Unbelievable

I'd planned our meals down to a perfect budget for the week, still GAPS friendly, with a £1.02 contingency fund - then Matt announces that he is going to eat lunch and probably breakfasts at school.

This is a problem, because it reduces our joint grocery budget from £10 for the week to £6.66 for the week.

Goodbye salad leaves, goodbye eggs, and probably goodbye home made yoghurt.

I need to rebudget, but right now I have the chicken pox and I can't think clearly.

One thing is for sure though, I am not sending Matt to the shops without a list of exactly what to buy.

He'll come home with peanut butter.

One Week to go...

So there's only one week left until we start the 'Live Below The Line' challenge, and this year it's going to be harder than ever. This is on the most part because although I said I wasn't going to start the GAPS diet until after live below the line, we actually already started and seeing the improvement in our health, I don't want to go back.

I recently watched a documentary called 'Food Inc' too.

Now it's not just about health, but an ethical decision to want to stick to the diet. How can I justify getting sponsorship to raise awareness of extreme poverty, whilst buying products which exploit the worlds poorest and most vulnerable people?

That's right, people.

It's not just the animals that are abused in battery farming. Illegal immigrant workers are used for cheap labour in slaughter houses throughout the industry, whilst the subsidised corn prices in the US put third world farmers out of business and create famine, and genetic copyright laws are putting farmers under crippling debt or out of business.

If you haven't seen Food inc, you really should. You can watch it on netflix, who will give you a one month trial for free if you sign up with your facebook details, no obligation and you can cancel right after you watch it.

The most heart breaking section of the documentary is when they follow a family who have just $1 a day to buy food, so they buy fast food burgers from a 99c menu. The parents want to feed their children better, but they take a trip round a supermarket and show you that they can't afford broccoli ($1.29) or pears ($1 would only buy two, which wouldn't fill them up for the day). One of the reasons they can't afford any more is because the father is on medication for severe diabetes - caused by their diet. They can't afford the medication and a change of diet, and don't want to risk losing the father by coming off the meds.

These are the decisions faced by families in extreme poverty every day.

I'm going to be making some really difficult decisions about what I eat for the next week. I think that homemade yoghurt is going to be key once again as it only costs me 55p to make just over a pint, but I'm honestly not sure where else I can save. Some very careful budgetting is going to need to happen if we are going to eat real food in an ethical way and stay below budget.

How much....

In preparation for our 'live below the line' week, I thought I'd better work out how much our standard groceries cost so that we can be sure we are spending less than 33p per meal.

So here is my base list* so far (obviously, I'll be adding as I go):

Milk 100ml = 8.9p [1 ltr = £0.89]

Porridge oats 50g = 11p [1kg = £2.25]

Bread 2 slices = 7p [loaf = £0.75]

Rice 75g = 4p [1kg = £0.49]

Black Eyed Beans 50g = 9p [500g = £0.90]

Ribena 15ml = 5p [600ml = £1.91]

Eggs 1 egg = 20p [12 =£2.50]

Muesli 100g = 7p [1kg = £0.67]

Butter 10g = 5p [250g = £1.30]

Jam 15g = 1p [454g = £0.38]

Peanut Butter 10g = 4p [340g = £1.29]

Some more food from our final above the line shop:

Red pepper = 80p

potato = 11p

kiwi = 12p

cucumber = £1

lettuce = 79p

banana = 11p

corriander bunch = 99p

bowl of coco snaps = 10p

cup of soup = 8p

donuts = 83p

*Prices are based on grocery brand already owned, at their current value from Tesco.com where possible, otherwise at local supermarket prices.