Day five

It’s the last day and I’ve just eaten my last meal of the five days (chick pea and lovage omelette). I have 300g barley, about 25g quinoa and a dusting of porridge oats left together with 40p. It’s Friday and I really, really want a glass of wine.

It’s been an interesting week. It has been an enlightening experience and the cause of many conversations but I haven’t spent so much time thinking, and talking, about food since I was a dieting teen. I have never been desperately hungry but there has definitely been a peckishness; a desire to eat more, and more varied foods, than I had available. On the other hand I feel quite well. No coffee, tea, wine or sugar, no bread and very reduced amounts of dairy food have left me feeling better than usual. A more equitable sharing of resources would probably benefit the rich world as well as lifting 1.4 billion out of a level of poverty that this week has only given a vague glimpse of.  

Finally I’d like to thank everyone who has (or will) donate money. I really appreciate it.  

Day four

A whole banana with breakfast this morning. It felt like luxury. For lunch I cooked a cup of quinoa, mixed in chick peas, olive oil and mint from my depleting pot and divided it up for Sally to eat at home (there was a strike at college) and me to take to work. It was surprisingly delicious and very filling but, as I was running a course with lunch provided, I had to explain to the delegates why I was eating this when they were tucking into exotic sarnies and several varieties of cake. The course was about sustainability and, whilst talking about resource issues we’d discussed escalating food prices and their effects on the developing world so it was an interesting talking point. Tonight I used up all the vegetables bar one onion in a soup, which I’ll liquidise for tomorrow’s lunch. I was a bit appalled to find two of my remaining three carrots had gone manky. I salvaged what I could rather than flinging the lot. 

Only one more day!

Live Below the Line, Day Three

Today has been a hunger free day! Before setting off for work I simmered a handful of barley grains, threw in some chopped kale from the back garden and added it to my left over stew to make a fairly decent quantity. I cycled into work again along the canal. It was lovely and I paused to take a few photos. Breakfast was porridge and ½ a banana again with a dash of milk.

I had half a bowl of stew at noon and another half at 2pm. I’ve found that spreading the meal reduces the hunger and gives me something to look forward to.
Cycling back along the Five Weirs Walk, towards the end I was definitely flagging. Also, whilst I adore my bike, the saddle is not comfortable. Tomorrow I’m running a course so I’ll bike down to the station and catch a train in an attempt to arrive feeling less jounced about.

Once home, as it is half way through the five days we had a treat. It’s a meal I used to cook all the time when the kids were little and the Rayburn was always hot. Savoury oat bake is from Rose Elliot’s fab book, ‘Cheap and Easy’, and consists of porridge oats, a tin of tomatoes and 100g grated cheese, layered and baked. Total prep time five minutes, baking time 30 minutes. Comfort food of the best sort, being both cheap and yummy.

Anyway, enough of this thinking about food. I need to read a paper about resource efficiency and then go to sleep. 


To donate please go to my donation page.

Live Below the Line, Day Two

Today has been fine. I've been mildly hungry most of the day and I've really missed my hot drinks, other than the peppermint tea first thing. I've drunk a lot of water which, again, probably wouldn't be sustainable in a real life situation. Clean water is not easily available for people living in extreme poverty.


In an effort to be more realistic I cycled all the way to and from work today. That's about three hours cycling which may well be comparable with the time spent travelling to look for work (or fuel or water etc). Of course my bike is a nice shiny new one with gears so not truly comparable.


Porridge with a bit of my milk and plenty of water together with half a banana was a quite filling breakfast (35g oats) but less than I would normally have. Plenty of nettle soup for lunch so I had half at lunchtime and half before heading off to woodwork. I've just eaten half my dinner and will save the rest for lunch tomorrow so that I'm not reduced to banana and plain barley. The rest of the meals are sorted, it's just tomorrow that I'm short of. Not really short, of course, there are calories left but I'm too tired to cook barley tonight and don't want to get up before 6am to cook it.

Live Below the Line, Day One

I tumbled out of bed this morning feeling distinctly peckish and desperate for a cup of tea. Oh well. I picked a sprig of mint (a perennial planted three years ago and no money spent on it since) and made a mug of mint tea. It was very refreshing and made me wonder why I buy mint tea bags. On the other hand, it’s not that big a pot of mint. It will probably last me the week and then I’ll have to leave it alone for a month. This would definitely not be sustainable long term. Nor is the use of an electric kettle just to make a drink.

To distract myself I got Ian to give me a lift up to the allotment with my fork, rake and watering can. Of course, a convenient lift is another luxury not available to people living in extreme poverty. It took me over two hours to clear a tiny bit of weed engulfed land that I then sowed with wild clover as a holding crop/green manure until I’ve got something more useful to plant there. Once the backbreaking digging was finished I picked a bag full of nettle tops. Another free ingredient but one I wouldn’t have walked over a mile to harvest.

Back at the house I fried the first of my four onions in a dollop of olive oil then went into the garden to dig up a couple of leeks. These are going rapidly to seed. It's amazing they survived my garden being decimated by the builders earlier in the year. I reckon I should put 5p in for my leeks and another 5p for the chard running to seed in a pot in the front that I intend to use. This leaves me with 46p. I chopped my straggly leeks up and added them to the pan. I would not usually use the green leaves but this is not time to throw away food value so the whole lot went in along with three spoonfuls of cooked chick peas, the bag of nettle tops and a fair amount of water.  Five minutes later I liquidised the lot. There’s a decent amount, enough for lunch tomorrow as well. It’s a little thin but tastes delicious. Normally I would have grated nutmeg into it and eaten it with a good tablespoon of yogurt and a hunk of bread. Not today.

I’m already starting to worry about the onions. I’ve only got three left. That’s a worry. I had probably better do a bit of planning.

So, at 6.30pm I’m feeling the sort of peckish you get when you’re on a diet. By no means awful, but noticeable.  We’re just waiting for the 1/3 cup of quinoa to cook. One of the things that is increasing my hunger is that Ian is, very ostentatiously, eating a Chinese takeaway in front of me and drinking a glass of Sauternes. Bad Ian!

Dinner tonight, for Sally and me is chick pea and barley stew with onion, carrot and potato. Two onions, three carrots and three potatoes left. Tomorrow will likey be the same meals again. I’m in the office and then will go straight from work to woodwork at the college. I won’t be home until around 9.30pm so there will be warming up rather than cooking. I’ll have to think about what to eat and when to cook Wednesday lunch. 

It's been a pretty good day. It feels like a very healthy diet so far. I'd just really, really like a glass of wine.

Getting ready for Below the Line

Hm. So not so easy as the Tesco website makes it seem to be. I wandered down early afternoon and there were no loose potatoes, no plum tomatoes, only chopped (2p extra) and the only ‘value’ stock cubes were beef. The non-value vegetable cubes are 78p. On the positive side there were a bag of 7 large bananas for 35p. They looked a little green and slightly bruised but worth the extra cash for a little variety.

Julia Daly asked whether I wanted to move back in with her for the week, which brings me to one of my concerns. It’s a great idea to live for five days to raise awareness of extreme poverty but we shouldn’t forget that we are only eating on £1 a day. People in real need are actually living on that. I have a vague memory of Lady Olga Maitland (con) many years ago proclaiming, after feeding herself for a week on the money given out in benefits (eat liver – it’s very cheap), that it was quite possible to be very comfortable, even if you are on benefits, if you plan well and shop carefully. I am guessing that even at the time her careful shopping would have involved someone else doing all the research and going to a dozen different shops to get the very cheapest of each foodstuff.

I am sure I could have got better value if I had, as I noted yesterday, either the money or the time in my budget to get to the market in the centre of Sheffield but what I would have saved would have been more than lost in either bus fares or time. Similarly, I have bought 500g of dried chick peas which gives a decent amount of food for the money (78p) but require to be soaked overnight, boiled hard in a change of water for a short time then simmered for around an hour. If I were living on the edge of extreme poverty, the fuel to cook the chick peas, if bought, would be expensive and, if gathered as wood, would take a lot of time to collect. I’m also going to cook the full 500g at once but this requires me to own and be able to pay to run a fridge.

So, those 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty have to find the money (or time) for fuel for cooking and warmth, find the money (or time) to travel to find or do work, find the money (or time) to obtain water for drinking, cooking and washing themselves and their clothes, find the money to clothe themselves and their children, at the very least. They might need to pay for health care, and want to pay for their children’s education. Obviously, on a pound a day they are unlikely to be able to achieve most of the above. Obviously, also, as we’ve already found, having more people working together to bring in money will mean that certain economies of scale can be achieved giving a small amount of flexibility. Extreme poverty encourages big families from a purely economic point of view but will not allow for education; everyone will have to work to keep everyone fed. And there is no chance of working your way out of poverty.

I worked out that currently my outgoings are around £20 per day, before we factor in buying food, buying toiletries and clothes (necessary for work) or any fun at all. I can cut that to around £12 per day by cutting out my charitable donations, all my comms (phone, mobile, broadband, TV licence, email domain etc) and my house & contents insurance. Having no car makes this easier. I can, indeed, get to £4 a day by not contributing to university expenses. Could I survive on £5 per day? Yes. But £1? Well of course I could. It wouldn't be in a house but on the streets. It would be the barest of survival.  And around the world a fifth of all people are living on this extreme edge of despair.

To donate please go to my donation page.

Ingredients

I have never spent this much time thinking about what I was going to buy to eat for a week. At my best I sit down and plan out menus for the week then write a shopping list, which I take to Waitrose and stick to, pretty much. At my worst I shop when I’m hungry and pile anything that takes my fancy into the trolley. I usually end up with too much stuff, most of which I do eat but after it is past its best, some of which I throw away when I find it mouldering gently in a corner at the back of the fridge. This week, with so little money I have spent quite some time online comparing prices.

The first thing to think about is that I must buy what is available. That is, I can’t buy in bulk and then split the food into smaller lots. If 500g is the smallest size of an ingredient that is sold, that is what I must buy. This, of course, presents the first difficulty of shopping when you are poor. The less you can buy at a time, the more it costs per unit. The economies of scale are just not available. It used to be that there were lots of bin-shops where you could find large numbers of open bins containing dry foods. You scooped out as much as you wanted. What an excellent idea. Unfortunately this fashion seems to have disappeared around here and there are no such shops in walking distance. And that’s the other thing I decided. If I am eating on £1 a day it is cheating to drive half way across Yorkshire to find food that is 20p cheaper per item. Everything must be purchased within walking distance of where I live. That leaves me Tesco, Waitrose, the Co-op a couple of health food shops and a greengrocers. There is a market in Sheffield that would probably be cheaper for fresh vegetables but it is a bus ride away (£2.60 there and back) or an hour and a half walk.

My usual supermarket of choice is Waitrose but I haven’t been able to use them this week because they tended to be up to 10p more expensive than Tescos. The Co-op is my nearest supermarket but is also more expensive for most things and has a very limited dried food section. My eggs and onions come from the Co-op, my cheese from Waitrose and all the rest from Tescos.

Shopping for one person is very difficult. I went for the following:

250ml Tesco extra virgin olive oil, 98p

500g dried chick peas, 78p

4 onions, 60p

4 carrots, 28p

500g pearl barley, 39p

300g quinoa, £1.69

10 Tesco value stock cubes, 10p

As you can see, a week of very boring meals for me! Having cooking oil seems very important to me, the flavour is in the oil, and a lot of the calories. Chick peas are my main protein with either barley (extremely cheap) or quinoa (my most expensive choice but a complete protein source). There are only two vegetables, onions and carrots. Onions are cheap, provide a decent amount of bulk and give a lot of taste. I’ve chosen carrots for the vitamin content and, again, the taste. I can’t afford any spices so the stock cubes are to add some additional taste to the grains. Luckily there’s a bay tree and a little thyme bush in the garden, which I am considering to be free because I haven’t spent anything on them for three years.

Having grumbled to Sally she suggested I reconsider and feed her too. Mm, good idea. That immediately made everything easier. With another five pounds to spend I was able to add the following:

500g Tesco porridge oats, 62p

1pt full fat milk, 48p

6 Co-op free range eggs, mixed size, £1.20

120g Wookey Hole Cheddar cheese, £1.06 (from the cheese counter at Waitrose)

4 new potatoes, 60p

1 tin Tesco value plum tomatoes, 31p

I’ve chosen full fat milk because it is the same cost as skimmed or semi and has more calories and nutrition for the money. The value eggs were much cheaper but I’d rather do without than use eggs from battery hens. The cheese is more a condiment than a major ingredient and was only affordable because at the cheese counter you can get whatever amount you want. The plum tomatoes are 2p cheaper than chopped and, when every penny counts, I can chop my own tinned tomatoes.

What I am doing without is tea, coffee and alcohol because it’s just not affordable on a tight budget. I’ve also decided not to buy any fruit. It’s relatively expensive and it doesn’t give enough calories for my cash. In a few months time I’d be able to eat blackcurrants out of the garden and forage for early blackberries. At the moment all I can forage is leafy vegetables.  There’re nettles, dandelions, and ransomes. I’ve also got the remains of some going to seed kale and chard and I may use the green shoots of one of the garlic plants. This is the equivalent to eating you seed corn as there won’t be a bulb from that plant at the end of the year. What this demonstrates is that anyone with access to land can live much better than those reliant on shops.

I’ve currently got 91p left to play with and I may go looking in the reduced bins. Now I’ve got to plan how to make these ingredients stretch for fifteen meals.

Live Below the Line

This is a very interesting idea and way of raising both money and awareness of extreme poverty. I am participating on behalf of Christian Aid. This is my message on the fundraising website:

This May I'm going to be living below the line! From May 2nd - 6th I'll be surviving off just £1 a day for all of my food... Given that sometimes I spend that much on a piece of cheese I expect it to be eye-opening.

I'm expecting it to be difficult (I'm going to have to wean myself of caffeine to prepare), but it's an awesome way for me to raise money and awareness for the 1.4 billion people who have to live like this every day - and who have to make £1 cover a lot more than food!

I will be blogging about what I'm eating and how hungry I am at http://yvonnemrowse.blogspot.com/. Have a look.

Please donate to support me, and critical anti-poverty initiatives. After donating - you should consider joining up and doing it yourself!

I have spent much of today doing research which has been fascinating. I've got my ingredients list sorted. I just need to work out how to cook my very limited ingredients so that I'm not bored. I'll write up my research in my next posting. If you want to read more the website is here.