Last thoughts

  I'm happy to be back to normal today. Normal meaning I don't have to give much thought about worrying how I'm going to stretch my food budget. I love eating, love cooking, it is a big part of my life. I think I would get grumpy and bitter if I had to live like that all the time.


Could we possibly change our priorities as a nation on how we address food insecurity? How can we be okay knowing 40 million people have to rely on SNAP to get by, even when having that is not enough and families have to turn to food banks. Could we exchange the cost of making one of these for food, or just a portion of the 2012 base military budget of $531 billion dollars? And hey, that figure does not even include the cost of Iraq and the Afghanistan war.

Huge Kudos to Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and everyone else taking part in this years United Way Hunger Challenge. And thanks to United Way for raising our awareness of the issue of hunger in America.

www.uwkc.org

I'm happy to have been part this collective experience and wish for every person who has a say in how much people should eat, determines whether or not someone makes a living wage or even gets to have a paid sick day, that they too would try to take on this Hunger Challenge.

 I hope we all can imagine a world where we have a place at the table.

Good Friday Last Day

Fine Dandelion Greens

 Found these on our walk Thursday. Picked them where no dog would pee and washed them very well. Quite tasty pan fried with garlic. After breakfast of toasty oats with apple and rice milk, I packed my meal to go and added the greens to left over refried pinto beans with Serrano pepper and turkey with brown rice and the tasty last half Japanese sweet potato.

Happiness is sometimes having exactly what you want when you think need it most. On my way to work I spent $4.25 + tip for a iced soy triple shot dark chocolate latte I bought with my big cash fortune of seven bucks and fifty two cents left over. I was a happy nurse fueled with chocolate and caffeine.

Food I ate Thursday

 Maybe I did too well, I was very frugal and did not eat enough. I had a fair amount of money left over from last shopping at Grocery Outlet. Most of the food I ate was from scratch except the stuff I bought from Grocery Outlet.

Money not to be used to bribe politicians.

Thursday was my day off.  It is a luxury having time to relax and eat. When I'm working, like most nurses, I eat on the fly. Well you know, we are angels of mercy. Breakfast was the last of the mesa flakes with half of my last banana and ironically dinner was on the fly because we meandered too much on our lovely walk in the sun with our sweet dog Matson. Had a play to go see! Good People at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Terrific production with fine fine acting. So for dinner I had the rest of my canned organic chicken chili with rice and blue corn chips. You know how hard it is to eat and put on makeup at the same time?

After the show we walked over to Dicks on Queen Anne. This one is nice because you can sit down inside instead of standing out in the cold. Big treat. I was craving for (fat) french fries. Had to have the side of tarter sauce too. Almost as good as dunking in Molly Moon milkshakes.

Another treat coming home was the chocolate ice cream I topped off with the fried red banana I bought from the co-op. The ice cream wasn't bad really, especially for $.50. It was chocolate.

An End to My Hunger Challenge

I wish I could say there is an end to hunger

I really believe we could end hunger in this world. We could grow enough food, produce the right amount of healthy food and we could end waste. You know the saying, "If we put a man on the moon".

Its astonishing really

Taking Stock

  

  Or making it that is. Turkey back bones with saved (collected in bag and put in the freezer) veggie peelings, including the top of the Serrano pepper I bought. Simmered down for a rice base stock I used last night for a lentil carrot and corn soup with the left over curry fried tofu. Not bad. I discovered the co-op sells organic frozen corn and peas in bulk. Great idea. I just bought what I needed.

I've been eating less. I wanted to make sure my food lasted. When I think about mothers with children, I wonder how many women go hunger because they feed their children first. Mothers are so inventive when it comes to stretching food. I think my kids remember fried corn patties, probably not fondly.

    

What day was Wednesday?

The Great and Tasty Fuji

After a morning breakfast chopped fuji apple and toasted oats, this time not cooked, no mush, I prepared my take along for the evening. Thankfully, Tuesday afternoon before work I made a quick stop at Grocery Outlet. I was searching for something to snack on and some hot sauce.  Can you believe it? There was no hot sauce! I asked a worker who said "I'm sorry we have no hot sauce at all." I'm thinking, what is going on with this Grocery Outlet? Anyway, I was able to really score some great foodie hits.

Organic Cheeeeese!

                        This made a fabulous dinner. Had lots of nibbles on the cheese too.

   Then again, I could have bought a few bags of these. Walk away from from the potato chips now.

I Left Off At Roasted Oats

For breakfast, day two. Oats spread out in a single layer, toast in a 350' oven for about 8 minutes. Brings out a nutty crispy flavor without having to add oil or sweeteners. Cooked up with some water and chopped half of a large fuji apple, splashed with rice milk. Not bad, yet seemed like standard old time New England mush sadly without the maple syrup.

 Lunch/Dinner is always a take along. Im trying to be creative so as to reward myself in the middle of a hard shift at the hospital. Bunch salad greens, glorious greens, needed some boosting with protein. Easiest go to, tofu. Wrap the chunk in paper towels to absorb moisture for about 20 minutes, slice into nice rectangles. Pan fried in canola oil (bought in bulk at the co-op) and sprinkled with salt and curry powder (also bought in small bulk quantity) Tasty, spicy, and a little crunchy. Perfect for salad, or a sandwich even.

Salad construction, how to keep your greens crispy and dry before you eat them. Chopped up carrot, fuji apple, grated ginger, splashed with canola oil and apple cider vinegar (bought in bulk at the co-op), salt and pepper. Kept separately in a small container, allows the dressing (oil & vinegar) to marinate the veggies. When you are ready to eat, just combine and toss. Delicious. I LOVE the taste of apple, carrot and ginger together!

End of shift snack I had half of a sliced banana with rice milk. Okay, that tasted like baby food, yes but good baby food.  Late night snack, wanting something more grown up, I air popped some popcorn. I really love my air popper! My beautiful daughter-in-law gave me one for Christmas two years ago. I use it a lot! Truly it is the cheapest, at about $.25 cents a serving, and healthiest with great fiber, snack you can easily make. Unfortunately I didn't have any of my favorite butter alternative, Earth Balance. I just couldn't see spending $4.50 on a tub to blow on my pretend SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) dollars.

SNAP is the official term for the food stamp program. www.fns.usda.gov/snap. Check it out. I do believe you can't get the old actual food stamps dollars or coupons as they were also called, US$1 (brown), $5 (blue), and $10 (green) bound into booklets of various denominations. Now there is a type of specialized debit card called Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) .  So if you hear people saying food stamp recipients misuse them by buying and exchanging them for cash or beer or cigarettes, ask them how do they think they do that with a EBT card?  I'm just wondering.

Stay tuned later today for Wednesdays Hunger Challenge travails.

A Place at the Table

This movie was a must see for me knowing I was going to do the Hunger Challenge again this year. A Place at the Table is a good movie and even if you are not a fan of social-justice documentaries you should see this film. My one regret after watching the movie, even though I reeled from stunning facts about food, poverty and politics, I wished there was a more positive push for people to do something. The most stunning fact, and one which is in direct correlation to obesity, the price of processed food has decreased in almost the same proportion to the rise in cost of fresh fruits and vegetables. Think about that, and check it out. Really, shouldn't that be the opposite?!

Toast and Roast your Oats

                                  Lunch/Dinner to go go

Cooking. I love cooking, but this is a quick fire challenge and I felt I must just cook what I had in front of me and then see how it all comes together. Bought a free range turkey part that was on reduced sale. The back has little meat but hopefully it will produce good stock too. Roasted it up in the oven with canola oil, salt and pepper. Pretty good, there is a little bit of fat that makes it crackling and tasty. Shredded meat off and saved the bone for stock. I had soaked pinto beans the night before, cooked them up soft. Finished part of them up fried in a pan with tiny bits of serrano pepper and bits of turkey meat. Paired with some jasmine rice, steamed broccoli  and this amazing delicious Japanese sweet potato. Firmer and smaller than regular sweet potato, more dense but sweet and smooth! I washed and scrubbed it up good, dried it, rubbed it with oil and sprinkled coarse kosher salt on it. Prick with a fork (harder because it's so firm and dense) and roasted in the oven at 350' F for about 45 minutes. Outstanding! The best sweet potato I've ever had. Thank you Hana for telling me about them. In Japan they are called Satsuma-imo. Sweeter and less watery mushy than plain American sweet potato.

Real First Day

Still just enjoying my coffee. Using the same get all you can from it technique Di taught me. Coffee ground to espresso grind and then french pressed. Wish I could remember the name of this Woodstock bulk coffee, it's fabulous. Nice deep dark chocolate overtones, added bonus.

Breakfast, bulk Mesa Sunrise flakes, gluten free. Very good with sliced banana and rice milk. I swear I've been so lucky finding large containers of cheap rice milk on my challenges. Happy happy.

Year three. I would think I have learned a few things about taking a personal hunger challenge by now.  Mostly the challenging part. This takes a lot of work, just having to THINK about food, and not the luxurious inconvenience of  "oh where should we go out to eat now", like we did last night after a SAM art event we attended.

I didn't really go very hungry in the past two challenges, mostly because I tried to plan my food a lot. This is a luxury, having the time to do so. A blogger on the Hunger Challenge in California wrote about the honestly of the time factor. Points in fact; I have a car, I don't spend hours on a bus looking to buy good fresh cheap food, I am not sick (I have great health care), I don't have hungry children to feed, I don't have to wait for hours trying to fill out forms to get assistance.

                  This is what I start with, $35.00 dollars for five days. Seems so meager.

What sticks out for you when you look at this photo? Not the amount or the twenty or the five or the George Washington's. What stood out for me is THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. This Hunger Challenge takes place here, in America.

So in honesty I need to start by saying I completed most of my shopping before the first day of the Hunger Challenge.  

I imagine I will be able to cook a few good dishes out of this group of lovely food.

HUNGER CHALLENGE: YEAR THREE