Living Below the Line - Day 5 - The End in Sight

At last it is Day 5 and the end of this thought provoking challenge is in sight.  Day 4 of this challenge was by far the most comfortable yet.  My daughter was off school unwell, so the day took on a more relaxed tone.  I was able to have a leisurely breakfast of toast and tea and I could take the dog out at my leisure, which in fact was only 30 minutes or so later than usual. (My partner works from home so could be left in charge of childcare).   It was lovely this morning to get some encouragement from the lovely Penny at The Hen House.  Thank you Penny for your kind words.

After an hour's walk with the dog, I came back feeling a little hungry, so made myself a cup of tea and had a few forkfuls of spaghetti out of the fridge to tide me over until lunch.  It made such a difference to be able to snack on something when I felt hungry and was the first time this week that I had had this luxury.  After doing a few bits and pieces around the house and attending to my daughter, I popped out for an hour to do a few errands.  By the time I got back it was 1pm, and after making my daughter some lunch, I had my lunch which was the remainder of the spaghetti heated up in the microwave on two slices of toast.  It was lovely actually.  Putting it on toast reminded me of eating Heinz spaghetti on toast as a child which I used to love, except the sauce was by no means as tasty as Heinz's.   Anyway it did a great job of filling me up and the dog even got a little bit too.  I had another cup of tea afterwards, as the milk seemed to be holding out.

The afternoon I spent doing some more washing and getting it out on the line whilst the weather was lovely and sunny.  I caught up on a few more jobs about the house and garden, read a magazine and then I had to make a quick trip to the Post Office down the road to send off a few urgent pieces of mail.  That done and before I knew it, it was time to start preparing dinner.  Day 4's  dinner was a sausage casserole and I had been quite looking forward to it.

I used a few slices of carrot, half an onion, a couple of spoonfuls of peas, one large new potato, a couple of spoonfuls of kidney beans, pepper, oregano, bay leaves and the remainder of the passata mixed with 150mls of water.

I roasted the sausages in the oven for 30 minutes whilst the rest was simmering on the hob, saving the fat again for use later.  I then added the sausages to the casserole and cooked it in the oven for a further 60 minutes or so.  I ate it with the remaining crust of bread, spread with sunflower spread.  Here's what it looked like.

It was very tasty.  Better actually, than the sausage casserole I usually make which was encouraging. I've got to admit that this was the best meal of the entire week.   It would have been lovely to grate a bit of cheese on top, but I didn't have any in my budget unfortunately.

For dessert I had a quarter of a tin of rice pudding with a dollop of rhubarb jam and felt lovely and full.  One more day and a breakfast to go. (I started a bit late if you haven't read my posts for earlier in the week).

For Day 4 food consumed cost 89p in total.

Moving on to today, Day 5, it is the last full day of this challenge.  I just have to include breakfast tomorrow and then from lunchtime I am back to my normal life which I realise would not be the case for most people forced to live on such a small amount of money per day.  For this last day I am back to having just a ham/beef paste sandwich for lunch with a slice of raw red onion and a pinch of black pepper to give it a bit more flavour.  I will follow this with the rest of the rice pudding with a dollop of rhubarb jam and a cup of tea.

For dinner I will be making sausagemeat, kidney bean, and vegetable patties or burgers, which I intend to fry if I can.  I may add a few breadcrumbs to bulk it out and have slightly less toast on Saturday morning.  I intend to eat this with the remainder of the new potatoes and peas and will have my final yoghurt afterwards for dessert. 

I will make a final post tomorrow on this subject and then normal blogging will resume.  I have a stack of posts ready to publish so there will be a lot more variety than there has been this last week.  If you've stuck it out and have kept reading, thank you very much for your support, I really do appreciate it.