Day 2 Living Below The LIne

Well, this morning I had to cook my rice and lentils for the day, since Sunday I cooked five days of beans and Monday's rice and lentils. Lesson learned: you will wake up hungry and not want to be cooking before you can eat! I cooked the lentils and rice together (started the lentils with all of the water, and added the rice six or seven minutes later, with 2 sliced cloves of garlic), then stirred it in with a day's worth of beans (1/2 cup!), then divided the mixture into three bowls, one each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

My day was a bit chaotic, so I needed to pace my meals. I had to run over to a friend's for a while first thing, so I ate about a third of the bean/rice/lentil mix before I left, and had the rest of it with one fried egg at about 10:00 am. I then spent the rest of the day until 3:00 doing some gardening, and stopped for my second bowl of beans/rice/lentils around 12:30, but saved the kiwi for later. I had the third bowl at about 4:30, because I promised to go to a reception at 5:30 where food would be served and wanted to be as full as possible. Just drank water at the reception, and came home at about 8:30 and had the kiwi and cooked up the broccoli.

Right now it's about 10:15 pm and I'm hungry, but doing okay. I am cooking the rice and lentils for the rest of the week as I type, so that I don't get caught hungry in the morning again with no food ready to eat. I'll add it to the beans again, and separate it into three parts for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then each morning separate that day's food into three.

I've discovered that I like the whole mixture together, and don't mind that it's the same all three meals of the day. Having beans and rice separate from lentils and rice didn't feel like I was getting interesting variety, and mixing it together is easier and perfectly tasty. We'll see if I still agree by Friday!

I've learned from tips from friends. Thanks, everyone who's suggested ideas. So, one meal a day, at lunch, I'm adding extra water when I reheat the food, and it's a bit like having a large bowl of soup. And a nutritionist friend (thanks, Jan Schiappa!) asked if I was sure to be outside at least fifteen minutes a day for my free vitamin D, since there's no money in the budget for supplements. I haven't been very successful foraging, since I finally found some dandelion leaves in my prairie plants, but left them outside all day and they looked too limp and icky to eat. And I keep forgetting to cut some chives and add them to the rice. I don't know if I'm too hungry and therefore forgetful, or not hungry enough yet to remember every scrap of potential food!