All posts tagged: Live Below The Line

Didn’t we do well?

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It’s Saturday and I’m so glad the challenge is over. This week has been torturous, emotionally, physically and mentally draining. Here’s a rough visual on what I ate while living below the line this week. I didn’t take photos of every freaking peanut butter sandwich or toast, so each picture of toast is just a symbol for the slice/s of toast or sandwiches I ate. I stuck to 3 meals a day over the first two days, but I soon found out that the portions were either too small or not nutritious enough and I wasn’t coping. So from day three onwards, I had more meals. Note a whopping five meals on day four! I can’t get over how tired I was all week and even light headed and dizzy at times. I was super forgetful and felt stupid and foggy a lot of the time. It could be caffeine and sugar withdrawal as well as lack of nutrients. Most days after work, I ate something and then napped for a few hours, got up, …

LBTL Challenge: Day 5

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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 …

LBTL Challenge: Day 4

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Day 4 Menu 2 slices of french toast and 1 sliced banana A small bowl of leftover egg fried rice (from dinner last night) Chicken noodle soup Satay fried noodles with a fried egg 1 slice of peanut butter toast I’m getting into the swing of things now by giving myself enough to eat during the day. Eating 4-5 times a day is working for me. I didn’t have good start to the day when I found that a quarter of my banana was black and slimy because of how I’d ripped it off the bunch at the store. When you have a single piece of fruit for the week, quarter of a banana is a lot of banana to miss out on. I took a lemon and 3 slivers of ginger to work today to add to my steaming hot mugs of water. It’s like a flavour explosion compared to plain water. I’m drinking a cup of ginger tea while I’m typing this. Just a slice of ginger and hot water. Simple but beats …

LBTL Challenge: Day 3

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Day 3 Menu 1 bowl of Congee (made with 2 cups of chicken stock, no meat, garnished with a clove of garlic and ginger matchsticks) 2 Peanut butter sandwiches 2 slices of toast with peanut butter Egg fried rice Today I’m halfway through the 5 day Live Below The Line challenge. I feel good in the morning and at night, but at work, I haven’t allocated enough to eat. This afternoon in the office, I felt lightheaded and dizzy and started seeing stars. Generally, I feel foggy from a couple hours after a meal until the next meal and god help me if I have to do any work that requires a lot of concentration. I wouldn’t trust myself to operate heavy machinery or drive. Luckily, I don’t have to do either. Breakfast was yummy and the 1/4 cup of rice that sounded like so much yesterday was gone too quick. I ate one sandwich at morning tea and the other at lunch and I was still very hungry so it was a long, long …

LBTL Challenge: Congee Recipe

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Congee is a simple rice soup or porridge that has been eaten all over Asia for centuries. The two essential ingredients are rice and water but many different meats, vegetables, sauces and spices can be added to it. Congee is a cheap dish and quite filling considering and it is eaten as comfort food for the unwell, the very young and the very old. It is usually eaten for breakfast, but also lunch or dinner. It is so common that even McDonald’s sells congee in many Asian countries. I’ve eaten congee from when I was a tiny baby and I’ve eaten rice soup and porridge in many Asian countries in my travels. I always find it very comforting, especially for a traveller’s tummy. When I first signed onto the Live Below The Line challenge, I thought I wouldn’t be eating meat. But when I saw chicken frames at $1.99 per kilogram at my local Chinese supermarket, I knew I had to use it. So at the start of this week, I cooked up one kilogram …

LBTL Challenge: Day 2

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Day 2 Menu 1 soft boiled egg on 2 slices of toast Satay Vegetables on rice with broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, garlic and ginger Chicken soup (Chinese style) with a bowl of rice Day 2 of the Live Below The Line challenge was much easier than yesterday. I’m going to blame yesterday’s fogginess on a lingering hangover. I felt a combination of sick, hungry or stoned all day. After a bowls of chicken congee, a nap, 2 more bowls of chicken congee and great night’s sleep I fixed myself and I got up early this morning for breakfast and to cook my lunch. I cooked 3 cups of rice last night and was surprised that it made 5 generous portions. With 5 cups of rice for the week, I’m going to have more than enough rice to eat. Good thing I love rice! This is the meal I made for lunch today and the amounts can easily be multiplied for more mouths. I haven’t worked out exactly how much this costs but it’s less than $1 …

LBTL Challenge: Day 1

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Day 1 Menu 2 slices of toast with peanut butter 1 fried egg sandwich 3 bowls of Chicken congee (rice porridge) I had a big dinner last night and even had seconds before bed because I thought I should. I wasn’t hungry when I woke up still full so bumped breakfast to be eaten at morning tea. Feeling good, but tired. No coffee or tea. Just lots of hot water. The hardest thing today was was lunchtime. I made the mistake of going into the kitchen to top up my water. Someone was having a big plate of lasagna that had been cut up into six pieces. One or two pieces would be enough but he was eating all six pieces for lunch. Hard not to comment on the portions size when you’re feeling hungry, but I really don’t want to be that asshole. I usually hate when people comment on my giant lunches! Tomorrow, I’m avoiding the kitchen at lunchtime. Food Waste I watched Tristram Stuart’s talk The Global Food Waste Scandal last night. …

Blessings Disguised As Rice

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When I was *yea high*, my Daddy and my Uncle Hon owned one of the only Chinese takeaways in our little city. Some afternoons, my Uncle Charlie* would collect me from school and together, we would walk 15 minutes to the shop. * Uncle Charlie was not an uncle by blood but because in my culture, we call all our parents friends uncle and aunty out of respect. When I arrived at the shop, I would carry a stool up to the rice cooker for height, climb on top, fill a small bowl with the fresh batch of rice, drizzle soy sauce on top and tuck in. I loved rice then and I love it now. I’m going to be OK next week for poverty challenge. Keeping to a budget of just $2.25 a day, I’ve allocated 5 cups of rice among other things to get me by. I can’t help but think that I’m lucky that I choose to eat rice. Many are not so lucky and I think as foodies, we forget to …

The ice cream cone

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He cowered in the corridor doorway. Away from the other children who were finishing their lunches. Some of us had already finished and were returning our lunchboxes to our schoolbags. When we spotted him, we stopped in our tracks. Sheepishly eating the last of an ice cream cone, he realised his mistake. “Where did you get that ice cream from!?” we all demanded. Ice cream for lunch is a prize in every child’s eyes. The poor boy, embarrassed that he had been discovered, admitted: “I didn’t have an ice cream. I just had a cone for lunch”. The kids are hungry Schools in New Zealand are ranked in socio-economic order from 1 to 10 so that funding can be allocated. 10 is the highest,  1 is the lowest and each decile contains a tenth of the schools in NZ. From ages 5 to 9, I attended a decile 3 primary (elementary) school and poverty was all around. Many children only dreamed of lunch. My sister and I were lucky and – though scrawny – always well fed. There …

Live Below The Line Recipe: Satay Fried Noodles

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In two weeks I will be eating my way through the Live Below The Line Challenge. This challenge will see me allocating $2.25 a day for food and drink. Considering I spent $15.50 on my lunch the other day, it makes me nervous to imagine spending just $11.25 over 5 days. The current Live Below The Line recipe collection has only 4 recipes. I think it needs some filling out. Maybe they will want to add my recipes to the list one day. I am determined to have variety, so a pot of dahl for 5 days doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve been looking up cheap recipes and asking friends and family for their suggestions. I’ve been price checking weighing, measuring and working out what foods get me the most bang for my buck. My local Chinese supermarket has been incredible for bargains. A bag of 8 dried egg noodle bundles came in at just 99 cents. Score! Yesterday I tested one of my recipes based on the stuff I’m gathering for the challenge. These …

Live Below The Line – An Intro

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Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.  – Edmund Burke Live Below The Line is relatively new campaign, not to make you feel guilty about world hunger and poverty, but to raise awareness and funds to charities that have been steadily working hard on these issues for years. Before we can tackle the concept of poverty. We need to understand it. This is a great 2 minute video about the challenge by Auckland designer Kaan Hiini. The challenge: Spend 5 days feeding yourself with $2.25 a day – the New Zealand equivalent of the extreme poverty line. The reason: To give a glimpse into the lives of 1.4 billion people who have no choice but to live below the line every day – and who have to make $2.25NZ ($1.80US) cover a lot more than food. More information can be found on the Live Below The Line website: http://www.livebelowtheline.com/nz