Free Breakfast

What an interesting start to Day 3! This morning was our Rotary Club's monthly Fellowship Breakfast. I had told our president, Patty McLeod, that I could not attend due to the poverty challenge. She insisted that I come and share our experiences in the challenge with our members and that she would buy me breakfast. This was a generous offer and a great opportunity to share the challenges. I decided on the way to breakfast that I would share the information, but decline breakfast, as it was really against the rules. Our group were quite interested in the challenge and had good questions.
When I was done my presentation and ready to leave, I received a text from Marion letting me know that our daily challenge was in fact a bonus: FREE BREAKFAST. We could have breakfast outside of our daily allowance. We decided to cook breakfast from our larder that is outside of our five day supply of food, rather than go out for breakfast.
We have spent two days watching every morsel of food for cost and making sure that we could make it through the week and passing on many of the foods we enjoy because they are outside of our budget. What excitement to make a breakfast without regard for budget nor quantity! We indulged in an omelet made with FOUR eggs, CHEESE and onion; toast and jam, sautéed broccoli, orange juice and yogurt with blueberries and cinnamon. What a feast! This event brought such elation into our budget stressed lives. We must find a way to share this sort of bonus in order to bring elation to others.
Some further observations:
I keep saying that I do not know how someone on Ontario Works could purchase all the basic supplies needed such as dish soap, laundry soap, personal soap, shampoo, conditioner, shaving supplies, deodorant, Kleenex, etc. Well I do know and I was reminded of it by one of the Rotarians: we would have to go for meals at the different shelters until we saved enough to buy this stuff.
We could go to the Minto Resource Centre and purchase some of our basic groceries at their discounted prices.
We could try cheating the system and claiming to be single. That would increase our allowance for basic needs to $610/month from $468/month and it would increase our accommodation allowance to $762/month from $609/month.
Living in poverty sure encourages one to think about bending or breaking the rules.
The allowances sound so much better when expressed in monthly amounts. $610/month is $10/day/person. Now it doesn't look like so much.
So we are off and running into day 3 and what a wonderful start it is. We have soup and bread for lunch that we made last night. Supper will be another culinary delight created from beans, mushrooms and sweet potato.
We have two unknown challenges to meet and only $4 in the kitty.
Many people are not this fortunate.