Wednesday evening – Hit Pea With Your Rhythm Chick

(Yep, it’s already getting to that point in the blog where the titles start to become real stretches)

Perhaps it’s Stockholm Syndrome kicking in, or perhaps all my taste buds have died and I’ve grown a new set which are simply “buds”, but lunch was actually a fairly decent meal. Having realised that the beans I’d bought earlier in the week weren’t going to be enough to last me the whole week (curse 300g tins of beans for being essentially a meal-and-a-half’s worth of food!), I raided the cupboard and discovered some black beans I’d forgotten about. I quite like black beans, so this seemed like a good idea, and actually as a combination it almost worked.

The rice was as usual inoffensive, and the black beans seemed to have enough of a taste to them that I actually almost enjoyed myself for a moment.

When it came to dinner, though, I decided to go all out. Since Wednesday is the middle day, I figured it was worth trying to construct a medley of all three ingredients to see how that went.

Chickpea Bake with Oat Reduction and a Rice Crust

1)      Remember the debacle of yesterday’s falafels and turn the oven on now.

2)      Microwave and mash the chickpeas.

I forgot to take a picture of this, so here's the one from yesterday. I don't mean to sound racist but I think all mashed chickpeas look the same.

3)      Microwave the porridge, briefly attempt to mash this before realising that mashing makes no difference, like cutting the head off a hydra or flossing.

4)      Clarify that actually flossing is pretty great.

5)      Also clarify that hydras aren’t.

6)      Mix the chickpeas and porridge together to make a chickpea-porridge hybrid that one could almost use to make falafel. Add mixture to a glass dish.

Displayed like this, it would make flat-lafel instead.

7)      Cook some rice, drain it, and don’t mash it.

8)      Put the rice on top of the dish..

This may look like just a bowl of rice, but trust me - under the top layer of boredom lies a whole new tier of monotony.

9)     Put the dish into the oven, leave it to go and write this part of the blog post, and hope that when you come back you’ll have produced something vaguely edible.

I ended up cooking the above for about twenty minutes, hoping that the top might start going a golden brown and make it look a bit more like a proper meal. Instead the rice just went crispy, which was perhaps to be expected.

I took two photos of this at various stages, and both are exceptionally blurry. I must have been shaking in anticipation at such an exciting dinner.

Again, the food actually tasted relatively decent, all things considered. The oats made the chickpeas go further without sacrificing much in the way of taste or texture (not that either sacrifice would have been especially substantial), and the fact that the rice was slightly baked meant that there was a sufficient range of textures for the food to almost be interesting. Not genuinely interesting, but if somebody came up to you at a party and started talking about something with that level of interesting, and you knew they’d have to go away in a few minutes, you’d be able to sit and nod politely through the conversation and perhaps throw in the odd sensible remark. You would almost certainly spend the rest of the evening casually trying to stay on the opposite side of the room to them so that they don’t actually try and continue telling you about it, but you wouldn’t feel like you had to resort to jumping out the window if you actually made eye contact with them.

Quantity-wise, this recipe actually made quite a bit of food (comparatively speaking), so I opted to only eat half and save the other half for lunch tomorrow.

Which brings me onto a serious note that has increasingly become obvious to me throughout this week – namely that there are so many ways in which I am so much more fortunate than those whose diet I’m emulating. Despite being limited to so few ingredients, I in practice have as much of each of them as I like to eat, so there’s no serious danger of me going hungry. I have access to as much clean water as I want to stay hydrated and to cook with. I have a selection of beans so that I can make each meal different.

And perhaps most significantly of all, I know that this is only for a few days. On Saturday I get to delve back into my cupboards and gorge on whatever I can find in there, and if I want pretty much any food, I can go to one of the many nearby supermarkets and buy it. People who actually have to live like this day to day are not so fortunate, and indeed are only one bad harvest away from having no food to eat at all.

Later in the week I’ll be writing a full serious post about how I’ve found this experience, as my first dalliance with what can often be deemed “poverty tourism”.

In the John Craving’s Newsround corner, bizarrely as I’ve started to enjoy the food a little bit more I’ve not really found myself with too many cravings. Note that I said “enjoy… a little bit more”, in the same way that if I stand on a chair during the day I’m technically a little bit closer to the sun – I still wouldn’t say I’m enjoying the food. But I have managed to stave off craving much in the way of food so far, and certainly the anticipated cheese withdrawal symptoms have yet to hit. Stay tuned tomorrow, though – I have a plan for testing how my food cravings are going.

 Note: As part of my Mean Bean challenge I will be writing about my experiences each day – the more money raised, the more I write. At the time of writing, people have generously donated £320, which means I’m aiming at 1,800 words per day (excluding the ones in this explanatory paragraph). This will hopefully come in two posts, one in the morning and one in the evening. If you would like these posts to get even longer, and support the excellent work of Tearfund at the same time, please click here.