£1
Today was my first in the live below the line challenge. The aim is to spend no more than £1 a day on food, with the intention that by undergoing the experience, talking and tweeting about it will bring attention to the billions of people across the globe who live in extreme poverty.
I am also hoping to raise money for Unicef; you can donate to my Live Below the Line page here.
Today my food has cost me 98p
Breakfast: Water porridge with two year old hedgerow jelly cost 4p. Actually this is not far different from my normal winter breakfast just the oats were Morrisons quick and easy so the consistency was quite gluey.
Lunch: Carrot soup, with flour and water doughballs cost 28p – not the same with no stock or decent seasoning, so felt a bit cheated. Another time I would forgo a carrot to add some potato and give it a bit more body.
Supper: Poor man’s paella black pudding, rice, cauliflower and mushrooms – sounds gruesome but actually quite tasty, warming and filling – 58p
Just back from badminton and had a kiwi at 8p
This is not going to be easy, I miss having cups of tea, I realise that milk and dairy products generally allow me to top up throughout the day. It seems very odd counting and weighing everything and calculating the cost, but it is making me look after the food very carefully indeed, re-wrapping things ready for tomorrow.
I have some country soup mix soaking for tomorrow and hope to make some sort of dahl; I’ll need the energy as it’s a swimming night.
May 7, 2012 at 9:23 pm
this is terribly below the line isn’t it.. do you have to factor in the cost of salt, pepper, etc. in that £1 a day, ie.. it assumes a totally empty larder?
May 7, 2012 at 9:27 pm
I’m struggling with the larder side of it. I guess using a few spices would be OK but things like the fresh chillies and ginger I have seem a bit extravagant. Also how about my own hens eggs, they probably cost me more than supermarket ones would if I tot up the hen food costs, but I tend to think of them as free.
May 7, 2012 at 9:38 pm
you need to check out the reduced counters at the supermarkets I guess, so that you can factor in anything you can get cheaply. If you were really on the line, you would be feeding the chickens leftover scraps, so you can assume that they would be free under those circumstances. Are you able to forage for anything at the moment?
May 8, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Yes to all of the above:). Today’s diet has included slightly out of date polenta, a bargin. I have also been foraging adding jack-by-the-hedge and Alexanders in various guises. I think your comment is fair about the hens if I was on the line they would have the free run of the garden (bar the veg bits) all year round not just in the winter.
It is good to work out the ins and outs of all of this. Not sure I’m making 5 a day veg wise but my lettuce was from the garden today, so that’s a bonus.
May 9, 2012 at 7:07 am
If the £1 is a global figure then that seems a bit unfair on you, since £1 would buy an awful lot more in some countries. Or have I misunderstood. Personally I think I would go for bulk rather than taste and how would making bread fit in? I’ve never been confident about foraging other than fruit although I had a lovely road kill pheasant once!
I think this is a wonderful idea though, got me thinking too.
May 9, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Thanks for the comment – I will try to respond in more detail in tonight’s post.