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.