Final day: Live below the poverty line – £1 a day

 

• Breakfast: porridge + blueberries 
• Lunch: prawn cocktail (10p) 
• Dinner:  meatballs (45p) +  broccoli (10p) + rice + curry sauce (20p)
• Treat: porridge pancakes + remaining blueberries 

Last day and I’ve bagged a prawn cocktail for lunch reduced to 10p, sadly it’s something of a misnomer. Finding a shrimp in this pot is like searching for the toy in the box of cornflakes and I count just three in total. Still it’s fresh (ish) and on budget.

I’ve still got gallons of porridge remaining and I decide to try out a porridge pancake recipe from the magnificent Jack Monroe. I think the taste is all in the flipping and I manage some epic Tom Daly style triple backflips. Despite getting covered in flour they turn out to be absolutely delicious and are a good one to keep in mind for shrove Tuesday later this month.  I pair them up with the remaining blueberries but they’d be great with some syrup if budgets extend.

The final scores on the doors are in and at the end of the challenge I’ve lost around 11/12 pounds, which is nutritionally quite telling.

I’m going to keep the narrative on this final post quite brief as I’ve prepared a Vlog to round off the month and give you some top tips if you want to have a go yourself.

I began this challenge as a personal test of curiosity and willpower and as the month has progressed I’ve learnt a great deal about food poverty (something I had always associated with the third world) in the UK. It’s been an incredible month for me in many ways and I feel very fortunate that I can return to life without these constraints but for many this is not simply a challenge but something that must be faced every day.

I’ve today donated my food money for the month to the Trussell Trust and Save the Children and if you would like to make a donation (perhaps a pound) then you can do so here. 

Challenge accomplished!

Thank you

Thank you in particular to the following people: all those who kindly offered me dinners which I had to decline, No 4 wine bar, Skipchen, Julian Clegg Breakfast Show, BBC Radio 4 and Radio 2, Jane, Rob and Sian, JCI, Krispy Kreme, Uptons Butchers, Dexter and Lou, Luke Cameron ‘the nicest man in Britain’, Auntie Wrinkle and Uncle Jimbo, Nicki for the tuckbox, BBC South, The Trussell Trust, Jesper Launder, ITV Meridian, my colleagues at Trethowans LLP particularly Lucy ‘half loaf’, Jake and Simon, Lee Peck PR, all those that shared posts, sent me comments and recipe ideas, That’s Solent TV, Mike ‘Wolfie’ Adams, the mad hatter and my sympathetic date Richard.

Next challenge 

My next challenge is to befriend a stranger every day for a month. I’m working on the premise that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet and the more you talk to the less there are. 

The drivers behind this challenge are twofold: firstly I’ve seen a lot of campaigns lately about loneliness in our country and so it would be great to tap more into that issue and secondly the digital age we live in sees us conversing more and more on Facebook, Twitter and via text- the questions are have we lost the art of conversation? and have we all become naturally suspicious of strangers?  I’m fully expecting some rejection but curious about the people I might meet. 

Please continue to follow the blog to see how it all unfolds.

Best wishes

Alice