The End is Nigh....

... and it it with enormous joy that I eat my tea  - a large helping of rice and veg chilli - and know that in 16 hours I will be eating as normal again. Well, I say as normal - as normal as you can after experiencing a bit of food poverty. Here are some of my final day thoughts...

1) We've not lost any weight, but that is probably because a bread line diet has to be mostly carbs (as my good friend JD pointed out today).

2) But we've felt more tired, and by that I'm talking falling asleep in front of the telly at 10pm tired.

3) We've been more ratty with each other. Grump.

3) My body feels less healthy - funny skin, slightly odd insides etc. You just can't live as well when you can't afford 'healthy' stuff - cheese and veg and meat and yogs and orange juice....

4) Being on the bread line affects your health, your relationships, your mental health (worrying about what the next meal will be, where it will come from, is there enough for the kids as well as me...) and your energy levels.

5) It's been boring! I LOVE food and I LOVE cooking it. When you have only a little capital to spend on food, ALL the joy goes out of it, and it all becomes a stress and a worry. A friend with a toddler remarked to me that she is always thinking about food for her toddler, trying to make it interesting and exciting as well as healthy. I guess that's not really a worry, just a positive burden. Whereas in real food poverty, it's a very real and very bad burden.

6) BUT - on a personal (some may say selfish) level, I have discovered that we can manage on less. I've thought more this week about how my buying habits affect the global market, so I guess by living on less we therefore use less fuel, less air miles and less of the world's resources.

And so to my final thought - there have been NO leftovers this week!  We've eaten up every last scrap, as you do when you have no money. So, tomorrow I'll be treasuring my food just a little bit more, and being very thankful for it .

I think we'll start to say grace before our meals again. Somewhere in the past, I forgot to be grateful for my food.