Can you accept free food?

Day 5

Over the past few days quite a few people asked me if I could accept free food, i.e. cooked meals prepared by others to help me throughout my challenge. The answer (long and short) is strictly ‘NO’. But why would I need it anyway?

Live Below the Line has taught me many things so far, and one of them is how to cook excellent meals for very cheap! Ok, I admit that some of them aren’t as filling or could do with some quinoa or rice on the side to be more filling, but at least I’m cooking different, non-staple meals every day.

Today's lunch

Obviously, I’m not busy enough to have that time to cook but that’s not a bad thing. I’m experimenting with the few ingredients that I have and cook dishes that I usually don’t have time for. Tonight, for instance, I had an Indian-spiced lentil soup with veggies in it. Never tried that before and it’s delicious. For lunch I had a small baked potato with beans and home-made salsa – not tinned baked beans, I can’t stand them. Tomorrow I’m planning on cooking a chickpea and veggie tagine, as I don’t often cook Moroccan dishes so why not tomorrow?!?

So as you can see, Live Below the Line is totally do-able if you prepare a bit in advance. Go through your recipe books before you go shopping to get some ideas of what to buy and cook. Otherwise you may end up eating the same food every day and that’s boring. And yes, I’m aware that the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty don’t have that choice and probably do eat the same food every day but I chose to buy different ingredients for my £8.

Another interesting thing I’ve experienced is frying with water – can you actually call it ‘fried onion’ if you only use water, no oil? I didn’t have any cooking oil at home and didn’t want to buy it either so I’m only using water to fry onions and veggies. It works, you just have to use more spices to give your food taste!

Try it. Live Below the Line for at least 5 days next year!