BBC Radio Northampton lunch challenge: Day three - Chilli, red pepper, celery and pea soup

Chilli, red pepper, celery and pea soup

Day three of the lunch challenge and the pickings have been slim in the bargains stakes so I resorted to using up some cut-price and leftover veg languishing in the fridge.

I had some celery reduced from £1 to 13p, some potatoes reduced from £1.50 to 49p and some chillis reduced from £1.12 to 39p. Only used one chilli, half the celery and a handful of potatoes and teamed them up with some other left-over veg.

Here's how I made the soup:
1) Chop an onion, fresh chilli and a few cloves of garlic and soften in a large pan with a glug of oil.
2) Dice a few potatoes, add to the pan and leave to soften for five minutes.
3) Chop up some celery, red pepper, a few tomatoes and add to the pan.
4) Add a litre of vegetable stock and leave to simmer for 15 minutes or until the veg are all soft.
5) Blitz up with a hand blender and add salt and black pepper to taste.
6) Mr Kate forgot to serve the peas with tonight's dinner so I added them to the soup - waste not want not!
7) Sprinkle a few chilli flakes to serve.

The soup was good but could have done with a bit of meat in it - maybe some chorizo or pancetta would have added a certain je ne sais quoi!

Pricewise this soup came in at just under £1 and has enough for four portions so 25p per portion.
Add to that a 3p yoghurt (reduced from £1.43 to 13p for four!) and another cut-price 6p roll from the freezer and today's lunch of soup, roll and yoghurt is 34p.

Think I might deserve a meal out at the weekend from all the money saved this week!