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More price hikes.

Does it ever end?

Do things ever go DOWN instead of UP?

Just wondering.  Has anyone else wondered the same recently?

I spent most of my time in PaknSave last shop muttering under my breath.  They had a stupid audio advert on trying to tell us that despite prices going up everywhere else they are keeping grocery prices low.  Yeah, right.  It could be a Tui ad, for crying out loud!  (non-kiwis - Tui is a brand of beer here...they do these big bill board adverts that have very unlikely or improbably statements followed by 'yeah, right.' As in, not likely, sarcastically said).

Munchkin has been having goatsmilk since he turned one.  It was half the cost of the goatsmilk formula.  In those four months, it has gone from a regular price at Countdown of $4.09 to over $4.90.  FOUR MONTHS!  Nearly 20% increase!!!!!!!!!!  Needless to say, our income has not had a similar rise.

We are gradually changing him over to cows milk starting this week.  About 8 months before I wanted to, but it is a third of the price and he hasn't shown any obvious allergies so hopefully it will be okay.  And then we can put the money saved on milk into our straining grocery budget. 

The first time, I thought it was just a fluke.  We went over budget.  But the second time, and the third?!  I'd honestly not noticed the price increases.  My mind has been swamped by study.  And we ate a lot of fruit from the garden over Autumn which kind of masked the fact that we were spending more and more on food.

But at least we have extra income to put towards food.  I hate doing it.  I want to decrease the food budget, not increase it.  I hate seeing all that money go into something so temporary.  Okay, so I know we need it to survive, but somehow I'd still rather see it in books, or a house fund, or anything tangible and semi-lasting!

But while I've been sitting here wondering about our groceries and how we are going to manage, things are much worse elsewhere.

This is what we received from World Vision this week.



Click to enlarge

A request to increase our child sponsorship by $5 a month.  From $40 to $45.  Not much.  But enough for me to feel just a teeny bit stressed by it.  But read the rest.  Their development projects have experienced an increase of 50% in food costs in the past six years!  Yet during that time they have managed, somehow, to keep child sponsorship at the same level.  So I don't feel that they are at all forward or pushy in asking for a bit more.  I am horrified at how people who have so little to survive on to start with are now managing.  We haven't had to decide whether to eat this week or not.  We've still even had a bit of spare money to buy pies for an easy dinner.  Yet it is still stressful, this food business.  I can't imagine how hard it must be for others.
I'm going to be gardening this summer, trying to get as much food from our garden as possible.  And thanking God that we have a garden to use.  It's fertile enough to grow good food, safe from robbers and civil war, with easily accessible water, and a good growing climate. 

With such a blessing available to us, I guess I shouldn't really be complaining, should I?


Amy

Different Perspectives

My parents did Live Below the Line with us.  It was really awesome being able to share the experience with them!  Even though we didn't actually see each other much that week, it felt better somehow just knowing that someone else was going through similar things at the same time.

I was talking with them recently about their experience of Living Below the Line and here are some of the thoughts from our conversation over the dinner table that night.

It was eye opening discovering just how much you can do on such a limited budget!

An important consideration was knowing how much you need in a day.  What if you get it wrong? How do you work it out? How hard it must be for people living in extreme poverty.  We knew we had $11.25 for five days of food.  They may often not know when they will next get money and be able to buy food.  So hard balancing between today's needs and tomorrow's needs, and particularly when you don't know what tomorrow might hold.

It was worth doing the Challenge for the conversations had with workmates, friends and others about extreme poverty, the questions people asked, the interest shown.  Dad wanted to raise more money.  (Boyo and I did too but in the end we all did what we had time/energy for and doing something was better than not getting started at all!).

Mum noticed that the food worked really well for her.  But she did really miss fruit.  She found it has really changed things in her relationship with food - less cravings over all.  I, on the other hand, had the opposite experience - I craved and craved and ate and ate (all the wrong things too!).  It took over three weeks after doing the Challenge for me to feel like I've returned to 'normal' eating again!

Mum noted that we use food for so many things other than survival.  When we are bored.  When we feel strongly about things.  When we are tired, for a pick-me-up.  It's about a lot more than just eating to survive.  And this is particularly so in the west where we have such an abundance of accessible food.  Sometimes we seem to just eat out of habit, because it is there.

We communicate so much over food.  The work lunch that Mum had to sit and watch.  The workmates with lollies or cake.  The supper at Life Group.  Food consumes so much thought.  Especially when you know you don't have much food available.  The worry over it, particularly, took a lot of energy away from other things.

It is totally understandable now why people resort to doing thinigs like using cow dung for their fires.  The 'making do' that we experienced with our food has to be experienced across all areas of life for someone living in poverty.  It might be cow dung or nothing, rice foraged from a rat's nest or starving (and yes, that is an honest-to-goodness scenario!).

When asked if they'd do Live Below the Line again, my parents said yes.  It was worth it.  I have to agree.  It is a fabulous way to connect with the issue we are trying to help alleviate. 

Through the generosity of our friends and family, Boyo and I raised over $850!!!
Amy

Loving the Little Things

This week there are a few little things that I am loving a lot:

New Gloves!

My old ones had decided to go to holes.  I rely heavily on my fingerless gloves.  My hands seem to be perpetually cold all winter long!  Fingerless gloves mean I can knit, type, and do most anything that doesn't involve large quantities of water or gooey material (kneading bread, for instance, is out - I did have to take my gloves off when our breadmaker decided to stop this afternoon and I had to knead a loaf by hand or have it go to waste...one loaf later, I am really missing the breadmaker!).  I found these lovely gloves at our local Farmers Market - made by a local lady from merino.  Soft as soft.  Warm, warm, warm.  And a PERFECT FIT!  Now, if you know me, you will know that this is a miracle.  I snapped them up.  Handed over my $12 with great happiness and have not regretted it since. 

Chives.

Spring really must be here.  Or my chives think so at least, and that is the important thing!  I love chives.  So love chives.  Chives on poached eggs.  Chives on salad.  Chives with mashed potato.  Chives go with just about anything.  Every winter I feel ripped off when my chives go dormant.  Every spring I have a little celebration when I get to eat the very first leaf again!

New shoes. 

Are they cool or what?!?  Munchin needed something bigger (again!) and with a more waterproof sole.  He just LOVES his shoes. 

Avocados.  And even more than that?  FREE avocados! 

Boyo climbed a tree.  Seriously.  Quite high by the sounds of things.  I wasn't even there, he did it out of the goodness of his avocado-tastes-yuck-but-my-wife-loves-it heart!  Then a workmate gave him three.  Then someone at church brought in a huge load of windfall ones.  I got a few more for me, and some for Mum.  Yummy.  Yummy.  Yummy.  And along similar lines, I am loving the free apples my mum dropped off.  I stewed them up and Munchkin and I are once more eating apple with our morning porridge.  So appreciate the free food right now, with groceries being so high.  Incidentally, apple peel makes a great all round toy...you can even eat it when you get tired of playing with it!

And one last thing I'm so loving this week:  Ornaments.  Now, I am not usually considered an ornamenty kind of person.  My husband was a bit shocked to hear that I had not only impulse purchased, but bought ornaments!  But these are special ornaments, or at least I think so.  They are from TradeAid.  So helping provide the people who made them with a real livelihood.  And they are cute.  They make me smile.  I might play with them with Munchkin when he is old enough to appreciate that they must be handled gently (they are fairly brittle clay or something).  Aren't they just delightful?!

Amy

Busy, busy, busy

The reason  you have not been hearing from me much lately (aside from being a little bit out-blogged after all the Live Below the Line posts!)...

I am painting.

And reminding myself that if I want the chook cage to last, it is worth painting.  Sigh.  It is so time consuming, and I have just three weeks left to get it all finished.  Three weeks before I have to knuckle down again and complete yet another monstrously large assignment then study for an exam.  Last week I gave myself a bit of leeway and had a few afternoon naps.  This week I will be a sterner task master for sure!  Nothing like a deadline to get oneself motivated!  Grin.

Amy

Frog Soup

Here's a treat for you!  Frog soup.

Not real frogs.  I promise.  But it is green, which is where I believe it came by its name.

I originally came across this recipe in an online forum, but I've amended it to suit the way I cook (it originally had instant potato in it, which I never use!).  Today I was using up broccoli.  Okay, so it was actually Tuesday when I made this, but Waste Not Tuesday doesn't have the same ring!  And I did eat some for lunch today!

Firstly, let me assure you that your instant thoughts of 'oh, yuck' are probably wrong.  You might really like it, and other than the colour might never know it uses a huge quantity of broccoli!

Start with your choice of onion, garlic, spring onion, leek (I usually use onion and garlic), lightly saute in a little oil.
Add 4-5 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed and 2-3 cups of stock (I use chicken stock) along with a bit of salt and pepper. 
Simmer for 5-10minutes.
Add a whole head of broccoli, chopped up small.  Include the stem and leaves and simmer until the potato is soft when you stab it with a knife. (I was using up the side shoots from our broccoli, so had a huge bag of them, plus one stray spinach leaf that somehow got in there too!).  Add some extra boiling water to just cover the veges if needed here or when cooking the potatoes.

Now take the soup off the heat.  Add a few tablespoons of your choice of cream cheese, natural yoghurt, or cream.  Do it slowly, and stir constantly so that it doesn't curdle too much.  Blend it.  Serve it.  Enjoy it.  If you like to make it look pretty, you could leave adding the cream/yoghurt till you serve it, and do a nice little white twirl in that sea of green.  I used some cream cheese that had been stashed in the freezer.  It's a great way to use a small amount up if you've got a tablespoon or two left over from another meal.

So there you go.  Frog soup.  You can also make Blonde Frog Soup.  My original creation, this one.  Subsitute cauliflower for broccoli.  I actually prefer the texture and flavour of the Blonde version!

Anyone have other broccoli recipes?  I've still got a fair bit to use up!

Amy

Christmas is Racing Towards Us!

Already it is the middle of September.  I find myself wondering where on earth the rest of the year has gone.  Has it really, truly been an entire year since I last wrapped, strapped and shipped out shoe boxes???  Perhaps not quite.  I seem to recall that last year's boxes were only ready one day before the cut-off for shipping.  This year I am super-duper organised.  But don't congratulate me for my amazing organisational skills.  I can't take too much credit.  I suspect it is that I'm a part-time student this year!  Less assignments.  Earlier practicum break too.  So here I am, a whole month early and my boxes are almost ready.  I need another five clothing items...not sure when I'm going to get to that yet, but that's the only thing left to do, other than drop them off and make my online shipping donation!  Wahoo!

I only had to wrap half the boxes this week, which has helped incredibly.  Mum and Boyo came to the rescue, and did a few with me Monday night.  My co-wrappers did not, however, consent to photographs of their wrapping in progress so you will just have to take my word for it!  Plus there were the ones we did on Christmas Day. 

So now I have a stack of boxes on my dining table.  I'll have to find somewhere else to put them I guess, seeing as it's a few weeks before I will drop them off yet.  Last year's deadline was 25 October, so if you've been contemplating doing a shoebox or two, you still have time to head out this weekend and get your skipping rope, flannel (facecloth), pencils, teddy bear and more!  The best kind of therapy for those of us who are gift-givers!

Now here's an original problem for you.  How do you get an A5 writing book into a narrow little women's shoe box?!

This way?  No, maybe that way!  Ah-ha.  Slide it down the side, and curve.  Hold.  Bang that lid on quick!  Now get a rubber band around it before it pops off again!

Amy

Five, Six, Seven, and Eight!

The next batch of peggy squares!  It is just me, or have I been motoring away??  I didn't think I'd had THAT much spare time lately.  Grin.  Perhaps I have just been knitting faster than I realised?!

The next instalment are going to be in grey and pinky-purple, as I'm ready for a change again.

Amy