cheap eats - Miss Alice

Question of the week: "Do you have any suggestions for cheap eats in London?"

"I know it's not London-specific, but it's still too big a money-saver not to at least mention - cook from scratch. At least, cook from scratch some of the time, to free up money to spend elsewhere.

If you find a local supermarket that's large enough to carry a good selection of their own-brand 'basics / value / essentials' range, and one of the local markets for bargain fruit and veg, you're in with some big savings.

Take breakfast - you can easily pay £3 - £5 for Pret or Starbucks to make you porridge and a coffee in the morning. Even if you sprang for Via sachets to keep the Starbucks taste, that's still less than a pound's worth of ingredients to DIY.

Personally, I wouldn't drink dried milk as a drink, but I think it's a store-cupboard essential for oatmeal, partly for cost, but mostly so you don't have to worry about when you last got fresh milk.

Per person, you need:

1/2 mug (value/basic/essentials) porridge oats
1 mug water
1 teaspoon dried milk powder (or use 1 mug milk)

- bring to the boil in a pan, stir, and you're done within a minute or two, when it's thickening up, or it's about 3.5 mins in the microwave, in 30 second increments to keep it from boiling over. Meanwhile, flip the kettle on to boil the water for your coffee, and get out whatever fruit, sweetener or spice you want to add to your porridge, and - that's it. Breakfast's ready. (It also takes 0% extra effort to make two or three servings, thus earning the gratitude and appreciation of any of your housemates who also have to be up and out at the same time of the morning.)

You can get as fancy as you want with the additions and toppings - a chopped apple and a good sprinkle of cinnamon cooked into it, or brown sugar, or golden syrup, or a handful of raisins, or honey, or chocolate chips, or bananas or jam or ...

If you want a full cooked English breakfast, though, that's another story - there's an art to getting eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, black pudding, mushrooms, toast and tea all ready to hit the table at the same time, and, frankly, I've never mastered it. Particularly as that lot's likely to cost you about the same as the coffee-and-oatmeal option in Starbucks, that's always seemed like a fair bargain for an occasional treat to me!"- Miss Alice

* Photo by //andreea//, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.