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.

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.

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.

Midnight feast time!!

Oh Ribena! How I have missed you!!!

We feasted tonight




Stuffed peppers, chicken kievs, spinach & rocket salad with mango chilli and lime dressing.

We followed it up with chocolate mousse (for Matt) and passionfruit for me.

Soooo grateful for fruits and Salad right now.

Irfan said he was going to hit mcDonalds drive thru.
#amateur

- Kj
Xxx

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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