Summer crafting

I have been making and selling some small crochet items in aid Of The Message Trust where Paul has just started working

Experience of living below the line 2015

Well for the last 5 days we have been living on £1 a day each and it has been an interesting experience. Here is our shopping - we shopped at Aldi and Tesco and as you can see made good use of all the value range!

It was interesting to do this as a family: we had to do some compromising as we all had different priorities. Paul wanted meat in the equation, I wanted to make sure we were having some fruit and veg everyday(can't get away from the dietitian in me!) and the children wanted some sweet treats!

We supplemented our supermarket shop with some rhubarb form the garden and some foraging goodies - wild garlic and nettles!

We had to plan our budget carefully to make sure we had enough for the 5 days. I emptied one cupboard of our usual food and filled it with this weeks rations.

Breakfast
Toast with jam,
Porridge
Treat of pancakes for 1 day.

Lunch
Beans/spaghetti hoops on toast
Chicken and wild garlic sandwich/instant noodles
Omelette/Tin minestrone soup
Nettle soup and home made bread with garlic butter
Leftovers

Main meal
Chicken with mashed potato and carrots
Chicken and veg curry and rice
Chilli and rice
Macaroni cheese with cauliflower
Home made pizza

Puddings
Rhubarb crumble
Chocolate mousse
Choc ices (70p for 8!)
Yoghurt
Poached pears

A lot of these meals are things we would normally eat but we would probably have had some little extras with it e.g. salad with the pizza, a few different veg with the chicken, chutney, raita and poppadoms with the curry.

As you can see we have had good meals and I think that is where doing this as a family made it easier. We spent £3 on a chicken but it did us 2 meals plus sandwiches, whereas a single person could not have spent 3/5 of their budget on a chicken or would have certainly been fed up of chicken by the end of the week if they had!

I was glad that we could fit teabags in the budget (20p for 40 teabags) but we couldn't afford coffee which my husband usually drinks. We did buy a bottle of value cordial so he and the children have been drinking that or water.

The things I missed this week were:

• having choice of what I fancied to eat
• being able to take a piece of fresh fruit from the fruit bowl whenever I felt like it
• snacking, especially in the evening

Normally I don't have a strict budget for our weekly shop and if we run out of something before the week is over I'll just call in and buy it or there's something else in the cupboard we can have instead.

So our time on our budget has ended and today I can enjoy whatever foods I choose, but for 1.2 million people in the world these limitations are always with them and often times they may have to choose between food or medicines or other such impossible choices.

I am grateful for the things I have that I don't always think about ;

• a bowlful of fresh fruit, 
• being able to afford to buy fair trade/organic foods,
• being able to nip to the shop if we run out of milk,
• being able to invite others round to share meals with us as we have plenty
• Knowing Jesus who declares"I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty"

Live below the line

Next week we are joining in with live below the line where we live on £1 a day each for all our food and drink to raise awareness and funds to help extreme poverty.

We have been busy planning our menus and eating up all the goodies in our fridge!

We are so fortunate to have incredible choice and availability of food and this week I hope will encourage us as a family to be more grateful for this, which we can often take for granted.

I am glad there is enough in the budget for teabags but I know I will miss the sweet treats I usually enjoy with my cuppa! Will keep you posted how we get on.