Day 1 down the hatch...{burp}

This is not hard. Nor is it by any means starvation rations. It is, however, boring.

I started out the day with a big bowl of oatmeal. Big, big I tells ya. 1 cup of dry weight oatmeal, a shot of evaporated milk mixed in with the water and I got about 3 cups of oatmeal in return.

It was bland, it was nasty and the texture sucked. I'm so used to my lovely Overnight Oatmeal that these bland flakes were a pretty nasty shock. Ah well, I threw some sugar and some of my strawberry jam in the bowl and I managed to choke down about half the bowl.

Before leaving for work, I scarfed down both my hot dogs and buns, mostly because I was running late and it didn't require much cooking. Unfortunately, I forgot to add some kind of mustard to my shopping list and was stuck eating plain hot dogs... blech.

I ate my apple at work and when I got home I didn't even try to eat TWO packs of Ramen. One pack, egg and flavor pack added and I'm happily full.

This is too much food. It's bland but it's not tasteless. My oatmeal isn't as good as I'm used to but it's still oatmeal, just more than I'm used to eating. I'm used to eating my favorite Hebrew National dogs. My .99 cent dogs still tasted like hot dogs, just not as much. Ramen is still Ramen and it's not a punishment to have to eat a bowl of deep fried noodles with an egg mixed in.

It makes me wonder about how much we pay for our food. I know there is probably a huge difference in overall quality between my .99 cent loaf of bread and the whole grain white I'm used to buying. You can feel it when you pick up the loaf. It's mostly air. But how many other items that we buy are artificially increased in price? We live in a free market society and while I'd like to think that food companies charge what the food it worth, I know better. Companies charge what the market will bear and they do plenty of research to find out what that number is.

A lot of people I know are full bore into the Organic movement. They think that eating foods with an Organic label on them is going to keep them healthy and live longer. They will happily shell out 25-40% more for an item that is "Organic".

Me, I think the trick is to keep your ingredient list down. My bread should contain flour, yeast maybe eggs, some water and salt. Nothing else if possible please. That is my idea of healthy.

My Organic adherent friends would never be caught dead in places like Aldi. They'd mumble something about hormones, preservatives and chemicals. But things like, flour, eggs, sugar? Is it really so different across town at Woodman's? Is organic flour, eggs and sugar really that much better for you, is it worth that much more?

We live with a lot of superstitions about food and, like any fanciful flight away from reason, it makes me nervous. We can see a time now when our cornucopia may finally start to run dry. What would people do in this country? Would we cling blindly to our fears or finally, after many many years, take a more practical look at what we eat and where it comes from.

To be honest, as bland as my food is, it think Dana's suffering a lot more than I am. Plain white rice? Good lawrd. Drive on up girl, I'll split my Ramen with ya.