Day 5 Menu
- Congee
- 2 or 3 slices of peanut butter toast
- Satay fried noodles with a fried egg
- More congee
New Zealand welfare has many great things going for it including benefits, healthcare and education, but school lunches do not exist. Even though school lunches in other countries are regarded as culinary horrors, the truth is that a culinary horror is better than no food at all. If you would like to know the state of the lunches of our kids, please watch this interesting 8 minute video on a recent social experiment. Too many children go without lunch in this country and it is heartbreaking.
Living on $2.25 a day this week, for the Live Below The Line Challenge has highlighted to me how distracting hunger can be. I haven’t missed a single meal. I’m eating 3 meals a day, sometimes more and I still feel foggy. I have trouble concentrating, I’ve had dizzy spells, I am weak and tire and need naps and bed early. If kids in this country are hungry, they cannot concentrate and they cannot learn. If they cannot learn, they won’t be getting good jobs. Without good jobs, they won’t be making a decent living and without money…is it a cliché if it’s the truth?
Today is Lunchbox Day and all over the country there are groups for fundraising for a school lunch programme through KidsCan. You can text Lunch to 8595 for an automatic $3 donation to “shout a child lunch”.
More information can be found at www.kidscan.org.nz and on Campbell Live.
I’d like to thank everyone for their support this week and all the donations that have poured in. I reached my $500 target and then some and I made a few yummy and super cheap meals to boot. You can read up on all my Live Below The Line posts here.
Bunny Eats Design 
Well done Genie! Your options look tasty, even if limited and small. It’s a great idea to blog about this, and to inform us on the realities of poverty, which seems so foreign to most people in NZ.
Thanks. We were just talking about how some people don’t worry about wasting food because they’ve never really been hungry. I consider myself very lucky but it still pains me any time I throw out food that’s gone off.
It is sad isn’t it. We have a campaign going in Aus at the moment about the Salvation army feeding kids before they go to school that would otherwise go hungry. It’s frustrating how much room there is between the rich and the poor.
It is. I can’t talk about it at work or I end up just sounded like a spineless greenie. I can’t argue against people who think that all poor people are drunks, druggies and gamblers.
I think it is the quantity of drunks, druggies and gamblers though. I have to admit, it does anger me that my hard earnt tax goes to fuel their lifestyle!
It can be a part of it, but there are plenty of people that don’t have those vices, yet still can’t make ends meet. Rent being as high as it is and petrol etc doesn’t help. Bad money management in there for sure.
Awesome, love your post on living below the line…You did a great job at making it look do-able and the food looked interesting – and delicious! We tried a feed a family of 4 for $5 – its ok every now and then but to continue this way, would be tough! Congrats on the $$$ you raised
Foodopera
Thanks Foodopera. It was an interesting week. Every now and then is a good idea. But all the time would be super tough.