I'm just so pumped that I don't have to eat a bean ALL DAY!
Breakfast - French toast, syrup, orange juice, milk, tea.
Lunch - Batter bread, margarine, spinach, milk.
Supper - Creamed tuna and peas over rice, garlic toast, ice tea.
Snack - Peanut butter tortillas, milk, tea.
We're running up against two big problems by Day Three. The first is that, with a few exceptions, the food I'm making is not food we would usually eat, and there's a good reason for that: we don't like it. I'm not a huge fan of french toast (eggy bread?) or pancakes, Samuel isn't a big bread eater at all, neither David nor I like beans or lentils especially, and David is missing meat terribly.
On the up side of all that, I think it means we're doing the plan well! This is, after all, an emergency menu. And with the exception of the pancakes on day one (and the orange juice allotment - I have no idea how two cans of juice is supposed to do four people for seven days!) every meal has given us so much food that not only could we easily feed four, but we're swimming in leftovers.
The second problem isn't one of preference, it's one of timing. These recipes take a lot of time. To make the refried beans from scratch would have taken me hours, which is why I used our leftovers from a previous night. I'm making bread every two days, where usually I can make it every four or five. Breakfast is taking 45 minutes to prepare from beginning to end, lunch over an hour and supper is being started the night before. I'm not used to cooking this way, nor do I particularly wish to become used to cooking this way.
Anyway, the french toast wasn't eaten by Samuel because 1) it was bread, and 2) it took so long to make it all that he ate before he ate, which ruined his appetite.
So, here we are at lunch again...spinach and something made out of cornmeal. Well, that's what Samuel and I will be having - David is on day three of eating the lentil and vegetable soup I made. It's almost done now! When he left this morning it was with a slightly forced smile, and he commented last night on how creamed fish didn't sound that bad for supper today, so I'd say he's holding up with his usual day three resilience to my crazy food schemes.
The batter bread recipe was difficult to understand for someone who has barely worked with cornmeal before. It said the meal would absorb the water, which to me means a paste is going to be the end result. But the cornmeal just sort of vaguely thickened the liquid - so I popped it back in the microwave for 30 seconds to thicken it up, and that seemed to work. The final product (which I cooked in a cast iron frying pan) was really very odd. The bread seemed to separate, leaving heavy cornmeal at the bottom, and a sort of salty custard on top. It was sort of like eating glue topped with mucus. Don't laugh, I have a whole pan of this stuff to eat. And let me tell you, it would have to be one heck of an emergency for me to make that again.
I didn't even try to give it to Sam, he had his share of the french toast, reheated. And I ate the last of the lentil soup.
And then...things just sort of fell apart for supper. I'd forgotten about the garlic toast, and had used the last of the bread for french toast this morning (though, with french toast for breakfast, cornbread for lunch, tortillas for snacks and rice for supper, did we really need another carb?) leaving me with no way of making garlic toast for supper. Since both of us had eaten leftovers for lunch, I forgot about the spinach (that we were supposed to eat earlier today) slowly puddling its merry way across my counters, and decided to make that with the creamed tuna. Which by the way was actually salmon, since that was on sale. Which made me forget about the peas! We sat down to rice, with creamed salmon (no peas!) and spinach.
It was pretty good, actually. I could see it working well on toast. Or biscuits. Or maybe mashed potatos.
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