Getting started

Welcome to my first blog!

Tonight, I went shopping for my upcoming eight-day challenge of Live Below the Line. 

I must admit, shopping for the groceries wasn't a challenge in itself - it was no different to my usual weekly shopping. I've been living on a very tight budget for the past four months - ever since arriving in this extraordinary expensive city (!) - so I am definitely used to comparing prices and buy my food at different supermarkets to ensure I get the best deals for the products I purchase. So tonight I went to two supermarkets and I'll go and buy my veggies at the market on Friday, as they are much cheaper there. But what is the challenge then? I guess I will figure that out over the next eight days!

I'm allowed to spend a total of £7 on food, as I have to count things that I will use but already have in my cupboard, such as salt and pepper, spices, herbs and cooking oil. I'm not going to use much of each within eight days so I figured deducting £1 pound for everything is fair (to give you an idea - the cheapest bottle of oil costs 62p and spices such as ground cumin, cayenne pepper and turmeric cost between 40-70p/ 40g pack. All of those last a long time anyway.)

Well, let me tell you $7 for eight days worth of food is not that much - especially in London! I bought some tinned beans, tinned tomatoes, dry lentils, split peas, polenta, and gluten free cereals, soya milk (it was on special, lucky me) and bananas for breakfast - and spent a total of £4.38 including the £1 for spices etc. The rest goes on fruit and veggies.

The plan is to have three meals per day - that's how many I usually have as I'm not a snack person. I put some thoughts into what I'm going to cook each day, and went through recipe books to ensure I won't have the same meal every day as variety is good :) I'd see it as cheating to cook something as basic as rice, veggies and beans every single day just to keep it within the budget. I wanted more challenge than that, and in fact, I didn't even buy rice!

Oh well, I'd say the next eight days are going to be very exciting - let the challenge begin!