day two.

I really don't like oatmeal.

I have never had completely plain oatmeal, before. it's rough. so rough, in fact, I couldn't finish my double serving. I put it in the fridge to save for later. I went to bed feeling somewhat defeated, but strangely full.

I woke up this morning with a strong memory of completely plain oatmeal, and decided I had to have something with flavor. I went for the emergency food supply, the Beef Top Ramen. I carefully measured it out, careful to be sure each noodle fell in the bowl. I boiled the water, and stirred in the seasoning. As I began to eat, I realized how strong the seasoning is, and made a mental note to start saving some of the seasoning for use in the rice and peas preparation. This made me very thankful, as I had no money to purchase any sort of spice or flavoring independently.

You might think it's weird to eat ramen for breakfast, and you'd be right. Unfortunately, these were my options:

rice/peas: not yet cooked
sandwich: conserving for meals at school
oatmeal: blech.
pancakes: YES! well, here's the thing....

When shopping for pancake mix, I realized I couldn't afford to buy oil or eggs. This is not an issue, as there is affordably priced pancake mix that (apparently) has those things premixed. What I didn't remember is that I'd need a way to grease the pan each use.

Oh, no. I quickly remembered how many calories of pancake mix I had. 3360. That's $2.19. I can't let that go to waste. I assured myself I could cook the pancakes scrambled eggs style, constantly scraping the pan. I knew I only had $2.48 left, and after checking online, butter was that much, is not more. Scrambled egg style pancakes it would have to be, and I didn't want to hassle with that this morning... so top ramen was selected.

I made my PB&J sandwich, careful to use exactly 2 tbsp peanut butter, 1 tbsp jelly, and lick the utensils after use. If I didn't, I could lose 10-20% of my peanut butter or jelly each sandwich.

I went to Publix to pick up some toiletries that were thankfully not part of this experiment, and hopped on the scale.

171 lbs. In 24 hours, I'd lost 3 pounds.

this. is. not. good.

More on the medical stuff tomorrow. I wandered off in search of things to keep me smelling fresh, and then remembered the pancake situation. I went to the dairy aisle, and found something that was beautiful beyond words.

only seventy-nine cents. $0.79. I could buy this and have $1.69 left! YES! More than that, it has 2835 calories per dollar, second only to flour.

Awesome. Unfortunately it has no nutritional value outside of fat and calories, but I can cook with it, and it opens up new worlds for bread, rice, and oatmeal. This find was a gamechanger.




The rest of the day went well. That's my dinner at the right, which you'd probably think is low in protein, but today I ate 45g. (the FDA recommends 50g or more per day for ages 4 and up)


2 pancakes - 420 calories, 12g protein
3 pieces of bread - 240 calories, 9g protein
1 peanut butter and jelly sandwich - 410 calories, 14g protein
1 pkg ramen - 380 calories, 10g protein
3 tbsp spread - 210 calories, 0g protein
total: 1660 calories, 45g protein