Friday 25 April 2014

Live Below the Line 2014

In a few days I will taking on the Live Below the Line Challenge - if you haven't heard of this, it's a campaign to raise awareness of global poverty issues and involves living off £1 of food a day for 5 days. I have done the LBTL challenge once before, a couple of years ago. Unfortunately the increase in the price of food hasn't been mirrored in an increase to the £1 a day budget, so every year this challenge gets tougher and tougher. I mean, kidney beans have gone up a whole 9p! And 9p is a lot when you only have £1 a day...

But I do have a couple of advantages this time round. Firstly, I know what to expect. Last time, I was paranoid about being hungry (I eat a LOT!), so stocked up on carbs; so much so that I actually ended up with flour, rice, oats AND pasta! And, needless to say, had a lot of it left over at the end. I also found that I was never really hungry, but I got heartily fed up of rice and frozen mixed veggies... So this time I'm going to try and reduce the carbs, make the most of everything I buy and hopefully get some fruit or fresh veggies in on the act!

Second advantage is that I've done more research this time around and am more aware of how imaginative you can be with food, even when you don't have much to play with. I'm a huge fan of Jack Monroe's budget recipes - she managed to stretch her £5 budget to a whole seven days, though I suspect she keeps key slim figure by not actually eating a huge amount - I usually eat double her portion size ;o) Perhaps even more impressivelyis the One Pound Per Day blog, where a guy ate for a month on a budget of £1 a day, but without being able to spend it all at once. If you want 101 things to do with a bag of flour, this is the blog for you (I really shouldn't be giving all my secrets away here).

But I'm not going it alone... there is a twist to the challenge, as the Hullian is also taking up the challenge! Usually doing the challenge as a couple is easier, as you can get a lot more variety with a £10 budget than £5. However, as logistically we're 200 miles apart, we're each going to have to do it individually with our own £5 budget. Which means (of course) that there is also an element of competition! In a supportive, romantic way of course... Although given that I got a text today claiming that sausages, chips, yorkshire pudding and gravy will be featuring on his menu, I think I may be onto a losing streak...

We are doing all this to raise money for AfriKids, a fab charity which focuses on sustainble methods of addressing child poverty issues in Ghana. Please help support us by donating via our Live Below the Line page - https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/samandali

Keep a look out here for daily blogs on our culinary endeavours!

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