Hangry

I'm now on day 4 out of my 5 on FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge. It's been an interesting journey.
I say interesting, but actually I mean frustrating.

Frustrating because of the constant temptation to break budget - whether this be by being told it would be ok to have a sip of my boyfriend's pint at the pub rather than stick to water, or by the way my stomach rumbles at 3pm when I know that, really, my lunch was sufficient.
Frustrating because I didn't realise how easily I would succumb to the need to maintain my working routine - not to mention my relationship with my colleagues - with tea I don't really need. Or a couple of biscuits from a shared pack.

Frustrating because when Tuesday's apple suffered a dent on the way in to work, I couldn't buy another one. And when my over-enthusiastic fridge froze my celery and carrot solid, my mid-afternoon snacks were no longer something to look forward to but something I had to put up with.
Frustrating because I have had to work my life around my food. This is usually a concept that would fill me with joy, but this week, food has just got in the way. I have forgotten a doctor's appointment because my mind was more concerned with what I was supposed to be cooking when I got home. I have felt like a rubbish hostess in my own home when I don't quite have enough milk to make tea for my parents when they pop over and make my porridge in the morning, so I've had to use water for my porridge instead.
Frustrating because by only doing 5 days of the challenge, I am restricting my budget further. I have enough base ingredients to get me through 7 days, and yet not quite enough money for some greens, or fish, or eggs. Or chocolate. Nutritionally, this week doesn't look great.

I have had a background headache since Sunday evening, which could of course be nothing at all to do with the challenge. But it has made me wonder if I'm a bit dependent on sugar or caffeine, and it's made things that little bit less 'fun'.

But more than anything, this experience is making me frustrated at just how much living on this food budget takes over your life. Everything is having to be made from scratch - and this is time consuming. I know how to make bread because I'm a trained chef, and while a trip to the library to use the internet would show you how, this kind of knowledge isn't something you can then perfect through through trial and error when money for raw ingredients is tight. I'm finding myself irritated at having beige food every day because all I bought in the way of herbs and spices is garam masala. Again, this is a result of my having fairly broad food horizons and being used to colourful plates. I feel cheated when I hear that someone else managed to find tinned tomatoes cheaper. We've all become a bit territorial over our food in the office - haggling with each other for teabags and the like. It's brought up debates like "if this were my usual budget, at what stage would I have decided that a stick blender is a vital part of my life?", "if I had to cook from scratch like this every day, how would it affect my gas and electricity bill?" and "how can I maintain my principles and care about the planet when my money won't allow it?"

It angers me that I have a choice to be on this challenge, and I have a passion for food which is backed up with skills and knowledge to make basic food bearable, whilst there are single parents up and down the country frantically trying to nourish their kids and maintain a stable home life whilst having to hunt down the cheapest food. If £2.86/day for food is a reality of your life, then so is stress over where to find it, how to prepare it and when to find the time.

So, to those of you now halfway through the challenge - keep going. If, like me, you feel a fire in your belly from it (and one that isn't just a result of eating lentils every day), then I hope you are getting angry too. Having to feed yourself on this budget isn't fair. I'm biased and I know that one solution is to volunteer for FoodCycle, so that more people can access a free nutritious meal, giving them a bit of a breather from their budget (and their kitchen) for the week. But there are other solutions out there. Let's get the conversations going.

You can support me, my colleagues and our wonderful volunteers through their #BreadlineChallenge week by donating here.

#BreadlineChallenge - The Shop

For most people taking part, FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge starts today. Up and down the country, volunteers will be living off £2.86 per day to highlight the harsh realities of food poverty and the reasons why organisations such as FoodCycle exist.

I started my challenge yesterday, and did most of my food shopping on Saturday, having started researching prices in the week.

This meant:

• 5 different shops
• 2.5 hours traipsing up and down my local high street in the rain
• 3 additional aborted shop visits as I deliberated over bacon, fish and the reduced section

So, what did I buy with my £14.30?

Ambient
Chopped tomatoes - 4 tins for £1 (Sainsburys)
Basics vegetable stock cubes - 30p (Sainsburys)
Basics pasta - 35p (Sainsburys)
500g brown rice - 90p (Sainsburys)
Tin basics kidney beans - 30p (Sainsburys)
1.5kg Plain flour - 45p (Lidl)
500g porridge oats - 65p (Tesco)
500g red lentils, and 150g Garam masala - on offer together for £1.50 (Tesco)

Fruit and Veg
1 lemon - 35p (Sainsburys)
5 small bananas - 37p (Sainsburys)
2 carrots - 20p (Sainsburys)
Bag of small basics apples (contained 7!) - 80p (Sainsburys)
Small butternut squash - 49p (Lidl)
Celery - 59p (Lidl)
2 parsnips - 65p (Sainsburys)
1 red chilli, 4 onions, 1 red pepper, a small piece of ginger and a bulb of garlic - £1.03 (local greengrocer)
3 avocados - 50p (skilful haggling with the £1-a-bowl man!)

Dairy
500g Basics natural yogurt - 50p (Sainsburys)
Basics mozzarella - 50p
4 pints semi skimmed milk - £1 (Iceland)

Fresh
50g Fresh yeast from the bakery counter - 20p (Sainsburys)

Cheats
I'm being pretty strict about the challenge. I went to pub quiz this evening and took a bottle of water with me. I've given away the food in my fridge that won't make it to the end of the week. I'm even using a counter-top fridge from my uni days as my Breadline supply store so I don't use anything that's not from the budget. But there have been lines I've crossed that others might not cross.
Salt, pepper and sugar - I haven't bought this, as it is freely available in fast food outlets for anyone to help themselves to. I needed 1tbsp salt for the bread and 2tbsp sugar.
Oil - I'm really debating this one. The cheapest option, it seems, is to buy lard, and I'm not quite prepared to do that. The most economical and acceptable option for me personally would be to buy a block of vegetable fat for 79p. But I won't use it after this week, which I feel is wasteful. As things stand I have £1.72 left in my budget, so I can afford this. However, I already know that I will have some food left over from the week, so I reason that if this were true on occasion, I would probably have some cooking oil in my cupboard already. So I'm using what I already have, very sparingly.

Nutrition
My shopping is fairly balanced, but if I had the extra two days of the challenge there are definitely some gaps that need filling.
I will be getting a good hit of protein from the lentils, milk, yoghurt and cheese, which will also provide calcium.
I think I'll be getting about 4 of my 5-a-day of fruit and veg, so that could definitely be better. There's no leafy veg, so my iron intake this week is poor and I will be missing a number of vitamins and minerals.
There's no fish. I'm planning on using some of my remaining budget for either a small piece of coley or on some oily fish such as tinned mackerel for essential fatty acids.

I made white bread, but porridge and brown pasta will provide fibre, and are slow burning carbohydrates.
As I've not bought any, it's definitely going to be a diet low in salt and sugar!

Challenges and Things I'd Change
I feel fairly confident I can make it without tea and coffee, and I'm thinking about cutting up my apple for lunch so I can use the core to flavour my water to liven things up a bit. I'll definitely be using the lemon rind for this. But by the end of day one I have a headache, which I think is due to not drinking enough water, so I need to watch out if water is all that's on offer!

I'm already finding myself thinking about snacks more than I anticipated. I have some celery sticks for tomorrow at work but at this rate my leftover budget might end up on chocolate rather than oily fish... Again, if I had more time and money on the challenge, some sultanas would provide snacks, iron, fibre and make breakfast more fun.

I made bread using plain flour rather than strong flour as it is cheaper and careful foodie forum research told me that this is possible, with extra time for kneading and proving as the flour contains less gluten. It has definitely made an odd few loaves - it looks ok but feels a bit too spongy and tastes a bit trashy. Maybe I actually over proved it. It is definitely better toasted!

I have 500g of flour left after my bread-making bonanza, and I will have milk leftover too. If I were to have 6, rather than five days of the challenge, I would totally buy eggs and treat myself to pancakes.

The time this is all taking is really quite significant. I changed my plans this weekend to factor in breadmaking, and an unexpected trip to visit someone in hospital meant I had to throw together an unsatisfying dinner. Trying to carry on with my week as usual is definitely going to be tricky...

You can support me, my colleagues and our wonderful volunteers through their #BreadlineChallenge week by donating here.

FoodCycle's #BreadlineChallenge

These days, my day job is working for FoodCycle, a national food charity that serves free communiy meals cooked by volunteers from food that would otherwise be thrown away by supermarkets. I got here by volunteering at my local hub, enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do it full time, and ended up in the team running their wonderful café for a year. Now I’m working at HQ, managing a number of projects similar to the one I started volunteering at.

A major part of what we do is trying our best to raise awareness of, and tackle, food poverty in England. We are not a soup kitchen or a food bank (although our projects around the country often collaborate with both), but instead somewhere that anybody can come and eat a nutritious meal, cooked from scratch with care, and make friends in their community. Our guests sit down and have a three-course meal brought to them at laid tables, often dressed with flowers. We only serve vegetarian and vegan meals both to minimise risks of food safety and to make the meals inclusive to all cultures and beliefs. People come to eat with us for many reasons – some are motivated by wanting to do their bit to reduce food waste. Some come because it gets them out of the house, provides some respite from caring responsibilities or gives them an opportunity to socialise somewhere warm and friendly. But some come because they have little choice; they can’t afford food and they need to eat.

My daily budget during #BreadlineChallenge

Next week, our volunteers around the country and the team at HQ are taking part in the Breadline Challenge. Research has shown that those people on such limited income that they are living on the breadline have an average budget of £2.86 per day for food and drink. So that is what our budget will be too. If we want to go out for a pint, it needs to come out of the budget. If we drizzle our budget pasta with olive oil, that does too. If we travel an extra mile or so to get to that budget food store, we should probably consider how the journey was paid for, and if we grow our own herbs, we need to factor in how much they cost.

It will be the first time I’m taking part in the annual challenge – the café team decided last year that this would simply be too difficult alongside catering orders and communal eating with our volunteers – and my colleagues warn me it will be very hard. I’m already having to wimp out of taking part for a whole week as both of my parents celebrate landmark birthdays next week, which also means a party. I'll still be doing five days though - with a total budget of £14.30*. We’ve already decided as a team that we can’t eat the cookies that will inevitably be put out at a training day next week, nor can we make use of the tea and coffee supplies already in the office – these are luxuries that simply wouldn’t be available to people on the budget we are calling into attention.

I will be blogging my way through the week and sharing my menus, as well as highlighting all those pitfalls I’m sure even my careful planning won’t have seen coming – like needing chocolate at 3pm on a Wednesday…

Further information about FoodCycle's Breadline challenge, where the figure of £2.86 came from and why we are doing this can be found here.

You can sponsor me to take part in thie challenge here. All money raised goes to helping us to open more much-needed hubs around the country and support our volunteers in the fantastic work they do.

*I will be donating the £5.72 from the extra two days of the challenge week to FoodCycle