On Day 1 of the Hunger Challenge I worked from home. On days 2 and 3 I had the cooking time that a weekend allows. When Day 4 rolled around I had go back to the office, a place full of temptation: free coffee, organic fruit and coworkers unwittingly offering me grapes, cheesecake and more grapes.

Was there a grape sale I missed? Because I went to the store and grapes were $3.00 a pound – a price I couldn’t justify paying.

Breakfast was a banana and a cookie – not nearly as filling as oatmeal, but a whole lot faster. The real challenge was getting through a morning at work. Offers of free coffee, pastries, and fruit reminded me how lucky I am to work at a place where some things are paid for. Of course, the pastry and fruit thing only happens on Mondays, so don’t get too envious. My office attempts to butter up the creative staff in preparation for the week ahead.

Lunch was day two of the pasta fagioli. I didn’t get through the entire serving, so I’ll get to eat the rest of it tomorrow. For free!

Accompanying the pasta was a Ziploc baggie of the most satisfying carrot sticks in the universe. My main fruits and vegetables have been bananas and peas, so breaking out the carrots ($1.49 for a 1.5 pound bag) is a little bit of joy. They are crunchy, sweet, savory, and do a tiny bit to keep me from obsessing over apples.

Expensive, expensive apples. How I lust after them.

Shortly before I left the office a man carrying two parrots was struck by a train. That’s the same train I take home. Suddenly sad and frustrated, all of the meal planning I’d done that day fell apart. I was stuck in San Francisco, waiting for a train to get to the station and I was hungry. But at least I was alive.

If I hadn’t been participating in the Hunger Challenge, I would have hiked on over to Safeway and purchased a corn dog. I don’t often eat corn dogs, but when I see an opportunity to have one, I take it. Instead, I drank some water from the station’s water fountain and dug into a book for distraction. I wasn’t eating by choice – but what happens if you can’t eat because you just don’t have food?

When I got home at 8pm, I wasn’t thinking about fruits and vegetables, all I wanted was something supremely filling. And that something was two awesomely enormous potato, egg, and bacon (half slice in each burrito) burritos.

Above are the burritos in their not-yet-folded state. Folded up burritos look really boring. Monday night I dropped into bed full, but not sated. I still craved one crisp, juicy apple.

It turns out that a 1/2 cup of dry oatmeal, when cooked, is large enough that by the time you’re done with breakfast, your husband will have completely dusted and vacuumed the livingroom. Yessss. But adding delicious things to the oatmeal (butter, sugar, milk) doubles the price!

I don’t know why I used an exclamation point there. It was really not a surprise. Measuring butter…now that is a surprise.

Shortly after finishing breakfast I started on lunch. Beans need to cook for a long, long time. (so much for Sunday errands) Several hours later, the pasta fagioli came in at $1.38 a serving, a pretty low price for a hearty lunch. The problems with pasta fagioli:

• TIME. It takes thinking a day ahead to get the beans prepped.
• I am going to eat pasta fagioli for 3 4 days straight. I have a frozen food review blog in part because I don’t like eating leftovers. If you could ask my husband, he would tell you that everything in the fridge in a tupperware container is fair game for him.
• Not enough bacon. Sure, there seemed like plenty of bacon when I was sauteeing the bacon and onion together, but after some quick math I found that there’s only 1/2 a slice of bacon per serving.
• Not enough tomato. Or maybe the tomato chunks are too large. Instead of giving my pasta fagioli the expected tomato-saucey broth, I have grayish-brown broth with the occasional tomato chunk.

Remember how I was all ‘Rah rah beans!’ yesterday? I am not so ‘Rah Rah beans!’ anymore. Especially when there’s not a jalapeno element.

And the bouillon. Sigh. Bouillon is a cheap flavor enhancer used in some of the Hunger Challenge recipes posted online. But bouillon is just shorthand for ’salt, salt, msg, and salt with some vegetable flavor thrown in.’

I used bouillon in both the pasta fagioli and my couscous, thinking that would add some necessary flavor. Instead it made my couscous taste like canned soup.

Fortunately, cookies rescued the day. Yes, I made cookies. Cookies! Here’s the ANZAC biscuits recipe from Lottie and Doof. If you make it using the cheapest version of the ingredients it’ll come in at even less than the $3.42 I paid to get 21 cookies. That’s just 16¢ per cookie.

After all of that bouillon, those cookies were in competition with the banana for being the best 32¢ I spent that day.

* Oatmeal with Fixins’ means oatmeal with butter, brown sugar and milk.
** I made pasta fagioli using this recipe from Cooking with Amy, but I added carrot and it made approximately 3 ginormous servings. Let me know if you want a spreadsheet of the cost breakdown and I will send it to you.

I woke up at 8am on Saturday and put some time into figuring out my meals for the week. I even made a calendar in Google Apps. But that was a waste of time. I am not a meal-planning lady. I like to choose what I’m going to eat immediately prior to eating it. That is why I like frozen food and buffets. If I liked planning out meals for a week then this blog would be called ‘Plan Meals, Cook, Review’. Obviously, it is not called that. Also, that blog would not be nearly as funny as the real Heat Eat Review.

By 9:45am I still hadn’t eaten. Instead, my husband and I spent 20 minutes madly refreshing Tickemaster’s website to get tickets to see the Pittsburgh Penguins play in San Jose. Hockey is a sport I learned to love in Texas, of all places. (Go Killer Bees!) Shortly after 10am we had a pair of tickets for considerably more than we’d planned to pay. Ugh. Instead of going to see a few hockey games this winter we’ll go to one. It makes me wish for the olden days of 2006 when Capitals tickets were just $5 each when you bought 4. And $5 is still more than I get to spend in an entire day on the Hunger Challenge.

Post hockey tickets I put together a filling brunch (eggs and potatoes!) completely lacking vitamins. Yep, if you take a look at what I ate yesterday, and my foods for today, you might notice that fruits and vegetables are missing. Also missing: alcohol. I stopped by a friend’s birthday party in the afternoon, played for awhile in the bounce house and then felt super-awkward. I couldn’t drink sangria or participate in champagne toasts.

Absurd deprivation is a major problem with the Hunger Challenge. If were actually on food stamps and one of my wealthy friends threw a party do you think I would be going into the bouncy house stone cold sober? No! I’d be drinking sangria with everyone else! And eating delicious birthday party foods like sandwiches cut into alphabet shapes and hom bow. I would not just drink a lot of water have to use the bathroom all the freaking time. Massive water consumption is NOT an good strategy when you’re going to a party that involves a bouncy castle.

Okay, that frustration aside I spent the evening at the Stanford v. San Jose football game, enjoying the fine weather and 2 bean burritos that I brought to the game. The lovely thing about burritos is that they retain heat really well. I ate one while we stood in line to get into the game and the other one was still hot at the end of the 1st quarter. Sure, the processed, canned beans taste slightly tinny, but they are also pre-spiced (Rosarita Spicy Jalapeno Beans!), filling, and an easy meal component.

Thank goodness for beans.

Admit it, you probably don’t know how to make oatmeal in the microwave. No, I’m not talking about that Quaker Instant stuff. I’m talking about straight up old-fashioned oats here. Yes, you can get real oatmeal out of the microwave. Fluffy oatmeal! Oatmeal that people would believe was cooked on a stove top for 30 minutes!

Below are instructions for making an adult (aka large) serving of oatmeal in the microwave. With photos!

1. CHOOSE A BOWL BIG ENOUGH TO HOLD YOUR OATMEAL. Yeah, all caps can seem sort of rude, but if you choose a bowl that is too small (or worse, try to make oatmeal in a coffee mug) you’ll spend the rest of the day cleaning oatmeal out of your microwave. Not fun. Believe me.
2. Measure out 1/2 cup of oatmeal and 1 cup of water.
   
3. Add a pinch of salt
   

4. Stir your oatmeal. Wow, that looks unappetizing.
   
5. Put oatmeal in the microwave and cook for 6 minutes on 50% power.
   I know, it is a pain in the butt. All you want to do is punch in 6 minutes and be done. Unfortunately, the 50% power deal is essential. Not sure how to do it? Here’s how it works on my work microwave:
   1. Push ‘Time Cook’ button.
   2. Enter cooking time.
   3. Push ‘Power’ button.
   4. Enter power level.
   5. Push ‘Start’ button.
6. Take out super-hot bowl of oatmeal and add delicious stuff like brown sugar, butter, cinnamon and vanilla. Shown below: plain oatmeal (did you know that plain oatmeal is just 2 Weight Watchers Points?).
   
7. Stir to cool and consume.

Still not sure what measurements to use? Need to make 2 servings of oatmeal? Here’s a handy chart:

I know, you’re thinking “Wait, Abi. All you’re doing is multiply the 1/2 cup per serving of oatmeal (and 1 cup per serving of water) by the number of servings! This is a lame chart.” And you’re right, it is a sort of lame chart. Except that it saves you from doing multiplication before you’ve had any coffee. So, in that small sense I am somewhat of an oatmeal microwave chart genius.