£5 for five days

DundeeDoll

I just got a mag from a well known charity who are once again running their Living Below the Line challenge this May and I was wondering, if you had to feed yourself totally for £5 for 5 days what would your menu be? And what would you struggle with?

HappyMJ

DundeeDoll wrote: »

I just got a mag from a well known charity who are once again running their Living Below the Line challenge this May and I was wondering, if you had to feed yourself totally for £5 for 5 days what would your menu be? And what would you struggle with?

Easy.. https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk

Rice, pasta, soup, vegetables....hang on that's most of my diet anyway and a loaf of bread should last out 5 days. I'd struggle with meat and beer so would have to go without for 5 days.

DundeeDoll

Having looked at that link i think we could better. I'd struggle without adecent cuppa (or 50 lol) and red wine. I'm gonna give this some serious thought. For starters probs go for a nice HM loaf so need to go price that up. Herbs would be a prob. Assuming we can pro-rata a full jar. Anyone fancy trying a day's menu for a quid?

HappyMJ

DundeeDoll wrote: »

Having looked at that link i think we could better. I'd struggle without adecent cuppa (or 50 lol) and red wine. I'm gonna give this some serious thought. For starters probs go for a nice HM loaf so need to go price that up. Herbs would be a prob. Assuming we can pro-rata a full jar. Anyone fancy trying a day's menu for a quid?

You can pro-rata herbs and spices and you can split purchases with friends and family. So you could buy 1.5kg of flour for your home made bread and split that with a couple of other people. However, cheap supermarket value bread is slightly cheaper than home made bread but nowhere near as nice.

You can mix and match these recipes on this web site to get a day of meals under £1 http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/recipes.html?opt=rcost

As far as a cuppa...that is hard as you would have to count the milk if you use it. Sugar is cheap. Try getting cheap value milk and using only a very small amount. The teabag or teaspoon of coffee is quite cheap but you can't pro-rata a teaspoon of it you would need to buy the cheapest jar such as value coffee for 47 pence and split it with friends for the 5 days and hope it's good enough. There are about 50 cups (not mugs) of coffee in a 100 gram jar so that's only 1 penny a cup.

Red wine...lol...forget it...Although home made red wine can be made for about £1 a litre..You could make that and try and stretch that out over 5 days. As it is home made the rules allow each bottle to be pro-rated and as the bottle and all the brewing equipment will be recycled again to use in the future then that does not need to be counted.

DundeeDoll

Happy that's really helpful. Have you done the challenge? I think it would be a real eye-opener for me how many extras i use eg herbs and spices, side salads, dried fruit in my frugal porrige. Would probs do without the wine, but not keen on cheap coffee. Still, i guess that's what the challenge is really about -the monotony of living below the breadline. Have you read kath kelly's pound a day for a year?

tessie_bear

would u times the £5 for how many people in your family ? if so i would have £20....id buy a bag of oats and have porrige for breakfast....id buy a loaf of bread and freeze in slices and make a sarnie for lunch...filling the bread with egg mayo...so about £2 for eggs and £1 for mayo
for teas i would base around mince..shepherds pie...savoury mince and mash...beef burgers and chips.....then repeat so that would be a big container of mince and a bag of potatoes...also a bag of carrots and frozen peas

also need some milk and teabags might also buy some fruit to go with lunch

how boring but in a very good cause and well worth a try

Skint_yet_Again

I found £5 for 5 days harder that it sounds ! Especially if we are assuming no store cupboard items included. Using my last few weeks receipts I have managed the following:


porrdge oats 500g 55p
1 kg bananas 68p
whole chicken 2.39
4 large potatoes 39p
bag carrots 39p
bag onions 39p
value curry sauce 17p

---

total 4.96

5 breakfasts: porridge with water. Porridge with mashed/sliced banana.

5 lunches: Chicken soup made with carcass and veg/potatoes. Sliced banana

5 dinners:
2 x Roast chicken, 1 potato cubed into mini roast potatoes cooked around chicken, veg (*no gravy but maybe small amount of meat juices poured over chicken so not as dry)
Roast chicken, bubble and squeak (1 pot mashed with some onion and carrot & dry fried)
Roast chicken, homemade potato wedges oven baked, curry sauce
Roast chicken, jacket potato, curry sauce


Might be more difficult if potatoes/veg not on offer at 39p, but might be able to get cheap from market

redlady_1

I have a feeling there was a thread totally dedicated to this very thing but as I am pants at searching on here I am unable to help. I am sure a grown up will be along shortly who can help though.

Winchelsea

I've decided to actually do it, and get sponsorship for my favourite charity.

When I was in Sa*nsb*rys this morning I did a recce and came up with this:

3 tomatoes 40p
5 carrots 50p
Cabbage 80p
Processed cheese slices (15 in pack) 88p
Margarine 55p
Dried peas 49p
Rice 40p
SR Flour 52p

And will buy oats from L*dl 45p

Total = £4.99!

It's not much is it?

But I can sprout the peas and they'll give vitamins and protein. I can make flat breads and pizzas with SR flour, and have enough bits there to decorate the pizza.

Cabbage and carrots can be cooked, or raw in a sandwich or a salad with sprouted peas. Cheese can go in a sandwich, on a pizza,or mixed in to a salad. No onions - I thought one would be OK, but it came in over total!

No tea or coffee - not even tea bags at 27p a packet! Can drink water, also I quite like veg water (from cooking the veg) so could drink that when I fancy a hot drink. Also can make herb teas from the garden - have a few bits sprouting already.

So it can be done healthily as far as I can see. But what a challenge, especially for those who HAVE to do it. And it's not a very exciting diet!

Just had a thought though - may be able to nip down to the woods to pick wild garlic - yum! - and it freezes well too! (The leaves are legal, but not the bulbs.)

aliasojo

That must involve tiny portions as well as being very limited in choice.

I couldn't live off a fiver for 5 days. I'd die.

Maybe I'd be better fasting for 5 days and spending the fiver on fuse wire to wire my jaws up. :rotfl:

Hard challenge. Good on those who could do it.

HappyMJ

DundeeDoll wrote: »

Happy that's really helpful. Have you done the challenge? I think it would be a real eye-opener for me how many extras i use eg herbs and spices, side salads, dried fruit in my frugal porrige. Would probs do without the wine, but not keen on cheap coffee. Still, i guess that's what the challenge is really about -the monotony of living below the breadline. Have you read kath kelly's pound a day for a year?

I have done the challenge before. I went over slightly to £6 for the 5 days. I wasn't concentrating too hard. Herbs and spices when pro rated usually end up free so not much to worry about. For example a pinch is about a quarter of a gram and most spices when bought in bulk (over 500 grams at a time) would end up being less than a tenth of a penny then when rounded it's 0p so just use them without worrying about the cost. I've read part of KK's pound a day for a year. A lot of it is cheating by going out to free dinners, launches, opening nights, etc... I used to do that a lot in London many years ago. Quite fun but very time consuming but at the time I was also network marketing myself to others so it sort of helped. She also only bought food that had been heavily discounted at the end of each day. She also instead of buying make-ups, creams and deodorants went to fragrance counters each day to use the testers. I don't have the patience for that.

I can get 1kg of potatoes for 19p yellow stickered. Carrots are usually 9p for a 1kg bag. A cabbage can be purchased for about 20p. Cheese is a luxury at full price. I only ever buy that on yellow sticker if I can find it. I do this kind of shopping all the time and spend about £3 per day and have a very wide ranging diet and far too many luxuries for that so restricting to only yellow stickers and value/basics isn't that much different. The reason....I have lived alone on a very low income (equivalent of minimum wages for 30 hours a week) for over 2 years.