Variety is the Spice of Life!

A big plate of maize meal all cooked up (aka pap, sadza, or ugali)

 Well, well. It's day 4 and I'm still living off of my maize and

Last year's 90 cent lunch that left me hungry all night:
1/8 can of tuna ($0.23), 1/4 of an avo ($0.25),
25g of stoned wheat thins -- ie 3 crackers ($0.25),
29g plain greek yogurt ($0.17)

oatmeal-based diet. I'm definitely feeling the malaise and inability to concentrate that I felt last year around Day 4.  What's different from last year is the food I'm eating. In 2013 I guess I took the easy way out by simply dividing the costs of foods I felt like eating. I ate a lot less, but at least I had some variety; a reminder of just how lucky I am to have grown up in a middle class family and a multi-cultural city. These last few days I have had plain oatmeal with half a banana for breakfast and plain oatmeal later in the day if I needed a snack. Lunches and dinners have been primarily maize meal (pap), with cooked spinach, cabbage, and onion with or without egg and tomato. I now understand why so many people survive off of pap as a staple. It's cheap and it fills you up, but it's over-processed and under-nourishing.

This year: spinach and cabbage... thrilling!

Dinner Day 1... and lunch Day 2 and 3.

Now at day 4 I am experimenting. Lunch today was oatmeal. I considered putting a fried egg on top for some kinda new invention... but that would mean no egg at dinner. So half a banana it was. I'm going to kick myself for that tomorrow. Tonight for dinner I left out the cabbage and had onion, tomato, and spinach with my pap. I've considered making phuthu with my maize meal to have a nice new texture, but I'm afraid I'll screw it up and then I won't have anything to eat. I completed my new dinner with a one-egg omelette with onion... ahhh the difference, I imagined. But I also imagined the omelette with salt and margarine, and the tomatoes and spinach with garlic and cooking oil. Life without condiments is pretty damn boring. On the plus side, my snack tonight is raw cabbage. Hooray??

Dinner Day 2: The introduction of tomato!!

Getting adventurous with an omelette on Day 4

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