Live Below the Line

Live Below the Line week is fast approaching.  I start this Challenge on Monday and it will run until Friday, just five days of living below the official poverty line on just one pound per day.

Remembering of course, that I have the luxury of a whole pound to spend just on food.  If I was truly living below the line this one little, solitary pound would also have to provide for my medical needs, for light, for warmth, for education........ for everything.  A sobering thought.

To find out more about Live Below the Line go here, they can tell you what you want to know so much better than me.

What am I doing to prepare for this, well I've bought most of my foods in already, just a few pennies left to spend, and yes.....you do think in terms of pennies when your spending power is so limited. 

 Obviously I'm still working to the rules of my other challenge 'Say No to Supermarkets', so the things that I have got were purchased when I played my Jokers, or during the amnesty that lasted for the whole of March.  The rest of my foodstuffs are either purchased from Approved Foods or grown or produced myself here on the smallholding.

The only thng taken from a larger pack is my Olive Oil, I did not want to go and buy another bottle (even if I could have afforded a smaller one) when I have three perfectly good full bottles in the cupboard, so I used mysupermarket.com to see todays prices and charged myself the price of 100mls, a little cheat but I hope an acceptable one.

To see all my foods and read more, visit my stand alone page (under the Blog title), this is updated regularly.

Last year some of you mentioned that you ate almost at this level on a daily basis, and indeed, all us growers, producers and folks with a bit of frugal knowledge can do just that,  but I decided to do the challenge again this year to remind myself  just how far I've come since the days when I almost lived 'below the line' for real, and that I now have the choice to do it or not to do it.

 I hope that anyone out there who struggles on a day to day basis will be able to glean a few tips and ideas for easy, cheap and nutricious meals from my five days of living on just £1 a day.  I will, like last year post the meals I had the previous day first thing in the morning and any tips I can think of, or any mistakes I think I may have made.  And of course I'll own up to any cheats!!

If you want to be really lovely and sponsor me you can find my personal sponsor page HERE,  a few pennies or pounds would be fantastic - THANK YOU.

Last year one boy doing the Challenge to raise money, spent his £5 for the week on 5 big Snickers bars and ate one a day every day, not healthy, not balanced......but it kept him alive and made him think, I wonder if he's doing it again this year?

What would YOU spend £1 on if you had to feed yourself all day.

Sue xx