Projects & Series

Readers Speak Back – Pat Anderson – Live Below The Line

Readers Speak Back – Pat Anderson – Live Below The Line

As it turns out, I have a couple of more things to say on the subject of the Live Below The Line experiment.  First, I want to share this great Readers Speak Back piece that has been sitting waiting for me to get it live. Sorry for the delay! Pat Anderson, aka @digiteyes, has been a regular commenter on the Live Below The Line series and given her participation I wanted to hear what she thought as an active observer.  So I invited her to participate by writing a guest post for the series. It has been an interesting week…

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Wrapping Up–Live Below The Line

Wrapping Up–Live Below The Line

“How does it feel when you got no food?”  Pass the Dutchie  by Musical Youth is playing in the background as I start this post and it seems very appropriate. So, how does it feel when you have no food?  What can I say about the Live Below The Line challenge? I don’t want to talk about the food I ate or the dishes I created. I want to talk about the experience. Sort of. There is certainly a big part of me that doesn’t want to talk about the experience. That doesn’t want to share with you that I…

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Day 5 Last Day – Live Below The Line

Day 5 Last Day – Live Below The Line

I wasn’t hungry when I woke up. I don’t remember my dreams. But within minutes of starting our day it was obvious we were hangry. Don’t know it? It’s that state when lack of food makes you unreasonably angry and frustrated with almost everything. We had it bad! And perhaps we let it show a bit more today because it was our last day! Food costs for day 5 =  $3.50 ($1.75/person) and we used every last cent today! Successes We MADE IT!  Some minor in-challenge edits to our food supply but we made it! Also our Live Below The…

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Day 4 – Best Food Day – Live Below The Line

Day 4 – Best Food Day – Live Below The Line

Spent the night dreaming of rescuing food. Smells of souring pork and the feel of slightly sticky meat filled my senses and it was just gross! I think it’s because I had roasted the turkey bones before I went to bed. I had stored them in the freezer along with the pork I’m saving for Friday. My mind wandered and I was thinking about how hard it is to keep meat without refrigeration.  How all the meat I bought would have had to have been eaten, or at least cooked, in the first 2-3 days if I didn’t have a…

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Day 3 Total Mess – Live Below the Line

Day 3 Total Mess – Live Below the Line

I didn’t wake up hungry on Day 3.  I’m not sure I woke up at all on Day 3. It was a slow and very weird day. Food was strange today and I had a couple of missteps. Because of other commitments Gerry only ate breakfast with me today.  To address this we planned to set aside 1/2 of everything I prepared or removed the equivalent ingredients from the working Live Below The Line pantry, but as I said the day was weird. Food costs for day 3 = $1.91 per person. Over budget, but trust me I ate much…

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Readers Speak Back – Anna Foat – Live Below The Line

Readers Speak Back – Anna Foat – Live Below The Line

In response to my Live Below The Line posts I got a series of email from Anna Foat about her own experiences which range from range from working on charity boards to choosing cigs and coffee over food. The point Anna really drives through is the serious disconnect between the Haves and the Have Nots. With permission, I’m sharing her comments below. Thank you Anna for your candour and openness. It occurred to me to share with you the dimension of the challenge and the participants who are very skilled and knowledgeable on good, nutrition and not the least if…

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Day 2 Salmon Belly Day – Live Below The Line

Day 2 Salmon Belly Day – Live Below The Line

Day 2 was spent hungry.  I got a lot done and even was out on my bike, clothes shopping and whipped up a wonderful dinner.  But I was hungry the entire time! That’s what comes from shorting yourself, cheating yourself and eating well under your budget. Today’s food costs were more reasonable. Food costs for day 2 = $2.82 or $1.41 per person. Still short but much better. Successes Wow, donations came flooding in on Day 2.  Thank you Leona, Heather, Anonymous and E. for your meaningful and generous contributions. We also had some donations to our Bloggers Living Below…

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Readers Speak Back – Len Senater – Live Below The Line

Readers Speak Back – Len Senater – Live Below The Line

I’ve been honoured by the stories, comments and challenges my friends and readers have been sharing with me about what I’m doing with Live Below The Line. One specific comment from Len Senater from The Dep really resonated with me: I worry about having talented, knowledgeable, confident cooks tackling the #livebelow challenge. Their skill and resourcefulness may actually make things seem less dire than they really are. Thing are much worse for those unfamiliar and intimidated by whole, unprocessed ingredients (which are usually the best value for $), who lack the skills, equipment or time to get the most mileage…

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Day 1 Failures, Successes & Menu –Live Below The Line

Day 1 Failures, Successes & Menu –Live Below The Line

I’m hungry. I woke up hungry. I dreamt about being hungry.  It’s not as if I didn’t eat well. I just didn’t eat much.   Food costs for day 1 = $1.78 or 89¢ per person. Leaving us with $14 for the next 4 days.  In the real world this would mean we had $15.72 left but for this challenge we’ve committed to only eating $1.75 worth per day so that extra $1.72 worth of food is unavailable to us. Successes Yesterday I got my first donation- $40. Thank you Pat for your generosity! You can support me too by donating…

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Choices–Live Below The Line

Choices–Live Below The Line

When you are doing a poverty or hunger challenge like Live Below The Line and shopping for 5 days food with only $8.75 per person you don’t think you have a lot of choices. But you do.  Especially here in downtown Toronto where it’s a short walk to 7 or more grocery stores, 2 major markets, 2 Chinatowns and countless corner stores. You can choose where to shop. You can choose alternative proteins like TVP or tofu. You can choose from a wide variety of cheap carbs to fill you up.  You can even choose from a vast array of…

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Working Within The Rules – Live Below The Line

Working Within The Rules – Live Below The Line

Preparing for the Live Below The Line challenge has been our main focus around here this weekend. What we’ll eat, what we won’t. What to buy, what we won’t. How to maximize our food budget of $1.75 per day. Gerry has mentioned repeatedly how this would be “much easier in August when there is plenty of food to forage around Toronto.”   As soon as I tell anyone I’m doing this they immediately start coming up with creative ways to get us fed. “Oh that’s no problem for you with all the food events you go to”, one friend said.…

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My History With Hunger – Live Below The Line

My History With Hunger – Live Below The Line

I have been lucky in my life and have rarely experienced real hunger, the kind of unending chronic hunger that 1 out of 7 people in the world wake up to every day. The only time I really had to face hunger was during 2 school-terms at university, but even then I knew that in a couple of months I’d be back on a work-term and everything would be fine. The first time was the hardest since I hadn’t experienced this before and I didn’t really know what it meant to be hungry. I was in 3rd year, and  at…

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