Archie & Sophie Lent 2021: Day 1

A bit of an early start today as I wanted to make it to Asda and back before breakfast so I could have a cuppa before I started working! Luckily they did have stock of Smart Price teabags – phew!

Today was quite a busy day for us both – with Archie busy with uni all day and Sophie having a combination of online lectures and a Foodbank shift. We started off the day with cornflakes, sugar, some watered down milk and a cup of tea. Not the most nutritious breakfast but tricky to see how you could make it any better without spending more! It did fill us up for the morning though. Normally we’d have either cereal with fruit on it, or toast – but for the sake of variety we tried to limit our intake of bread to lunchtimes only.

I did feel a bit peckish during the morning and definitely in the late afternoon (especially as last week’s birthday cake was looking at me and calling my name!). We bought a pack of biscuits for these occasions, so luckily we had something to snack on in the morning, and (thanks to a bread miscalculation earlier today!) had an extra slice of toast in the afternoon too. Sophie thinks her foodbank shift felt much harder today than it normally does, and I have to admit I found my concentration going and even drifted off to sleep at one point when I was meant to be working despite having a good night’s sleep before!

Menu today:

Breakfast: Cornflakes with Sugar & Milk, Tea/Water

Lunch: Tinned Spaghetti on 2 small bits of toast, half an apple, water

Dinner: Sardiney-carrotey-tomatoey pasta (see recipe below), water, buiscones (see recipe below; it made 4 generous portions)

Ingredients: 2 x tins tomatoes, 1 x ‘value’ tin of sardines in tomato sauce, 300g bag of reduced, out of date chopped carrots, 3 stalks of thyme (from a community garden in a nearby park), ⅓ onion, 2 tsp mixed herbs, salt and pepper, small bit of margarine to fry, Strong mug of black tea

Method: Fry onion in margarine for a few minutes. Then add carrot and fry for a few more minutes. After that, add the herbs and some salt and pepper. Chop the sardines with a sharp knife, and add them along with the tomatoes and tea.

This was really quite nice actually! The sardines and black tea (a tip from Jack Monroe) added a lot of flavour. It would have been nice with some cheese in it or on top but that was a luxury which didn’t fit into the budget. We allowed ourselves a bit of extra pasta above the recommended portion, on account of the fact we have twice as much rice as pasta to use up. We definitely needed it by 7:30!

Biscuones (made 5):

Ingredients: 50g margarine, 50g sugar, 100g self raising flour, about 2tbsp of milk/water mix

Method: Cream margarine and sugar, add in half the flour, then the milk, then the rest of the flour. Spoon onto tray, bake at 180 for about 15 minutes (check after 10).

These were… pretty odd but ok! The main thing we struggled with today was that we were still pretty hungry after we ate lunch, so have saved a few of these for tomorrow. The consistency is weird – crispy on the outside like a biscuit, but inside like a cross between a scone and a cake. Eggs didn’t fit into the budget, and we got self-raising flour because we thought it would be more versatile than plain flour, so this was the best we could come up with – but it contained carbs and sugar so it ticks all the boxes!

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Pre-covid, Norwich foodbank put together recipe kit bags of ingredents, containing all the items needed and a simple to folow recipe. Several of these were taken (with permisison) from Jack Monroe’s various cookbooks and the author donated several copies which were given out to interested clients. The recipe bags proved popular as it gave people an extra meal or treat alongside the food parcel, there was no worry about ‘I don’t have this item’ because everything was included and there was an element of choice because we had several kits available so people could have the one they fancied. The charity provided kits for corned beef hash, spaghetti bolognaise, fishcakes, soups and cakes and received positive feedback. Pancake kits were given out on Shrove Tuesday this year and the general concept will definitely be repeated!

Archie & Sophie Lent 2021: Shop

Welcome to our next ‘Live on £1’ participants:

Hi Everyone, we’re Archie and Sophie. We’ve both supported Norwich foodbank in various ways for a while, and as it’s Lent we decided to do the £1 a day food challenge.

We’re both students at UEA (Sophie is studying Natural Science (maths, physics and biology), and Archie is studying Paramedic Science). We both ‘go’ to Kings Community Church in Norwich, and at the moment Sophie is part of the foodbank warehouse teams on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.

We’ve decided to do the challenge for 7 days rather than 5, because surprisingly we thought that this might actually make it a bit easier – there was a little bit more wiggle room for buying extra bits like herbs, and the packet sizes worked better for 14 portions of meals than for 10!

We chose to do our supermarket shop at Asda, firstly because it’s the supermarket we normally go to (so we know where things are!), secondly because they are fairly cheap for the basics anyway, and also because they have some cracking yellow-sticker bargains on a Sunday afternoon! We are so lucky to have the means to even get to a cheaper supermarket though – our nearest Asda is 3 and a half miles away – not fun when you’re carrying tins and on foot, and we’d have had to double our shop to make it eligible for delivery. We worked out that if we had bought our £14 worth of supplies at our local supermarket (a medium sized Co-Op) it would have been much more expensive at £28.24!.

We spent a bit of time before we went looking online and budgeting what we would eat each day so we had a rough framework for when we were in the shop. We started off by listing some basics that we definitely wanted to include – onion, garlic, herbs, sugar, milk and tea bags – those came to £3.51. Then we added breakfast – a pack of cornflakes at £0.53. Lunch, which was limited to bread, butter, lettuce and cucumber, a filling and a piece of fruit came to £5.80 leaving us £4.16 for dinner, which means 29p per portion – not easy! We settled on a bag of pasta, a bag of rice, 3 tins of tomatoes, a few tins of beans and a bag of carrots, which left us with £1 spare to spend on anything we saw that was on offer.

When we actually got to the shop we were surprised to find many cheaper options than what they advertise online. Nearly all the smart-price range seems to be absent from the Asda app / website – which is awful at the moment when people for all sorts of reasons may not want to / be able to get to a physical shop and so would have to spend more. Luckily for us this did us a few favours – we ended up £1.43 under budget, leaving us room for a few extras. We decided to go shopping about an hour before closing time, thinking that we would get better deals – which we did, but unfortunately that meant the stocks of the things we actually needed were quite low! We couldn’t get any teabags (no 40 packs in stock, and 80 packs were far too pricey to fit in), and no semi-skimmed or skimmed milk (we had to opt for less whole milk and watering it down).

We called in at Aldi, a Co-Op and a Tesco Express on the way home but none of them had any cheap teabags (although we did spend some of the remaining money on cheese sauce, biscuits and another loaf of bread)- so an early start is in order tomorrow! I don’t drink tons of tea, but I know that when I don’t have any for a few days I get really awful headaches so we decided it was worth trying to find some because (theoretically at least), teabags are cheaper than paracetamol!

We made a big effort to try and include enough fruit and veg to get 5-a-day but we found it really almost impossible on such a budget. I think we’ll just about manage 3-a-day if we try! We also took into account 20p for salt and pepper. We weighed this out from the salt and pepper we already have (from Asda, using their prices = 3p for 75g salt and 28p for 10g pepper) – mainly because we didn’t want to end up with another half-used pot of each – but even this is a luxury many don’t have.

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Norwich foodbank has collection points in most major supermarkets acorss the city – Asda, Co-op, Lidl in Sprowston, Morrisons, Sainsburys, Tesco, Waitrose – all of which, thanks to generous donors, are empited and collected at least once a week by volunteer drivers. The charity’s website http://www.norwichfoodbank.co.uk is kept up to date with what it’s needs are (currently fruit juice, tinned fruit, toilet roll and 40s / 80s teabags!) and it is incredible to see these items come in, without fail, after the website or social media has been udpated with these items. Project Manager Hannah says, ‘We are constantly humbled and delighted at the support we receive – from donations direct to us or via collection points, volunteers supporting us all day every day, financial gifts coming in by cheque or BACS and we know prayer and advocacy is being done all the time too. For ALL this, we thank you.’

Dawn Lent 2021 – Day 2

Last night wasn’t too bad. I slept really well and wondered if all the carbs and calories helped? (I certainly ate far more of each than I usually do). Or maybe it was drinking less caffeine? I cant say I am very excited about more rice and dahl for dinner but I’m not hungry and the porridge went down well (though we are going to run out of milk soon) – we are actually eating bigger portions than usual to fill us up. I can’t say this is a healthy diet and not one I would recommend for anyone for more than a few days… and really, its only nice because I have a drawer of spices (which is not in the budget, so I’m cheating). I imagine, without this, dinner would be pretty horrible. This must be what our families foodbank users have to live with – eating whatever is available or whatever they are given – and it is a sobering thought.

I told some colleagues at work about this and everyone was really supportive – we talked about how to make food cheaper and I realise how tough/impossible this is… some collective thoughts:

“vegetables are really cheap” I worked out that a veggie curry (vegetables and chickpeas) would cost me about £4.20 to make (with rice) but that thiswould only last us for 2 meals (with me having left overs for lunch) and that has taken up over 40% of my budget…so actually, vegetables are NOT cheap and this only provided food for 2 days, with no breakfast (and no lunch for my daughter). So – it might be a healthy option – but it is not a cheap one.

“you can get some great bargains if you shop around” – this is indeed true but how can you shop around if you don’t have the bus fare or petrol money? Also, many of our foodbank users work, so how can they find the time, never mind the energy and the extra travel cost?

“buying in bulk makes things cheaper” – yes it does, but you can only do this if you have money to start with – and bulk buying is not possible with only £10. And many families end up making tough choices, like feeding their children and not themselves. Pre lockdown, I often stopped to talk to a homeless man in town and he told me he ALWAYS fed his dog before he fed himself (the dog always looked better than him).

The highlight of my day was eating the cupcake my daughters friend gave us yesterday, with a cup of tea, when I got in from work – I think I ate it in 5 seconds flat…. It wasn’t just because the cake was so nice, but because someone had made such a kind gesture.

No pictures the food look exactly the same except there is less cabbage…

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During the pandemic, lots of the foodbank’s donors have asked how they can help in different ways and one ‘extra’ thing the charity has done specifically is to accept fresh donations, in a limited way so as not to waste anything that ‘turns’ and taking into account the heat in the warehouse (usually either freezing or baking!), so just from a few select donors who are known when they will come and what they will bring. Norwich foodbank now receives regular donations of bread from Bread Source, eggs from a local farmer and fresh fruit and veg (potatoes, carrots, onions, apples, cabbage / sprouts) from the Norwich Christadelphians. Not only does this provide at least one more meal alongside the 3-day food parcel, but also some healthy options and an encouragement to cook, which many of those who receive the help say they miss as it feels like a luxury.

As part of the Trussell Trust, Norwich foodbank uses a specific picking list for each food parcel – single, couple, family, etc – and these lists are made in conjunction with a nutritionist to ensure that the 3-days supply of food is nutritionally balanced. While all the items are tins, jars and packets, tinned vegetables and fruit are included but fresh pieces to complement what is given is such a joy.