A time for tightening belts – and golly gosh doesn’t it taste good!

What is it about the beginning of a New Year? Once the usual feeling of anti-climax post-new year’s eve had been cleared up, slept off and packed away for next year, an unmistakable fizz of excitement began to percolate from brain down to somewhere in the stomachy region. A New Year – woohoo!

So there I sat on the 2^nd of Jan, all giddy with excitement at the prospect of tackling my inevitable but by no means irreparable pecuniarily-challenged status. “I shall buy – NOTHING!”, I announce to the wall.

“I shall spend – NOTHING!” (tautologous, perhaps, but I was feeling emphatic).

“I shall eat…. – NOTHING!” which is the sort of stupid thing I will say out loud, esp if trying to find things that fit in the sales has been particularly difficult after the lard-fest that is Christmas.

“I will delay paying all bills and subsist in a limbo-like state and hope the bank forgets all about little ol’ moi”. Hurrah! Plan.

But once reason and a rumbling tummy kicked in, I did have to grant myself just a morsel or two to keep my brain ticking over (first deadline of the year lurching up speedily). I had a fair amount in the cupboard and a brand new and innovative cookbook or two. I settled on potato curry – a meal that isn’t really a meal, but is a meal and costs about 2p to make (as long as your spices haven’t run out). Only needed to get a few items and, following the instinct of scrimpage, I shunned the easy Sainbury’s and ventured to the ‘Tahmid Stores’.

If ever I needed confirmation that chain supermarkets are the enemy of all impoverished souls, the glorious Tahmid Stores provided it. Three onions = 99p says the dreaded S-bury’s? Tahmid says 32p! Three garlic heads = £1 says S***bury’s? All-wondrous Tahmid says 45p! But gloating over my receipt later, it was the chilli, a beacon of hope and fierce flavour that was the real kicker. A large red chilli, which s**ing, p***ing Crapbury’s would have sold you in a packet with other heatless, soppy shadows of a chilli for a pound was only 9p. Independent stores, Tahmid or otherwise, win.

So a thrifty 90p spent on my dins I set about it. While the onions and garlic softened up, spices were sourced (the ground coriander had run out), and potatoes chopped. Also turned out I didn’t have any tomatoes to put in with the curry but eh, you can’t have all chips crunchy and fluffy in this world. In fact it made a nice change not to eat food that was orange (other creations over Christmas all entertained the orange hue - bacon and lentil soup, Moroccan spiced chickpeas and a prawn and tomato thingy) and opt for a nice fluoro-yellowy-green instead, which is precisely the colour the potatoes took on after I added most of a tin of coconut milk.

While all that was bubbling away, I was searching my new Flavour Thesaurus for a way to use up the fresh bunches of mint and coriander that hadn’t flavoured and fragranced previous meals and so, had joined me journeying back to Oxford. Blow me down there’s something called ‘Salambal’ which uses coriander, mint with fresh chilli and a bit of lime juice. Whizzed up in my faithful processor, the combination of these flavours added the upper notes of heaven to an already headily satisfying dinner. I can’t wait to have it all over again tomorrow….

 Poverty Wins.