Pasta Sauce, another step in beating the factory food scam to keep you poor

Probably one of the best ways of pissing your money up the wall is spending it on pre-made sauces. It looks like it's good value, cheap enough that you don't notice it and expensive enough that manufacturers make a tidy profit on it. A couple of quid on a jar of Dolmio is a nice little earner.

I haven't bought one in years. Why? Because you can make decent pasta sauce for peanuts. I'm not a big pasta eater but my daughter is so it's a regular tea for her. She loves this sauce and I love it because it is piss cheap. You need:

- a small onion (12p)
- a tomato (22p)
- a clove of garlic (I'd guess around 3p)
- half a tube of tomato puree (25p)
- some dried oregano and basil (maybe another 10p)
- a couple of spoonfuls of oil (no idea, let's call it 15p)

That's 87p. And you know what is in it. There's no shit in it, no flavour enhancers, preservatives, sugar or salt (unless you want to add some, I don't usually).

Chop the onion fine, fry it in the oil on a low heat until soft. When nearly done add the garlic, also finely chopped. Chop the tomato and add that. Let the whole thing cook at a low heat into even more mush. Meanwhile, make your pasta. When it is ready drain it but keep a cup of the cloudy water. Squeeze half a tube of tomato puree into the onion and tomato. Add the dried herbs. Mix. Add the pasta water until you get the consistency you like.

Piss easy, cheap and tastes great.

I have been making an effort to get away from our reliance on pre-made or processed food. Sure, there are all the health issues assorted with eating crap made in a factory but it's also a damn sight cheaper and better to make. There might be a little bit of upfront cost involved like buying the herbs and the oil. But you can do this cheaply: I just got a bottle of really good olive oil in Aldi for £2, about half of what it costs in Asda or Morrisons. But you need to bite the bullet on things like these because once you've got them you've got them. A bottle of oil makes god knows how many meals. A jar of herbs lasts forever, or at least until it stops smelling of anything. Again, Aldi and Lidl are great for stuff like this.

One of the single best money-saving skills anyone can develop is learning to cook. I was lucky that I grew up in a kitchen where both my mum and dad cooked really well (my father was in the RAF catering corps). You pick up what you grow up around. If you see jars and packets then that's how you cook. If you see fresh food then the same applies when you are an adult. I've always really made the effort to cook around my daughter and she never sees me reach for a jar of Dolmio.

I think a big part of the problem is the way that food is marketed. Fresh produce is always shown as almost a luxury item. It's always some middle class couple in their Hygena kitchen with a bottle of wine. If you ever see a skint parent then it's usually alongside a jar of Homepride sauce and a packet of Uncle Ben's. What message does that send? If you're on a budget then forget about eating fresh food. What you need, the only thing you can afford, is this nice packet of shit that we made in a factory out of horse dicks and potato peelings...

My parents grew up piss poor in post-war Britain. They learned out of necessity how to make food work for you. I am very grateful that I grew up seeing that.

It's not particularly impressive but if you want to see a picture then have a look at my Instagram account @skintlife2020

How I Work Out If My Weekly Shopping Is Good Value

One thing I struggled with last year was coming out of Morrisons with two big bags of crap and 40 quid down the bog and there was nothing I could make a meal out of in amongst it. It pissed me off and it happened all the time.

So this year I decided to be more organised. Not going into a shop without a list. Not eating meals that need twenty ingredients (nineteen of which you can't taste). But I still didn't know whether what I was spending was giving me good value or not.


Maybe this is the most obvious thing in the world to everyone else. What totally changed the way I thought about my shopping was trying to see it for what it gave me rather than seeing it as two bags of individual items. It came about by accident, I wrote myself a little explanatory note as to what it was.

I'd been fretting about what I spent and had no clue if it was good or bad. Just by chance I wrote a note like I was trying to justify the spend to someone else.

I can't remember of the top of my head but it went something like:

Four dinners for me

Dinners for all the nights my daughter was with me

A Friday treat

Everything I need to clean the kitchen

£17

 It's ridiculous but it really altered my perception. When it was just a list of individual items then it meant nothing. I had no way of telling whether I'd spent too much or too little or if I'd even got what I needed.

It is important to think of your weekly shop in terms of what it actually is. It is the means to make X number of meals. It is a job around the house. It actually means something, I can picture it. It also focuses my mind as well because I'm thinking oh, I'll have a piece of chicken left over that I can freeze or whatever.

When you see what you can make or do with it then you can judge whether or not it is good value. If you look at your bill and see that there isn't much that you can do with it then you know you screwed the pooch.

I don't think supermarkets want you to think that way. I think they want you to just wander round grabbing things from the shelf. If you start thinking about what you would actually use a particular item for then they are going to lose money. When I was a gym member it was a real epiphany to me when I realised that gyms made their money off the people who don't go. In the same way, supermarkets make money off the stuff that you don't need and won't use. They want you picking up things that catch your eye. If you bought only what you needed they'd be in deep shit.

And that is what I love about Aldi and Lidl. They don't have all that scope for buying shite. They just have what you need. They don't have twenty different types of tomato or a range of artisan cheeses. You can't wander aimlessly, what's on offer doesn't allow it and I hope they don't change.

So, my lesson that I have learned is be answerable. Take a minute after you get home to justify what you have bought. This is not a collection of things, these are your meals for the week. See it that way and you change how you look at your shopping.

Basically you need to make yourself accountable for what you spend. You have to justify it to someone. I live alone so it will be easy to slack off. I heard an interview with a guy who was an engineer talking about how he comes up with good designs. "I have a rubber duck on my desk and I have to explain everything to the duck. If I can't come up with an explanation that is simple enough for the duck to understand then I have failed". That's the attitude I need to take with my spending habits. I need to find someone, even if it is imaginary, that I need to explain my behaviour to.

I think part of the whole reason for starting this blog has been to make myself accountable. If I am honest about what I am doing on here then I have to stand by it.