A Ration Challenge Recipe

A little film of a refugee called Maya cooking the Lentil Soup recipe that is in the Ration Challenge Pack recipe book.

I am now just 33p short of being able to supply nine refugees with enough ration packs to last them a year.  Thank you so much to everyone who has sponsored me up to now, as well as feeding so many people and helping such a good cause you have also enabled me to climb the rewards ladder and add little extras to my rations pack foods.  Things that you see Maya using in this short clip.

My Fundraising Page

Sue xx

The Ration Challenge - Rice

Included in the Ration Challenge Pack is a little bag of white rice weighing in at 420g.

And along with it and the other contents, there are two coupons that tell you to buy 400g white flour, and another 1.5kg of rice for the week long Challenge.  This is mainly done to save the exorbitant postage costs that adding almost two kilos to the weight of the box would cause, but also because that is exactly what happens in the refugee camps.  

While Concern Worldwide provide the refugees with ration Packs just like mine, other aid agencies hand out coupons that are redeemable in local shops and markets.

I bought the white long grain rice that I needed and yesterday weighed out the 1.5kg and put it into a jar ready for next week, and then remembering the post the other day I decided to use the left over half kilo to weigh out what a seventh of the total rice allowance would be.

It looks quite a lot doesn't it?

Then I decided to keep going and cook it.

Now it looks even more, almost three times the weight in fact.  I cook rice using the absorption method and this time I used my pan rather than the rice cooker and followed Jamie Oliver's instructions to the letter. 

Wash the rice once, use double the weight of water to rice, bring to the boil and then simmer for twelve minutes with the pan lid on.  Then turn off the heat and leave for another ten minutes or so before fluffing up with a fork.

It turned out beautifully.

I had the bowl full on the right for my tea and the rest was quickly cooled and put into the fridge.  I think I may have a go at making rice cakes from the Ration Challenge Recipe book later. 

4. Place cooked rice into a muffin tin, filling each hole about halfway.

 5. Sprinkle a pinch of reward spice across the cakes. 

6. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 10 minutes (or until crispy on the outside).

 They sounds interesting, if a little plain ... I'll let you know how I get on.

There are quite a few people currently doing or who have done the Ration Challenge ... you are allowed to do it at a time to suit you if there is a reason you can't manage the official week ... saying that they were hungry all the time and I honestly cannot understand this.  The total calorie intake is a bit lower than is recommended for an adult at 1738 per day, but these people are also saying they don't like this or don't like that so haven't eaten it, and the thing they are leaving out the most is the rice.  When the rice makes up such a large proportion of the ration I think it is important to use it and make it to the best of your ability and even more important ... eat it.  One lady had over 1.3 kg over at the end of the week ... no wonder she was hungry 😢

It will be interesting to see how much I have left over by the 19th.

Edited to add:  I didn't like the rice cakes at all, so I wont be making them during the Ration Challenge Week itself.  Better to put my effort into things that I do like. Thank goodness for this time to have a little practice!!

Sue xx

The Week Before the Challenge

So there's less than a week to go before the Challenge kicks off again for this year and I decided the other day to have one final little 'play with my food'.  I had a little bit of flour in a jar in the Van so I weighed out 50g of it added a pinch of salt and just enough water to bind it all together to make me some pasta.

A quick knead and then a half hour rest for the dough while I got on with a few little jobs and I was ready to roll out my pasta.

Just using a rolling pin and a well floured surface meant I got it reasonably thin, well I could see my fingers through it so I reckoned that was thin enough for me.  This was actually only the second time in my life I have ever made pasta from scratch, last time I was at the Vegetarian Society showing that pasta could be made without eggs, but then I had a pasta rolling machine.   If anything I found the rolling pin method easier and obviously there was a lot less to wash up afterwards ... always a bonus in my book!!

I sliced it into sort of tagliatelle width strips, I thought that was so much safer than trying to get to the spaghetti thinness.

And then I hung it to dry, far out of the reach of a certain little permanently hungry Pug  🐕

After a few hours hanging in the sunshine it was almost completely dried out, so I made a quick 'sauce' with half a dozen halved cherry tomatoes and a finely sliced spring onion that had seen better days.  Simply sautéed in some olive oil with a sprinkle of garlic granules and then a dash of the pasta cooking water right at the end to make it a bit more saucy.  It took around four minutes to cook and really was as simple as that to do.

A tasty little evening meal and surprisingly filling for what seemed like a small portion.  A good finale to my practising for Ration Challenge Week. 

I'm home in Wales at the minute but tomorrow morning I will be heading back to the Van and once there I will take some photos of my rations and get myself prepared for starting the Challenge.  I think a bit of this preparing may involve eating all the chocolate that is left in the Van in a bid to take away all future temptation ... it's a hard but very necessary job  😁

The Fundraising Page

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me by donating money to my fundraising page, between us we are doing an amazing job and we are now less than £11 from being able to feed nine refugees for an entire year.  Wow ... what a result.

Thank you so much.

Sue xx

Gearing Up To a Challenge

One days food for ration Challenge Week,  the same rations that the refugees in the Syrian camps have for each day.

I don't usually spend so long 'gearing up' for a new Challenge.  This year because I signed up nice and early to the Ration Challenge there has been over a month up to now of thinking about this, fundraising for this brilliant cause and sort of planning.  I say sort of  because I have yet to work out a menu for the week, I have lots of ideas in my head for things to make with my limited ingredients, but no definite menu plan as such.  

Some of this years Challengers have divided their food up by the seven days and are using one seventh of the total rations each day.  A guy called Jonathan Smith divided all his food up into sevenths and took this photo to put on the Facebook group so everyone could see what this actually looks like.  But of course there are lots of us, me included who don't eat fish, so with his permission I did a vegetarian/vegan version of his photo with the little one seventh of a tin of sardines carefully edited out.

A little bit of vegan magic I called it  🤣🤣

Some ... me included ... are making larger portions of things to have in different meals all through week.  One thing is really for sure with 1.92kg of rice to pad out the meals one heck of a lot of rice will be consumed.

Between now and the start of the Challenge in just eleven days I am slowly and steadily eating my way through the cupboard, fridge and freezer at the Van and when I nip back to Wales at the weekend it will be the same there.  My mind is telling me to remove all the temptation ... well it's a good excuse to have chocolate for supper!!

Thank you so much to all of you who have donated recently.  My fundraising page is HERE and you can see for yourselves what the brilliant new total is.  

THANK YOU

Sue xx

Thank You for All the Coffees

Thank you to all those of you have donated to the Ration Challenge.  

By sponsoring me to take this food Challenge on 13th - 19th September eating the same food for one week that the refugees in the Syrian camps eat week in week out we have between us managed to raise the amazing amount of £1,322.57 as of this morning.

Once again we have burst through the target I had set myself, that of feeding eight refugees for an entire year, indeed we are less than £70 away from feeding yet another person for a whole year.  The figures humble me, both the amount we are raising AND the amount of money that is spent on food to feed a person for a whole year.  After Saturdays post you 'took me out for so many coffees' that once again the total amount rose and rose.  I am all coffee'd and cake'd out ... thank you 😃

As someone well used to doing Challenges where I feed myself for a week for the price of seven cups of filter coffee, or Challenges where I live on just £1 a day for a week or a month, or as I once did for almost a year, I know that living on half this amount would just not be healthy in any shape or form, and  I should imagine it is only through the resourcefulness of these amazing people that they and their families survive at all.  A fact I learned the other week is that the average length of time spent in the Syrian refugees camps is a shocking 17 years.  Seventeen years!!

I am humbled to be taking part once again in the Ration Challenge and even more humbled at your continued support of me and I really do not have the words to thank you enough.

So just for one minute let's let someone else speak.

MY FUNDRAISING PAGE

Thank you for your support.

Sue xx

For the Price of a Coffee

Remember my Challenge in October of last year the 'For the Price of a Coffee' challenge.  

If you hadn't found me or didn't read this blog back then  HERE  is the start of it, and you can read through by clicking on Newer Post at the bottom of each days post.

Well anyway to carry on, Nikki a participant on the Ration Challenge mentioned on someone's query about fundraising that the weekly amount of food for an average refugee costs £3.25 ... virtually the same as lots of people would spend on one fancy Costa Coffee.

And it got me thinking ... if by any chance you haven't sponsored me yet and were waiting until nearer the Challenge week, why not pretend you are taking me out for Costa Coffee this Bank Holiday Weekend ... it's looking like it going to be a traditional British weather bank holiday anyway, so we might as well spend it drinking coffee and having a chat.

So if you are going out for a coffee with family or friends over the weekend have a look on the price list at your local coffee shop and notice the amount it would cost if I were there with you ... I would be good honest  ... I really would ... and  just sit quietly in the corner gently blowing and then slurping at my coffee ... then either pull out your phone then and there or be a tad more polite and wait until you get home ... and send the cost of my coffee straight onto 

MY FUNDRAISING PAGE

Looking at the UK Costa Coffee price list on their website my drink of choice, a medium Americano is £2.20.  There, I'm a cheap date ... no top of the range marshmallow floaty cream topped concoctions for me  😆😃  

But if you do want to treat me to one of those ... go ahead  😃

It's thought provoking and very humbling to think though isn't it, that the cost of that one fancy coffee could keep someone fed for an entire week!!

❤

If you go over to my page for a little look you will notice that I have just updated my target.  

My new Ration Challenge target is £1,256.00.  

Which is enough to money astonishingly to feed 8, yes EIGHT refugees for an entire year ... and I am just over £75 away from it!! This is the last time I am increasing my target, if it goes over, it goes over.  I simply wanted to round it up to an amount that really means something to me, and that it's you lovely lot and my family and other friends that have raised this magnificent amount of money to feed these very deserving people, warms my heart and makes me feel so very grateful.

Have a wonderful Bank Holiday Weekend ... it's the last little splurge of a Summer we've barely had, it's almost our duty to enjoy it the best way we can.  And then for me the Ration Challenge Week is just two weeks away and I am itching to get started  💖

Sue xx

The Ration Challenge - Playing with Ingredients - Flour

So, I know for Ration Challenge week my 400g flour ration will mostly be used to make me flatbreads as they are just so easy to do and great for accompanying meals or just dipping in hummus for a snack.  But I wanted to try a couple of other things to try to vary what I can make with my limited ingredients and, well just to make it feel like I'm cooking and eating different things.

I have already tried pastry and that was quite successful, well maybe it wasn't the prettiest to look at it but boy was it tasty.  Then I read on the Facebook group page about Parathas.

On the BBC Food website it says:

A paratha is a deliciously flaky flatbread, made by brushing ghee on the dough and folding it over itself before re-rolling and frying in a dry frying pan.

My basic recipe copied from someone's post on the Facebook group is this, so I thought I would give it a go yesterday while the rain poured down outside.

I decided to make one large paratha for my lunch, so I used 50g of flour ... well as you can see just a smidge over!  I added a pinch of salt and enough water to bring it together to a nice workable dough.  

After a good kneading I left it to rest for a just over half an hour.

Then I rolled it out nice and thin, brushed it with oil and then sprinkled it with some garlic powder and a pinch of salt and started to roll it up.

The next stage is to coil it up, then cover and leave to rest again for another 30 minutes.

Then roll it out thinly again into a large circle ... and once again brush with oil and roll up.

This time you can roll it out straight away, the slight squelching noise as the oil is pushed into dough is brilliant. 

Then after brushing both sides of the paratha with oil you fry it in a very hot dry pan until both sides are slightly browned.

I cut mine into quarters and had two of them spread with hummus and the other two just as they were so I could really understand the flavour and texture of them.

They taste like an amazing cross between a flatbread and a slice of lightly cooked flaky pastry, and with mine having garlic powder added mine were very reminiscent of a delightfully light and crisp garlic bread.

It might seem like a lot of work for a simple snack or meal, but I can assure you the end result is more than worth it.  They actually taste the nicest when they are still warm, fresh from the pan as like anything made with oil they do tend to get a bit stodgier as they cool.  

You can also incorporate other things into the parathas, such a tomato or curry paste, or some dahl or herbs.  Really it's something I intend to play with a lot in the future as I already have at the back of my mind a future Challenge using minimal ingredients and very little money. 

Sue xx