Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, I am only spending twenty-eight dollars on food! I haven’t had any rice for three days now, which I’m starting to regret. I hope I do not die! 

Believe it or not, I have never met that doctor in real life. The magic of photoshop!

68.1kg, for those who are following at home, is 1.2kg (way too many pounds) less than I weighed yesterday. I have lost 1.2kg in 24 hours.

That’s a little alarming, to be honest.

The graph seems to agree with me: 

As you can see, the only comparable weight loss was on Day 4, and I regained a significant portion of that weight straight away. Day 12 was the next largest, and that's only half of today's weight loss.

First things first: I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post a food-related dream that I had.

Dream:

I was at my old high-school, and at the tuck shop, they were selling spaghetti bolognaise (which, as regular readers will know, is my favourite food in the world.) Naturally, I bought some, and only a few hours later did I remember about this project.

Every dream about food I’ve had so far has involved me eating, then remembering the project and freaking out. This made sense for the first few days, when I would instinctively reach for food before I remembered, but it’s been over two weeks now – you would think that my subconscious would have clued into what’s going on by now.

Anyway, I remembered the project, and more importantly, realised how far I was – well past the half-way mark, it’s reached the point where I can almost taste the end. I can’t, I can only taste rice and bread and occasional onions, but I can almost taste the end.

So rather than just give up the whole project, I worked out how much of the spaghetti I’d eaten (only, for some reason, a few mouthfuls) and what percentage of the total container that was.  I decided to bend the rules slightly, and only count that percentage of the container’s cost – it wound up being about a dollar or two, which is a lot for a few mouthfuls of spaghetti, but I’d happily pay it to ensure that I didn’t have to start the project again.

At this point, I’m continuing through sheer stubbornness. If I give in, I know that I’ll make myself do this project again some time, and believe me, I never want to do this project again. I was toying briefly with the idea of doing it again next February, with different rules, but fuck that. I’ve had enough rice and bread to put any man off the idea.

I woke up, and was quite relieved that I hadn’t accidentally spent two days worth of food for a few mouthfuls of spaghetti bolognaise.

Camera update:

It turns out I left the camera in the car of Communications Officer Bernhard, who will drop it off the first chance he gets. He leads a ridiculously busy playboy lifestyle, so that might not be for a while. In the meantime, I shall continue to graft old photos of my head onto public domain images of scales. For science!

Food eaten today:

Today I had only six of my eight permitted slices of bread. Turns out that there’s a limit to how much bread a man can reasonably consume in a day. I also had an onion, and cooked up another packet of my yucky “Yum Yum Noodles”: 

Here, have an unused photo from Day 1.

I worked out something that, in retrospect, should have been pretty obvious; you put all the flavouring in while it’s in the boiling water. The result looked and smelled quite edible, but I didn’t just want to eat them as noodles, I wanted to see what they were like fried up, so I drained the pot, and fried the noodles (along with half an onion.)

Turns out that boiling the noodles and then frying them again is quite pointless – they come fried, so they just return to their packaged state. All that’s accomplished is the addition of a bit of flavour – the packet of flavouring is far too hot for my tastes (I’m not a spicy foods kind of guy) when consumed by itself, but when it’s mixed in with the water, it’s quite pleasant.

For the first time, the “Yum Yum” noodles were deserving of their name.

Fortunately, I only fried (and re-hardened) the noodles on the outside, the rest were still soft, and the result was quite delicious. The onion helped, too.

I tried eating an onion raw again yesterday, and I don’t know why, but it was quite an unpleasant experience. The day I bought the onions, I ate one raw, and it was delicious, but this time it “burned” my tongue. If the noodles had turned out spicy, I don’t think I would have been able to eat them.

From the comments:

“Louise Callinan” (who played the mother in the video I posted yesterday) comments:

I haven’t been eating vicariously, but I have been enjoying the smell of food a lot more. My sense of smell has dramatically improved – I was walking down Adelaide St the other day, and I could smell sushi from the sushi shop. I enjoy my housemates getting pizza, because it fills the house with the smell of pizza. Whenever someone has chocolate, I sniff it. My sense of smell is much better, and I find myself enjoying food just by the smell, not even needing the taste.

It doesn’t even compare to eating, but in the absense of food, smell is pretty good.

I’m still quite vague, and my weight loss has me a tiny bit worried, so I’m going to get back on the rice tomorrow. I forgot to have any today (I was going to cook some to take out with me, but I lost track of time, which I blame on the vagueness, which I blame on the lack of rice…) but tomorrow I’m home all day, and will definitely have time/remember.

Tomorrow: Daily Post!

(total money spent so far – $23.37. Remainder – $4.63 - enough for four loaves of bread, with 27 cents remaining!)