Smiley faces on the Mirror Money website |
I read an awful lot of frugal food blogs preparing for Live Below the Line, when I fed myself on £1 a day for 5 days to raise funds for Unicef and awareness of global poverty (sorry for another plug, it’s an interesting challenge, great cause, and is still running until the end of June
if you fancy taking part or can spare anything to donate).
So last week I wrote an article for the Mirror website about five of my favourite budget food bloggers.
Familiar names like Jack Monroe (aka A Girl Called Jack), Frugal Queen (no longer blogging, but available from WayBack) and Thrifty Lesley are fantastic sources of cheap recipes, and I mentioned Skint Dad for his fakeaway series. I also added Pat Parker’s friendly Facebook group: Feed Yourself for £1 a Day.
It is always hard to cut a long list down to just five, and I did cheat by cramming in a few more links at the end of the piece (Penny’s Recipes, The Skint Foodie, North/South Food, Natural Kitchen Adventures).
Many of the frugal living blogs include great recipes among a myriad of other useful advice, and I am sure there are many more excellent blogs that I haven’t stumbled across yet.
However, there are also several blogs I found particularly helpful for Live Below the Line, but either don’t have continuing posts, or
just had limited parts relevant to Live Below the Line.
Here are some I particularly enjoyed:
365 Days – £365
I’ve put the link to the first post in Sue’s 2014 challenge to spend no more than £1 a day on food, plus any food from existing stores in the
house, vouchers, discounts, donations, prizes or the garden. This particular challenge is now finished, but fortunately Sue continues her normal blog at Our New Life in the Country and more recently A Challenging Year.
The author decided to spend January 2014 feeding himself on£1 a day, and describes it in his own unique way. Ever read The Rosie Project? It does remind me a bit of this blog.
Written by a keen cook who did really interesting recipes, with everything from making his own pasta and warka wraps to living it up on
yellow-stickered sea bream. I’ve just seen there are even a couple of posts this year, so maybe he might be back!
Back in 2012, Masterchef finalist Koj did Live Below the Line, and posted some of his shopping and recipes here, with inspiration for
stretching a chicken and cooking with split peas and pearl barley.
Feed a family of 4for £100 a month
Originally generated by posters in the
MoneySavingExpert forums, still available in archive, with sensible meal plans
and recipes.
Lots of good advice about healthy food on Live Below the Line, even though I won’t be starting my days with spinach smoothies any time
soon.
I only came across Yumsome after doing Live Below the Line, but her food looks delicious and the photos are beautiful.
Which blogs do you turn to for inspiration on low cost but interesting food?
Actually I look at most of the ones you mention …. and yours 🙂
I enjoyed my challenge, but didn't finish it off …I should have done. Maybe I'll do something similar in the future and actually try to see it through to the end.
Personally I think it's amazing that you did your challenge for 211 days – I'm only on day 24 of eating down the cupboards, fridge and freezer and I'm already looking forward to food shopping without the need to justify and photograph the purchases!
Has definitely helped cut down on food bills and wastage though.
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