Soap Box Warning

I got this in the post yesterday.

A thank you for doing Live Below the Line earlier this year.  It was a letter, a certificate ...

 ... and a glossy brochure telling me all about the work done by Action Against Hunger.  

Yes, it did contain a plea for funds and a form to fill in to set up a direct debit, BUT and this is a great big BUT, I did not raise funds to be spent on postage, on paper and on printing magazines, I raised money to help in my small way, to try and stop some, any people being hungry in any way it was possible to help them.

Needless to say I will not be raising money for them again.  I only hope that some of your, and that includes family, friends, and the lovely readers of my blog, hard earned money went to where it was supposed to go.

This is from someone who has worked in the charity sector for years and knows that some money has to be spent on fundraising and paying staff to do this work, but it does not have to be spent on unnecessary fripperies.

I do not, and never will support the charities that send me begging letters, send me free pens, and even in one case sent me FOUR letters all with a five pence coin stuck to them, that was twenty pence profit I made, perhaps twenty pence that some poor child dropped into a collection box from his spending money!!  

And as for all the leaflets with the poor donkeys, horses, dogs, cats. tigers, abused children etc etc that clutter up every magazine that I get on subscription, if you stopped printing millions of leaflets you might be able to help the very animals and people that you spend so much time photographing.

And breathe ......

On a lighter note .... do you think this is fashion sense in ANY meaning of the word.

Look at little Suky's face in the left hand corner of the photograph, it says it all.

" Dad ... you've been tangoed!! "

Sue xx

Collecting Free Food

I seem to be collecting lots of lovely free vegetable seeds at the moment.  This month my newly subscribed to magazine came with more free seeds, £4.53 worth ... 

...and inside there was an offer to get even more, which of course I immediately did.  I am keeping notes of how many freebies I acquire, but I will of course knock off the cost of postage which I had to pay to get my extra free seeds.

I also bought this magazine, which is running a series on polytunnel planting that I'm following and it also just happened to also have free seeds with it .... £11.26 worth    :-)

I'm thinking of all these free seeds as totally free food for next year, when I hope to rise to Lovely Hubby's challenge of us growing and eating all our own fruits and vegetables for as little outlay as possible.

I did actually pay for these seeds which is something I don't seem to be doing very much of at the moment, and I paid full price..... which is even rarer.   I buy most of my seeds for the following years growing at the end of the season, when garden centres sell off their stock for around 50p a packet, but with all my freebies it's starting to look like I won't have many, if any to buy for next year.

In other news .....

The first section of the foundation for the retaining wall was laid yesterday in glorious sunshine, with the concrete being poured through welded cages for extra strength.  Today the guys are working in persistent, miserable drizzle while they hack out more of the stone that is in the way of the next section going down. 

And in other, other news ....

THANK YOU to Sarah (aka Compostwoman) for your donation to my Live Below the Line challenge, which very nicely brings my total up to a very respectable £449.  Thank you so much.

Sue xx

Live Below the Line - Over

Well that's it .... my Live Below the Line challenge is over, and in all honesty I think this will be my final year.  I have a feeling I may have said that last year ....but this time I mean it.  It has taken a lot out of me, but I can't complain, it's only been a week, some people live this way week in week out, I know I did for a while.  But now I am lucky .... I have the choice, and it was my choice to take part in this challenge for the last five days, so I'm not complaining.

The food has been boring, even with tinkering around with herbs and bits and bobs of seasoning there is only so much you can do to spice up plain boring claggy rice.  The one wonderful thing coming out of this week is the fantastic people in blogland that have support me with their comments, emails and most wonderful of all their donations.  Cold hard cash that will go to make a huge difference to the people that really need it, and for that I thank you.  My final BIG THANKS of this week go to two more lovely donators ... Claire Perks and Hazel Owen, your donations helped me through a final tough day.  Thank you so much.

I have to say my last meal of Live Below the Line was probably the worst one, ...and poor Lovely Hubby choose to join me in it.  

The idea was good ... using up the half tin of beans and the half tine of potatoes from the fridge, adding some chopped fresh herbs and salt and pepper to try and spice things up a bit .... it didn't work.  Bland 'bean burgers' on claggy rice served with plain boiled vegetables is most definitely a meal to be forgotten.

Now left lurking in the freezer is two thirds of a bag of frozen vegetables.

I checked the weight after I tipped out the veggie for the last meal, I'm turning into an obsessive!!

In the cupboard there is about a quarter of a jar of peanut butter and the onions ....

... nine onions in fact.  

I should have made better use of them, I am ashamed I left them languishing there,  My only excuse is lack of vitamins and unsatisfying meals somehow dried up my inspiration and my desire to experiment flew out of the window.

And I forgot all about my little saved carrot!!

I kept tabs on what I ate and what each days meals and drinks cost me, maybe I should have left the paper workings out and concentrated more on just making the food.  Oh well it's too late now.

I did what I said I would do and shopped for the local Foodbank.  

My plan was to spend the twenty pounds that I would normally have spent on my food and donate it to the Foodbank, to keep some of the benefit of Live Below the Line in my local area, but I got a bit carried away and it came to just over thirty pounds.  But fate had a pleasant surprise in store for me and the till spat out a voucher for £9 off my next shop, it gave me a smile.  Karma if you believe in that sort of thing.

Here's a final link to my fundraising page, just so you can nip over and see my brilliant final total, I'll tell you anyway just in case you don't have the time to visit.  Between us, me and all the fantastic folk that donated their hard earned cash, we managed to raise the sum of £411, that is a whole one hundred and eleven OVER my target. 

I would like to say a massive thank you to all of you.

Have a good weekend.

Sue xx

Live Below the Line - Almost the Final Post

Friday nights tea was yummy!!

By the time we sat down for tea it was almost 8pm, we had spent the afternoon dismantling the old henhouse to make more room in Chicken World, and I had been planting in the polytunnel after a morning that saw us both here there and everywhere running round doing errands, so it was bliss to collapse in a heap on the sofa with something tasty.

The radishes did the job and made the sandwiches taste so much more crunchy and healthy.  I've really missed salads this week.

So much so that while yesterdays lunch was cooking I went out to the tin bath full of herbs and picked a small selection to chop up to add to our tea .... yes I said our tea .....for the last two meals of the  challenge Lovely Hubby is joining me.

So it was a bowl of soup each for lunch and the last of the little garlic breads, three for me and four for Lovely Hubby.  That's it now, all the soup is gone, in fact the freezer is empty apart from the frozen mixed veg some of which will be eaten tonight.

All week I've been carefully keeping tabs on what I have been spending for each meal and each day,  including from my little freebie stash tin, I had 17p available and with careful rationing I have spent just that.

Tomorrows post will be a final round up of Live Below the Line news and pictures and then it will be back to polytunnel pictures, shots of wayward chickens and snoozing dogs.  

Thank you to all those of you who have called by each day to read these foodie posts (I guess my brother isn't one of you, he doesn't like my foodie posts!!) for having the patience to bear with me while I take part in this very worthwhile challenge, and a very BIG thank you to all of you who have donated to my Living Below the Line page over HERE.

Special BIG THANKS today go to Jenny McCandless and 'Someone', an anonymous donor, for their very appreciated donations to the total.  Between you all you have managed to get me past my initial £300 target, over a hundred pounds past actually.

THANK YOU

Sue xx

Live Below the Line - Day 5 - Confession Time

Remember the three bags of cooked rice, that I stashed in the freezer at the start of the week, the stodgy, claggy rice ......  I have to confess ... I thawed them out and threw them to the chickens.  The chickens were very grateful and so was I .... I just couldn't face eating that stodge.

I needed something light, something crunchy and fresh for my tea .... so I raided the polytunnel and came up with the start of something wonderful.

I sat and worked out that each one cost me 0.2p, so that means I get five whole radishes, leaves included, for just 1p.  Bliss, something fresh and crunchy, just what I've been missing.

Breakfast yesterday was egg on toast again ... this time it was a normal sized egg, you can just see my small slice of toast peeking out from underneath it. By cooking the egg lightly the yolk is gorgeously runny and I can just about manage without the butter I normally have on my toast.

Lunch was the soup that had been stashed in the freezer along with three slices of toast.  Still very tasty and filling but now getting slightly unsatisfying, but perhaps that's just because I know I can't have anything else.  Choice is a wonderful thing, this week highlights that so well, choice is what is missing for so many people that live 'below the line' permanently through no choice of their own.

We are so lucky.

Once again I have to say BIG THANKS to the lovely folk that have been over to my donations  page HERE and left their donations for this wonderful cause.  This time I would like to thank - Linda Wright, Jas Towers and Juliette Dean ... you are stars, thank you.

Back tomorrow with the photos of my finals day's food, I have just about enough to see me through to the end ... I think!!

Sue xx

Live Below the Line - Day 4

Lunch yesterday was yummy ... tiny but yummy!!

It was the little Pekin egg that I didn't use for my fish cakes on one slice of my small bread toasted,  it tasted delicious.  Flavour is what I needed, I wasn't that hungry hence only having the one egg but I did want something in my tummy before I went out weeding on the veggie patch.  I get crabby when I'm hungry .... and I mean really crabby!!  So I usually try to make sure I eat regularly just to make myself a better person, even the dogs know to keep out of my way when I'm hungry  :-)

It didn't last long, just six mouthfuls, but it stopped me thinking about food for a while.

For tea last night I had the remaining two fishcakes from the night before.  Still as tasty, and they held together even better while I oven baked them, so obviously leaving them to rest is the real secret.

It's a good job I've been here on my own all week, or I might have been like Suky.

She wolfs down her own food, making real 'gobble, gobble' noises (a turkey would be proud of her), and then waits by Mavis's dish.  She never pinches food from the other dogs dishes, but she does consider any food that flies out to be fair game and will snaffle it off the floor almost before it lands.

Lovely Hubby is home now so he better watch out  ;-)

I have to say it again .... THANK YOU for the wonderful donations that are landing in the donation box on my Living Below the Line page HERE.  There have been three more since yesterday.  Thank you to Dawn McHugh. Roxane Harker and Faith Archer.  Your support and faith in me is truly wonderful and I thank ALL the folk that have donated from the bottom of my heart.

I might have had a few moments doubt that I could do this at my low spot yesterday, but you wonderful lot have kept me on the straight and narrow and even more determined to see this through to the end.  I'm off to the supermarket later on today to fill my trolley with food for the Foodbank ... it will be nice to shop even though it is not for me.  As much as I like making money for overseas aid I do want to feel as though I'm doing something to help local people too, and some of the areas around where we live have a real need.

It is a sad day for the dogs today ... the 1st of May means they are no longer allowed on the beaches in Llandudno or Rhos on Sea.  So no more sand between their little toes until the end of September.  They can come with Mum to the woods instead ..... I need to forage for some Wild Garlic

Sue xx

Live Below the Line - Day 3

I woke up this morning to find an email had landed in my Inbox overnight, I've copied it here for you to read in full, I've also reinstated the link that is on the copy so you can go straight over to the Action Against Hunger 'Nepal Emergency' page and read for yourself.   It goes to show all the doubters and people that laugh off Live Below the Line as a pointless gimmick, that every penny of the money we raise for Action Against Hunger and all the other charities that benefit from this week of penny pinching and being food obsessive, that our efforts and your donations make a difference .... a HUGE difference.  And that putting money into a charity's coffers help it to respond immediately when help is needed. Thank you for helping. *** *** ***

Dear Sue, Well done on making it half way through your Live Below the Line challenge! Although your energy levels may be low, and the thought of eating another bowl of flavourless rice is not appealing, the funds you’ve raised so far will go a long way towards helping support Action Against Hunger’s life-saving work. Last weekend a powerful 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, leaving thousands dead and even more injured and in need of urgent care and support. Action Against Hunger, who have been on the ground in Nepal since 2005, have deployed an emergency team who are working around the clock to respond to the crisis. The team has 11 tonnes of vital supplies ready to be transported to areas affected by the earthquake. Click here to find out the latest about our work in the country. Thanks to your fundraising support through Live Below the Line, Action Against Hunger is able to respond to emergencies, like in Nepal, as well as working to develop community-based solutions to malnutrition and the hunger problem. Spread the word, keep fundraising and help Action Against Hunger to provide vital support to an increasing number of families in need. Jenny Clarke Senior Community Fundraising Officer *** *** *** I got the idea for last nights tea from a YouTube clip that I watched via the Live Below the Line page last week, when I came to try and find it again I couldn't, so I cobbled it together from memory. First I whizzed up two of my crusts to make breadcrumbs and left them to go stale in the sunshine on the worktop. I mashed together half the tin of potatoes with the whole tin of Sardines and the tomato sauce they were in, finely chopped an onion and mixed that in, but it looked a bit bland so I went out and cut a few Chives from the tin herb bath outside the back door.  It was a very wet mixture so I decided to miss out the egg I had planned to use to bind it together. I didn't even need to dip them in egg to get the breadcrumbs to stick!! I left them in the fridge all day sat on the breadcrumb plate to firm up a bit, and then when I got them out rolled them around again to pick up a few more of the crumbs. Last nights tea, and very tasty it was too.  This time I cooked the rice as per the instructions on the pack and rinsed it well with boiling water before putting back in the hot pan to dry off a bit, it was much better. The total cost with banana ice cream for pudding was just 40p. The fishcakes cost me just 12p each and are something I will most definitely make again, although I'll be able to add more herbs and some chilli flakes next time to make them even tastier. I've realised that the way I'm blogging about this week is a bit confusing, some of yesterdays food mixed with todays food etc, so I have put up a page at the top of the blog 'Live Below the Line 2015' which shows the food and costs as they are for each day. *** *** *** This morning is my Day 3, I'm a day behind a lot of folk as I missed out on starting on Monday.  I always find day three tough and it seems Jack Monroe does too.  I woke up this morning with a blog plan in my head only to find that she had mirrored my feelings exactly HERE. I think that by day three the limited choices get to you.  Opening the cupboard and seeing it so bare brings back memories of opening the cupboards and always finding them like that, no doubt one of the reasons my cupboards are always full now  I brought up my boys living with bare cupboards, with meal plans carefully thought out and just enough to keep us all fed.  We never went hungry, I rarely went to bed with an empty tummy and the boys never.  A large pack of value bourbon biscuits and custard creams tipped in the biscuit tin every week meant that a drink and a couple of biscuits to dunk in it, always seemed a satisfactory treat for supper.  So things weren't that bad, just bad enough for a young Mum to worry about. The good thing is we all survived those times, and came through them with lessons learnt and respect for what we have now.  Being able to give something back, even if it includes some bad memories for a while is my way of acknowledging that I went through that time for a reason.  For so many people living with empty or near empty cupboards is still a way of life, there's maybe not much we can do to help everyone, but if we can do something we should. That's why at the end of this week the £20 I have saved by not buying my usual shopping this week will be spent on a trolley full of food for one of our local Foodbanks ... if I can't shop for me I can shop for someone else. Once again I have to say HUGE THANKS for yesterdays donations.  So thank you to Tracey Whitehead, Jason Wright, Marjorie Stintzi and  'Someone' as they call anonymous donations on the donations page.  Your money really will make a difference.   And you see it was worth making sure Jason got those bourbon biscuits he loved so much even when times were tough, he's a loving, giving young man that I am so proud of  .... yes you guessed,  he's my youngest son  :-) Sue xx

Day 2 - Live Below the Line

My cupboard at the start of the week.

And once I had prepped the bread by opening each pack and separating the slices slightly, and laying the little garlic breads on an open tray to freeze them so I can remove bread slice by slice and so the garlic breads didn't freeze stuck together ....

... this was what my shelf in the freezer looked like.

Last nights tea.  Rice and half of the tin of baked beans.  

I cooked just under half of the bag of rice, so I can save time later in the week by just taking out of the freezer and zapping it in the microwave, but I'm not happy with how it turned out.  Fingers crossed it's edible.  I always cook rice by the absorption method, which didn't seem to work as well with this cheap rice.  It's very claggy and clumpy even though I was careful to rinse a lot of the starch out before I put on to cook.  The beans however, were a revelation!!  I don't eat beans very often so maybe I just enjoyed them as a complete change ... but they were very tasty.

It was a filling although rather bland meal, but I had had a very busy day and only sat down to tea at 7.40pm when all the chores were done,  I left the rice to cook while I was walking the dogs around the paddock and watering the polytunnel, so it was at least, very nice to finally sit down with a plate of something warm and reasonably tasty.

So now I have half a tin of beans in the fridge and three bags of clumpy, claggy rice in the freezer.  If they come out inedible I will have to try boiling some more of the rice in lots of hot water and then draining it.  I really don't want to have to share my rice out between the chickens and the dogs, but at least I do have enough in reserve in case this has to happen.

This mornings breakfast.

Two eggs scrambled on two slices of toast.  I was careful to slightly undercook the eggs to leave them moist .... as I don't have the masses of butter I normally slather on my toast.  I like that it looks like a big meal but this is a small plate and my bread is small, even so it was satisfyingly filling.  :-)

Massive thanks to my two donators yesterday, Sharron Harris and Pamela Dungar, who have taken me to within sight of my target.  You are inspiring me to keep going. Thank you again and HERE is the link to my official Live Below the Line donations page, every donation no matter how big or how small is one step closer to helping keep someone that is hungry fed.

Sue xx

Starting Off With a 1p Coffee - Updated

Well my day started off with a 1p cup of coffee, thank goodness black and unsweetened is the way I drink my coffee all the time  :-)

I tipped the jar of 47p coffee into our usual coffee container on the worktop so I won't get confused during the five days and use the wrong coffee, the normal coffee is back in it's jar in the cupboard.  Well I say tipped but I actually took the opportunity to count the teaspoonfuls of coffee that you get in a 100g jar.  The way I drink it, a pretty heaped teaspoon for each mug, you get 45 cups of coffee in one jar, so for ease of maths I'm counting each cup of coffee that I have as 1p.

While my bread was in the toaster for breakfast I tipped out the contents of my bargain 20p stew pack of vegetables, all of them were looking reasonably healthy, a spot of dampness on one carrot and a bit of mould starting on the onion, but nothing that a bit of peeling wouldn't get rid of.

I decided it might be useful to have an extra carrot in my repertoire, so I took out the smallest and fittest looking carrot and added in one of my onions from the one kilo bag of onions, which I have worked out cost me 5p each.

So one chopped Turnip ....

... two chopped Onions ....

... two peeled and chopped Parsnips

.... and two chopped carrots ....

.... make one pan half full of simmering soup.

Rather worryingly it all looked a lot smaller and less volume once it was chopped and simmering, I'm hoping it was just the big stock pan that I used, I'll be able to see how many meals this is going to make once it comes out of the Aga and is whizzed into soup.

Then I sat down with a quarter of the jar of peanut butter spread on the four rounds of toasted bread for my breakfast..

Total cost for breakfast (including 2 cups of coffee) =  18p

Back later with an update.

*** *** ***

There I told you I would be back!!

When the stew/soup was cooked I had a taste and it was a bit bland, so I decided to make a purchase ... 

... from my freebie Sachet Stash.  

And as my frozen Mixed Vegetables weighed in at 11g more than the promised kilo, I picked out a few peas to add a dash of colour to today's lunch.

There ... much better!!

A good amount of soup left over.

Today's stew and three portions of soup.

A happy coincidence, but not quite an accurate statement .... it was good stew just not 'A Taste Sensation'  :-)

The pricings for four meals. 

One is now in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch and two are safely tucked into the freezer for later in the week.

Why am I doing this you might be asking yourself .... well I can't say it any better than THIS is explains it all so well.

To visit my fundraising page go to HERE

BIG THANKS today go to Nicola H, Chris Barrett ... in memory of my cousin Tony, and Joan Shaw (my Mum) for their wonderful donations.  Thank you. 

Sue xx