Living Below The Line: a ponder.

It's all over now, all bar one more sleep.  I've had my frugal meals, spent roughly £1.00 a day, thoroughly enjoyed the creativity side of things and using my meagre cooking skills to make my meals tasty and interesting.  I've learnt things like being able to make bread with value plain flour which means that a very delicious white loaf - reasonably large white loaf that gave us 18 slices - costs around 30p, max, probably a bit less.  I can make a mean wrap!  I am SURE I have lost weight and done it in a much more pleasant way than 'going on a diet'.  I feel better in myself, probably because of the lack of caffeine in my body and I am sleeping very soundly.

I've felt hungry, sure, but what's actually wrong with that, given that we know where and when the next meal is.  Maybe that sort of hunger maybe ought to be built into our lives a bit more.  Maybe we ought to see it as a friend, something that gives a good appetite and helps us to appreciate our food much more.

Real hunger, the kind that goes on and on, the kind for which there is no next meal, no good meal, no nourishing meal or sustaining meal, is evil.  It's totally wrong.  Even in this country I know that parents go short in order to feed their children.  They go to bed hungry every night, worrying about where the food is coming from or whether they will have to beg to be allowed to use a food bank.
I know that some parents can't cook because they don't know how to.
I know that my generation (some, anyway) put going back to work before our children in the sense that we did not provide them with a good role model in the kitchen, we didn't guide, support, encourage our children to get involved in food preparation.  We thought that the extra income would benefit the family, we thought that having a satisfied, fulfilled mum and dad would benefit the family, we thought that foreign holidays were essential . . .
So a child grew up not knowing how to take basic ingredients and turn them into a good meal and, as an adult, was not able to then teach their child how to do the same.  They don't know that not only can it be fun, it's a real money saver!
Two generations, that's all.  It's scary.

I know all of this is a generalisation but there's enough truth in it to make me worry.

There was a programme on a few years ago.  I wonder if you watched it.  It was called 'Economy Gastronomy' and the idea was that two chefs went into a family home where ridiculous amounts of money were being spent on food and taught the whole family how to cook, how to be economic, how to make the best of fewer ingredients.  I loved it - I thought it was brilliant.  But they never made another series . . . and I do wonder why.

Sorry about the waffle!  I haven't done a ponder for a while, that's my excuse.