Bean Stew Recipe

Now, I've got to be honest, this started out as a proposed bean stew but I didn't follow a recipe and it became more of a basic sauce which I had with rice. That said, it was really nice. Bland, but nice. From the small number of dishes I made for my 5 day challenge, this was my favourite and I took to having it for dinner so I would have something to look forward to throughout the days!

Ingredients

Two cartons of chopped tomatoes

Kidney beans

Mixed bean ‘salad’

2 or 3 spring onions

Mixed frozen veg

Method

• Chop spring onions and remove lids to other ingredients - put to one side
• Preheat pan with about a cm of water in the pan (we want into heat up without the pan burning, but don't want the water to splash out and burn the chef, either!)
• Rinse spring onions and place in pan
• Add tomatoes and allow to bubble and thicken
• Rinse the beans in a colander - the mixed ones came in a vinaigrette so this was especially important.
• Add beans to pan
• Add a handful of mixed veg to the pan
• Transfer to an oven-proof dish and oven cook for 20 mins on a medium temperature

If budget was no problem, I would have added a few different things for a range of dish variations. I think it would still be possible to make a big batch cheaply (although probably not for less than £3!) if you increased the amounts used, freeze it up and turn it into a selection of meals.

I think this would have worked well as follows:

Salsa with nachos: add a chopped up chilli, grab some nachos and grated cheese. Pile up in an oven proof dish and cook for 15-20 mins in a pre-heated oven (about 180°c)

Chilli con carne: cook off some crushed garlic with mince meat or Quorn in a frying pan, and add sauce to it. Heat through and add some chilli powder to taste.

You could adapt pretty much any of the ingredients. As I had initially planned for the meal to be bean stew, I used the spring onions as an alternative to leek, but you could swap them out for real onions or leek. All in all, the world’s your oyster with this one!

Below the line results

Well, it was tricky but I made it to the end of the challenge! Although a lot of sites offer recipes for cheap meals, they invariably require a larger initial spend, e.g. £15 for a range of meals that will last 3 weeks, which is no good if you don’t have £15 to begin with.

I cooked all my meals (apart from breakfast) on the Sunday night, and then portioned them out for the course of the week. They were all vegetarian but to ensure the meals were still all ok to eat, I froze Wednesday, Thursday and Friday's portions and defrosted on the day. This meant I had 3 small meals a day - nothing more - apart from Wednesday when I was at home and had an afternoon snack of rice (I was volunteering in the evening, and knew that if I didn’t eat before then I would be an absolute joy to be around!).

As you can see from the pictures, it seemed like the food was quite beige. It became a way of keeping me ‘healthy’ whereas I am used to food being a pleasurable experience, so I found myself following the same routine everyday in order to have something to look forward to. My favourite meal was the bean stew, so I would have that in the evening.

Although I found myself hungrier than usual, I got into the habit of knowing when meals would be and knowing that I could wait. It was also a good opportunity to remind my body that when I think I'm hungry, I actually need a drink. Each day, I drank at least 3 litres of water having cut all other drink from my diet - I generally don't drink enough water on a daily basis and I found this helped my skin as well as my hunger. In the morning, if I wanted a hot drink I would have a mug of hot water.

Reading this back to myself, I know it doesn't sound as though the week was too difficult, but I'm an everyday carnivore who thoroughly enjoys sugary treats. Throughout the challenge week I was basically a sugar-free vegan and it really had a physical affect on my body. It was a bad week for me to choose as I was recovering from a cold, and had some travel vaccinations on the Tuesday, but I did find that my cold seemed prolonged and I had a headache all week. The connection is purely speculative, but I think the lack of certain vitamins didn't help.

Going back to my normal habits has been tricky. I've found myself considerably cutting down on anything even slightly greasy because it makes me feel ill (I had cooked everything in water over the last week!). In fact, we took the Brownies out to Mcdonald's on Sunday and I ended up having carrot sticks - sad, or what?! It's weird how quickly your body can get used to new habits, though, on Saturday I had a fresh orange juice and my lips came out in a rash (presumably because I hadn't had any sugar or citric acid for 5 days!)

It was difficult to calculate my exact spend because, in reality, if I was living on this budget I may not have access to the cooker (to initially cook my meals), microwave (to reheat my meals), or a hot water heater (at work we have a magic water tap rather than a kettle so it's tricky to work out the precise spends). Despite this, I have tried to work out the basic costs to the best of my ability!

Total spent including water:

£4.33 on food (although I do have some potato soup left - only one portion!)

£1.44 on drink (tap water - 15 litres over the course of the week - based on figures from Thames Water)

= £5.77

To put the costs into perspective, when I went out with my mum on Saturday, we had a lunchtime snack at M&S and it cost £14.90 for the two of us! I have found myself thinking about money increasingly when I look at the costs of food, and it's something that I'm going to bear in mind for as long as I can.

It wasn't the plan, but I am going to try and keep some of the habits I gained from last week for my everyday lifestyle. Avoiding some of the sweet treats at work wouldn't be a bad thing, and neither would eating smaller portions! That said, I'm not going to intentionally force myself into eating beige food because it's cheaper.

Thanks so much to everybody who donated and supported me throughout the week, you helped me raise £180 from this alone, which is incredible! It's not too late to donate if you would still like to, check out my Just Giving page for more info: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Francesca-Jones1

Living below the line

Haiti is widely recognised as a poor country, with the overall incidence of poverty in the country at 77 per cent. In fact, in rural areas, which are home to 52 per cent of Haiti’s population, 88 per cent of people are poor and 67 per cent are extremely poor. Although agriculture is an important sector in the overall economy, Haiti does not produce enough food crops and livestock to feed its people. The country even has to import 60 per cent of the food it needs, including as much as 80 per cent of the rice it consumes.

That is why I have challenged myself to live the next five days (11-15 April 2016) below the poverty line. 5 days, £5. £1-a-day to buy all my food and drink for the week. I'm hungry just thinking about it!

I used to pride myself on being good with money, and whilst at uni I would have easily managed this. But I must admit there are days now (most of the time, in fact!) when I don't think about meal planning in advance and am left buying food last minute. This is especially true for little things like ‘I’m being good, I’ll have that healthy yoghurt at M&S’. There's also often a lot of food at work, and I can’t help feeling it would be cheating a bit (even though someone will have already paid for it!) so I will be avoiding all snacks in the office throughout the 5 days. That's a challenge in itself!

If you would like to support me, please donate to my JustGiving page:

https://www.justgiving.com/Francesca-Jones1

Thanks for reading,

(Data source: http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/country/home/tags/haiti)