I’m taking the Ration Challenge and eating the same rations as a Syrian refugee living in a camp in Jordan for one week. Find out more and sponsor me here! And read previous Ration Challenge posts here.
For some reason, I woke up at 5.30am on Day 4 of my Ration Challenge – a whole hour earlier than normal, and while the toddler was still sleeping. I didn’t feel at all hungry (odd after the lack of food the day before) and I had a ton of energy – it was a little odd.
At 8.30, the toddler was shipped off for his regular Wednesday with the childminders, and I’d already planned in a meal for Wednesday lunchtime that I really didn’t want to share! I was going to attempt a very basic pastry, combining 120g of my flour ration with salt, and rubbing in 30g of oil to make a breadcrumb-like consistency. I then poured in a little room temperature water to bring it together to a dough, kneaded it for a few minutes, then chilled the dough in the fridge for half an hour.
Once chilled, I divided it into four and rolled each portion into a ball, before rolling each into a thin circle. I filled each one with a spoonful of yesterday’s mujadara plus a sprinkling of shallots (another 1/7 of my vegetable ration for the week), before brushing the open edges with water, folding in half, and pressing the sides together to seal. I cooked these at 190C for 20 minutes – and they looked and smelled pretty good (for Ration Challenge week!) when they came out of the oven.
And after the previous three days of food, they tasted like a real treat! The pastry was flaky, crumbly and salty, and it was nice to be eating something with a bit of a crunch. It also masked the fact that I was eating rice AGAIN. I ate two of them around 11.30, and saved the others to snack on during the afternoon.
Again, I didn’t fancy eating at my normal time in the evening, so I waited until pretty late to reheat a tiny portion of my mujadara, which I’d planned to “enjoy” with just another 1/7 of my shallot ration. However, I needed something different…so I grabbed my tin of sardines from the ration box. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the serving suggestion on the side of the tin…
I mashed them all up in a bowl (oil included) and took a small spoonful with which to top my mujadara…and honestly, after three days of such bland flavours, that tiny spoonful made so much difference!
I went to bed early, feeling fed up and with a niggling lower back pain – I have no idea where that’s come from. I’m over halfway through my Ration Challenge week, but I’m one of the lucky ones: some, like these, have to endure far longer than me, and without the creature comforts that I’m used to, too.
Learn more about the Ration Challenge here.