30 days on $30 of food

Monday, June 26, 2017

Day 26: Happy about rice and beans

Part of my commitment in taking this challenge is to blog each night, recounting some of my thoughts and experiences over the day, and to typically dedicate each day to either a) some part of the struggle that those facing extreme poverty endure, or b) to those my nonprofit is assisting to break out of the cycle of extreme poverty.

After a long day of attending Parent Orientation at the University of Texas where my son will be attending this fall, I will admit that I don't have much energy left to blog and I'm sure there are some typos or incongruities. However, I would like to try to keep my eyes open just a little longer to share some key thoughts.

I had to improvise this morning, rushing out the door to get to orientation in Austin, which is a 30-40 minute drive from where I'm staying in Bee Cave with my friends Joe and Hollis Bullard. They have been gracious enough to provide me with shelter and a beautiful kitchen in which to conduct my strange cooking experiments! Thank you Joe and Hollis!

Below you can see my photos and read a few notes about my meals from today, which cost me less than $1 to make. Again, this thought of simple living brings me back to a point I touched on yesterday. If I'm able to make half-way decent meals for around 30 cents each, imagine if I had my own gardens or farmlands to pluck fresh vegetables from, to add to these basic staples I've been using?

And that idea is the work of Peace Gospel and She Has Hope in a nutshell. We are investing your donations into farmland enterprise and supplementing farmland and gardening project produce with the purchase of basic staples in the market, to create nutritious meals for the children we serve.

I didn't get any more movement on the "heart-chart" today, but I've had over 500 visits to the blog in the past 48 hours, which shows me that people are intrigued, reading, and wanting to know more about why I'm doing this. I have a feeling that we will get a sudden rush of new hearts being sponsored as I move into the final lap!

We've already filled 30 new hearts since I started the challenge 26 days ago! This is amazing progress, representing about 5,400 meals per month, or almost 65,000 meals being provided annually for vulnerable children in need!

I'm dedicating day 26 to these children at our rural primary school in Uganda, who have very little access to consistent nutrition outside of our school. It is not uncommon for children to go on one meal a day in this village and surrounding areas, especially since the food crisis hit Uganda several months ago and prices of basic ingredients have almost doubled.

You will see large bowls of rice and beans in some of these photos, and with your Western eyes you will think that this is not adequate nutrition. But I can tell you that in the midst of my hunger, and having to ration my beans down to 1/3rd cup per day, their meals look delicious, and copious. And beans and rice are a complete protein containing several key nutrients. Let me just tell you, these kids are happy to be eating rice and beans!

Charitable goal explanation. For those of you just tuning in, I'll recap what I'm trying to achieve with the "Monthly Donor Heart-Chart" and my goal of finding 50 new sponsors for these "hearts" which I like to think of as representing lives being transformed and, ultimately, saved.

Why am I seeking monthly donors? The orphan care, child labor response, and human trafficking response programs we've pioneered at Peace Gospel and She Has Hope— while sustained in part by small business enterprise— need charitable support to be fully sustained. The budgets of these programs have fixed, monthly expenses. Thus, while one-time donations are deeply appreciated, it's the monthly donations that give us something to count on and plan with. Therefore, long-term, they're the most powerful.

If you're willing to make a small monthly sacrifice of any amount to help ensure that the following merciful actions are fully funded each month, I would be grateful for your partnership with me in this effort. With your help, our monthly budget enables us to…

Provide resident care for 290 orphans in 11 homes in Asia and Africa
Operate 4 schools and 4 after-school care programs reaching over 1000 children
Serve approx. 50,000 fresh meals to children in our programs
Train 100s of girls how to avoid the dangers of human trafficking
House, rehabilitate and empower 20 girls recovering from human trafficking

On to what I was able to create with just $1 worth of food today. This morning was really rushed and I barely had time to make breakfast and lunch, so I only used very basic ingredients. This left me with a surplus of rations for a relative feast at dinner time!

Click or tap on image to enlarge...

Breakfast. ▼

Lunch. ▼

Dinner. ▼

Take Action!

1) Please consider helping me reach my goal to find 50 new "Sustainers"— donors willing to give a small amount each month toward our work helping vulnerable children and trafficking survivors. Learn more and sign up here!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to the work of Peace Gospel's programs helping orphans, at-risk children of the slums, and human trafficking survivors.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Day 25: The $30 miracle

Today was a much better day than yesterday, and while there are still some uncertainties ahead, I have a renewed determination to finish strong. I packed up my remaining rations in a cooler and hit the road to Austin with my son Noah where we will be attending University of Texas orientation sessions, as he will be a freshman there this fall. It's been nice to break up the routine and cook dinner in a new setting tonight. I still have no idea how tomorrow is going to work, as we need to be up at 6:30am and it's now 11:30pm and I barely have any kind of plan for breakfast or lunch. It might be cold rice and beans. Life goes on...

Noah is a national debate champion, literally. He just got back from the national debate championship tournament and had an outstanding record. So I picked his brain about the challenge, as we had plenty of time to talk.

He agrees that most Westerners feel that their small charitable contribution won't make a difference and so they don't bother to take action. He is on some emerging social media platforms and says there's an account where someone is giving advice on simplification and living a minimalistic lifestyle, and that they have over 700k followers. We discussed the point that this influencer and my blog here are both helping to emphasize that even 30 cents can can be utilized, with creativity, to make a delicious meal.

We then revisited the story from my Day 15 blog entry, where my friend Hudson in India demonstrated that with just 30 cents (20 Rupees), he was able to make a delicious egg scramble masala with two large pieces of chapathi flatbread. This, along with evidence of what 30 cents would buy you in Manila, Philippines, as reported by my staff there, proves that there is "purchasing power parity" on basic food staples in at least these two locations we polled.

So the overall point is that your $1 donation, especially when coupled with produce from our farmlands, is more than enough to provide three meals for a hungry child in need. Three meals. To children like this girl at our girls home rescued from "bonded servitude" (modern day slavery) in India...

One of the most frequent comments about the meals I cook during the challenge is, "Wow that actually looks pretty good, I'd eat that!" And this is my favorite entry to discussion about the challenge. That is exactly my strongest point.

Imagine if I were to supplement my ingredients list with fresh vegetables from a farmland or gardening project? Bingo. That is the work of Peace Gospel and She Has Hope right there. We are multiplying your generosity, no matter how small your contribution may feel to you.

So, literally, a $30/mo recurring donation will put a delicious fresh-cooked meal on one child's plate, three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. By buying basic inexpensive staples such as rice, beans, and potatoes, then combining them with fresh produce from our farms and gardens, we can work miracles with your humble, consistent contribution, no matter how small.

Great news today on my charitable goal! A very generous soul stepped forward to sponsor the $53/mo heart, while we also saw another friend reject indifference, committing to $10/mo, which brings us just $35/mo within reach of the $54/mo heart! Also, traffic to the blog has skyrocketed, yesterday seeing over 300 readers! This means you all are really doing great getting the word out as we head into the final stretch. Thank you so much!

The goal of filling the next 20 hearts below in just five days seems impossible, but I am very convinced that if we all work together, and everyone signs up for whatever monthly amount they can afford, no matter how small, we can do this!

This is what the first part of the "heart-chart" looks like currently... progress!

Provide resident care for 290 orphans in 11 homes in Asia and Africa
Operate 4 schools and 4 after-school care programs reaching over 1000 children
Serve approx. 50,000 fresh meals to children in our programs
Train 100s of girls how to avoid the dangers of human trafficking
House, rehabilitate and empower 20 girls recovering from human trafficking

On to what I was able to create with just $1 worth of food today. I am very aware of the fact that I'm getting repetitive in my meal choices, but with as little time as I have on my hands, I'm happy to make something that I know will taste good and be satisfying. Still, I'm trying my best to mix things up slightly with each meal.

Click or tap on image to enlarge...

Breakfast. ▼

Lunch. ▼

Dinner. ▼

Take Action!

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Day 24: Overwhelm

I'll be honest, today was a downer and an overwhelming kind of day, and I don't have much inspiration left for a blog post of any substance. I'm not feeling well, there was no progress on my charitable goal, and I'm concerned about how to make the challenge work this next four days as I have to travel to Austin tomorrow afternoon. I'll be packing up my rations in a cooler, using a friend's kitchen, and improvising to-go lunches I'll have to prepare in the morning or the night before.

In order to meet my charitable goal, I will need some of you to don the advocacy hat and challenge your friends to help us reach the goal of filling the next 21 hearts on the "Monthly Donor Heart-Chart." To quote Dr. Seuss, I'll need "every Who in Whoville to make some noise." On top of all of this, I still need to find $11,000 to meet our June fundraising goal by the end of the month, which prepares us for all the needs our programs have in the field for July. I know, you didn't come here thinking you were getting a "day in the life of a fundraiser" blog, but I just needed to be honest with you. That's where I am.

And actually, this is a good underscore to why my all-out focus is on finding more monthly donors— so that I don't have to keep putting pressure on existing donors to help meet our shortfall at the end of every month. It's a hard place to be. That's why we've got to get more monthly support and spread the burden. That's where the "Heart-Chart" comes in. Literally any amount being given monthly is that much less that we have to spend time and energy on fundraising.

But if there's one thing I want to make sure is not getting lost in translation, it's to make sure you undersand how hard our native teams work in the field to multiply your donations through their farmland and small business ventures. I believe strongly this is what sets Peace Gospel and She Has Hope apart from most other organizations focusing on similar causes as ours. If you're not aware of how we approach this, please go back to my Day 14 blog post for an explanation, and some of my favorite shots of our farmers and the kids enjoying the harvests. This is why I feel so passionate about meeting our fundraising goals: 1) obviously, for the children and trafficking survivors our work aids, and 2) to honor our native staff who work so hard by meeting them in the middle with the additional support they need to make their programs function optimally.

Thanks to your support and the success of our farmlands, our program provides her three meals a day at our school in Kampala, Uganda.

Thanks for following along and for all of your support, it's very humbling and restores my hope every day. I'm sorry I don't have a more positive blog post tonight.

Provide resident care for 290 orphans in 11 homes in Asia and Africa
Operate 4 schools and 4 after-school care programs reaching over 1000 children
Serve approx. 50,000 fresh meals to children in our programs
Train 100s of girls how to avoid the dangers of human trafficking
House, rehabilitate and empower 20 girls recovering from human trafficking

On to what I was able to create with just $1 worth of food today. Since I only have two more servings of oatmeal, I opted for a breakfast taco this morning. These are delicious little creations and if I had to guess, probably only cost about $0.20 to make. Oops, I just realized that I used 4 corn tortillas today. That means one day this week I will have only 2 instead of my previously ration plan of 3 per day. Preparing lunch at my mom's house was perhaps a good dress rehearsal for what meal-prep is going to be like in Austin the next 3.5 days.

Click or tap on image to enlarge...

Breakfast. ▼

Lunch. ▼

Dinner. ▼

Take Action!

Friday, June 23, 2017

Day 23: Solving for hope

Tonight ended my first 23 days and marks the beginning of the final week of the challenge. So it was time to do a ration check and final plan for the next few days to make sure I know what I'm working with here. This is a shot of what I've got left.

What I'm running low on:

Oatmeal: probably only two more servings. A little disappointed here because I was assuming that the serving size count on the label was accurate. It said there were "about 30" servings of a half-cup of oatmeal. Not true. Only about 24. It's a morning staple for me on this challenge, but with only two servings left, I'll have to improvise and make the other ingredients stretch.
Pasta Sauce: I didn't really expect it to last as long as it has, so I'm not too worried about this. It makes everything zestier, and it's the only kind of ingredient of its kind in my spread, so it will be missed, but not a huge deal. Will probably save what little is left to go with the remaining pasta I have.
Beans: I had blogged earlier about how I made a mistake in the first week and ate too many beans. Since then I've been rationing strictly to about a 1/3rd cup of cooked beans per day, and that has paid off. I am now coming into the final week with what should be a sufficient supply, but the rations will still be tight.
Frozen Banana Slices: Holding steady, but will only have about 3 slices a day for the remainder of the challenge. These make amazing little night time snacks, tasting just like banana pudding pops. With raisins and a dash of cinnamon, it's a nice little boost.
Cabbage: If you've been following along, you'll recall that I suspected my cabbage had gone bad around day 10, so I threw it out. I was sick for two days after consuming what seemed like rotten cabbage in my soup. No fun at all.

What I feel like I have plenty of:

Eggs: I'll have two per day, and on two of the next seven days, I'll have 3 eggs. This is very helpful, as they're a great protein source and can be used in everything.
Potatoes: Great news here. Thanks to conservative rationing in the earlier days of the challenge, I will now have a full potato for each of the remaining seven days of the challenge.
Pasta: Again thanks to being super conservative with rations on pasta, I think I should now have a small bowl of pasta available each of the remaining seven days. I will probably use some in soups as well.
Ramen Noodles: Doing fine here, as half a ramen brick is plenty for six of the remaining seven days. Great and filling when added to my soups.
Brown Rice: Holding steady and I think I'll be all set with about three more servings (a serving is one cup dry) to last me for just a week. Should be plenty, all things considered.
Raisins: Just eyeballing it, I'm happy that it looks like I should have a small handful each day. These are great little power snacks when the hunger hits in between the small meals.
Corn Tortillas: Thanks to being cautious on the front end, I will now have 3 corn tortillas per day through the end of the challenge! This is fantastic news, because there's just so much you can do with these. Homemade corn chips, tostadas, tacos, and taquitos are all made possible by these beautiful little gifts from God.
Carrots: Fortunately, I'll be able to up my carrot ration from 1/3rd carrot to a full 1/2 carrot each day remaining! This is honestly a result of being lazy in not measuring out the carrots precisely, and being afraid that I'd run out, because these are a really nice addition to my soups. So it looks like we'll be fine on the carrot front as we head into the final stretch.

I write all of this out so that you can see how much thinking goes into this. I have seen first hand those living in the urban slums of the developing world being so conservative with their rations; buying only small portions of staples in the market and then having to be really smart about how to make them stretch.

Once such scene is a vivid memory for me. Here a woman prepares a very basic soup broth to put into a thermos to take to work. Her job, like many living in the Katoogo slum settlement of Kampala, is probably day labor, sifting through trash, sorting recyclables by type, to be paid about $1, for the whole day's work.

On the other side of the equation from this scene, Hope. We are able to offer about 130 children in this slum colony three fresh-cooked meals each school day, at our school, "The Children's Hope Center." Basic ingredients, yes, but fresh and much, much better than what they're getting otherwise. This is EXACTLY what the "Monthly Donor Heart-Chart" DIRECTLY impacts.

Speaking of the "Heart-Chart," I have fantastic news tonight! We got THREE hearts sponsored today: $46/mo, $51/mo, and $52/mo! What I love is that the $52/mo heart was sponsored by three donors who used the "Heart of Gold" option to donate monthly whatever they could afford. Community-pooled resources in love-action!

This puts the lower third of the chart looking like this tonight-- real progress! Wow! I now have 29 hearts sponsored of my 50-heart goal, which means we just need to fill three hearts each day for the rest of the challenge. We can do this!

Provide resident care for 290 orphans in 11 homes in Asia and Africa
Operate 4 schools and 4 after-school care programs reaching over 1000 children
Serve approx. 50,000 fresh meals to children in our programs
Train 100s of girls how to avoid the dangers of human trafficking
House, rehabilitate and empower 20 girls recovering from human trafficking

On to what I was able to create with just $1 worth of food today. Thanks to being conservative in the first half of the challenge, I now have 3 corn tortillas per day, and one whole potato per day for the rest of the challenge. That allowed for some relatively flexible recipes today. Savory porridge is a whole lot better than it sounds. It's a mix of brown rice, oatmeal, and one beaten egg dropped into the boiling water while it cooks. Seasoned the right way, it's a nice start to the day. Cost: about $0.33.

Click or tap on image to enlarge...

Breakfast. ▼

Lunch. ▼

Dinner. ▼

Take Action!

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Day 22: Lots of hearts and lots of smiles!

Amazing news today on my "Monthly Donor Heart-Chart" charitable goal progress! We filled two more hearts, putting us beyond the half-way mark on my way to the goal of 50 hearts sponsored during the challenge! Now we just need to fill 24 hearts in 8 days. We can do this!

New to the blog? Scroll down to "Charitable goal explanation" to get caught up on the "heart-chart" and its purpose.

I believe there are some of you among my 150 daily readers of this blog who could actually sponsor more than one of the lower-dollar-amount hearts. Please consider the exponential impact your recurring monthly donation will have in our programs if you choose to sponsor a heart (or hearts) on the heart-chart!

It is a monthly commitment BUT just think of the impact you will have in keeping orphans and young trafficking survivors out of harms way, safe, well-fed and empowered for a brighter future-- a future outside the cycle of extreme poverty.

Their needs are not one-time needs, their needs are monthly and ongoing, and that's why the focus of my charitable goal for this challenge is to find more monthly donors.

These benefiting from our programs thank you for considering to underwrite a portion of their program budget needs not already met by our small business enterprise efforts in the field...

A few shots from my frequent visits to review their programs...

Provide resident care for 290 orphans in 11 homes in Asia and Africa
Operate 4 schools and 4 after-school care programs reaching over 1000 children
Serve approx. 50,000 fresh meals to children in our programs
Train 100s of girls how to avoid the dangers of human trafficking
House, rehabilitate and empower 20 girls recovering from human trafficking

On to what I was able to create with just $1 worth of food today. The breakfast taco concept is so brilliant, my hats off to whoever had the idea first. I put a little twist on it by making the egg a little omelette that lays flat on the tortilla, then adding my refried beans-n-rice before placing the boiled potato cubes on top with seasoning. I have a bit of potato rations saved up so I've been able to use them rather "liberally" the past few days, all things considered. Today I mashed some boiled potatoes to create a more true "patato soup" consistency in my soup. Anything for the perception of variety on your pallette.

Click or tap on image to enlarge...

Breakfast. ▼

Lunch. ▼

Dinner. ▼

Take Action!