anyone taking up the live below the line challenge?

PasturesNew

ceridwen wrote: »

- nothing to put on the bread (eg butter).

So - have you - or anyone else either - got any ideas as to cheap (but healthy! - ie no cheapie breadspreads) things to use on toast instead of butter. Would peeps try making homemade peanut butter from Value peanuts - or what else could peeps use (as butter would be deemed too expensive)?

I don't buy butter, there was a butter shortage in the 70s and we went onto margarine and that's what I grew up knowing, so that's what I buy. I'd say, usually, I get through 1Kg per year max.

However, for the things I mentioned I'd mostly not bother. If I've got beans on a spud or toast then there's no need for any form of spread as you can't see it so it's wasted.

For cheese sandwiches I prefer to spread salad cream on the bread. This is also what I do with fish finger sandwiches.

PasturesNew

I think those cooking for 2, or for 4 should have been forced to work on the "£5 for 1 person" budget - and have to buy 2x or 4x those items, thereby restricting all that variety they're slipping in!

PasturesNew

7_week_wonder wrote: »

I'm still tweaking my menu for the week - but it will certainly feature a half quantity of Weezl's homemade peanut butter, although I will have to miss out the pumpkin seeds to stay in budget:
http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/recipe-pumpkinseedbutter.html?opt=rbreakfast

I make a half quantity every couple of weeks (using value salted peanuts) and have it in my packed lunches - yummy!

One point about the peanut butter.... it's highly likely that somebody living under the poverty line won't have access to high-falutin' equipment like food processors.... so I hope you're mashing those by hand with a fork! Just for the true authentic experience of suffering.

ceridwen

PasturesNew wrote: »

One point about the peanut butter.... it's highly likely that somebody living under the poverty line won't have access to high-falutin' equipment like food processors.... so I hope you're mashing those by hand with a fork! Just for the true authentic experience of suffering.

A good point.

A poor person in this country might be that way for two reasons:
- because they had had a reasonable income previously, but fallen onto Hard Times (through job loss or health problems or something attributable to themselves)

OR
- they'd always been poor.

If someone had always been poor - then the chances are that they would be living in accommodation with such a tiny kitchen (or some awful bedsit that didnt even HAVE a kitchen - but just a cooker and a couple of shelves that had to suffice as one). Either way - they would only have absolutely very basic equipment (if that..) and that would certainly not include a food processor.

When I had to spend over 10 years living with first no kitchen and then only a tiny kitchenette - I had very very little kitchen equipment. It about consisted of a can opener, kettle, toaster and couple of saucepans. In those bedsits I had to live in for years - I didnt even have so much as a shelf in a fridge to keep food.

Looking back - I am struggling to recall how I actually managed at all - but it must have been with difficulty and partly courtesy of a job I had for a while during the bedsit years including a work canteen.

In hindsight I think there were two things that kept me going through those years - a "Cooking in a Bedsitter" cookbook (by Katherine Whitehorn) and the hope that I had (as an attractive young woman at that time) that I would meet the right man to marry and would be able to escape by buying a house together....

What I would advocate - to be as authentic as possible for anyone doing this project - would be to only cook meals that could be cooked in a typical bedsitter (as that is the level of cooking facilities that most nearly equates to those available to poor people in Third World countries).

Eating healthily (and in the vegetarian way I now do) simply didnt come into the equation in those bedsits. It would appear that I was only able to start eating in a way that suits me and the type of person I am once I eventually managed to buy a house and get a (fairly full) set of kitchen equipment. With poor cooking facilities - I seem to recall a lot of cheap mince, bacon bits, faggots, cheap sausages - but I think I must have deliberately forgotten a lot of just how I DID manage with such limited facilities.

*****************************

Hence - all round - I am watching this challenge with interest from the sidelines but I won't be taking part myself - because its far too uncomfortably "close to home" from my even poorer days.

rachbc

PasturesNew wrote: »

I think those cooking for 2, or for 4 should have been forced to work on the "£5 for 1 person" budget - and have to buy 2x or 4x those items, thereby restricting all that variety they're slipping in!

why? I have £20, not spending more than £4 a day - thats the rules....

Not sure why people not taking this challenge are digging at people who are doing it by saying we shouldn't use a food processor etc - should I grind my own wheat on a stone in the garden and walk 30 miles to get water too to make it 'authentic' enough for you? This challenge is to raise awareness and money not to play at being poor.

ceridwen

Well I, for one, am certainly NOT "digging at" anyone in any way - just raising points on the "full experience" of poverty level eating. PasturesNew doesnt do "digging at" people either. As Pastures would be the first to admit (she often has done so...) she is somewhere on the autistic spectrum and therefore just "tells it like it is" about things straight out (with no intentions of either "fluffy" talking or "nasty" talking - just straight out "how it is" talking....which is actually a "positive" about her I would say...).

rachbc

Xevius wrote: »

Do you think it's cheating to buy the shopping in 2 lots....first time getting a few whoopsies (eg meat), rush home to do your meal plan based on those, then do a second trip to get the staples?

I have decided its ok to use whoopsies and offers...sure some people won't agree

rachbc

really? 'for the true authentic experience of suffering' didn't sound like telling it how it is it sounded sarcastic to me....but I am perfectly happy to accept that it might be me - and if someone posts on a forum then they have to accept that their comments might be read differently to how they we're meant so I make no apology for that

Yes lots of people won't have access to food processors - but cheap cooking equipment can be bought - Ceridwen I seem to remember you putting together a basic kitchen kit list for weezls planner and that must have assumed access to a blender or somekind to make many of the recipes in the planner - can you remember how much a basic blender costs?

However I am fairly sure you can make pnb with a pestle and mortar if that makes people happier....I might make use of my child labour to find out...

Justamum

baad2dabone wrote: »

You can keep using them, but whatever food you buy for the 5 days has then got to last the 5 days (if that makes sense) - check out the Rules page at livebelowtheline.org.uk/how-to-participate/rules/ for all the do's and don'ts.

Thanks for that. I must query the rule on getting food from your garden though. I've lived in a third world country, and lots of poor people manage to supplement their meagre 'buyables' by growing their own veg, so I don't know why it should come out of the £5.

Boodle

I have decided to try this out next week instead of the "set" week. Poverty is a problem all over the world and a person in one particular part of the world will be eating vastly different foods to another person in poverty living somewhere else. One person might be single, another might have several children and extended family to feed. I agree that experiencing how tough it is for us to shop at Tesco/Asda etc with the "set" budget will make us more aware of how much harder a huge number of other people have it plus raise some money to do something about it. Also, when other people wonder why we are eating different things, we can pass on the message. That all has to be a good thing

I have 2 young children, so I have budgeted 50p for each of them. I am also doing it over 7 days as we do a weekly shop. So we have £21 for the week. I did a shopping list on Tesco to try and come up with something - so tough! I would certainly not usually flavour bread with cheap stock cubes instead of salt or give the children value squash instead of fresh fruit juice, but of course this is the point - to see just how difficult it is. (We will still all take our vitamin + mineral supplements though and be dreadfully grateful we have them.) I am still 2p over! So I will try redoing the list in Asda (the substitutes offered by My Supermarket are not exactly like-for-like in brand value.)

Thanks everyone for posting their plans and lists x