Grit's Gruels

Here we are, innocently supping on the finest vino vintage, refreshing ourselves with the sweetest fruits, and tasting the exquisite and expensive delicacies of the world, then a miserable bloke on Radio 4 spoils it all.

He warns that now we have a ConLib government, everyone in the country must pay the National Debt Or Else. And it is like Big Money. Thousands and millions of pounds. Maybe zillions. My maths is not good.

But then I hear something worse. That every household in England owes the government thirty thousand pounds! Shit! We haven't got that money, not even down the back of the sofa. And they won't take your first born, you can forget that. I asked.

What to do? Grit's body is worth a couple of quid. Then I eye up Dig for the insurance, and sure enough when he sees that twinkle in my eye he's off through the door.

So we are in Big Trouble.

Right. It's time to grit those teeth, get out of the groove, and economise. Selflessly, I shall do my bit. I offer up to the nation the finest selection of Grit's cheap eats. Consider it a gift, in the national interest, and in lieu of 30grand.

(PS. Of course my cheap eats are vegetarian! We may be poor, but we hippies float on the moral mountain top of righteousness.)

1. Vegeburgers
Cheap tinned red kidney beans
Three-day old brown bread scraped out the back of the bread bin
Onions. The local shop sells a 5Kg bag for a couple of quid
Leftover cooked veg from sometime earlier
Tomato puree
Salt and pepper or dried herbs

I bet you are already busting your buffers in anticipation. Mix up all the delicious flavours in the whizzy machine. The one with the broken thing. It still works. Glue the mix together with tomato puree. Make lots of burgers and fry them. Serve with knocked-down salad rescued from the reduced bin and hawthorn leaves. Delicious, nutritious and 88p for six!

2. Bean slurry
Beans. Howabout blackeye? They are easy to soak and boil.*
Two cans chopped tomatoes
Vegetables. Stuff like onions and carrots and broccoli and stuff.
Cube of chopped spinach. (When questioned about green bits, claim they are herbs.)

Put all stuff in saucepans, cook it, mix together.
Serve with cheesy rice. What's that? Ha! You'll go crazy when you discover how easy this is! Cook brown rice, and grate a load of cheese in it!

I might get myself a big pair of wobbly bosoms like Sophie Dahl, and market Grit's book: Cheap Eats for Idle & Mean Gits.

*Danger! Soak and Boil! Otherwise you all will DIE!

3. Lentil slop
Red lentils
Celery, onion, potato chunks, carrot and more carrot.
Stock cubes
Lots of water

Put all stuff in a big saucepan and boil up for 20 minutes.
Serve with croutons. (Stale bread hacked into chunks with a power saw, tipped into a dish, tossed with olive oil, salted, peppered and shoved in the oven for 10 minutes on hothothot. Properly cooked they look like smashed up housebricks.)

4. Chickpea something
Tin of chickpeas
Carrots
Onions
Sweet potatoes (When questioned, lie. Say it is carrot)
Red peppers
Yet more tins of chopped up tomatoes
Big cloves of garlic

Serve with mashed potatoes, sculpt an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, pretend this runny red stuff is lava, and run a geology lesson. All at the same time. Smugbastardhippy.

(Grit cuisine, is a cinch, isn't it? Quick, easy, CHEAP. And all without any deep feelings of food guilt, shame, inadequacy or any culinary skill whatsoever!)

5. Rice splatter
An enormous mound of white rice
Anything else edible. (Excellent after a late night dumpster dive.)

Put the enormous rice mound in the middle of the table, and put a dozen different things to eat all around. There is nothing wrong with peaches, peas and lettuce. They accompany baked beans, melon and cucumber exceptionally well. Persuade yourself. It's been a successful dive into the skips.

There! I have saved you for the nation too! Only £29,987.12 to go!