Meal Planning Monday:
Live Below the Line
Live on £1 a Day for 5 Days to understand Food Poverty
Live Below the Line
My meal plan this week is in fact TWO meal plans; one normal meal plan, as I have been posting over the last few weeks as a link to the wonderful Mrs M – At Home with Mrs M, and my £1 a day Meal Plan pledge to live below the line for 5 days on £1 a day……….. Live Below the Line is an annual challenge to understand what it is like to live in poverty, and as a food blogger I am keen to highlight this global problem and will try to do my bit this week. I DO have some prior social commitments, so there is one day that I might not be able to fulfil my obligation, but I am still posting my meal plan here anyway, as I am all geared up to try to achieve this £1 a day diet.
The UK Live Below the Line website has been an absolute boon in helping me with my shopping lists and also with recipes; and a special mention must go to my friend Maureen Reynier on Twitter, who has sent me some very frugal recipe ideas…..in case anyone else wants to give this a go, you can choose any week in May to try to live on £1 a day……all the details are here: Live on £1 a Day – Live Below the Line. I am not accepting donations on my blog – I was approached by Live Below the Line a few months ago in order to try to raise awareness of their challenge by blogging about it, and maybe trying to live on the £1 a day plan, but please do make a donation if you wish, via their website, which is the same link that is shown above. And now to the £1 a day plan! I have used one of their shopping lists to help me, as well as a few of their recipe ideas too……..but, I have also utilised some ingredients I already have at home.
Meal Planning Monday
Live Below the Line on £1 a Day
Weekly Shopping List:
15 eggs – £1.25
(But I have my own hens, so I will offset this cost against something else)
800g wholemeal bread (20 slices) – 47p
(I will probably make my own but will use this as a costing)
900g frozen mixed vegetables – 73p
(I would have chosen fresh vegetables, but frozen are undoubtedly cheaper)
20 pork sausages – £1.00
1kg rice – 40p
410g tin baked beans – 27p
4 x 125g plain yoghurt – 35p
10 value stock cubes – 10p
567g value new potatoes – 23p
300g value mushy peas – 10p
150g Frozen fish (coley or hake) – £1.25
(To offset my eggs earlier)
(Plus some home-made fish stock from fish bones)
Recipe List:
day 1
Breakfast:
1 yoghurt pot
Lunch:
sausage and egg sandwich
(2 eggs, 3 sausages and 2 slices of bread)
Dinner:
Risotto with sausages and mixed
vegetables (100 grams of rice, 3 sausages,
1 stock cube
day 2
Breakfast:
1 yoghurt pot
Lunch:
100 grams of baked beans and 2 slices of
toast
Dinner:
Risotto with fish, potatoes and mixed
vegetables (100 grams of rice, 75g fish,
home-made stock with fish bones, 100 grams of mixed
vegetables and 100 grams of potatoes)
day 3
Breakfast:
2 eggs on toast
Lunch:
3 sausages, 100 grams of baked beans, 100
grams of mushy peas and 2 slices of toast
Dinner:
Egg fried rice with sausages with potatoes
and mixed vegetables (2 eggs, 2 sausages,
100 grams of potatoes, 100 grams of mixed
vegetables and 100 grams of rice)
day 4
Breakfast:
2 eggs on toast
Lunch:
Eggs and sausage sandwich (2 eggs, 3
sausages and 2 slices of bread)
Dinner:
Risotto with fish, potatoes and mixed
vegetables (100 grams of rice, 75g fish,
home-made fish stock made with bones, 100 grams of mixed
vegetables and 100 grams of potatoes)
day 5
Breakfast:
3 sausages, 1 egg, 100 grams of beans and
2 slices of toast
Lunch:
3 sausages, 100 grams of mushy peas and
100 grams of (mashed) potatoes
Dinner:
Egg fried rice with sausages, potatoes and
mixed vegetables (2 eggs, 2 sausages, 100
grams of rice, 1 stock cube, 100
grams of potatoes and 100 grams of mixed
vegetables)
(All menus and meal ideas are from the Live below the Line website)
As you can see there is a lot of sausages, rice, eggs and sandwiches……..I suppose with such a strict cost per day it is difficult to be more imaginative; I may jazz some of the meals up with seasonings such as curry powder and fresh herbs, and I may change some of the meals to contain the same ingredients but be cooked a different way; this meal plan is really just to show you how to live below the line on £1 a day……but, I am going to try to do it……and I will report back at the end of the week with a £1 a Day Diary of how I got on……the rest of my family will be treated to a normal meal plan which will follow later on today…….Karen
PS: Having chatted with some of my lovely friends, I have decided to design my own menu plan…..and will reveal ALL at the end of the week…..the sausages are being put in the freezer and I am going to get MUCH more creative.…..I will post my comparison menu at the end of the week.
Do you think you can live off £1 a day?
If so, how would you go about it, what would you buy and cook?
Live Below the Line
I am very impressed at you taking part in this. I know I could never do it, but it is important to remember how many people have to budget like this week in, week out. Good luck
Jude x
Thanks Jude….I am going to give it my best shot, although the rest of the family will be on normal rations! 🙂 Karen
That is certainly a challenge. I’m not sure I could head out into my day on a pot of yogurt! I know from my son how hard it is to live frugally and he was thrilled when he found how cheap things were at a well known frozen food store! However, the quality and ethics of the food sold there does concern me. I know from my own past experience just how difficult it can be to live frugally especially if you are working and don’t have much time to shop around. I’ll be interested to hear how you get on.
Thanks Janice. I have decided to veer away from the suggested menus and make my own up Janice…..as I think I can do MUCH better with soups, lentils, omelettes and pasta dishes, and yes, I agree with you about the ethics of the cheaper “freezer” stores…..I will be back at the end of the week with my notes and my revised menus! Karen
I have never heard of this so thanks for bringing it to our attention. You are a braver woman than I. Some of the folk I see in my work live on very, very tight budgets but looking at that list makes kind of depressing reading. How lucky we all are. Good luck & keep us posted on your week.
Thanks Kellie, I am changing the menu however, as I think I can do it better and MUCH healthier using different ingredients and fresh herbs and veggies!
Well done you for doing this – my friend is also doing it and put a picture of his weekly shop on Facebook. My husband and I are hardly extravagant with our food shopping (about £40-50 a week) but I was still shocked at how little people live on according to this project. The milk allowance alone would send my husband into shock! (we go through roughly 15 pints a week, he likes his tea and cereal!)
Hope it all goes well – massive respect to you for doing it 🙂
THANKS so much for the support; I feel bad as today is the day I had a prior engagement and my plan for today has not been 100% living below the line……I have to admit that the milk is a hard one, as I also love my tea, but powdered milk is cheap and goes a long long way! Karen
Karen, I too have joined the Live Below the Line campaign!! I found your menu extremely helpful. It’s soooo hard to budget your entire day on only $1.50. I gotta say its been rough. I was kept awake last night by the rumbling hunger pains in my stomach..this challenge so far has really given me the strength to stay strong through this campaign! It breaks my heart to think of the 1.4 billion people throughout the world that are forced to live this way day after day..and i almost feel guilty that I have health care and clean water to drink as most even go without that!! Anybody reading this please visit my link and show your support http://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/angiewagers (please dont let all of my hard work be for nothing)..Thanx in advance for everybody’s support and GOOD LUCK KAREN..YOU HAVE MY SUPPORT 100%!!!
THANKS so much Angie….I SHALL be over to support your link as soon as I have finished commenting here!
I’m just a bit worried about the eggs Karen. There’s no way you’d get free range eggs at the price you’ve quoted and I am concerned about promoting intensively farmed eggs. How about pulses – they are cheap and tasty too?