Live Below the Line - Day Five - The End!

We have (as of the time of this post, very nearly) made it!

Today, I have no photos of my food.  I was shoving it in my face so quickly at mealtimes that I didn't have a chance to take a picture.  I had this gnawing stomach ache all day, and no amount of glasses of water helped.

Breakfast: Scrambled egg and flatbreads

Lunch: Pasta with olive oil and basil

Dinner:  Lentil dhal

The worst part was having to make Josh's birthday cake for tomorrow.  It's a grown-up banoffee pie with a layer of buttery biscuit base, caramelised bananas, caramel, and chocolate ganache.  All I wanted to do was lick the spoon, but I held out!

Here are the things I've learned this week:

1.  Being hungry makes everything harder.  Work is harder, walking is harder, cooking is even harder.  It's difficult to concentrate on anything because when your stomach isn't growling, it's aching.  And half the morning, I was counting the minutes until lunchtime.

2.  Poverty is isolating.  It was hard going places this week.  Everywhere you go has things that cost money and delicious food that costs money or even free cups of tea that you can't take.  It's really tough to walk past all of those inviting food shops, so I just didn't go anywhere.  Getting the ingredients for Josh's birthday pudding was really hard.  I just wanted to buy things to eat that I didn't have the money for.

3.  Cheap food is mostly beige and lacks texture.  Fruit and veg and meat are expensive.  Healthy food is expensive.  We ate mostly carbs.  Beige carbs with some spice added.  They tasted okay, but I couldn't get the porridge down very well after the first two days.  I kept dreaming about crisps, not because I eat them regularly, but because they are crunchy.  We thought about it, and grapes were probably the chewiest thing we ate all week.

4.  My friends are amazing and generous and wonderful!  Thank you so much to everyone who has donated, prayed and supported me.  I'm blown away by the fact that we've raised almost £300!  It's amazing, and I never thought I would be able to raise that much.  Not to mention the fact (okay, I've mentioned it LOADS) that ActionAid will be doubling all of those donations, so that's £600 to help women and children in extreme poverty.  Here is a video of where the money will go:

Thank you so much!

With love,
Wendy