amazing.
Sugar free squash is also a lifesaver in this house! I used to drink mainly diet coke, but now its mainly squash, and perhaps one glass of coke, keeping those costs down too.
I paid £9 for a slowcooker from Tesco a couple of weeks and it has been a godsend! Cooked a whole chicken it in on Sunday, so we had chicken salad sandwiches Sunday night when we got in, roast chicken dinner last night, there's chicken in the fridge awaiting me making chicken noodle soup, a massive pot of stock simmering away, and a box of chicken in the freezer ready for chicken, bacon and leek pie - and that chicken cost me £3.50 reduced in the co-op.
Good luck with the upcoming week. I got a STS today, so I am battling to get my head back into practising what I 'preach'!
