Live Below the Line…

Live Below The Line is an initiative of the Global Poverty Project, and from the 29th April to the 3rd May will see over 20,000 people in the UK, USA, Australia and Canada, all voluntarily spending 5 days living below the poverty line. The challenge is to survive on £1 a day for all your food and drink for 5 days, with the aim that you raise money for your chosen charity, as well as raising awareness around global poverty.

One of my lovely readers bought this campaign to my attention, and I immediately thought “Is that even possible?” But then I did a bit of research, and decided it would be a great thing to do. Hubby was, however, a little less keen.

I did then point out to him, that as I would be doing all the meal planning and shopping and cooking, apart from having to eat it, it wouldn’t have that much of an impact on him. And he knows by now that I am always right…. (nearly always – lovely hubby) So he came round to it after a while.

The budget is set at £1/day/person, so for 5 days, for our family of 4, we have a budget of £20. What we have decided to do is to then give the remainder of our usual weekly food budget to our chosen charity (we have picked Save the Children)

This is obviously going to need some thought and a bit of planning..! What I really want to try and avoid is eating processed cheap crap for 5 days. I want to see if it is possible to eat well, and cheaply without having to resort to horse meat sausages…

So I have come up with a meal plan, and a shopping list, and I am sharing it with you guys, in case anyone else wants to join in!

Breakfasts

Porridge-made with milk, raisins, or stewed fruit to sweeten

Toast-homemade bread-with butter or homemade jam

Lunches

Soup-whatever is kicking around in the veg basket-mixed veg/leek and potato/curried carrot/parsnip

Rolls-cheese and homemade chutney, egg, tuna

Dinners

Pasta bake

Pizza-homemade bases, and tomato sauce made from tinned toms-cheese/egg/roasted veg toppings

Macaroni/pasta cheese-with added veg

Frittata-with any leftover bits of veg, and homemade baked chips

Bean burgers

Puddings

Fruit

Stewed fruit

Baked apples

Natural yoghurt flavoured with stewed fruit

Snacks

Cheesy feet

Homemade cake-like a tea loaf or similar

Homemade biscuits-hobnobs maybe?

Shopping list (supermarket):

Value porridge oats -65p/500g
Value raisins-£1.54/500g
White bread flour-£0.80/1.5kg
Caster sugar-£0.90/500g
Eggs x6-£1.00
Kidney beans-2 tins-£.054
Chickpeas-1 tin-£0.62
Stock cubes-£0.78
Value pasta-£0.30
Milk-2L green, 2L blue-£2
Butter-2 packs-£2
Cheddar-£2.74/500g
Frozen mixed vegetables-£0.75/kg
Natural yoghurt-£0.45/500g
Tinned tomatoes-£0.31

Total £14.97 (Prices from Asda on My Supermarket.co.uk)

Shopping list-market/greengrocers

Whatever is cheap or reduced at the end of the day, but I am on the look-out for:

Potatoes
Onions
Carrots
Bananas
Any other fruit

Crikey. I was a but blase about this, and thought it would be easy, but starting to actually look pretty hard….

Anyone else joining in? Please….!!