Day 5 of Live Below the Line – the final countdown

Decisions, decisions.

I woke on our last day running through different
combination of food, trying to work out how on earth to allocate the leftovers
and still come up with recognisable meals.

BREAKFAST: Tea with porridge
with apple 21p or boiled egg and toast 15p

Doh cast my own shadow over the food

We didn’t have quite enough milk and eggs for us both to
have the same breakfast. 

Josh opted for a boiled egg on toast so he’d still
have enough milk for tea during the day, and finished off the pineapple chunks
he’d hoarded from yesterday, while I ate porridge with half an apple. 

Josh took
the other half apple into work.

LUNCH: Egg fried rice
with carrot and kidney bean burger 24p

Last bean burger marooned in mass of rice

I churned out yet more fried rice for our last day, snipping
bacon fat into the pan to replace the oil we couldn’t afford and softened a
quarter of an onion and some garlic.

Last night I boiled up 140g of the rice with a
stock cube, so I bunged that into the frying pan, along with
the last carrot (grated), and the last couple of eggs. 

I’d frozen two of the six
carrot & kidney bean burgers from Monday, and fried them so Josh and I could
each eat a solitary bean burger with the rice.

Bland on bland

SNACK: Mock
minestrone soup with toast 9p

I made some soup the night before that I have called mock minestrone, solely on the basis it had some pasta in it. 

Again, I used chopped up bacon fat to soften a quarter of an onion and a clove of
garlic, before adding the last 50g of frozen carrot
and 50g of frozen cauliflower from the mixed veg bag, some veg stock, and 50g
of spaghetti snapped into smaller lengths to make the soup easier to eat with a
spoon. 

Heated through as a snack at tea time, accompanied by a piece of dried
toast, it didn’t taste of much but was warm and filling.

Celebrate in style: jam on toast

SNACK: Jam on toast
3p

When the only treat food you have is jam on toast, you start
looking forward to it, and Josh and I both enjoyed a celebratory slice on our
last evening of Live Below the Line. 

Josh also had another slice of bread and
jam at work, plus his half apple (extra  12p).

DINNER: Pea and
mushroom risotto 30p

Peas! Cheese! Delicious.

I’d planned a vegetarian meal for our last evening, with the
end in sight, as I thought the bacon would be needed to boost morale earlier in
the week.

As I frantically chopped yet more tiny pieces of bacon fat
into the pan, I felt relieved that I could return to cooking with oil the next
day. 

I softened the last half onion and the last clove of garlic in the bacon fat, added
170g of the value rice, and ladled in veg stock from the last cube, simmering in
a separate pan. 

A few minutes before the end of the 15 minutes cooking time I
added the last frozen mixed veg: 75g of laboriously separated peas.

Finally I added the last 110g mushrooms, dry fried in a
different pan, and the 30g sliver of Red Leicester cheese, retrieved from the
freezer and grated.

I thought this tasted fantastic, perhaps due to an almost
Wallace-and-Gromit worthy delight in savouring cheese for the first time in
five days.  

Total day 5, including a
couple more cups of tea: 89p for me, 95p for Josh

To donate to Unicef at
Live Below the Line, the global poverty project, click here: 

www.livebelowtheline.com/me/muchmorewithless