It’s five days on and I’ve managed to get to the end of the Live Below the Line week! I’m walking around with a sense of achievement – and a cheque for Tearfund. Phew.

Here’s the summary (add a banana and you have my total food ration for the day):

[You may notice one very small slip (Oh dear). Lets not talk about that. Something to do with an invitation to lunch which the family (who weren’t joining me in this) wanted to go to – what could I do? Just don’t ask how much I argued on Day 4 of a pound a day.]

I even have food left over:

• 1 egg (9p)
• 500g flour (15p)
• 1 portion pea soup (18p)

Which means that in five days my spend on food was £4.56 (and a free lunch).

Three meals and a snack a day, on less than a pound! But to put it in perspective, I only achieved 50-60% of my recommended calorie intake, 80% of carbohydrate and protein and 15% of recommended daily intake of fat. Dropping down to that overnight did have some interesting physical effects which I wasn’t expecting. Suffice it to say that I had planned to continue for another day to make up for slips but in the end didn’t.

Whether you consider I’ve been successful or not, I can tell you that I’ve done quite enough this week to understand a few things:

– how confusing supermarket prices are and how hard it can be sometimes to work out which product really is the cheapest

– how much I missed a cup of tea!

– how much food we unwittingly waste each week – and if food waste is such an issue globally that’s a problem

– and, most of all, how very blessed I am to be able to give up living below the line and go out to supper tonight to enjoy a lovely meal with my family, and not worry about where the next meal will come from.

And I have of course raised some money for Tearfund to help in their fight against poverty and the IF campaign. My sponsors were very forgiving – THANK YOU!

If you want to read more about the Live below the line challenge and peoples experiences, visit a girl called Jack where Jack Monroe is taking the challenge to new limits. Having spent less than £2.50 so far she plans to continue until all her food is gone, however long that takes.

If you want to read more about the IF campaign have a look here.

As I cook my morning flatbreads on the morning of Day four I have to admit that this diet is getting very monotonous. Living on a pound a day for all your food and drink is much more of a challenge than I ever thought possible.

Progress so far has been up and down but I thought I would catch you up on how it has been going – so:

Day One: Oh for a cup of tea!

Spent the grand total of £4.98, so it now has to last me the whole five days. Slight feeling of panic at that thought.

Day Two: Not at all bad

A good day – going well. In fact a small feeling of pride started to bloom at how well I was coping until I started to become ever-so-slightly irritable (the family might phrase it differently) in the evening.

Day Three: Why am I doing this?

The grumpiness continued so I wavered and breakfast was a LOVELY cup of tea and a bowl of muesli. At a cost of 29p I decided to trade 4 eggs for it (@ 9p each that was 36p but it was well worth paying over the odds!)
This is, of course, cheating as the rules clearly state that we should buy the whole packets. I’ve stuck to the straight and narrow ever since and I’m hoping my sponsors will be kind…

Thoughts so far?

My most overwhelming, clamouring thought is that this can’t end soon enough. This challenge is hard. But think of all the money Tearfund will get.

This is a slightly different menu plan this week as I thought I would have a go at the Live Below the Line Challenge. Yes. Really.

A couple of weeks ago you may have seen that I tried to feed the family for £20 – £1 a head for supper. This challenge is a pound for the whole day.

Yes – breakfast – lunch – and supper – for £1.

“Oh dear”, I hear you say.

And I can only agree. I have to admit to some serious doubts as to whether I’m actually going to be able to finish it. I have some busy days coming up so I may need to break it depending on how it goes. Also we’ve been asked round to friends for a meal one day (what shall we do? – no cost to the budget but not quite in the spirit of the challenge!). But I’ll have a good try to stick to 15 meals for a total of £5 in 5 days (or so?) – it is after all, to raise money for Tearfund.

It seems a lot of others are also trying this – Ben Affleck and various other celebrities have announced they are participating, to highlight the fact that so many people live below the poverty line. In fact the number is 1.4 billion and to make matters worse, apparently one third of the food crop produced globally every year is either lost or wasted – more than enough to feed them.

There are a lot of recipes, hints and tips about the challenge – if only I had seen them before starting! What I’ve found difficult is that you have to factor in the cost of whole packets – so can’t just count 100g pasta as 4p but need to include the cost of the whole packet (19p). As such it means that choice is really limited – you can’t afford to buy the packet of pasta and not eat all of it – so it’s going to be pasta on all five days!

So what can you eat for a pound a day?

The short answer I found is not a lot – certainly choice is very limited – but maybe more than I thought initially.

Breakfasts will be boiled eggs and flatbreads.

Boiled egg with Flatbreads

Lunches will be vegetable soup or baked beans.

Baked Beans on Flatbread

Suppers will be some combination of pasta, tomatoes and vegetables, and maybe more eggs

Snacks : as I haven’t managed to include a lot of fresh fruit I’ve added a kilo of bananas.

And no tea and coffee as I can’t afford it in the £1!

So in the end my list looked like this:

• 10 eggs Lidl 89p
• Flour 1.5kg Lidl 45p
• Tinned peas – Aldi 28p
• Passata 500g Aldi 29p
• Mixed veg – 1 kg frozen beans, carrots, peas and sweetcorn Aldi 89p
• Spaghetti – Aldi Everyday essentials 500g 19p
• 2 tins Baked Beans – Sainsburys Basics Baked Beans 50p
• Salt – 35g 4p
• Tinned tomatoes Sainsburys basics 31p
• Tinned potatoes – Sainsburys basics 14p
• 1 onion – 12p
• Vegetable stock cubes – 10 for 15p
• 5 Bananas (@ 68p/kg) – 73p

Total spend = £4.98

Possibly not my best menu – and please don’t remind me how unbalanced / unhealthy it will be (they do say only do it if you’re fit and healthy).

It’s been hard work even getting this far – as you can tell I’ve visited at least 3 different supermarkets (over a couple of days or so). Fortunately there is a very high concentration of supermarkets around where we live or I’ld have spent more than £5 on petrol going between them all!

I’m going to link this up to Mrs M’s menu planning Monday – a good place to visit for other more appealing ideas.

Have a good week!

You may also like:

A pound a day and a weekly menu plan

Lunch-in-a-hurry and simple to make Flatbreads

Bacon and Tomato Pasta sauce with creme fraiche