Live Below The Line 2: Day One Meal Summary
At the end of today – a day I have spent mostly packing up my kitchen and handing most of the contents to a friend to look after in the face of my pending move – I wasn’t really hungry enough to warrant a ‘proper’ dinner.
My shop for take two of the Live Below The Line challenge included whole meal bread, yogurts, sausages and peaches – all of which I tucked into with gusto today, and relief that I wasn’t facing a week of white bread and cornflakes again!
I divided the mixed veg into ten freezer bags at 100g each, and have worked out that I can have an apple or a peach every day – a significant fruit increase on the last time!
Breakfast: 2 slices of toast with lemon curd and a glass of water. 7p.
Lunch: Sausage and stuffing sandwich (2 slices of whole meal bread, 2 sausages, 1/4 of the packet of stuffing mixed with 60ml boiling water), with a strawberry yoghurt and a peach. 38p.
Dinner: Beefy vegetable rice. (75g rice, 100g mixed veg, 1 beef stock cube). 12p.
Total for the day: 57p.
I seem to have made hardly a dent in my £4.85 food shop – but will have to ration the sausages! At 56p for 8, they were much nicer than I thought they would be, and I think I’ll keep another sausage and stuffing sandwich up my sleeve for the end of the week, when I’ll need some additional motivation, but so far, so good.
For those of you who followed my progress on the challenge at the end of April – I did consider trying to leave out the lemon curd for take two, but it was an absolute godsend last time, so I just had to have it! At 22p a jar it’s cheaper than any of it’s substitutes; jam is 29p, honey is 99p, and peanut butter is 62p – and none of them are quite as versatile as the humble lemon curd proved to be.
Six days left, and £4.28 of food left (plus 15p on top of the microwave that I’m not sure what I can blow it on yet! Either a tin of potatoes at 14p, rice pudding at 15p, a single yoghurt at 15p, or some chicken noodles at 15p. Choices, choices!)
Thankyou to everyone who has sponsored me so far – and to new readers, I just want to make it clear that this is not my normal diet, it’s a challenge to raise money for Oxfam!
To donate to Live Below The Line, a global poverty project, click here: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/agirlcalledjack
Jack Monroe. Twitter: @MsJackMonroe
Categories: Blog, Live Below The Line
Jack…all I can say is WOW.. you truly are an inspiration.
For sure, I think you should be head of Most Countries’ Economies…Just imagine what could be learnt from you?…… Just imagine, if entire countries caught on to your Way of Thought / Learned your skills? Just Imagine. Children would go to bed fed. Children would go to school fed. Mothers and Fathers would go off to work fed. Maybe countries would not need to go bankrupt/or as good as.
I am not a patch on your skills, innovation. That being said, you do inspire me to make small steps…
A really good first day’s food, well done.
My first thought was why didn’t you buy the peanut butter (peanut butter on toast for breakfast was my best decision for LBTL last year, but then I realised it would have pushed you out of budget, Lemon Curd is therefore a brilliant decision.
Good luck for the rest of the week, and yes it’s nice that you are doing a full week, hopefully it will shut up a few of the doubting Thomas’ you are getting. We know if anyone can do it YOU CAN.
Yeah, I had some tough decisions to make. I put back the £1.09 bacon to get the peaches, apples and courgette, swapped the 45p natural yoghurt for the 33p fruit ones (4 in a pack) that are higher in sugar but 12p cheaper…
Kicking myself for buying the loose potato at 24p when a can of them would have been 14p – I guess I underestimated how much a single potato weighed/cost seeing I normally buy them in bulk! And yes, I desperately wanted peanut butter to do sandwiches for work but given the choice between peanut butter and sausages… >:)
Hi Jack,
I’ve been following your blog for a whole now and you are a true inspiration! Just a thought, far be it from me to try to teach you about fodd, but how about a ‘meatloaf’ kind of affair? A sausage (or two), stuffing, extra breadcrumbs and maybe a few veggies? You could have it with some tomato saucy stuff made from some of your carton of toms, or cold in a sandwich or whatever. You could get a couple of meals and a sandwich or two from that maybe. Good ‘stretcher’!
Katie
x
P.S. best of luck to ye!
That sounds good!! Mmm. I might mash it with some kidney beans to make it go further….. 🙂
You managed so well last time that I can’t see you doing the same again…only better! It’s great that you do this so well and provide encouragement and inspiration for so many others. Can’t wait for the book. I’m broke but I’ve asked (nicely!) for it as a forthcoming birthday present 🙂
Just found this for you 🙂
http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=702849
Or a variation of this 🙂
http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Dinner-Tonight_-Tomato_-Rice_-and-Andouille-Soup-Serious-Eats-198186?&columns=3&position=16/36
Glad to see it’s a healthier version this time – white bread and cornflakes are off the menu for good, I hope. You could add a slice or two of the bread in the form of breadcrumbs to that meat loafey thing and a stock cube crumbled in to make it go further and taste better. If you add the kidney beans, too, you could probably live off it for the whole week!
And yes – sausages are very comforting. Long time ago, I worked at a place that made the skins for sausages. There was a consensus that some of the more pricey sausages were not not as good as some of the cheaper ones. You seem to have been lucky.
Good luck, Jack!
You are amazing, such strength such will what is the deep passion that helps you stay so focused and on track ?
Oh ya, forgot about the kidney beans. Would be good!
K
x
Looks decidedly more filling and nourishing this time round–I guess we all live and learn. Those sausage sandwiches look especially good. Best Of luck! Total admiration from me. M
I’m really on board with this idea of making a ‘meatloaf’ out of a couple of your sausages. If you think about it it will stretch the sausages that much further and give you that meaty taste in a much larger portion than simple eating just 2 sausages and therefore do you a couple of meals instead of one.
My plan, when I was asked for it this year, although this is the first year I have not done LBTL, was to eat virtually the same meals each day, just with small variations, by doing this you can afford to use more of your ingredients in a dish knowing it will be being stretched to three or more meals.
So for your meatloaf I would use the last of the stuffing mix (or buy another box with your leftover 15p), 2 sausages, the two crusts of your loaf, at least one of the stock cubes and about a third of the tin of Kidney Beans, you could even use some chopped up apple peel and the core (after you have had the apple for a snack of course) finely chopped to add a fruity moisture to the mix, a portion of rice would pad it out even further and make you a good sized loaf that you could then cook and slice up into portions to use either for hot meals or for sandwich fillings.
Just some ideas, I hope they help and you don’t think we are all ‘telling our granny how to suck eggs’ 🙂
Another option for the 15p is mushy peas, which can make the basis of a pea soup with stock to thin it (or even pea and ‘ham’ if you save the fat from cooking your sausages and use that in it too)
Hi Jack, i am a blogger based here in India. How can i help you?