Sorry for the late post, but here's how I finnished off Live Below The Line.
The night of day four, I made lunch for day five. Given that I had lived out of a bag of rice for five days, it felt weird emptying the bag. "What will I have for dinner!" a voice in my mind asked. I glanced over at the potato. Yes, I did have a potato. I wouldn't need to skip lunch again and save the rice. But that was what my instinct told me to do. It was a weird thought that the daily rice dinner had come to an end. Now that I'm back onto a health diet, I won't be having any rice for quite a while.
In the morning, I made my last Daliya out of all the kibbled rye in the bottom of the bag. I saved some onion "In case I need it" even though I knew I wouldn't, (I did add it to the sauce in the end) saved the end of a carrot, to eat with dinner, and some tomatos for a sauce to go with my anticuchos.
I felt so full after eating all the daliya I'd had left. I barely got hungry by lunch time. It felt almost as though I wasn't on Live Below The Line. For lunch I had a Peruvian style "garlic rice" which wasn't briliant, because I had to use a dribble of vinegar instead of the lemon juice Peruvians use. ...And also because I put too much water in the rice. But nevermind, it was food and I had the privelege of being able to have three meals. Oh, and my last 1/4 of my dal.
I brought my dinner to work. I had to go to work at a takeaway shop and cook other people's burgers while I was hungry. But, I'd imagine quite a few people in extreme poverty prepare food for richer people. In other countries where restaraunts don't have minimum wages. I know what they would feel like. I took anticuchos on sticks, with potatoes and carrot in a container, and sauce in another. I cooked the anticuchos at work, seeing as beleive it or not, we have facilities to grill food there. It felt appropriate to think this is quite possably what Aldair's family would have as a treat when (if) they have takeaways, but if they could have takeaways, it would definitely be a treat. Hey, perhaps some people from their community are employed cooking it. I enjoyed it. The anticuchos didn't taste quite as good with white vinegar as they had when I made them with sushi vinegar. But that's how you live below the line in New Zealand.
Before I took my little box of Peruvian takeaways to work, I put the little box that I had kept my Live Below The Line Food in back in the cupboard; completely empty of food. I felt great eating all my food, actually being full for once, and knowing that the next day I would also be full. But, in the back of my mind was the sad realisation that for 1 billion people, the end of living in extreme poverty hasn't come yet. Each day they struggle to have enough. Each day they are careful not to eat all their food even though they are hungry -They don't know if they'll be able to get any more tomorrow. Likewise for victims of human trafficking, they can't see an end. Let's put an end to living below the line. Let's put an end to slavery. ... I know. We might not ever really be able to rid the world of those two ugly things, but we can definitely end it for one person. That's changing a world. Donate now.
Anticuchos (My Live Below The Line version)
100ml white vinegar,
1/4 tsp cumin seeds,
3 cloves garlic (Or less, I had lots of garlic left so I used it)
Fresh Parsely and oregano, (Or dried herbs for about 1.5 cents per 1/2 tsp)
ground pepper,
100g chicken hearts, (Or other heart meat)
3 kebab skewers (From the bottom of my cupboard, not included in my budget but probably worth a couple cents each)
(Do this in the morning if it's for dinner)
Crush garlic, and place the marinade ingredients in a small bowl. Add the chicken hearts. Leave in the fridge. Stir them a bit every now and again (I stirred once before and once after school) to make sure all the hearts get coated in marinade since there won't be enough to cover them.
Just before dinner time, put them on sticks. I used three kebab sticks. Grill for 5-10 minutes ensuring the hearts are heated through but not overcooked.
Serve with potato and a sauce.
Tuesday 29 September 2015
Saturday 26 September 2015
Day Four -Almost over
(24th September)
Today, I was running late to school, so I brought my daliya with me in a little plastic container and are it at recess. Having breakfast later didn't make lunch time any easier though. I saw the fruit that New Zealand school children get each day. It's hard not to be able to have any. I set to work making my dinner straight after I got home. I had soaked my beans all day for making Boussan Touba, which my sponsored child, Nouridine might eat. But I had to work out which African sauce recipe to use. I had heard that Burkinabe usually serve meals with a sauce. I found a recipe with meat in it, and just left it out as well as some other ingredients. Here are my recipes followed by the links to the originals.
Bousan Touba with rice and sauce. - Live Below the line version
For the rice:
1/2 cup of rice,
(I just cooked it normally)
For the sauce:
3 tomatos from a tin.
slice of onion,
2 cloves garlic,
1/2 green chilli.
Parsely from our garden.
Chop the veggies, cook the onion and garlic and chilli, then add some water, add the tomato and parsely into that. Once my sauce had cooked a while and everything was mushy, I pure'd it.
For the Bousan Touba (bean cakes)
about 80 grams black eye peas,
One egg,
1/2 a carrot, chopped,
slice of onion,
salt and pepper.
3tsp oil.
Put the bean cake ingredients in a food processor, or in my case a jug with a stick mixer, and pure. This is quite a lot of egg to beans, so in hindsight, I could have scrambled the egg, had some scrambled egg with something else, and used half an egg in the bousan touba. In saying that, mine worked fine. The mixture was runny, but bound well because of the egg.
Spread tablespoons of mixture in the pan with just a little bit of oil. Cook for about a minute and then gently flip, and press down to flatten, and allow the edges to cook more evenly.
Serve Bousan Touba with sauce and rice with the sauce.
Recipes inspired by the more authentic recipes
For Bousan Touba; http://travelbystove.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/recipes-from-burkina-faso.html#.VgZkbPmqpxR
For sauce: http://rw7howto.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/how-to-make-burkina-tomato-sauce.html
Today, I was running late to school, so I brought my daliya with me in a little plastic container and are it at recess. Having breakfast later didn't make lunch time any easier though. I saw the fruit that New Zealand school children get each day. It's hard not to be able to have any. I set to work making my dinner straight after I got home. I had soaked my beans all day for making Boussan Touba, which my sponsored child, Nouridine might eat. But I had to work out which African sauce recipe to use. I had heard that Burkinabe usually serve meals with a sauce. I found a recipe with meat in it, and just left it out as well as some other ingredients. Here are my recipes followed by the links to the originals.
Bousan Touba with rice and sauce. - Live Below the line version
For the rice:
1/2 cup of rice,
(I just cooked it normally)
For the sauce:
3 tomatos from a tin.
slice of onion,
2 cloves garlic,
1/2 green chilli.
Parsely from our garden.
Chop the veggies, cook the onion and garlic and chilli, then add some water, add the tomato and parsely into that. Once my sauce had cooked a while and everything was mushy, I pure'd it.
For the Bousan Touba (bean cakes)
about 80 grams black eye peas,
One egg,
1/2 a carrot, chopped,
slice of onion,
salt and pepper.
3tsp oil.
Put the bean cake ingredients in a food processor, or in my case a jug with a stick mixer, and pure. This is quite a lot of egg to beans, so in hindsight, I could have scrambled the egg, had some scrambled egg with something else, and used half an egg in the bousan touba. In saying that, mine worked fine. The mixture was runny, but bound well because of the egg.
Spread tablespoons of mixture in the pan with just a little bit of oil. Cook for about a minute and then gently flip, and press down to flatten, and allow the edges to cook more evenly.
Serve Bousan Touba with sauce and rice with the sauce.
Recipes inspired by the more authentic recipes
For Bousan Touba; http://travelbystove.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/recipes-from-burkina-faso.html#.VgZkbPmqpxR
For sauce: http://rw7howto.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/how-to-make-burkina-tomato-sauce.html
Wednesday 23 September 2015
Day three- Three meals! Why am I still hungry?
This is day three of Live Below The Line. And today, I managed to have lunch! My stomach is just settling down from the "Tacu tacu" Peruvian rice and bean cakes I had for dinner. How is it that the day when I had three meals is the day I feel more hungry than ever? Before school, My sister and I went on a walk to film the opening, morning scenes of a video we are making which I will post tomorrow. My school was re-opened today. At school, I found it really hard not to have any of the fruit New Zealand school children are having. I found some oranges on the ground. Would it be cheating to have one of those? Our children are obviously unapreciative of their priviledge. Today, my Dad said that he had taken in a lot from what I'm doing. It makes him more aware not to waste food. That's a large part of Live Below The Line. We may be a bunch of whiny, complaining rich people who can barely buy food on what one in seven of the world's population lives on. But we are agents of reality showing our friends and family the state of the world. I myself am now more aware than ever of the way I live.
Meal One;
Daliya, $0.60, see day one. I also had a sardine with it this morning.
Meal two, Left over 1/2 cup of Babenda, one sardine, and 1/2 of the left over dal, leaving one 1/4 portion of dal for another day.
Meal three, Tacu Tacu total cost (aprox) $0.80
Roughly 1 cup cooked beans -$0.30
1/2 cooked rice (About a third of a cup raw) - $0.15
One tomato from a tin, -$0.15aprox
Herbs from the garden
-Oregano, parsely, and coriander would be ideal.
I ended up using Thyme, parsely, and basil.
1/4 tsp ground cumin - 1/5 a cent
Little onion,
3 cloves garlic.
1 tsp sweet chilli sauce.
Make a 'sofrito' by cooking onion, 2 cloves garlic, then adding tomato, herbs, and cumin.
I saved two teaspoons for my next Peruvian inspired meal. Then I rolled the beans in the sofrito. I then mashed the beans with a fork, and mixed them into the rice by hand. I shaped it all into one big patte, and then I fried some onion and the other clove of garlic in a teaspoon of oil. I fried the tacu tacu until the rice on the outside was browned, and served it with a tiny teaspoon of chilli sauce. While I was cooking it, it looked white. I expected it to taste bland. But it didn't! it had a wonderful flavour. My only problem is that there was not quite enough of it. I think this is a problem many people in poverty face.
Inspired by this more authentic recipe; http://www.piscotrail.com/2011/04/06/recipes/tacu-tacu-peruvian-refried-beans-and-rice/
Meal One;
Daliya, $0.60, see day one. I also had a sardine with it this morning.
Meal two, Left over 1/2 cup of Babenda, one sardine, and 1/2 of the left over dal, leaving one 1/4 portion of dal for another day.
Meal three, Tacu Tacu total cost (aprox) $0.80
 |
| This is the sofrito. Sorry, I kinda ate the tacu tacu before I could take a photo. |
Roughly 1 cup cooked beans -$0.30
1/2 cooked rice (About a third of a cup raw) - $0.15
One tomato from a tin, -$0.15aprox
Herbs from the garden
-Oregano, parsely, and coriander would be ideal.
I ended up using Thyme, parsely, and basil.
1/4 tsp ground cumin - 1/5 a cent
Little onion,
3 cloves garlic.
1 tsp sweet chilli sauce.
Make a 'sofrito' by cooking onion, 2 cloves garlic, then adding tomato, herbs, and cumin.
I saved two teaspoons for my next Peruvian inspired meal. Then I rolled the beans in the sofrito. I then mashed the beans with a fork, and mixed them into the rice by hand. I shaped it all into one big patte, and then I fried some onion and the other clove of garlic in a teaspoon of oil. I fried the tacu tacu until the rice on the outside was browned, and served it with a tiny teaspoon of chilli sauce. While I was cooking it, it looked white. I expected it to taste bland. But it didn't! it had a wonderful flavour. My only problem is that there was not quite enough of it. I think this is a problem many people in poverty face.
Inspired by this more authentic recipe; http://www.piscotrail.com/2011/04/06/recipes/tacu-tacu-peruvian-refried-beans-and-rice/
Tuesday 22 September 2015
Live Below The Line Day two- Dal Curry and a birthday party.
Today, my sister Amber is turning 8!
I've eaten Indian food all day. I had Daliya for breakfast again (see yesterday's post)
and for dinner, Dal -(Split pulse curry) with rice. It was hard going to a kid's party and being so hungry, but not being able to eat anything. It did make me think though, about all the kids who don't get presents or nice food on their birthdays. That sounds pessimistic. Especially those for whom living to such an age is an achievement. It's not that I'm trying to be pessimistic. It's simply a reality that we usually try to ignore in favour of our own problems. I don't know if we can really afford to ignore our children, the next generation of the earth.
(For Dal)
1/2 cup lentils or split peas (I used toor dal) -0.30
1/4 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/8 tsp fenugreek
1/8 tsp turmeric - $0.02 (For all the spices together)
1/2 stem curry leaf -$0.04
3 tinned tomatoes -$0.45
1/3 onion -$0.13
1 clove garlic $0.10
1 teaspoons oil $0.03
(To garnish)
1/4 carrot chopped, $0.05
1 teaspoon chutney, $0.02
Pinch of salt $0.005 (Yes, I'm using half cents)
Cook the lentils until they are mushy. Toast the cumin and mustard seeds in the oil. Add the onion and cook. When it is translucent, add the tomatoes, garlic, and remaining spices. Pour in the mushy lentils, ideally cook until they are more of a paste than lentils. Then serve with rice. I had chopped carrot, and a teaspoon of chutney.
Inspired by the more authentic recipe at: http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/tomato-dal-andhra-tomato-dal/
You might also like to try this one http://onelifetoeat.com/2010/04/23/masoor-dal/
I've eaten Indian food all day. I had Daliya for breakfast again (see yesterday's post)
and for dinner, Dal -(Split pulse curry) with rice. It was hard going to a kid's party and being so hungry, but not being able to eat anything. It did make me think though, about all the kids who don't get presents or nice food on their birthdays. That sounds pessimistic. Especially those for whom living to such an age is an achievement. It's not that I'm trying to be pessimistic. It's simply a reality that we usually try to ignore in favour of our own problems. I don't know if we can really afford to ignore our children, the next generation of the earth.
Dal with rice -Aprox cost;
$1.27 - plus an extra portion of dal.
1/2 cup dried rice -$0.20(For Dal)
1/2 cup lentils or split peas (I used toor dal) -0.30
1/4 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/8 tsp fenugreek
1/8 tsp turmeric - $0.02 (For all the spices together)
1/2 stem curry leaf -$0.04
3 tinned tomatoes -$0.45
1/3 onion -$0.13
1 clove garlic $0.10
1 teaspoons oil $0.03
(To garnish)
1/4 carrot chopped, $0.05
1 teaspoon chutney, $0.02
Pinch of salt $0.005 (Yes, I'm using half cents)
Cook the lentils until they are mushy. Toast the cumin and mustard seeds in the oil. Add the onion and cook. When it is translucent, add the tomatoes, garlic, and remaining spices. Pour in the mushy lentils, ideally cook until they are more of a paste than lentils. Then serve with rice. I had chopped carrot, and a teaspoon of chutney.
Inspired by the more authentic recipe at: http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/tomato-dal-andhra-tomato-dal/
You might also like to try this one http://onelifetoeat.com/2010/04/23/masoor-dal/
Monday 21 September 2015
Shopping Day
I made this on Sunday, posted this on You Tube yesterday, and just realised I hadn't put it on my blog yet (Sheesh!)
Live Below The Line day 1 -"Welcome to the third world"
I have now survived the first day of Live Below The Line 2015!
I woke up to a storm that had wiped out our power. We had no running water and no way of heating food. "Welcome to the third world" I thought. Most people living in extreme poverty don't have electricity. (They'd have to pay the bill from $2.25 per day). Just as I was contemplating the value of cooked food, the power came back on.Today, I had two meals, and the total food cost for the day was $2.10. I did publish a meal plan last week, but I've had to change that around when I realised that I won't have time to cook tomorrow afternoon since I'm (If weather is better) going to my little sister's birthday party.
For breakfast, I made my bowl of spicy idian style porridge -vegetable "daliya", except with less vegetables than I'd like. It was okay, which is good because I'm going to have this for breakfast every day. ...I might change which spices I add each day to make it more interesting.
Meal 1 -Daliya -Indian style spicy porridge Aprox meal cost; $0.60
This is sometimes eaten as a healthy breakfast in India. It could also be a dinner. I don't know what my Indian sponsored children eat for breakfast, or if they even have breakfast, but I chose it for it's fibre content, it's cheapness, and the feel of being like a 'real meal' rather than being a simple breakfast.50g (1/3 cup) kibbled wheat, or rye.
1 tomato from tin
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
teaspoon oil
Sliver of onion, chopped
1 Clove Garlic
1/5 carrot
1/5 of a chilli
Boil the kibbled wheat until it's cooked, you can do this the night before if you like, it takes about 10 minutes. In a seperate pan, toast the cumin seeds, add onion and garlic. Pour in the kibbled wheat, then add chopped carrot and chilli.
Inspired by the more authentic recipe at http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/vegetable-dalia/
Meal 2- Babenda -dish from Burkina Faso.Total cost; 1.50
According to what I read in a diet book, the taste of strong things like mushroom, and strong cheeses is very satisfying because it is similar to the taste of meat. ...Or something like that. If that's true, the people in Burkina Faso have it going on with Babenda. It's apparently one of the staples, so I bet Nouridine eats it.I substituted their traditional fermented beans with miso paste, and dried fish with tinned fish.
This made a really filling dinner, and I have about 1/2 a cup of Babenda left over!
1/4 cup peanuts -$0.22
A large handful of silverbeat -$0.03 (Cost to grow)
1/2 Tin of Sardines - $0.64 (Saved the other two sardines for a snack later)
1 1/2 Tablespoons of miso paste -$0.42
1/2 cup rice -$0.20
Grind the peanuts and mix well with the sardines and miso paste. Add the raw rice, and grind it a little to break up the grains. Put it in a pot with the silverbeat and 1.5 cups water. Cover with a lid and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Stir in the silverbeat. Lid off, simmer until the rice is cooked, (About 15 minutes) then cover and let it sit and soak up all the water.
Inspired by the more authentic recipe at http://globaltableadventure.com/recipe/babenda/
Sunday 20 September 2015
Exploitation producing vegetables for the US.
This is a very insightful documentory into the lives of workers in Mexico who grow vegetables for Mexican and US markets. Beware Americans, some of your vegetables are grown by these people. They are subjected to varying degrees of exploitation, bad labour conditions, poor wages, and sometimes, literal slavery.
But you don't really care where vegetables come from. Why should you care?
If you are an American, your country abolished slavery, and is not the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth, but every restaraunt, every high rise building, every clothing store, every accomplishment in America is still built on the backs of slaves.
I wonder, will the US will ever cease to be a land built on the backs of slaves?
If you are human, you are related to these people. These children picking chillies in the feild. The little boys who will never drive their dream car and possably never own a car at all. The little girls who sit in a hot, dark room all day, who can't read or write or go to school. Their mother who hurts every time she leaves them there, but is terified somebody will kidnap or harm them and has no other option. Imagine the shame within her that she can't do any better for her children. That isn't soley her fault, it's societies problem. We allow a situation to exist where these children will never be able to do anything more than pick whatever vegetable and take whatever meagre amount they can get to feed their families if we cannot change their cicumstances.
Monday 14 September 2015
Planning my Live Below The Line menu, ...What do my sponsored children eat?
With less than a week go until the beginning of Live Below The Line, I have been busy planning my menu.
In the last post I shared about my very clever, beautiful and hansom sponsored children, who live in areas where it's common to live in extreme poverty. I love to explore the foods of different countries, so I thought it would be a good idea to explore the foods my sponsored children eat, and plan my menu based on their cuisines. This way, I'll be getting an insight into the lives of real people who live in extreme poverty.
I think most Live Below The Line participants eat three meals a day for about 80c per meal. I did that three years ago, but this time, I've decided to cut back to two meals per day. At first, I was going to do lunch and dinner, but actually, if I don't eat anything in the morning, I don't feel well. So, I decided on a breakfast, and an afternoon meal at about 4pm. Funny enough, when I was doing research on Burkina Faso, I found out that's pretty much what they do.
Manthasha (6, India) and Nouridine (5, Burkina Faso) have both sent me letters and told me their favourite foods.Nouridine's favourite food is rice. Manthasha's favourite food is rice and dal. Dal is split beans or lentils, usually curried, although there are endless styles of cooking dal and endless flavours of curry) Aldair (12, Peru) and Susantho (13, India) haven't told me their favourite foods yet. (It's okay, you guys are teenagers, we get it.)
Having been to India, I have a grasp on their style of cooking. I often make my favourite Indian dishes at home, but India is a huge country, with very different styles of cooking from one region to another, so there will always be more to try. Knowing that Manthasha lives in a community of ethnic North Indians who migrated to Mumbai, I set out to find some North Indian recipes. And, specifically, I wanted breakfast. In India, we usually cooked our own breakfast, so I didn't try many the foods Indian people had for breakfast. I do remember trying what I think was Idli. Perhaps in a hotel in Delhi, but this is a distant memory.
On the internet, I found several breakfast ideas, but it was easier to find ones that were most common in South India. Eventually, I settled on a porridge made of kibbled wheat that is called Daliya in Northern India (Although Daliya means any porridge in Southern India). This is good for me because it has a resonable amount of fibre, which I hope can keep me full during the day until my four o clock meal. Kibbled wheat is also avaliable and very cheap. So, if my calculations are correct, I can buy enough for five days for under a dollar. I'm going to put some tomatoes and spices with it (Yes, Indian savoury porridge) And if I'm really lucky, I might even have a small amount of chopped carrot or something in it. Since I like having the same breakfast every day, I'm going to have Daliya every morning of Live Below The Line, and then each afternoon I will have food from a different country.
I also decided to hail to Manthasha's favourite meal for my first dinner. Since I'll already have a big tin of tomatos, and dal is cheap enough. I'm not sure which dal recipe I'll use, though. Maybe something from Susantho's home state if I can find a good recipe. My advice for anyone who wants to try Indian food for Live Below The Line, or just to try authentic Indian food, is find an Indian recipe website or blog, there are plenty of them. I'll put some links to my favourites in the bottom. Being mostly vegetarian, authentic Indian food is cheap to make. Note that for Live Below the Line, you can calculate the cost of 'condiments' like spices per gram that you use. That way you don't have to go into the bulk shop and buy two teaspoons of Garam Masala for one portion of curry.
So, that brought me to Peruvian food. I hadn't really known anything about Peruvian food until I googled it. What I found was very interesting. The first website I found, Lima Easy, was great. It's about Lima, which is fine because Aldair lives near Lima. I was really happy when I saw some recipes involving offal. Ahh, Last time I tried to go without meat for Live Below The Line, but I really missed it. I 'sold' other ingredients half way through to 'buy' some meat. Offal, being cheap, is a good solution. It might put people off, but to me, most offals are just meat. For the Maori audience, think boil up. It's a kind of food developed by people who only had access to cheap meats, and it's good.
So, I found two Peruvian boil ups, Cau Cau, which is traditionally made with Tripe and potato. I made a trial batch, and it was ediable. I'm not quite sure if I will actually do this for Live Below The Line, because you have to buy about 300grams of tripe at a time, and I don't want to eat Cau Cau every day. But, when I was looking at a recipe for Cau cau, I found a link to another Peruvian offal dish; Anticuchos. It's marinated meat on a skewer. You can basically use any meat, but it's generally made of Ox heart. I couldn't actually find any ox heart, but I got a portion of sheep's heart for $1.24. I made the recipe up just to see what it was like, and honestly, it was beautiful. I could feed it to my little sisters, well, I wouldn't because I'd eat it all myself, but I know they would eat it.
If you want to try Peruvian food for Live Below the Line, but offal isn't for you, may I reccomend
Tacu Tacu - a bean and rice dish.
Salchipapas - A style of Sausage and chips.
If I opt out of cau cau, for Live Below The Line, which I probably will, I'll be having Tacu Tacu. But it does depend on what happens when I go shopping.
However, I admit Tacu Tacu is kind of similar to a Burkinabe (Burkina Faso) dish that I will also be making; Boussan Touba. It's a rice and bean pancake. I want to serve it with a home made African style Hot sauce costed out gram for gram. (Or otherwise, sweet chilli sauce) The other Burkinabe dish I want to use is Babenda, which is a cooked rice dish with spinach or silverbeat, peanuts, dried fish, and fermented beans. My only problem is getting dried fish and fermented beans. I have to get my ingredients with $2.25 per day in New Zealand, despite the fact that they would be much cheaper in Burkina Faso where they are staple foods. I remember buying dried fish for another African dish when I was about 8, and living in Nelson and had a school project to research Chad. (I made it for some friends, and I was the only one who ate it). But now I live in Gisborne. I've decided the next best thing is tinned fish. I could use anchovies and work out the cost by gram because they are usually a condiment. But I think I'm more likely to buy a tin of sardines with my budget and add some extra salt, because it's more valuable meat in my diet. But for a whole tin of Sardines -Wish me luck. For the fermented beans, I think miso paste would be a good substitute, and it costs about $7 for a 500g tub, so per tablespoon will be about 28 cents. The other option would be to use some dried beans with a splash of soy sauce for that fermented taste.
I haven't costed out this menu yet because I live 30 minutes away from the shops and I don't know the exact cost of everything so it's not set in stone. I've 'guestimated' the breakfasts to be about 50 cents per day, and the dinners about $1.75 on average. On Shopping day I'll post a video of what I got (Possably of me shopping as well) and the actual cost of each meal. I'd really love it if I don't have to give up tea, but I suppose I'll have to. :(
Indian recipe sorces:
www.padhuskitchen.com
http://sinfullyspicy.com/
In the last post I shared about my very clever, beautiful and hansom sponsored children, who live in areas where it's common to live in extreme poverty. I love to explore the foods of different countries, so I thought it would be a good idea to explore the foods my sponsored children eat, and plan my menu based on their cuisines. This way, I'll be getting an insight into the lives of real people who live in extreme poverty.
I think most Live Below The Line participants eat three meals a day for about 80c per meal. I did that three years ago, but this time, I've decided to cut back to two meals per day. At first, I was going to do lunch and dinner, but actually, if I don't eat anything in the morning, I don't feel well. So, I decided on a breakfast, and an afternoon meal at about 4pm. Funny enough, when I was doing research on Burkina Faso, I found out that's pretty much what they do.
Manthasha (6, India) and Nouridine (5, Burkina Faso) have both sent me letters and told me their favourite foods.Nouridine's favourite food is rice. Manthasha's favourite food is rice and dal. Dal is split beans or lentils, usually curried, although there are endless styles of cooking dal and endless flavours of curry) Aldair (12, Peru) and Susantho (13, India) haven't told me their favourite foods yet. (It's okay, you guys are teenagers, we get it.)
Having been to India, I have a grasp on their style of cooking. I often make my favourite Indian dishes at home, but India is a huge country, with very different styles of cooking from one region to another, so there will always be more to try. Knowing that Manthasha lives in a community of ethnic North Indians who migrated to Mumbai, I set out to find some North Indian recipes. And, specifically, I wanted breakfast. In India, we usually cooked our own breakfast, so I didn't try many the foods Indian people had for breakfast. I do remember trying what I think was Idli. Perhaps in a hotel in Delhi, but this is a distant memory.
On the internet, I found several breakfast ideas, but it was easier to find ones that were most common in South India. Eventually, I settled on a porridge made of kibbled wheat that is called Daliya in Northern India (Although Daliya means any porridge in Southern India). This is good for me because it has a resonable amount of fibre, which I hope can keep me full during the day until my four o clock meal. Kibbled wheat is also avaliable and very cheap. So, if my calculations are correct, I can buy enough for five days for under a dollar. I'm going to put some tomatoes and spices with it (Yes, Indian savoury porridge) And if I'm really lucky, I might even have a small amount of chopped carrot or something in it. Since I like having the same breakfast every day, I'm going to have Daliya every morning of Live Below The Line, and then each afternoon I will have food from a different country.
I also decided to hail to Manthasha's favourite meal for my first dinner. Since I'll already have a big tin of tomatos, and dal is cheap enough. I'm not sure which dal recipe I'll use, though. Maybe something from Susantho's home state if I can find a good recipe. My advice for anyone who wants to try Indian food for Live Below The Line, or just to try authentic Indian food, is find an Indian recipe website or blog, there are plenty of them. I'll put some links to my favourites in the bottom. Being mostly vegetarian, authentic Indian food is cheap to make. Note that for Live Below the Line, you can calculate the cost of 'condiments' like spices per gram that you use. That way you don't have to go into the bulk shop and buy two teaspoons of Garam Masala for one portion of curry.
So, that brought me to Peruvian food. I hadn't really known anything about Peruvian food until I googled it. What I found was very interesting. The first website I found, Lima Easy, was great. It's about Lima, which is fine because Aldair lives near Lima. I was really happy when I saw some recipes involving offal. Ahh, Last time I tried to go without meat for Live Below The Line, but I really missed it. I 'sold' other ingredients half way through to 'buy' some meat. Offal, being cheap, is a good solution. It might put people off, but to me, most offals are just meat. For the Maori audience, think boil up. It's a kind of food developed by people who only had access to cheap meats, and it's good.
So, I found two Peruvian boil ups, Cau Cau, which is traditionally made with Tripe and potato. I made a trial batch, and it was ediable. I'm not quite sure if I will actually do this for Live Below The Line, because you have to buy about 300grams of tripe at a time, and I don't want to eat Cau Cau every day. But, when I was looking at a recipe for Cau cau, I found a link to another Peruvian offal dish; Anticuchos. It's marinated meat on a skewer. You can basically use any meat, but it's generally made of Ox heart. I couldn't actually find any ox heart, but I got a portion of sheep's heart for $1.24. I made the recipe up just to see what it was like, and honestly, it was beautiful. I could feed it to my little sisters, well, I wouldn't because I'd eat it all myself, but I know they would eat it.
If you want to try Peruvian food for Live Below the Line, but offal isn't for you, may I reccomend
Tacu Tacu - a bean and rice dish.
Salchipapas - A style of Sausage and chips.
If I opt out of cau cau, for Live Below The Line, which I probably will, I'll be having Tacu Tacu. But it does depend on what happens when I go shopping.
However, I admit Tacu Tacu is kind of similar to a Burkinabe (Burkina Faso) dish that I will also be making; Boussan Touba. It's a rice and bean pancake. I want to serve it with a home made African style Hot sauce costed out gram for gram. (Or otherwise, sweet chilli sauce) The other Burkinabe dish I want to use is Babenda, which is a cooked rice dish with spinach or silverbeat, peanuts, dried fish, and fermented beans. My only problem is getting dried fish and fermented beans. I have to get my ingredients with $2.25 per day in New Zealand, despite the fact that they would be much cheaper in Burkina Faso where they are staple foods. I remember buying dried fish for another African dish when I was about 8, and living in Nelson and had a school project to research Chad. (I made it for some friends, and I was the only one who ate it). But now I live in Gisborne. I've decided the next best thing is tinned fish. I could use anchovies and work out the cost by gram because they are usually a condiment. But I think I'm more likely to buy a tin of sardines with my budget and add some extra salt, because it's more valuable meat in my diet. But for a whole tin of Sardines -Wish me luck. For the fermented beans, I think miso paste would be a good substitute, and it costs about $7 for a 500g tub, so per tablespoon will be about 28 cents. The other option would be to use some dried beans with a splash of soy sauce for that fermented taste.
I haven't costed out this menu yet because I live 30 minutes away from the shops and I don't know the exact cost of everything so it's not set in stone. I've 'guestimated' the breakfasts to be about 50 cents per day, and the dinners about $1.75 on average. On Shopping day I'll post a video of what I got (Possably of me shopping as well) and the actual cost of each meal. I'd really love it if I don't have to give up tea, but I suppose I'll have to. :(
Indian recipe sorces:
www.padhuskitchen.com
http://sinfullyspicy.com/
Sunday 6 September 2015
Tuesday 1 September 2015
Faces of the poor. They have names, they have stories. What I call a challenge they call life.
From the 21st of September until the 25th, I'll spend five days simulating living below the extreme poverty line.
I'm making a big deal about it because I want to raise money and educate people. But, part of me feels bad about the fact that I have to make a big deal about this. Because millions of people live in worse conditions every day of their lives.
Let me introduce you to three of these people; Aldair, Manthasha, and Nouridine.
This is Aldair. He is twelve and a half years old, and he lives in Peru. Aldair likes football, art, and ball games. He's a normal pre-teen. He lives with his parents and four siblings. His parents get short term employment in an area where the average adult wage is about $115 per month. Parents battle daily to bring food home.
Employment opportunities are scarce in Aldair's community. Multiple families can shelter into one house. They have major problems with crime, gangs, and drug addiction. Children and teenagers like Aldair often don't feel safe. This is often another problem caused by poverty, by the lack of hope.
But there is hope for Aldair's community. Aldair has been attending a Compassion 'child development centre'. I became a correspondent sponsor for Aldair (Meaning I write him letters while somebody else pays his sponsorship) a couple of months ago. I believe young people like Aldair can make an impact on their communities, and on society as a whole, but they need a helping hand.
This is Manthasha. I have sponsored Manthasha for about a year and a half now. In September, she will turn six. Manthasha plays hide and seek, and plays with dolls. She has many friends, and draws some really lovely colourings.
She lives in a slum in Mumbai, India. I've been told about 99% of people in her area are uneducated, but Manthasha goes to school! People there earn around $60 per month from manual jobs. It's taboo for women to work, so most families have to survive on this one income. Water is also still a problem for them. Children get diarrhea from drinking dirty water. Human trafficking occurs near Manthasha's community. There have been some raids on brothels in her area.
But since Manthasha is sponsored, she has seen a doctor, gets a meal each day, school resources, and she attends lessons in her compassion centre to as well as going to school. Mothers of the sponsored children are also attending classes in literacy and sewing, and some of them have started to earn an income from that.
This is Nouridine. He lives in Burkina Faso. Nouridine likes football and outdoor games, he especially loves to play builder with mud. His favourite food is rice. He is turning six in October. Adults in his community grow crops. They earn the equivelent of $25 per month. I think this estimate was made by deviding the money they would make selling the autumn crops over the entire year.
Right now it is September, which is hungry season. The crops from last year are running low, and people are eating very little until October when they will be able to harvest their crops.
I know at least Nouridine gets a meal each time he goes to the Compassion centre. I know Nouridine and his classmates also get their medical costs, tutoring and help to learn. I hope that he can grow up to be strong and healthy, so that he can create change in his community.
I got a letter from the pastor of Manthasha's church the other day. That letter broke my heart. This little girl who I love so much, lives in such a place. I knew I was sponsoring a child in poverty, but I didn't realise it was this bad. I wish nobody had to live in those conditions. The sponsorship work of Compassion/Tear Fund in their communities is obviously the silver lining. It is the one thing that offers hope to Aldair, Manthasha, and Nouridine. Please help to raise money to offer more hope to more people who have lived below the line every day. This year fundraising from Live Below the Line is going specifically toward freeing people enslaved in sexual slavery, which adds another thick layer of hopelesness. We can break through that. Sponsor me in Live Below the Line, donate, or sign up to do the challenge yourself today!
I'm making a big deal about it because I want to raise money and educate people. But, part of me feels bad about the fact that I have to make a big deal about this. Because millions of people live in worse conditions every day of their lives.
Let me introduce you to three of these people; Aldair, Manthasha, and Nouridine.
This is Aldair. He is twelve and a half years old, and he lives in Peru. Aldair likes football, art, and ball games. He's a normal pre-teen. He lives with his parents and four siblings. His parents get short term employment in an area where the average adult wage is about $115 per month. Parents battle daily to bring food home.Employment opportunities are scarce in Aldair's community. Multiple families can shelter into one house. They have major problems with crime, gangs, and drug addiction. Children and teenagers like Aldair often don't feel safe. This is often another problem caused by poverty, by the lack of hope.
But there is hope for Aldair's community. Aldair has been attending a Compassion 'child development centre'. I became a correspondent sponsor for Aldair (Meaning I write him letters while somebody else pays his sponsorship) a couple of months ago. I believe young people like Aldair can make an impact on their communities, and on society as a whole, but they need a helping hand.
This is Manthasha. I have sponsored Manthasha for about a year and a half now. In September, she will turn six. Manthasha plays hide and seek, and plays with dolls. She has many friends, and draws some really lovely colourings.She lives in a slum in Mumbai, India. I've been told about 99% of people in her area are uneducated, but Manthasha goes to school! People there earn around $60 per month from manual jobs. It's taboo for women to work, so most families have to survive on this one income. Water is also still a problem for them. Children get diarrhea from drinking dirty water. Human trafficking occurs near Manthasha's community. There have been some raids on brothels in her area.
But since Manthasha is sponsored, she has seen a doctor, gets a meal each day, school resources, and she attends lessons in her compassion centre to as well as going to school. Mothers of the sponsored children are also attending classes in literacy and sewing, and some of them have started to earn an income from that.
Right now it is September, which is hungry season. The crops from last year are running low, and people are eating very little until October when they will be able to harvest their crops.
I know at least Nouridine gets a meal each time he goes to the Compassion centre. I know Nouridine and his classmates also get their medical costs, tutoring and help to learn. I hope that he can grow up to be strong and healthy, so that he can create change in his community.
I got a letter from the pastor of Manthasha's church the other day. That letter broke my heart. This little girl who I love so much, lives in such a place. I knew I was sponsoring a child in poverty, but I didn't realise it was this bad. I wish nobody had to live in those conditions. The sponsorship work of Compassion/Tear Fund in their communities is obviously the silver lining. It is the one thing that offers hope to Aldair, Manthasha, and Nouridine. Please help to raise money to offer more hope to more people who have lived below the line every day. This year fundraising from Live Below the Line is going specifically toward freeing people enslaved in sexual slavery, which adds another thick layer of hopelesness. We can break through that. Sponsor me in Live Below the Line, donate, or sign up to do the challenge yourself today!
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