£5 is a small lunchtime snack for me.
A real pot-boiler kicks off Reg man's quid-a-day nosh challenge
It's day one of the El Reg Quid-A-Day Nosh Posse's attempt to survive for five days on a fiver for food in support of Malaria No More UK. I have no doubt our elite team is rising magnificently to the challenge, having prepared their cunning survival plans well in advance. While I await news of how it's going, here's some of my …
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Monday 28th April 2014 11:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Worked out I could live quite well dinner wise on £1 a day, and breakfast too. Sadly it left me starving between breakfast and lunch so I scrapped that plan. One day I'll work out a menu I can work with. Anyway lunch time, glad I'm not on the £1 challenge, feeling starved, good luck folks, but I hear chips calling my name.
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Monday 28th April 2014 12:27 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: The rotters at work
Neil Barnes,
I don't see the problem. As any good lawyer would tell you, you're within the rules. You're happily living on food you haven't paid for. The fact that it's cake that probably cost more than your entire weekly budget isn't your fault. After all, no-one quibbles about Lester and his free pork bone - this is just the same.
There, I've written your justification for you. Eat up your cake.
Unfortunately you've now failed the challenge. As although the cake is free, my legal opinion is worth at least £200. So you're over budget...
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Monday 28th April 2014 11:29 GMT Andrew Commons
Try harder!
Have a look at this:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-22263706
And check out Jack Monroe in the Guardian.
You can also look for road kill while collecting the wood and maybe throw bits of wood at the wild life - something that used to be quite effective once upon a time here in the realm of Vulture South :-)
cheers
Andrew
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Monday 28th April 2014 13:18 GMT Chris Miller
Re: Try harder!
We used to gather stinging nettles - they need to be young ones, older growth is a bit stringy. Wrap them in a tea towel and run over it with a rolling pin to remove the stings, then you can pull the leaves off and use as for spinach. I'd like to say they have a delicate flavour, but I don't remember them tasting of much.
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Tuesday 29th April 2014 10:28 GMT Andrew Commons
Re: Try harder!
I've had nettles served as a component of a soup in an expensive noshery, I've actually picked the nettles used. It's not a 'Wow' experience, more novelty, but not at all unpleasant.
Fruit from trees on private land were fair game when I was a young lad...the practice was called 'scrumping'.
Shellfish are a great resource if you have access to someone who actually knows what isn't going to kill you. Collecting them helps pass the time between snacks as well.
Mushrooms were a part of my diet in the 50's and 60's, collected on the vast grass expanses of airfields.
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Monday 28th April 2014 11:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
Next year's challenge
Whilst lauding the aims, next year's challenge could perhaps be to see what the cheapest acceptably balanced diet would be. So rather than simply balancing your energy needs and a basic protein/carb mix, for one week at the lowest absolute cost, to actually see what can be done on a diet that won't give you scurvy, rickets, anemia or whatever after a couple of months?
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Monday 28th April 2014 11:46 GMT Tanuki
Free food...
Learn to scavenge: on my drive to/from work each day there's always casserole-tastic roadkill pheasants and rabbits on offer - sometimes a Hare or even a Deer. [I draw the line at stopping for Badgers].
The River Cottage website has recipes for Grey Tree-Rats: it's entirely legal to trap them.. There's also wild garlic available in the woods right now; soon the riverbanks will be bursting with watercress, and a few weeks back I harvested a good crop of "Jew's Ear" fungi which though looking - well, like a withered human ear - do add body and flavour to a stew.
It's also the season for harvesting both dandelion-flowers and nettle-tops: flash fry them in a pan with a bit of oil and they make an excellent, nutritious Spinach-substitute.
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Thursday 1st May 2014 07:05 GMT Grikath
Re: Free food...
Given the average knowledge of your average bod about what is and is not (still) edible when found in "nature" , how to test for said edibility, and ways of preparing said food to maintain edibility... Especially bloody mushrooms....Really?!!
Might as well teach them how to play inverse russian roulette..
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Monday 28th April 2014 12:37 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Fry me a river
Lester,
For a change, can't you swap to scrambled eggs on toast later in the week? Toasted over your open fire, or done in the toaster, as laziness kicks in.
You could liven up your brekkie by doing different eggs each morning. Fried, scrambled, poached, boiled and french toast / eggy bread on day 5.
Here speaks a man who's very glad that our beloved government health advice is no longer to limit yourself to only 2 delicious eggs a week. Eggs are back to being good for you again. I'm still waiting for the official rehabilitation of the Jaffa Cake though.
Sorry I didn't join you, but I didn't have time to sort any of this out last week - and I'm off for a weekend of drunken licentiousness on Friday. Please give us a week or two more notice next year, and I'll have no excuse not to join the fun. I won't do a scary spreadsheet like Neil Barnes, but will try to be inventive.
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Monday 28th April 2014 13:50 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Fry me a river
I find eggy-bread particularly unhealthily satisfying. I guess it lacks the perfect evil quality when only fried in olive oil, rather than properly artery-clogging butter. But it's great with stale bread - where toast without butter is less fun.
I believe you can do all sorts of poncing around with cinnamon and flour, and I need to experiment with this. But my Mum's way was to genrly mix 3 eggs with a fork plus some salt + pepper - then quarter the bread soak the bits in the egg for a minute, and straight into the pan. Maybe a quarter teaspoon onto the top of the bread in the pan, to soak more in before it's turned over. Eat, as you cook, alone or with ketchup.
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Monday 28th April 2014 12:23 GMT Steve Button
What's the point?
Lester,
I'm sure you'll say it's about raising awareness, and all that. Which is a good thing. Perhaps. As long as it changes someone's behaviour somewhere, and they aren't just more aware and then do nothing about it.
But for just one week, you can probably live off your own stored body fat (none meant, and I'm sure none taken) - as long as you have water to drink. So, you can happily live off nothing per day and just drink from your spring. But you'll probably have a stinker of a caffeine headache.
What about homeless people who probably don't have access to free drinking water (as they don't have a spring on their land)? And that's just in a rich Western European country.
What about people who don't even have any access to clean drinking water?
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Monday 28th April 2014 12:28 GMT Truth4u
Re: What's the point?
they should work harder if they want food and water.
cameron says there are enough jobs for everyone, and i believe him. he says everyone who wants a job can get one, if this means getting a zero hour contract as a part time cleaner 300 miles away then you do that because you dont DESERVE any better, scum.
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Monday 28th April 2014 12:44 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: What's the point?
Steve Button,
It's a fund-raising and awareness thing. I think it's valuable just for thinking about it. If nothing else, it can put some of our problems into a bit of perspective. And there's a lot that money can do for malaria. It was a very under-funded area in terms of vaccine research up until recently, now much improved, but a couple of quid's worth of mozzie nets and some education can save lives on their own.
It's pretty hard to solve world poverty with cash. But you can have a lot of effect on healthcare, for example. Which as well as just being a good thing in itself (people not dying of curable stuff and not being ill) - also helps with poverty reduction. Healthy people earn more, boosting their economies, making everyone better off. And are less of a burden on their families, who have spare capacity to get some education or get better food/water etc.
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Monday 28th April 2014 14:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What's the point?
It seems to me that living-in-temporary-poverty challenges like this always get some criticism because apparently you have to really be permanently starving in order to raise awareness of starving people.
I guess it's a psychological thing. Usually when people are raising money for (say) cancer research, they don't go off and actually get cancer for a week. They do something else, like a parachute jump or cycle ride. So the homeless / hungry kinds of challenge are different because someone is putting themselves in the particular situation they are campaigning about - and then telling you what it's like.
So anyway, good on you. I shall donate.
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Tuesday 29th April 2014 09:04 GMT Sean Timarco Baggaley
Re: What's the point?
"So the homeless / hungry kinds of challenge are different because someone is putting themselves in the particular situation they are campaigning about - and then telling you what it's like."
I suspect most people are already well aware of exactly "what it's like". Turns out it sucks. And is often quite death-y.
This particular "awareness" stunt is about malaria, not starvation. I'm not sure how picking an arbitrary weekly amount to spend on food helps either. £5 is more than a month's average salary in some particularly poverty-stricken countries – and spending said money in Spain and the UK, where the cost of living is actually quite high, doesn't signify anything of value either. So far, all I've learned is that you can buy 2 kg. of rice in the UK for less than it costs in Spain. Never mind that you have to get it back to Spain as well.
We know malaria isn't nice. It's called "malaria" – a name that literally translates as "bad air". There's a clue right there. And that nice Mrs. Gates and her feckless wastrel of a husband have actually been doing something rather more concrete about it than trying to live off £5 of egg butties and a bit of risotto for a week.
I'm all for doing good deeds, but I genuinely don't understand what the point is of "raising awareness" about something most educated people already know plenty about. Despite the increasing link-bait, this is The Register, not FOX News.
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Monday 28th April 2014 13:02 GMT Tom 7
If I ignore my homebrew,
which works out around 50p a pint, I can live on homegrown food for about a tenner a week if all goes well with the weather and storage!
By all goes well I mean my daughters eat what I cook them but young tastebuds are hard to argue with.
Have a word with your butcher - you can get a pigs head for a £5 sometimes - has quite a bit of meat on it which is easily removed by simmering for a couple of hours. Strain the liquid from it while still hot and you have a stock that, along with about 5 pounds of dried borlotti beans and the meat from the head (the brains are nice but makes most people scream) and some dark green cabbage leaves makes a surprisingly nice and filling stew for a greedy bastard like me for a fortnight - freeze portions for the last 9 days. Beef it up with the odd addition. And use a straw box - bring it to the boil and you can keep it cooking overnight in one.
Everyone whose tried it loves it. "Best cassoullet ever!" Until you tell them what's in it...
Imagination is a great thing in the right hands!
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Monday 28th April 2014 13:51 GMT stu 4
fecking labels that you are meant to remove
Oh man... that is my number one hate.
labels on stuff that are meant to be removed, but don't without industrial solvents.
pans, oven trays, stainless steel trash bins are all culprits.
what are we talking about ? an extra 1p per 1000 labels to buy ones that actually peel off ?
When I become dictator of the world, the people responsible will be shot.... After 10 years forced labour removing their own labels of their products. bastards. utter utter bastards.
obviously malaria is pretty bad too. cough.
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Monday 28th April 2014 13:37 GMT I ain't Spartacus
And someone thought it was a really bright idea to put a really sticky label inside the pan, rather than on the bottom
Sod it! I've gone off world poverty. I no longer care about the need for clean water. These people can look after themselves. I've got a bigger global problem to solve!
Global Over-Adhesive Sticky Label Week is born! March with me ladies and gentleman! March to the sound of the guns! We must make the world aware of this scourge! We must end this tyranny!
I washed a mayonaise jar in the dishwasher on Friday. No effect. I took it out, still warm, and tried to peel the label. Nothing! I put it in again, for the next run. Nada! The buggers appear to have epoxied the damned thing to the glass. I don't want people to mistake my marmalade for mayo. The last casserole dish I bought took ten minutes to get the bloody label off the inside!
I don't think a week of abstention is the answer. We don't need to raise funds. We should just march on the companies responsible, and glue their designers, buyers and board together with the strongest adhesive available - and leave them to learn their lesson. Or starve, I don't really mind which ...
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Monday 28th April 2014 15:44 GMT I ain't Spartacus
I bought myself a pair of 'aircraft sheet cutters' the other day. They claim to cut 1.5mm thick steel sheets like scissors. No idea if they work, as I never do that sort of thing. But for getting into insane plastic packaging, say the electrical tester I'd actually gone into B&Q for, they're brilliant.
Quite why a 50g electrical socket tester should require a planet-destroying, armoured plastic case capable of surviving WWIII - is totally beyond me.
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Tuesday 29th April 2014 07:32 GMT death&taxes
If warm soapy water doesn't work it usually means you have an oil soluble glue to contend with.
Scratch the label all over, rubbing off the top surface as much as poss then rub some cooking oil into it. After a few minutes rubbing, hey presto, the label slides off in slippery bits which you can then wash off with warm soapy water.
Still bloody annoying, although malaria probably pips it.
Keep up the good work, Mr H.
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Tuesday 29th April 2014 08:50 GMT NogginTheNog
Re: hunger is all political
As I keep thinking whilst reading about this challenge*, if you're hungry in the First World you might just be a child who's parents cannot or will not provide sufficiently. What the fuck do THEY do smartarse??
* What you guys are doing is amazing btw, it's really made me think about how lucky we are and how much I take for granted. I WILL be donating!
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Monday 28th April 2014 17:50 GMT Lester Haines
Re: Free food
I've already given the bone back - after boiling all the nourishment out of it. How does that work ethically in terms of the challenge? Can I suck someone's banana, as long as I don't chew on it?
A fair point about freebies, though. If we can accept them, then there's nothing stopping someone popping round with a kebab and a six-pack of beer.
Ah, beer, forbidden nectar of the gods...
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Monday 28th April 2014 21:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'll be honest and say I can't realistically cook everything on wood for the entire week, The principal problem is not time or lack of willingness, it's my bloody mutt pack.
I can't leave anything edible unattended for even ten seconds, because the sods will attempt to have it away, boiling or not. So, if you'll excuse me, I must get back to the stew before it does a four-legged disappearing act.
Maybe they can go on a quid-a-day (sorry, haven't got a pound symbol on this keyboard) diet as well?
Wishful thinking I know. Still, it made me chuckle.
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Tuesday 29th April 2014 10:36 GMT Andrew Commons
The problem with the free food angle...
Is that there is probably a far better way of addressing the problem.
Two slices of bread with a bit of egg squashed between them will retail for between 1.50 and 2.00 quid/euros according to a bit of google.
A loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and thou beside me in the wilderness to get the punters to stop should double the value in a morning....by the end of the week you have started a franchise and world poverty is something you are talking to Gates and Bono about.