The Will to Cook

Is it terrible that I've lost the will to cook and it's only day one?

The children aren't doing live below the line (it is something we'd like to do with them in the future, but when they are older and can understand why) and already I realised I've become lazy about cooking for them.

Breakfast went well, but then their lunch had turned out to be just cheese, dates, pears and cashew nuts; not that they are complaining. This kind of snack food is Will's favourite meal.

I don't want to start a trend though. Just because I'm not eating it myself doesn't mean I can't still create delicious and nutritious meals for my children.

The curse of live below the line

I'm sick again.

What is it about live below the line that does this to me? Fortunately it seems to be a nasty cold virus, rather than chicken pox this time so we are going to go ahead with the challenge.

I spent most of our budget on a chicken this year, so we'll be drinking plenty of chicken broth which should help aid recovery.

On the plus side, both kids appear to be coming down with said virus as well, so we should get a nice cuddly day on the sofa, which won't be too strenuous.

The end of the week

There has been little to no posting from us, mainly because I got really sick and ended up in hospital.

Although I have easily lived on less than a £1 a day for about eight days (so no need to withdraw your sponsorship ;0) ) we do feel like it was kind of a cheat and not really the experience we'd hoped for.

With that in mind, we are going to be doing our live below the line week again later in the year.

Hope you'll keep up with us then.

Kj
Xxx

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.

Unfortunate events

An unfortunate twist to live below the line this year, not only will I be attempting to do it on GAPS, but I have been up since four am today vomiting.

Please pray that I get better quickly.

I was hoping to use my fat reserves to get through a rather lean weak, but if I'm already depleted its going to be really tough.

2012

It's almost time for Live Below the Line 2012 - Well, I say it's almost time, actually there's still about 3 months to go, but we've already signed up and are ready to go.

For those who didn't follow us last year the basic idea is that from the 7th-11th of may we are going to live on less than £1 a day. This is supposed to simulate the extreme poverty that 1.4 billion people around the world live in.

Our experience last year told us that it is achievable, but not at all pleasurable. There's absolutely no wiggle room, and you can't afford to get sick as there's not budget for any medicines.

So what can you buy with £1 a day?

Not a bus ticket, not formula milk for a baby and certainly not a magnum ice cream.

We could afford Salt and Pepper Sandwiches, Strawberry Thai Chicken risotto and plain rice.

But the reality is, as hard as we found this, we still aren't even close to experiencing poverty like many others do. We are only budgeting £1 a day for food and drink. We haven't included living costs like heating, rent and travel (luckily we live where we work, but this isn't true for many).

We also aren't going to be including the children until they are much older and able to understand what's happening. This means that we get to spend the whole £1 on ourselves each day, where plenty of mothers around the world have to go hungry to be able to feed their starving children.

There are a few things we'd like you to consider doing this year.

1. Taking part in Live Below the Line yourself. You can read the rules and sign up here.
2. Consider sponsoring one or both of us (we're raising money for the same charity, but can't help getting competitive about it!)
3. Just follow our blog. Raising awareness of extreme poverty is one of the reasons we are taking on this challenge, so we'd love for you to keep reading and share with us in this experience.

Blog posts might be sporadic over the next three months, but we promise to update at least daily during the challenge.

If you do decide to get involved and want to blog your experiences too, let us know so we can link up.

Today has been quite straight forward. Had only water. Even been to the gym and runaround with will this avo. Knowing there's not small meals in between doesn't tantalise you as much. Also I suppose knowing it all finishes at 12 makes it a bit easier too!!

I hadn't really felt hungry. Until now: sitting watching will eat a chips and cheese sandwich. Now midnight can't come soon enough...



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Final day fast

Well,

The final day. I have gone a bit quiet, there are only so many pictures of peanut butter on scales you can post.

As I've said before, I have become aware of how indulgent and instantaneous our eating habits are. I have conflicting emotions about spending our final 39p on a pack of cookies. We're indulging ourselves because we can. But did i est and enjoy them? Yep!
Plus will we have a nice big meal at 12.00 tonight? Probably. There is probably a part of us that thinks we deserve it after this week. It would be difficult to look someone in the eye who lives in actual poverty and justify our lifestyle I think.

If it went wrong or we had to feed the whole family, this would have been more difficult. I am eating nothing for the final 24 hours just to see what it may be like.

But then, I don't have to worry about where my whole family's next meals are coming from and i know at midnight I can just drive to 24hr tesco or get a cheeky takeaway.

Any way, no answers just questions. Thanks very much to everyone who sponsored me. Be sure it is going to a worthwhile cause.

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Impatience

Being hungry makes me impatient.

Matt was five minutes late for lunch today, so I started without him. What's that about? Im pretty sure that makes me eligible for suckiest wife of the year. I knew it too, but I did it anyway. Why?

Because I had been thinking about lunch (salt and pepper baked potatoes) for the last two hours and only holding out because I knew Matt would be home soon. When he wasn't exactly when I expected him to be, I snapped in a hormonal hungry rage.

I'm not proud of that. But I feel like I got punished a plenty this afternoon.

Man training were having their last official meet up, and they invited me and the kids along to their BBQ, where they all ate crisps and burgers washed down with soda. Okay, it was cheap soda, but it was still soda!

To make matters worse, Will insisted on sitting on my lap and offering me a bite of his burger every few minutes.






Dinner tonight was pretty good. Started out as soupy rice with tofu, same as before, but this time I used 'wild mushroom' flavour cup a soup instead of 'Thai chicken'.

It basically tasted of nothing, so I put loads of salt and pepper in. It now tasted of nothing with pepper.

So, in the interest of making it taste like something I stirred in a teaspoon of peanut butter. Weirdly, because I hate peanut butter, it actually tasted pretty good.





- Kj
Xxx

Now to tot up today's eating:

Breakfast: 2 slices of bread (7p) + 20g peanut butter (8p) + 60g yoghurt (3p) =18p

Lunch: Delicious meal made by KJ including stolen herbs = 40p (quite heavily rounded up for seasonings

Snack: 10g peanut butter sandwich = 11p

Dinner: 75g rice (8p) +seasoning and butter (6p) = 14p

Day's total = 83p (I want a sandwich now but I don't want too waste all our bread with another 3 days to go... think ill nick 60g yoghurt and a glass of water)

New day's total = 86p

Well,

Feeling a little drained now. Since early lunch I have been to the gym, run to the track, coached athletics, run back from the track and bowled in the nets.

Nothing 10g of peanut butter, 2 slices of bread and a pint of water won't fix though!




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Day one complete food diary - KJ

Here is my total food diary for today!

Breakfast

Toast x 2 with butter 12p

Large glass Kefir 1p

Lunch

Cup of soup (thai chicken yummy) 8p

one piece of toast 3.5p

Dinner

Jacket potato 11p

Salt & Pepper 1p

Butter 5p

Large glass Kefir 1p

Snacks

60ml homemade yoghurt 3p

Total cost of todays food = 45.5p

Well under budget. Unfortunately, there's nothing else I want, given that we can only eat more off the list we already have and I don't fancy plain rice!

The new budgeting rules have scuppered my plans for rationing Ribena as the bottle cost nearly £4 so there is no way I can work it into our budget. I'm getting withdrawal just thinking about it...

Day 1 Breakfast

So here it is:

Breakfast:

Matt:

2 slices of bread = 7p (I love 2 loaves for 1.50 at Tesco now!)
20g Peanut Butter = 8p
2 Pints of tapwater
Total = 15p (18p added to later in the day. This is a piece of cake....)

KJ:

2 slices of toast (7p) + 5g of butter (5p) = 12p!

Upcoming difficulties.....

About to go to the park and try to walk past the ice cream van. Even a Minimilk is 60p, hoping we don't sell out 2 days food for a Magnum...