Can You Live Below the Line?

It's May and in just a few short days I'm going to be participating in the Live Below the Line challenge. From May 7–11, I'll only be eating $1.50 worth of food per day. (Well, technically since my husband is unknowingly participating, that's $1.50 per person, so we'll have a whopping $3 to spend on food per day.) It sounds hard and I'm sure it will be, but I want to make an attempt. I can't say how long we'll last with one of us on a gluten-free diet, but it's worth a try.

Live Below the Line is an initiative of the Global Poverty Project, an education and campaigning organization whose mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of people taking action against extreme poverty. Live Below the Line is running simultaneously in the U.S., UK, and Australia with more than 20,000 participants. The challenge is all about seeing how 1.4 billion people in this world live every day, and those people have to make their $1.50 cover more than food.

You can participate, too, by signing up to take the challenge on LiveBelowtheLine.com. Once you sign up, you'll find resources to help you meet the challenge, such as a downloadable cookbook. (The only problem with the cookbook is that the recipes are for a UK/Aussie audience, so unless you own a food scale, you'll have to look up how much 80 grams of rice is in U.S. measurements.)

Here is an example of a recipe you might want to try:

Rice, Vegetables, and Sausage
Ingredients

80g of rice
2 mushrooms
2 carrots
1 or 2 sausages
1 cube stock
olive oil

Directions

Boil the rice using half the stock cube. Boil the carrots using a quarter of the remaining stock cube.
Heat oil in a frying pan and cook the sausage until brown, turning frequently (about 25 minutes).
Use the last 4 minutes of the cooking time for the sausage and add the mushrooms and carrots, pan-frying them for about 4 minutes or until everything is cooked.



If you're not physically up to the challenge, you can still contribute by donating to my Live Below the Line campaign at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/lalalaurie. (I'm on the BzzAgent team, and right now, we are No. 1 in donations received on the community group leaderboard!) Donations will go to my charity of choice The Global Poverty Project.

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