Jared Irmas is a writer and activist, and may soon be an attorney if he passes the California Bar. Upon graduating from New York University, Jared worked as an investigative reporter in New York City, writing for publications such as The Village Voice. Returning to his hometown of Los Angeles in 2008, Jared joined the administration of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, where he eventually served as speechwriter, working closely with Mayor Villaraigosa during Los Angeles's budget crisis and its transition to a new Chief of Police. Jared also spent time as a community organizer in the Mississippi Delta, working with hundreds of public housing residents who were being threatened with eviction, and helped start a legal clinic for Iraqi refugees at USC Law School, where he will graduate with a J.D. in May 2013.
I am just wrapping up my last year of law school, and then must devote my time to preparing for the California Bar Exam in July.
In August, I plan on returning to this blog and the food justice movement. I have plans for a project that I look forward to sharing with you all. Until then….
- J
Eight pounds in two weeks. Some people would kill to lose eight pounds in two weeks. Diet books could be sold off that promise. But for me, at 6’2” and an already skinny 170ish pounds, I’m getting a little scared looking at the scale these days. I’m starting to get comments from people about how skinny I look. I’m finding it a little harder to keep my energy up throughout the day.
At my last weigh-in this morning, I’m clocking 162 pounds. I don’t want to wait another week to find I’m in the 150’s. I need to take care of myself. I need to stop my #SNAPchallenge.
I am really sad to be stopping. Sad not just because my own sense of pride has been wounded by having to quit, but also sad for so many Americans out there who don’t have the option to just quit being poor.
I have managed to make this blog fun by infusing it with film and pop culture references, but the unspoken truth has remained lurking in the background – eating on a very limited budget is such a profoundly stressful situation. If the diet doesn’t take a toll on your body, the stress will.
As a converted and now dedicated food justice advocate, I will continue to share my thoughts and experiences on this blog. So please keep reading, even if the novelty of the #SNAPchallenge must disappear for the time being while I get my health back.
A NOTE TO NEW READERS: Not quite sure what’s going on? Click here. And then explore the rest of my blog here.
As last week came to a close, it became apparent that I’d need to reload on food. So on Friday, I walked (yes, I love my walking) to my nearby Trader Joe’s and stocked up on the following - totaling $43.30:
GROCERIES
Here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve managed to make out this latest batch:
Lunch: Spinach salad w/ carrots, peppers, cucumber, cheese, avocado, hummus and sunflower seeds; half Kati pouch; cup of Carrot Ginger soup
Dinner: Chickpeas, green beans and tofu in Thai sauce over brown rice
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY:
As you can see above, my dinner on Tuesday night cannot be so easily summarized. I was at another campaign event for Matt Szabo for City Council, and despite the orange I had right beforehand, the event soon eclipsed 9:30pm and my blood sugar started to run low. I couldn’t help but snack on some nearby almonds and breaded tofu (it was an event for the animal rights community, and that tofu was delicious). So yes, I cheated again, but I hope you forgive my trespass. After all, it’s not like I’m lining up at the Sizzler all-you-can-eat buffet…
THE COUNT: 21 days, $46.64 remaining
Food stamps and other limited budgets have an isolating effect. I learned that firsthand last time around when I embarked on my week-long #SNAPchallenge not too long ago. With most restaurants (save for fast food) unaffordable on a limited budget, a food stamp recipient has little choice but to subsist on only what he or she can afford to put in their refrigerator and nothing else.
What does that do to a family who want to socialize their kids by taking them out to a restaurant? What does that do to a single working man or woman who wants to go out and meet somebody to share their life with?
Last time around, I used an example from HBO’s The Wire to illustrate my point about the stigmatizing effect this isolation has, especially on kids. This time around, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that isolating effect reading the New York Times today, which reported on what has happened to low-income Americans after the expiration of the two-year payroll tax holiday.
For those unfamiliar, President Obama and Congress enacted a payroll tax holiday in 2011, meaning that employees would not see their paychecks deducted for social security contributions. The relief totaled little more than about $60 per month – nothing extravagant, but just a little something to help them out during these tough times. It was a program designed specifically to help the working poor, and it worked.
But the tax holiday expired at the end of this year, with little debate, and it won’t be coming back anytime soon. That extra cash is now going back to the government, and out of the pockets of those who’ve come to rely on it for the past two years.
What effect is this having on low-income Americans? You guessed it. It’s keeping them home alone. Take for instance ceramics manufacturer Jack Andrews:
He earns a bit more than $40,000 a year manufacturing ceramics in a local factory, but because his wife, Cindy, is disabled, he is the sole breadwinner. Something had to give now that he is earning about $800 less a year, or $66 a month, and it was the couple’s monthly night out.
That’s right. No more nights out for the Andrews couple. They can only afford to eat what they cook themselves. No excursion from their front door into the city for them. No taking in the bright lights of the commercial areas. No basking in the warmth of a roomful of other couples and families. No being waited on and getting to forget about the dishes for just one night. They have to stay home now. Alone.
Is this a “first world problem?” You bet. The Andrews aren’t starving, as so many millions around the globe must endure every day. Just watch this video to get a little contrast:
As clever as this ad campaign is, though, these so-called “problems” – about wireless internet, maids, and cold water – don’t seem to be as serious as what the Andrews and so many families like them are facing. When low-income Americans are barricaded in their homes because they can’t afford to go out, the public space that we all share becomes homogenized. We lose our diversity. We lose the critical exchange of ideas from all walks of life. We lose our sense of community.
And yet again, upon reading this newspaper article, I see so clearly why it is I’ve decided to embark on this project of artificially restricting my food budget in the first place. It’s because people who haven’t taken the time to really reflect on the experiences of others not like themselves end up rising to power and making grossly insensitive statements like the one below, a choice quote from outgoing U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner:
“I don’t see any reason to consider supporting its [the tax break’s] extension,” said Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, in testimony last year.
It’s that same narrow-minded attitude that allowed Social Security to be structured in a regressive way in the first place, capping taxable salary at $113,700. That means for every dollar a wealthy American makes over that amount, not one penny goes back to the government for Social Security. Which means the system is underfunded, and rather than broaden the scope of the tax, we place the burden on the working poor by dangling a tax rebate in front of them and then yanking it away when it becomes politically expedient.
A NOTE TO NEW READERS: Not quite sure what’s going on? Click here. And then explore the rest of my blog here.
Even in a food lockdown like the #SNAPchallenge, I still manage to find those simple pleasures in life. Like the mobsters in Goodfellas sent to the joint for racketeering, I manage to make do on what I can sneak into my limited budget. I may not be able to afford a lobster or salami, but one item in particular is fast becoming a reliable, savory treat – string cheese.
Truth be told, I probably haven’t eaten string cheese since the 4th grade. But if you think about it, string cheese really is the perfect food. It’s got your salt. It’s got your protein. It’s got a great texture. You can put in your pocket. You can put it in your sock. You can put it behind your ear like a cheesy cigar!
But best of all, it’s an interactive food. You get to tear it apart. For me, I like those strings that come off clean and even. But they’re hard to come by. You’ve gotta be slow and deliberate in your pull. Too fast, and it’s gonna come off mid-cheese. You want to peel it down all the way from top to bottom.
The one downside about string cheese is that it doesn’t melt. I decided to buy a 12-pack of string cheese, amounting to 12 oz., rather than spend the same amount of money on a 10 oz. bag of mozzarella. True, I get a tad more cheese for my buck, but it makes for an awkward toaster oven pizza and an inconsistent addition to my eggs. There’s a reason why it’s stringy – it’s low moisture.
But I’ve managed to scarf down eight string cheeses in four days. Round that out with the rest of my meals over the past two days, and I’ve been eating pretty well.
I did make some additional purchases. Two Trader Joe’s prepackaged sandwiches (a lentil and a falafel – each $3.99 – a little pricey in retrospect, but I was on the go and needed something prepackaged), and an organic orange (79 cents – it was ten cents extra, and I just thought, what the hell…). That’s another $8.77, leaving me with –
THE COUNT: 27 days, $89.94 remaining ($3.33/day)
DAY 3 EATS
DAY 4 EATS
Walking in LA is like swimming laps in the kiddie pool. It’s not safe, there’s no point, and there’s urine everywhere.
But for some reason, I decided to venture out into Hollywood on Sunday night, during the Super Bowl, sans wheels. Well, I decided to walk mostly because my building doesn’t have its own parking, and I didn’t want to lose my space by driving a mile across town. There have been nights where I have circled the block for nearly 30 minutes looking for an open space amongst a jam-packed Franklin Avenue and 101 Freeway overhead, filled with too many cars and not enough parking for all of them.
I was in Brooklyn for last year’s Super Bowl, and I remember being overwhelmed with the constant bustle of community activity at every corner. Zig-zagging across New York’s outer borough with intuition as my only compass – turning left, turning right, staying straight with little concern for direction. Because wherever I found myself at a particular moment, it was the right place. It was Brooklyn. A community. Every apartment building was glowing in the blue light of televisions, soaked in the revelry of cheering, interspersed with bars, restaurants, and pizza parlors with fragrant aromas emanating from their doorsteps. “Aaaaah…” I thought to myself. “This is a city.”
Fast forward to a year later. I’m walking underneath the 101 Freeway, with little but the Department of Water and Power building in sight. Sprinklers spray at non-existent foliage on the side of the onramp. Napsacks left behind under the bridge, no doubt the earthly belongings of homeless men who have located prime real estate among the ruins of backwoods Los Angeles, only two blocks (very long blocks) distance from trendy Hollywood Boulevard, where littered Popeye’s wrappers sit atop the sidewalk stars emblazoned with names such as Harrison Ford – who would just as soon be found in this tourist trap as Indiana Jones at a snake farm:
The entire walk takes me about twenty minutes, but there are large gaps of 3-5 minutes where the silence is deafening. One lonely apartment building is alight with residents, and the commotion of their post-Bowl party can be heard only faintly from the eighth floor. Several times I have to cross the street because one or another side of the sidewalk is closed. Walk signals last only briefly, if they ever light up at all. “Aaaah,” I think to myself. “When’s the next flight to Brooklyn?”
As my colleague on the Matt Szabo for City Council campaign, Brigham Yen, remarked on his LA transit blog “Streetcar Down Sunset,” LA is composed primarily of “linear model villages.” As Brigham writes:
In LA, you have commercial streets lined with pockets of relevant businesses, such as restaurants and shops, flanked by large swaths of residential neighborhoods on each side of the commercial street. This linear model is inherently less walkable than a commercial grid model, with multiple layers of streets that create“synergistic feedback,” which then allows pedestrians to truly enjoy a dynamic urban experience.
“Synergestic feedback” is the ability to zig-zag intuitively across the city blocks, like in Brooklyn. As opposed to LA, where square blocks are islands unto themselves, stretching towards the horizon with no pathways in site.
In LA, it’s too easy to barricade yourself in your car and go on autopilot towards your next destination. I’ve recently gotten into the habit of driving with my windows down and turning off the radio. It forces me to take note of my city and start looking at it with more critical eyes. It gets me acquainted with LA in a way that walking connects people to New York. I see the city for all its flaws, and also, for all its potential. It’s not as intimate as walking, but until we remap our streets to make them more pedestrian-friendly, rolling down your windows is as good a place as any to start getting to know LA.
A NOTE TO NEW READERS: Not quite sure what’s going on? Click here. And then explore the rest of my blog here.
Yes, it’s true. I cheated. Sadly, I think I exhausted all my willpower at Sunday’s Super Bowl party.
The day seemed to be going so well – with carefully prepared meals and mindfully measured portions sustaining me all throughout the day – until I got a last-minute phone call from LA City Council candidate Matt Szabo, who needed me to accompany him to a Democratic Party debate in Echo Park. With little warning, I threw together a TJ’s frozen tortellini with some frozen kale for good measure, and chowed down before taking off for Echo Park.
A little context: I have now been to about six of these debates in less than two weeks. I cherish the democratic process. I revel in the exchange of ideas. But I already know who I’m supporting in this race, and because of that, I’m finding myself a little distracted at the debates these days.
Coincidentally, the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action were nice enough to supply free pizza and pastries to the debate crowd, and as the minutes turned into hours, I found myself more and more tempted to wander over to the snack table. At first I thought half-a-slice of pizza would satisfy my hunger, but the layers of processed cheese just piqued my appetite more, and got me wandering over to the cookie plate about ten minutes later.
I’m beginning to wonder: how much of what we eat is to fuel our body and get our proper nutrients, and how much do we eat simply out of sheer boredom?
Rarely do you find yourself eating carrots and celery out of boredom. Boredom eating demands instant gratification – fast food, processed sweets, salty and savory snacks. But the thing about boredom eating is that it’s there to cure your boredom, not to quell your appetite. There really is no end in sight to the trail of Hostess wrappers you can leave in your wake, in this Sisyphean task of conquering boredom through mastication. Pringles knows what they’re talking about when they say: “Once you pop, you just can’t stop.”
So I popped. I couldn’t stop. It was a worthless endeavor, lacking any nutritional value, and yet I couldn’t help myself.
Which is why I was so surprised to find this article headlining the New York Times website tonight, the story of an obese gourmet chef who reveled in junk food and was diagnosed by a New York psychologist as a “finisher” – as in he has to finish every gargantuan pizza, box of donuts, and bag of chips put in front of him.
I myself have grappled with this problem, as “finishers” run in my family. Here’s what the New York psychologist had to say to his client:
“I told him to get off the food-stamp diet,” Dr. Gullo said. “If he wants to go down the tubes, he should behave like Evita, and at least go out in style with his own gourmet food. Not with Buffalo wings and the pizza pie.”
Well unfortunately not everybody on a “food-stamp diet” can afford to behave like Evita, with the shrimp and vegetables and Greek yogurt that this doctor recommends. And not all of us can sing like Evita either:
But the fact remains that there is a part of our appetite, maybe unnecessary, that demands its own type of sustenance on its own schedule – regardless of whether we’ve had our fill of healthy food to eat for the day. It’s not supernatural, not beyond our control, but it’s a tough habit to break.
We here in America love our boredom eating (and drinking). If it wasn’t for boredom eating, the Super Bowl would just have car commercials to broadcast between plays. Oreo’s, Dorritos, Pop Tarts, Hot Pockets – not exactly the stuff of contemplative, intimate meals. Most of what we find in the supermarket should be relegated to one aisle that just reads “Things to Eat When You’re Bored.”
So on on this second day of my #SNAPchallenge, I’m honest enough to admit that I still feel the need to pop. And once I pop, I just can’t stop.
THE DAY’S EATS
THE COUNT
29 days, $98.71 remaining
What is it about a fridge-full of fresh groceries that gets the stomach rumbling? That’s the question I asked myself around midnight last night, when my #SNAPchallenge officially began and my appetite quickly restarted, despite a large last meal of homemade Thai noodle soup (thanks, mom) that I had consumed only three hours earlier.
Yet thoughts of all the fresh, wholesome Trader Joe’s goodies stored up in my refrigerator refused to leave my mind, and by 1:00AM, after a futile attempt to fall asleep, I caved in and launched my #SNAPchallenge with an inaugural midnight snack – string cheese, and a toasted Trader Joe’s spinach pizza bread.
For those who haven’t tried the Spicy Spinach Pizzas, they are probably the best item that TJ’s has to offer. They are small flatbreads – no cheese – with onion and spinach, and they are soft, gooey pizza dough-y goodness. They come in a pack of six for $3.99 – about 66 cents a pizza. They’re great with melted cheese or a dollop of hummus (my preferred condiment last night).
It hit the spot. Despite it’s humble size, I couldn’t help but strut a little bit, Tony Manero-style, as I chowed down on TJ’s finest.
Because of my midnight snacking, I woke up feeling less than the usual hungry. So for breakfast I kept it simple – a granola bar, before walking over to Hollywood’s 101 Coffee Shop to meet a friend for breakfast.
You may remember last time around that I found my social life seriously compromised by the food stamp budget, which essentially prohibits you from eating out at any restaurant nicer than a McDonald’s. This time around, I’ve given myself a small loophole: I’m allowed to meet friends for coffee/tea and drinks – but no food. Given that I rarely drink booze or coffee these days, it looks like tea is the social commodity of this next month. Even if it means having to stare across the table at my friend’s fried egg sandwich.
On returning home, I had a quick snack of sunflower seeds and half an apple. About an hour later, I fixed my first lunch, a combination of a Trader Joe’s frozen pesto pasta, and some frozen kale.
After lunch, I drove over to Silver Lake for the Democrats for Neighborhood Action endorsement meeting, where my candidate for City Council Matt Szabo spoke to voters. It was a great event and a great chance for Matt to share his vision for a real public transportation system in Los Angeles.
I had the foresight to pack a string cheese and the remaining half of my apple, and ate that in the car on my way to a Super Bowl party some law school friends were hosting. Despite the plethora of chips, dips, and bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers, my own cravings were nothing compared to the intense craving for a touchdown that my 9er friends were agonizing over. As to my eating and their team – maybe next year.
For dinner, I fixed a salad and microwaved a Kati Pouch (like an Indian hot pocket).
THE DAY’S EATS
THE COUNT: 30 days, $98.71 remaining
A NOTE TO NEW READERS: Not quite sure what’s going on? Click here. And then explore the rest of my blog here.
Rarely is the sequel better than the original. But in this case, I’m digging the opening scene.
You may remember from my last #SNAPchallenge that my grocery budget was $33.94. As a result, this was all I could afford to eat that week:
Not exactly a farmer’s market. And yet, I managed to survive. But I cannot say I enjoyed my meals. I got tired of the same canned goods, the same generic peanut butter, the complete lack of variety in flavor. So why would I choose to subject myself to this experiment again – this time for a month?
Well believe it or not, a month-long food stamp budget may prove easier than a week-long. Let me explain –
The average food stamp allocation for an individual in California is $149.05/month. A SNAP recipient receives that money all in one lump sum for the month. So as opposed to last time, where I scaled down my budget proportionately to $33.94 for the entire week, here I get $149.05 to shop with for the entire month.
A little more leeway in funds allows me to buy some more expensive items that I need for the entire month (i.e. olive oil, cheese), but that otherwise would break the bank if I was on a week-long budget. So with that freedom I ventured out to my neighborhood Trader Joe’s.
My choice in grocery store may surprise you. But the fact is that Trader Joe’s takes food stamps. And because my goal is to purchase a variety of different, flavorful foods that I can buy cheap and prepare quickly, Trader Joe’s frozen and prepackaged sections made it the perfect choice. It’s a monumental oversight that Trader Joe’s doesn’t open more stores in poor neighborhoods. But trust me. As the Joker would say, “It’s all part of the plan.”
With that disclaimer out of the way, feast your eyes on my bounty for the next seven to ten days. Compare it with the picture above, and you’ll see why I chose Trader Joe’s instead of going back to Ralph’s.
FRUITS/VEGGIES
* I forgot to include the red pepper I bought for salads.
WHOLESOME EATS
THE ESSENTIALS
Here is my grocery list:
THE COUNT: 31 days/$91.87 remaining
It was more than six weeks ago now that I posted my last blog post on Ooooh SNAP!. Where have I been, you ask? Well, after a very long week, I hopped into my DeLorean time machine, hit 88 MPH, and traveled back to the future to the year 2013, where I find you now on this chilly Los Angeles winter’s day.
I needed a vacation. I had just finished my law school final exams, started this new blog here, and of course, had just completed the #SNAPchallenge, a one-week experiment in compassion that has brought us here today.
As I explained in my inaugural post last month, Newark’s Mayor Cory Booker issued a nationwide challenge to those who enjoy the bounty of the American breadbasket, to try – for just a week – to step into the shoes of those less fortunate and see for yourself how hard it is to live on a food stamp budget of less than $5/day.
I took Mayor Booker up on his challenge, for which he was kind enough to call me with encouraging words. It was an exercise in humility and gratitude, and by the end of it, I felt radically motivated to do something about our failed public policies on poverty.
Food stamps are a government subsidy that protect people from starving when they find themselves down on their luck – whether by losing their job, their house, or getting hit with an unaffordable medical bill. It’s supposed to be a temporary program to get people back on their feet, but with the massive job crisis that has plagued the United States over the last five years, we now see a record 44 million of our American citizens on the program. Five dollars a day is all they get (if they’re lucky…), and the message we send them by not talking about this phenomenon openly and publicly is: “You’re on your own.”
As a result, what we find is that people on food stamps are stigmatized – both through irresponsible national discourse on the subject, and by a lack of education about how to make the best of your food on five dollars a day.
The key word here is stigma. It is not new. We’ve seen it in the eighties with HIV/AIDS, when those in national office and those at the FDA refused to talk about the disease, refused to take it seriously, and refused to educate people about prevention and science. We’ve seen it for the last forty years when it comes to drug use, which, without a proper public discussion, has been confined to a black market and treated as criminal – rather than as a public health issue. And, in more recent times, we’ve seen it with women’s rights, by those who wish to shame and stigmatize women who would choose to make their own decisions about their reproductive health, and who have tried to stifle meaningful discussion and education in schools and around the world about safe sex and family planning.
But I’m not here to talk about those issues (not just yet, anyway). I’m here to talk about food. I’m here to talk about how we can make food security part of a healthy, vibrant discussion in America, and use the power of our resources to educate people on how to eat healthy, warm, flavorful meals on the cheap, without the sense that they’ve done something wrong to deserve them being on government assistance.
So let’s pick up where we left off. For the next 31 days – beginning on Sunday, February 3 – I will return to the #SNAPchallenge, limiting the totality of my food budget to $149.05 for the entire month. That’s just $4.80/day, for three square meals a day.
As I did during the last #SNAPchallenge, I will blog not just about my everyday experiences, but also my thoughts on public policy big and small, cultural issues, and, this time around, issues affecting low-income and working families in my hometown of Los Angeles, where I am working closely with Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Matt Szabo, a candidate to represent Hollywood, Silver Lake, and Echo Park in LA City Council in this upcoming March 5th election.
As much as I like Twitter (you can find my tweets here), I make my online home on Facebook. So if you want the latest and greatest from Ooooh SNAP! without refreshing this website a million times, please friend me on Facebook here. I’m hoping to post 4-6 times a week, so let’s start the conversation!
Please forgive the delay in my final post, Tumblr was down yesterday and I couldn’t get onto the site to edit this blog.
So the #SNAPchallenge ended Monday night, and it’s been six days since my last lengthy post. Did I make it? Not quite. With a final exam hanging over my head Tuesday, I sat down at my local cafe and had a big, filling dinner – stewed chicken (yes, I even fell off the vegan wagon).
But up until that one final dinner, I had managed to stick to the food stamp budget, and have some thoughts to share with you about my experience:
First, the novelty of this experiment wore off surprisingly fast. The first few days I was taking pictures of everything I ate, marveling at my culinary ingenuity. By Day Five, I had acclimated so much to my limited budget, I began to doubt whether or not #SNAPchallenge was interesting enough to continue blogging about. The fact that I have now finally sat down to write this last post is a miracle when examined in how unenthusiastic I’ve become about eating on food stamps. And it only took five days… Imagine how jaded I would have become if I really was on food stamps.
Which brings me to my next point: food stamps are not a death sentence. Because there is a stigma attached to the whole idea of food stamps, and because we don’t talk openly and publicly about options for people on food stamps, the whole system is unnecessarily bleak. I managed to survive because I’m educated about healthy eating, know good recipes, and had the time to plan. With those advantages, there is no reason anybody else can’t eat tasty and healthy food on a food stamp budget.
But the whole system is still so shrouded in the shadows. That needs to change – before any advocacy about raising the amount of money provided under the program. The economy is too precarious and the country too divided to make any short-term impacts at the legislative level.
Instead, I will continue to pursue ways to educate and enlighten people on the food stamp system – both for those currently on the program, and for those who might someday be. Without giving away the trade secrets, know that I have ideas for a food stamp cookbook, a partnership with local community centers, outreach to California’s grocery store chains, and a new, unique way to expand access to warm meals.
I am wrapping up my second-to-last semester at law school, and plan on using the next month to relax and recharge. I will return to this blog in mid-January, and I hope you continue reading when I do.
In the meantime, please follow me on Twitter at @JaredIrmas.
Thank you for taking the journey with me.
- Jared Irmas
Three hour final exam on Gifts, Wills and Trusts has left me with little energy to put my end-of-the-challenge post together. Please check in tomorrow for my thoughts and reflections on a very eye-opening experience this past week with the #SNAPchallenge.
Weekend roundup and end of the challenge reflections to come tomorrow. I have a final exam for law school tomorrow, so I’m short on time to write all I want to write today. But please check in tomorrow for a lengthy post.
Was so hungry for my meals today, I completely forgot to take a picture of them. For the record they were:
BREAKFAST: Two slices of toast w/ peanut butter
LUNCH: Pasta
DINNER: Yams, lentils, and spinach w/ two slices of toast
What money I’m saving on food, I’m spending on movies. Saw Flight tonight and thought it was quite good (with a killer classic rock soundtrack). Everybody’s talking about the plane crash scene, but for me the most heart-in-your-throat scene was the end, where Denzel Washington’s character is faced with the choice he knew he’d have to make all along. Movies are powerful stuff.
