I survived! I made it through five days of really dull
food and came out the other side. I stared into the unblinking eye of blandness
and held my ground without blinking myself. (Metaphorically, of course. I
actually blinked quite a lot during the week.
When somebody invents the Slink Blink challenge to not blink for a week,
I will definitely accept the opportunity to sleep for five days).
It was a little touch and go, though. Last night I was
again extremely hungry when I went to bed, which noticeably affected how long
it took me to get to sleep. The clock definitely ticked past midnight before I
drifted off, and I did consider using the “Technically it’s Saturday” loophole
to order approximately all the food in the world. But somehow that didn’t feel
quite right – going to sleep hungry on the Friday night seemed to me like part
of the challenge, and so I managed to hold off.
But this morning, nothing would hold me back from
enjoying my first meal of freedom! What should I choose? What exciting dish
would break my fast?
Oh yeah, I’ve already agreed it’d be porridge. Bummer.
I really do genuinely want to like porridge (as I think I’ve
mentioned before). The problem is that at the moment I really don’t (as I know
I’ve mentioned before). So I was really hoping that, by making this porridge in
the best possible way, I would have discovered that over the course of the past
week I’ve learned to love the meal I was stuck with, like we were the two main
characters in a Richard Curtis romcom.
Alas, it was not to be.
 |
| Excuse me, waiter? Somebody seems to have put colour in my food. Isn't all food supposed to be vaguely off-white? |
I did pretty much everything I was supposed to. I made it with milk instead of water. I added a liberal amount of honey. I even put in some berries I had in the freezer before I microwaved it to give it additional depth.
And sadly, porridge is still just uninteresting sludge. I’m
sorry to be the bearer of bad news for those who love it, but it just isn’t a
good food. The only difference between the porridge of today and the porridge
of the previous week is that today’s porridge was sweeter, slightly creamier
sludge. Which admittedly was better, but only in the sense that when somebody
is repeatedly sledgehammering your face, when they switch to hitting your leg
instead it’s a refreshing change of pace.
Sadly, then, this may be my last porridge-based meal for
a long time. On a related note if anybody would like to give a good home to a
well-endured, half-consumed bag of porridge oats, you are more than welcome to
begin the adoption process. (I’ve never given away porridge before, so I assume
the process is like giving away children).
So my first post-Mean Bean meal wasn’t especially
exciting. But that’s OK – I have meals planned for the rest of the day that
should be a step up.
On Thursday evening (and this is an indication of what
the challenge does to you), I found myself surreptitiously perusing a Buzzfeed
article of meat-free dinners, to prepare myself for today. I ended up deciding
that I really wanted to eat at least half of them immediately, and I expect
that over the coming weeks I’ll make all of them at one point or other. But I
have in particular picked two out to make for lunch and dinner, and my plan for
this morning is to pick up the ingredients (my fridge currently resembles
Winnie-the-Pooh in that it’s a little bare) and then slavishly wait for lunch
to come around.
One slight challenge for today is to not overdo the
eating. Having dramatically cut my food intake for the past few days, I suspect
it’ll take a couple of days to get back to my usual level of consumption, and already
I can tell that my body isn’t completely sure what to do with the porridge I’ve
just eaten. I have a strange sensation of simultaneously feeling quite full and
very hungry, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible before. So let’s see how
that develops over the rest of the day.
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