story of the $25 challenge

Last year I managed to feed myself for a day spending just $2.

The aim was to help with the ‘Live Below the Line’ campaign to raise awareness for global poverty. While I was able to eat without going hungry on $2, it wasn’t the most nutritionally balanced day of eating.

So when I was invited by the lovely Lauren from Corridor Kitchen to participate in her $35 challenge – feeding yourself for a week on just $5 a day – I was super excited about her idea.

Unfortunately, I was travelling the week Lauren suggested. So I adapted the concept to my own challenge.

Just 5 days or $25 per person for the week.

and how did I go?

While it did require quite a bit of thought and planning, I actually enjoyed the week.

My Irishman said if I hadn’t told him about the challenge, he would never have noticed we were eating any differently to normal.

And we even managed to entertain some friends on the Friday night, without breaking the challenge, or spending extra cash.

If you’re wondering what we ate, I’ve included a list at the very end of this post.

the rules

Basically it’s all about not spending more than $25 per person on food and beverages. I didn’t include alcohol.. that would have had me over budget on the first day :).

Lauren allows food from your pantry. But apart from salt, pepper, a few spices, mustard, olive oil and vinegar, I didn’t dip into my well stocked pantry. I could probably feed myself for a week for free if I was just eating my pantry / fridge / freezer staples.

Although I did use some pantry items to bake a cake for our guests on Friday night and our sausages for the ‘bangers’ came from the freezer.

Leftovers were also allowed, but again I didn’t rely on any, apart from some leftover cheese for our Friday night entertaining.

I also didn’t include any things from my garden, except a few sprigs of rosemary. Because every where I’ve ever lived, (including Australia, France, the US and England) I’ve always found a rosemary bush somewhere that needs a little pruning.

the challenges?

The most difficult part of the week for me was shopping. Keeping it to just $50 was tough.

I found it helped that I kept a tally on my phone calculator as I added items to my cart. And was very excited when my grocery bill came to $49.99.. phew.

The other thing I really missed was being able to eat from my garden.

There was a new crop of baby broad beans finally on the bush to tempt me. And masses of purple spouting broccoli, cavalo nero and kale that needed eating up.

So it felt a little weird to be focusing on supermarket veg. But hardly the end of the world.

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