Living below the Line: Day 1

 

This week I'm living below the line to raise awareness of severe poverty and raise funds for Action Aid and UK food banks who are fighting severe poverty. Worldwide, 1.2 billion people have to survive on less than £1 a day for food and drink. In solidarity, I'm trying to see how I'll faire on £1 a day for 5 days.

Breakfast: Porridge with mainly water, and a good splash of milk. Tea with a little milk and a little sugar (7.5 p for the porridge and 20p for total milk used today, 4 tea bags - 6p)

Lunch: Improvised (read: couldn't resist): potato scone (12p) and a slice of bread (2p) with some peanut butter.

Dinner: Lentil shepherds pie. 4 portions, I only ate 1.

200gr red split lentils (30p, bought in bulk)
1 onion (10p)
7 potatoes (out of 18 in the pack I bought) (30p)
clove of garlic
1/3 of tomato puree (13p)
Garam Masala, about 1 Tbs  (2.5p)
splash of milk to mash tatties
Spinach, chard and purple sprouting broccoli from the local community garden (free!)
Salt 
total for 4 portions: 85.5p, or one portion = 21.4

Total:
69p

I did have 2 crips, 2 pieces of breakfast cereal and 2 sour wine gums to see me through the day, as well as a tiny leftover from free food that would have been wasted otherwise. Haven't priced the 3 teaspoons of sugar either. Cost for all of these negligible, but let's round it up to 75p total.

Sugar cravings weren't as bad as expected. But I am hungry. I haven't felt quite so hungry in a very long time. The kids didn't like the dinner which was heartbreaking a I spent much longer than usual cooking it and I thought they would like it.

I wondered also about energy costs. The preparation of dinner used 3 pots and pans, plus the oven, more than I usually use. So energy consumption wise, this was an expensive dinner and I don't know how this is measured or if indeed the energy needed for cooking is part of the £1 a day that people all over the world have to survive on.

For now, I'm just really looking forward to my porridge in the morning.

If you want to sponsor me (please do, to make it all worthwhile!), you can do so here.
Remember your donation will be doubled by the UK Government and I'll donate the same again to a local food bank.