h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

what level of rent are you paying to require that stringent a budget?

I pay £181 each month, no summer reduction - my current bank total is about £70 so essentially I'm very financially poor.

£181!!!!
sorry, but when I was in London, the LEAST I paid was £70 a week!

We're not in London - they pay astronomical prices there. Elsewhere in the country the average is about £30 a week. You get paid more to live in London, and jobs pay more.

That's why no-one will live there.

Oxford is nearly as dear as London and you don't get extra money for Oxford

It's true that there are several areas in the south that are more expensive than most - including Oxford, Reading, Guildford etc, but the majority of places are far cheaper - especially if you head north.

Have you thought of dal?
That is, lentils cooked Indian style.
Lentils get a bad press, I think. They are nutritious, cheap and easy to cook. The basic taste is fairly bland but they are like a blank sheet of paper on which you can draw your flavours with spices and so on. Dal and puris (a form of bread) make up a large part of the staple diet in Calcutta and the rest of West Bengal.
I can get you some recipes if you are interested. I have a very easy one using red lentils (the most commonly available in supermarkets), onion, ginger, chillis and a few spices - I got this one from someone in Calcutta. Another I have is a chana dal with cucumber - a Madhur Jaffrey recipe. Chana dal is similar to yellow split peas - you can use the latter instead but chana dal has a lovely nutty flavour.
In India they tend to prepare dal to a consistency somewhere between a soup and a thick stew; for myself I prefer to use less water and get a sort of sludge. You can keep left-overs and re-heat.
Also dal and rice are the main ingredients of Khichri, which I think is the original from which kedgeree evolved. Again cheap and easy.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you want more info. Happy eating.