Recently Voucherbox reached out to me, wanting to spread awareness of how much food we waste and the amount we spend in doing so. Did you know that it costs £2 a day to feed, clothe and educate a child in Zambia? Voucherbox has teamed up with Zamcog to present the £2 challenge.
The #2poundchallenge is all about encouraging bloggers to try living off of just £2 a day and for each blogger that takes part and writes a post on their experiences, Voucherbox will donate £50 to Zamcog. Which is amazingly generous. Working in the city of London, I am only too aware that a typical lunch can cost me £5 or more. And that's just lunch.
For the challenge myself and M. would need to live on just £4 a day (£2 each). The £4 would go towards three meals for two people and some form of snack. To save as much as possible, I made lunch and dinner in bulk so the below takes into account the costs of both of our portions for just one day.
I bought a loaf of supermarket own brand wholemeal bread which equated to 4p a slice. A very frugal lunch meant that I could stretch to jam as well as butter (albeit in small quantities!)
Parsnip soup
The rosemary was scavenged from the garden which was a good way of being resourceful and thrifty. Being a relatively simple soup with one vegetable and no meat stock, I did worry that it may be fairly bland, but the rosemary was great at counteracting this. This was in fact one my favourite soups I've ever made!
TOTAL = £1.97
Who knew that a £1.97 dinner with the most basic of ingredients could be so full of flavour?! I picked up a value pack of gnocchi for just 75p from the supermarket and I only used half of it as gnocchi is brilliant for being really filling - so you don't need a whole lot of the stuff. Rather than being just a plain and boring stodge, cheese and tomato combo, the veg gave it some extra colour, texture and flavour. I shopped the 'farms' range of supermarket veg which is sourced from local farms and is considerably cheaper. I usually shop this range anyway as it's just as good quality as anything else. Not the prettiest dish to plate up, but that crispy cheese on top was the real MVP!
In an ideal world I would have been snacking on fruit but have you seen how expensive fruit is these days?! Why spend 40p on an apple when you can spend 30p on a pack of 22 biscuits? Chocolate is a lot tastier than fruit anyway. This worked out at 2p per biscuit which were perfect for late morning nibbles and the afternoon slump!
What I learnt from the experience is that living on just £2 a day is incredibly hard. Everything has a price and it was interesting seeing the monetary value of a splash of oil and a sprinkle of paprika, because everything adds up. It really made me re-think how much I spend on food and this is something I'm going to continue. This experience has proven that this is possible and that cheap food isn't tasteless or lacking. My shop was done in Tesco - so this proves it is possible in British supermarkets other than Aldi, Lidl or Iceland.
One of the conditions of the £2 challenge was to tag another blogger to continue on the good work. But I don't want to tag just one person - I invite you all to join and contribute towards this good cause. To date over £1000 has been raised which is an amazing achievement. If you participate in the #2poundchallenge, please do leave links to your experiences in the comments below as I'd love to see other ideas for money saving meals!
The #2poundchallenge is all about encouraging bloggers to try living off of just £2 a day and for each blogger that takes part and writes a post on their experiences, Voucherbox will donate £50 to Zamcog. Which is amazingly generous. Working in the city of London, I am only too aware that a typical lunch can cost me £5 or more. And that's just lunch.
For the challenge myself and M. would need to live on just £4 a day (£2 each). The £4 would go towards three meals for two people and some form of snack. To save as much as possible, I made lunch and dinner in bulk so the below takes into account the costs of both of our portions for just one day.
____________________________________________________________________________________
BREAKFAST
Toast & jam
x4 slices of toast each - 16p
Butter - 13p
Jam- 9p
TOTAL = 39p
I bought a loaf of supermarket own brand wholemeal bread which equated to 4p a slice. A very frugal lunch meant that I could stretch to jam as well as butter (albeit in small quantities!)
____________________________________________________________________________________
LUNCH
Parsnip soup
Parsnips - 30p
Rosemary - free!
Veg stock - 12p
Onion - 6p
Milk - 16p
Butter - 6p
TOTAL = 70p
The rosemary was scavenged from the garden which was a good way of being resourceful and thrifty. Being a relatively simple soup with one vegetable and no meat stock, I did worry that it may be fairly bland, but the rosemary was great at counteracting this. This was in fact one my favourite soups I've ever made!
____________________________________________________________________________________
DINNER
Gnocchi bake
Gnocchi - 38p
Cheese - 24p
Peppers - 39p
x1 tin chopped tomatoes - 31p
Garlic clove - 5p
Tomato puree - 5p
Spinach - 50p
Smoked paprika - 5p
TOTAL = £1.97
Who knew that a £1.97 dinner with the most basic of ingredients could be so full of flavour?! I picked up a value pack of gnocchi for just 75p from the supermarket and I only used half of it as gnocchi is brilliant for being really filling - so you don't need a whole lot of the stuff. Rather than being just a plain and boring stodge, cheese and tomato combo, the veg gave it some extra colour, texture and flavour. I shopped the 'farms' range of supermarket veg which is sourced from local farms and is considerably cheaper. I usually shop this range anyway as it's just as good quality as anything else. Not the prettiest dish to plate up, but that crispy cheese on top was the real MVP!
____________________________________________________________________________________
SNACKS
Bourbon biscuits
x4 biscuits each = 2p per biscuit
TOTAL = 16p
In an ideal world I would have been snacking on fruit but have you seen how expensive fruit is these days?! Why spend 40p on an apple when you can spend 30p on a pack of 22 biscuits? Chocolate is a lot tastier than fruit anyway. This worked out at 2p per biscuit which were perfect for late morning nibbles and the afternoon slump!
___________________________________________________________________________
TOTAL SPEND = £3.22
____________________________________________________________________________
What I learnt from the experience is that living on just £2 a day is incredibly hard. Everything has a price and it was interesting seeing the monetary value of a splash of oil and a sprinkle of paprika, because everything adds up. It really made me re-think how much I spend on food and this is something I'm going to continue. This experience has proven that this is possible and that cheap food isn't tasteless or lacking. My shop was done in Tesco - so this proves it is possible in British supermarkets other than Aldi, Lidl or Iceland.
One of the conditions of the £2 challenge was to tag another blogger to continue on the good work. But I don't want to tag just one person - I invite you all to join and contribute towards this good cause. To date over £1000 has been raised which is an amazing achievement. If you participate in the #2poundchallenge, please do leave links to your experiences in the comments below as I'd love to see other ideas for money saving meals!
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