Day 4 Operation Refugee

That’s me in my orange cocoon

Our first night in the tent went without a hitch… the forecast rain was very light and came around 6.45am after Antony was already up and inside.

It wasn’t too cold outside, about 3 degrees the low. I was toasty warm in my sleeping bag with a long sleeve merino top, PJ pants and a warm hat. Antony had just boxers on but was warm enough – such a hottie 😉 We both slept fine. Frost and minus 1 forecast tonight though!

Usually on a Monday I am at RPM (spin class) at 6am but I decided while doing this challenge not to go to my usual gym classes. They require a lot of energy and I wasn’t sure I’d have enough. So I enjoyed lying in the tent a bit after waking at 6:20 and facebooking while listening to the light rain on the tent…

Breakfast was the usual rice with cinnamon. I am so over this breakfast!!  It is the one meal I find the most difficult during these 5 days. I can’t wait to have my soaked oats, nuts and seeds breakfast with apple juice on Wednesday 🙂

I got stuck into some work at home before heading out at 10:30am with friends Sarah, Clare, Sonya, baby Maisy and 2 dogs. We headed to Lake Hood for a walk. It was great to catch up with these lovely ladies- all of whom have sponsored me for Operation Refugee. Nice to get some fresh air and a good walk in, about 5km.

Winter Walk with friends, Lake Hood

By the time I got back from the walk it was well and truly lunch time. Ants had his half a can of tuna while I got the rest of lunch sorted. I put lentils on to boil and got a portion of greens from our garden. As we had both earned $400+ we got a reward of a portion of greens and a lemon each. We used one portion of silverbeet, sliced thinly and fried and to flavour it a bit I added zest of half a lemon.  I removed that from the pan for a time, and let the cooked lentils fry a bit in the pan. I then made a well in the pan, put the greens in, pushed them to the edge of the well and dropped in the 2 eggs we had earned (for getting $300+). Lid on until the egg was cooked then ate it. Not brilliant but not bad. A tad dry. Had I been organised enough to get the plain yoghurt (reward for making $500+) then that would have really made it delicious. The good thing about the meal was that for a change it didn’t involve rice!

Day 4 Lunch

I was at my computer feeling very sleepy around 4pm… so had a lie down on the couch. More than an hour of sleep and another hour almost of resting/ dozing.. I was suddenly knackered! Antony had lots of work to do and I hadn’t got dinner on early enough so we put in apologies for our Monday night Bridge class and stayed at home.

6 years ago today Antony and I met for the first time, in the Rakaia Gorge. We have done all kinds of random things since, this being one of them! Yay for a partner in life who has similar values and loves doing the somewhat crazy things I suggest. I tried to make our anniversary dinner a bit special…

Preparing dinner

I measured out 200g of plain yoghurt (our reward for reaching $500) and added to it zest from the other half of the lemon, plus salt and Moroccan spice. I mixed it all up to make a nice dressing for the rice cakes. The rice cakes consist of cooked rice, water, salt and flour. Not that exciting, but fried up and served with the yoghurt dressing and some fresh crunchy lentil sprouts they were actually really good. Ants ate heaps! I don’t eat dairy products but made an exception for this challenge and really enjoyed this yoghurt dressing.  Along with the rice cakes I made re-fried beans again, using the last half an onion we had and some kidney beans which I had soaking today and cooked before dinner. I fried them up in a heavy pan over the fire. I’d also made more chickpea snacks which we could add to the meal (but weren’t really required).

Anniversary Dinner

So that brings us to the close of Day 4.

Thanks to more sponsors today I have just hit # 1 on the Leaderboard for Individuals. Hopefully we can get even more sponsors & I can stay at the top spot! All the money is going to a great organisation working with Syrian refugees in Jordan, doing wonderful things. I’ve been sponsored $1734… be awesome to get to $2000.  As a team we have raised $2370 and are in 5th place in the team rankings.

Huge Thank You to all those who have supported us. Click here if you haven’t and would like to donate.

It’s 1.4 degrees outside and dropping… we are soon off to sleep in our tent!