P100 for 5 Challenge?! Nutritious Recipes for 5 for Only P100!

September 3, 2019

Spread the Love!

So many Filipinos suffer from malnutrition, but we have the richest soil that grow bountiful crops!

There used to be a time when it was quite common to just pick fruits and vegetables from the yard, FREE! I don’t know if Filipinos have lost this traditional knowledge, but I do hope that we bring this back. Even if we don’t have big yards anymore like in the old days, we can still plant in containers.

Earlier today, I attended a media event by Action Against Hunger (AAH), and I’ll talk about their Love Food Give Food program later, but what I am really into is their P100 for 5 Challenge.

What is the P100 for 5 Challenge?

The challenge is to create a nutritious, delicious and safe meal for 5 people on a P100.00 budget.

Why P100.00? According to the 2015 Family Income and Expenditure Survey of the Philippine Statistics Authority, the average family income is estimated at P22,000, and 41.5% of it is spent on food. This equates to P300 daily, or P100 per meal.

The average number of persons in a Filipino household is 5, so that’s how the P100 for 5 challenge came about.

The Recipes

Action Against Hunger’s partner chefs gamely joined the challenge and came up with delicious recipes that feed 5 for only P100!

I was able to try Chef Robby Goco’s Kare-kare Rice with Binagoongang Tokwa, and I’m putting it on our regular menu rotation! It’s delicious, like a flavorful cross between paella and bagoong rice, and made creamier with peanut butter!

Here’s the recipe:

The other chefs also shared their creations, and if you are looking for affordable and nutritious meals, give them a try:

Here’s Chef Lau (of Guevarra’s and OK Cafe) making his Tinola Arroz Caldo with Malunggay Pesto:

Here’s Chef Jac (of Guevarra’s and OK Cafe) showing how to make Fish Soup with Kamote Fruit and Leaves and White Rice:

Chef Chele Gonzalez and Chef Carlos Villaflor (of Gallery by Chele) created Chicken Tinola with Fideua:

I know there are times when we are just too tired to cook and just resort to opening a can or a packet and heating / frying our processed food. But let’s all try to make fresh, healthy food for our families more often!

Let’s Plant!

But I think we can do more for our health (and our pockets!) by going beyond the P100 for 5 Challenge. I want to encourage everyone to try to plant at least one edible plant at home. I suggest something that is easy to grow and used often, so that you won’t have to buy it anymore, but just pick them fresh from your garden, FOR FREE!

Here are some recommendations:

siling labuyo – you’d be amazed how fast and easy this grows! Also, whenever we buy chilis, we never use up the whole pack, anyway, and it’s wasted if it goes bad. With a chili plant, we just pick what we need, and it always has chilis growing!
pandan – we add a leaf every time we cook rice; it’s free and makes the rice taste better; plus, it’s supposed to have some health benefits, too 🙂
malunggay – so you’ll never have to pay for one tali of malunggay again! I’m still trying to grow a malunggay plant in a pot but I hope we succeed soon because I hate paying for malunggay 😀
basil – I use basil a lot to freshen up the flavors of my tomato-based pasta dishes. I used to have trouble keeping basil alive, but the newer basil plants seem to already be acclimated to the Philippine weather and survive without much help from me
green onions, parsley, kinchay, wansoy – I am still having trouble keeping these plants alive, but we use so much of them as toppings that I really want to have plants so that we can just pick them fresh, for free!

You can also try planting camote, tomatoes, ginger, turmeric, ampalaya, alugbati, etc… whatever you like!

Love Food Give Food

So what is Love Food Give Food?

This campaign, previously known as Restaurants Against Hunger, is a fundraising campaign to stop the upward trend of extreme hunger: malnutrition. The name was changed because they now accept the support of all types of food establishments, including kiosks, bakeries, and home-based online food vendors, not just restaurants.

Food establishments who would like to participate will choose 1 or more special items from their product list as “Charity Dishes”. For every purchase of these Charity Dishes from October 1 to December 1, 2019, a portion of the sale will go to AAH’s projects.

Would you like to be part of Love Food Give Food?

For food business owners: All you have to do is go to https://www.lovefoodgivefoodphilippines.org and click “Join Now”. All marketing materials for the campaign will be provided by Action Against Hunger. This includes posters, table cards, menu stickers, and information notes for staff.

For customers: Patronize participating food establishments and purchase the Charity Dishes within the Love Food Give Food campaign period (October 1 – December 1, 2019).

Here’s a list of participating food establishments (as of this writing):