Day 24: Pomme Frites aux Oeufs

You're thinking that I translated my lunch dish into French to make it sound fancy, but honestly, that's the name of the recipe my friend Omar from Cameroon gave me. That's right, a genuine French-African dish right here on the 30 day challenge, baby! However I did add my own twist to it: oven-roasted carrots. This is seriously easy to make and tastes great. (Note: I saved up my rations of potatoes and carrots from yesterday to use for this dish, and also borrowed my bonus egg from tomorrow to use here) ... Recipe:

Ingredients: 

• 5 oz. potatoes
  
• 2 oz. carrots
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 2 tablespoons veg. oil spread (or butter)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon Season-All

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees. 
   
2. Cut potatoes into strips like french fries. Chop carrots into sliced quarters or halves. 
   
3. In a medium sized bowl or large coffee mug, place 2 tablespoons vegetable oil spread (or butter), microwave for 20 seconds or until melted. Dip chopped potatoes and carrots into the vegetable oil or butter, making sure each piece is well coated. Place the potatoes and carrots in a single layer on a roasting pan or baking sheet.
   
4. Roast for 20 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, turning every 5 or 6 minutes to brown on all sides. 
   
5. Beat the two eggs in a bowl. When potatoes and carrots are ready, place them in the bowl with the eggs. Let the potatoes soak up some of the eggs for about 3 or 4 minutes as you stir occasionally.  
   
6. Pour all of the ingredients into a skillet on medium high heat. Scramble as desired with spatula. Scramble an additional 3-4 minutes after eggs are solid to ensure all ingredients are well heated. 
   
7. Serve and season to taste with Season-All.
   

Alternate, more authentic method is to dump the eggs, carrots and potatoes into the skillet and NOT scramble them. Just let the eggs harden like an omelet. When the eggs harden, place a plate over the skillet and flip it to serve the omelet upside down! I meant to do this but misread my friend's instructions. Still turned out great using my improvised method.

Cost: About 37 cents. (One of my more expensive dishes!)

Soaking the ingredients in the eggs:

The finished product: 

Tonight for dinner I made refried beans again since they were so tasty last night. I used two of my tortillas to make corn chips, and one to make a taco of my beans and rice. Also had a spicy chicken-chili flavored ramen noodle soup (half-serving) with cabbage. Delicious! My kids love the homemade chips and beans. Cost of the meal pictured here, including the soup was about 30 cents. 

Health Ponderings: Today I did start to feel a little lethargic from the lack of fruits and fresh veggies. Had a few headaches, but kept downing the water and that helped. The remainder of my lemon essentially rotted a few days ago, so I'm missing the vitamin C there. The meals today were a bit heavy with the vegetable oil spread, which could be contributing to my "thick" lethargic feeling. So I think I'll cut back on that tomorrow and try to go a little lighter on everything while keeping the water flowing. My appetite has decreased and hunger pangs are less frequent. I have not weighed in lately but I think I continue to lose weight. Glad to be rounding the home stretch. Six days to go!

Prayer focus: Pray for one of our staff "mothers" at the orphanage in India. Her name is Krupamma, and she had to go to the hospital today complaining of chest pains. 

Estimated Savings for Day 24: I was thinking about Indian food a lot today, so I think I would have likely made my usual run to Sri Balaji Bhavan. I might have had some iddly with lemon rice, or maybe a Madras Thali, not sure, but definitely would have had a cup of their chai. Probably would have spent about $8 there. Add this to my normal estimated daily grocery cost of $7, subtract $1 for today's actual cost, and I'm looking at $14 saved for my orphanage donation today. My running total is now up to $369.31, equal to over one year's wages among the poor of South Asia.