SNAP Challenge Day 1

It's Day 1 of the SNAP Challenge! Here's what we were eating over at my house.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with Spiced Apples
We cooked oatmeal on the stove with milk and topped it with apples that had been tossed in cinnamon, ground ginger, and cardamom and baked. I bought three apples for oatmeal topping thinking they would last us the whole week. However, after breakfast this morning left us with only half of these apples, I hurried over to HEB in my aforementioned food panic to collect a few more.

Lunch: Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Kale
At my fiance's suggestion, we first attempted to roast the potatoes in the toaster oven. It failed to get hot enough so we switched to the oven. When that didn't work, we just used the microwave which, to be honest, is how I normally cook them. Just stab them with a fork, wrap them in a dish towel, and cook on three minute blasts until done, turning occasionally. We topped these with salt, pepper, and a little cheddar cheese. The kale was sauteed in a pan in with a little oil and finished with salt, pepper, and a little balsalmic vinegar.

Dinner: Pinto Beans, Brown Rice, and Kale
After soaking the beans for most of the day in salted water, we cooked them with a sauteed, diced onion. My fiance also found a handy trick in Cook's Illustrated to add salt and baking soda to the cooking water to decrease cooking time. The result was incredibly tender beans after only an hour and a half on the stove.

Extras: We split an orange after both lunch and dinner.

I definitely found this menu filling, but my fiance would disagree. He was hungry about an hour after eating oatmeal - whoops. Half a cup of oatmeal was definitely not cutting it. Though I wasn't really hungry, I definitely noticed myself reaching for snacks throughout the day. Since I'm thinking more about what I'm eating during this challenge, I'm definitely realizing how often I have a snack impulse even when I'm not hungry.

This menu also required a lot more cooking than is usual for us. Normally breakfast and lunch are very low maintenance meals for my fiance and me. Breakfast is often cereal. Lunch for my fiance is usually Greek yogurt, fruit, and granola. Lunch for me usually involves grazing on whatever we have left in the fridge. Cooking is usually about dinner.