Oatmeal

This week our church is having an event called "Celebration of Hope."  I won't go into details here; you can read about it on our church website.  Part of the event is the Five-Day Food and Water Challenge, in which we'll be eating like the bottom economic half of the world eats.

So the list of food is pretty basic, but I figure I can handle it.  One of the foods is oatmeal.  I never grew up eating oatmeal.  My parents don't eat it, and I don't think it ever made it's way into our house.

I remember trying some, though.

I gagged.  It was like eating dirty paste.  It wasn't the taste so much as the texture.  So I've never been an oatmeal person.

Our Florida friends Del and Bonnie have steel-cut oatmeal every morning for breakfast, so when we stay with them, we eat steel-cut oatmeal.  And it's not bad.  The texture isn't as pastey as regular instant oatmeal, and the taste is nuttier.  The main thing, though, is that Bonnie has all sorts of things to add to it, like walnuts, pecans, almond slivers, crushed pineapples, fresh blueberries, and dried cranberries.

So Pam got all over the steel-cut oatmeal after our first trip to the Bunch's, so we started eating it at home.  We can't afford all the different stuff Bonnie gets, but I'll add the crushed pineapple, also some mandarin orange, and some dried cherries.  The oatmeal, for me at least, just serves as a binder for the good stuff, and I imagine it cleaning out my coronary arteries.

So I figured I could handle the oatmeal part of the food and water challenge.

Then I looked at the list again:

• Plain oatmeal or Cream of Wheat
• A tortilla, rice, and beans
• Rice with bits of fish or chicken, and a vegetable
• Tap water

Plain oatmeal.  No pineapple.  No mandarin oranges.  No cherries.  

No good stuff.  Just binder.

So that's what I had for breakfast.

Plain steel-cut oatmeal.

It sucked.

And I guess that's the point.