Wrap Up

Posted by Brody

Contrary to what my lack of posts suggests, I am still alive. I made it to ten days, and even then still had food left over. That was the oddly annoying part -- I could have gone another day. But why bother? Ten days is a long time to exist on potatoes, onions, and cabbages. I'd proven to myself I could do it, and I'd had ENOUGH.

This is what I had left:














Some pasta, a packet of instant noodles, an onion, 5 potatoes, and some parsley.

I didn't really miss anything in particular; just flavour in general. The whole thing was like watching a very long movie that started out in black and white with a scratchy audio track, and gradually degenerated into a silent, washed-out picture of some damp rocks. The first day of freedom came, and I took the can of Dr. Pepper I'd left in the fridge the previous night to cool, and walked out onto the deck and into the sun. I opened the can, slowly. I stared at it for a while, then took a sip, and sat there taking in the warmth, admiring the city and everything I had, and considered how lucky I was.


The next challenge.

The Awful Truth About Improvised Pasta Meals

Posted by Brody

I'm getting sick of potatoes and onions, so I made pasta (OK... I put it in a pot with water and heated it). I avoided the reality that I had no sauce until I had a pot of cooked pasta lightly seasoned with salt, by which time there was no turning back... I had a pot of pasta, but what to do with only a teaspoon of any condiment? A little creativity was called for -- the solution? A teaspoon of each:
























Definitely a solution, but maybe not the best solution.

Here we have:

1. Wholegrain mustard
2. American mustard
3. Dijon mustard
   
4. Mustard pickle (did I mention I like mustard?)
5. Vegemite
6. Piccalilli
7. Lime pickle
8. Marmalade
9. One jalapeno slice
   
10. Hot chilli sauce
    

Ranked by appeal out of 10:

1. 7/10 -- Marmalade, American mustard, Dijon
2. 6/10 --Piccalilli, plain
3. 5/10 -- Mustard pickle, Vegemite
   
4. 4/10 -- Jalapeno slice
5. 3/10 -- Lime pickle, hot chilli sauce

Pasta doesn't have much of its own flavour, so a lot of this came down to how palatable the condiment was by itself, although these are all favourite ingredients when used for toast, sandwiches, barbecues, etc. But these ingredients mix in different circles, only gathering when forced. The results are mostly awful, so don't try them. I eat weird stuff so you don't have to.

Did I Make It?

My challenge this week was to spend just $20 on food.

Did I achieve it?

I ate $8.64 worth of the $11.71 food that I bought. I still have over a kilogram of rice and half a kilogram of flour left, plus one and a half onions.

Here is the food I ate:

$ 1.99 — Cereal

$ 1.47 — Flour ($0.78 worth left)

$ 1.63 — Rice ($2.06 worth left)

$ 2.00 — Potatoes

$ 1.05 — Spaghetti

$ 0.39 — Apples

$ 0.11 — Onions ($0.23 worth left)

$ 8.64 — Eaten

$11.71—Spent

I could have saved a little by buying less rice and cheaper flour, but it would be a matter of cents rather than dollars.

What I've learned is that I can eat very cheaply with regular ingredients—none of my purchases were discounted—if I am prepared to spend time cooking and searching for good deals in stores.

Another thing I've learned is that serious self-denial is INCREDIBLY frustrating. On the last day of the challenge I walked past dozens of cafes, bars, restaurants, and fast food outlets after eating rice for breakfast and anticipating nothing but rice for lunch. Later I walked through the supermarket without buying anything. It drove home the fact that I spend more on food in a typical day than I have over this last week, and I do it so thoughtlessly. When the decisions became deliberate and came with a real cost, the focus switched to what I couldn't have rather than what I could, and a poverty mentality kicked in.

I began thinking about what I would eat next, and talking about food with others. It had become a non-casual subject. My life pivoted on the acquisition and preparation of food. I would imagine in some regions of the world it is this way every day.

So, did I make it? Well, I finished the week and came in under budget. It was a loooooong week. It threw up new challenges, and detrivialised the spending of money. This may be a lasting change, and a good one.

Day 7: Beaten To Pita

I woke up this morning without cereal, nor did I have apples or potatoes or pasta. I did have an onion and a bag of flour and a bag of rice. But mostly I had a big pot of cold rice.
Actually, half of a big pot of cold rice, because I had some yesterday and then kind of left it there. I put a lid on it—I mean jeez, I'm not an animal. I'm just not very conscientious when it comes to Tupperwaring things.

There is a limit to what can be achieved with flour, rice, and an onion.
After having rice for breakfast, second breakfast, and lunch, I put the bag of rice far, far away from the food preparation area. The onion got just a cursory glance before being dismissed as a viable ingredient. This left a kilogram of plain white flour. This was my material, my canvas, my tabula rasa. I would take this bag of powdered grain and make it extraordinary. Or at least eatable with a fork.

My early work in the medium of flour proved disappointing, except for adhering pieces of paper together. I had learned much, however, in the interim about the mysterious process of embreadishing. The yeast, you see, needs food and it needs comfort. It is alive; it is a living, bubbling thing, and it requires succor.
Yeast eats sugar, and basks warmly in hot water. Yeast should be treated like a corrupt senator in the dying days of Rome, fed delicate sweetness and drizzled with steaming fluids. Just because it is small and brown and granulated does not mean that it cannot know luxury.

There is another side to ancient Rome, and that is the brutal degradation of the Colliseum. I kept my yeasted flour in a dark place, I cut it in two with a knife, and I dumped it in a pot with burning oil. I beat it with a spatula and crushed it with a pot, and after it was spreadeagled and bruised I threw it in the air and did it all over again.

It was delicious.

The End ... is nearer.

Posted by Brody

Tonight I accomplished something great; I finished my last meal of the challenge. A week ago I was getting pangs of fear that I might run out of food -- a strange feeling, one I'd never really had occasion to feel before the challenge. I wasn't too keen on running through a mall wearing the balaclava either, but that was a more rational, less instinctive fear than the fear of starvation. But I weighed up the remaining food, and there's still a bit to spare. Actually there's a lot to spare -- 34% by weight of the original share, so I'm going to try to stretch this crazy stunt out another 3 days, which would sit me on about $2/day for 10 days. It won't be much fun now that Logan is eating normally, but at least my food is OK; Logan's diet over the last week consisted mostly of flour and water arranged in various ways, none appealing. I don't know how long I'd survive on dough.Without the requisite ingredients, flour and water turn into a rubbery ball of glue, so some might say pancakes are a little ambitious... Here are some photos of Logan's attempt to make a pancake by flattening a ball of dough into a frying pan using a saucepan:



















The result: a saucepancake. Bon appetit!

Day 6: Potato Soup

Late last night I took stock and prepared for the home stretch. I had a lot of rice, probably too much flour, about a third of the 4kg potato sack, and one and a half onions.
Of these, the potatoes looked the most promising. I had just bought a chopping set that looked like a pair of oversized garlic presses and was keen to try them out.
I emptied all the potatoes into the sink. About a quarter had squidgy bits that I had to cut out. I had not obeyed potato storage ettiquette, and this was my penance. I then ran them through the choppers with great pleasure and boiled the hell out of them.
My largest pot was almost equal to the task of 1.3kg of chopped potatoes, only boiling over six times. I had sliced half an onion into the mix, so the acrid smoke curling from the stovetop was delicately flavoured, adding a touch of class to my usual routine of food destruction.

After what seemed like half an hour, the potatoes had given up completely. I looked at their limp remains and was struck by a brilliant idea. 1am ideas are like that. I would turn this pot of tatoes into a soup.
I'm not really sure how soups are made, but I do know that they always have about ten things in them. I added chicken stock, oil, salt, pepper, cornflour, garlic salt, and possibly some other things that seemed like a good idea at the time. I swizzled it all together until the water thickened up and changed colour, but hang on, the potatoes were too big for soup. I ran a big knife back and forth until they looked small enough, and ta da! Soup.

In this picture, the soup looks more like slightly diseased mashed potatoes. This is because the World Cup came on and I put the pot to one side while Germany destroyed English hopes of sporting glory.
Two hours later it had dried out really quite a lot in the warm pot and turned into strongly-flavoured potatoes. Still nice, but not strictly soup.


The method looked to be solid. Today I tried exactly the same thing with rice, and to my utter surprise it worked flawlessly. Every other bite has a large strip of onion that makes its presence strongly felt, but otherwise a stand-up effort.

Food eaten today:

25c — last of my oatmeal

44c — potatoes

37c — rice

$1.06 — Total: first time I've gone over a dollar.

Day 5: The Error Of My Ways

I made some seasoned potato wedges today, or at least I did on my second attempt.

My first attempt was going swimmingly until I put paprika on the wedges. This is coming out quite fast, I thought. Oh well, that just makes my job easier. I put the shaker back and caught a glimpse of the label: cinnamon.

If you have never before seen cinnamon wedges in your life, you have now.
Much as I am averse to wasting food, there was no way in holy hell that I was going to eat cinnamon on potato. Into the bin they went.

Breakfast was cereal, lunch was the rest of yesterday's spaghetti, and dinner, apart from the second batch of wedges, was a pile of pancakes.
Now when I say 'pancakes' I mean a combination of flour, water and sugar that is fried in a circular shape. Regular pancakes have milk and eggs, which give them cohesion, flavour, and impart a general fluffiness. I did not have that sort of pancake.

My pancakes were amorphous blobs of sweetened glue whipped into a runny paste and coaxed into a pan. When the bottom had cooked sufficiently to form a thin layer, I held my breath and flipped the frail enterprise.
On two occasions my pancakes came down flawlessly and I clapped my hands in girlish glee. On the third occasion it landed like an economics teacher falling off a skateboard. It formed itself into a sluglike roll, but the malleable nature of the medium was my ally. I slapped it repeatedly with a spatula and squished it with a pot.

Sprinkle with sugar. Serves 1.

Food eaten today:

19c — Oatmeal

42c — Spaghetti

11c — Potatoes

15c — Flour

87c — Total