SNAP Challenge: Nice! Raisins

I had never shopped at Walgreens for groceries before this SNAP Challenge. Who knew that there was a food product line distributed by Walgreens called Nice! I bought the Nice! brand of quick oats (cooks in about one minute), as well as the Nice! brand of creamy peanut butter and Nice! raisins. Of all the items on my week’s menu, these are some of the healthiest foods I will be eating, though not necessarily my favorites.

I ate too much oatmeal as a kid – not the yummy steel cut oats that I spend an hour making on Sunday mornings in the winter – but the cooks in three minutes on the stovetop kind that glops into a bowl when served. As a teenager, I vowed to never eat oatmeal as an adult, and I didn’t until I discovered steel cut oats. Now, with this SNAP Challenge, I’m back to eating the kind of oatmeal I detest. With each spoonful, I make the same yucky face that I did when I was a boy. Still, it’s filling.

Walgreens Nice! peanut butter, on the other hand, is creamy and delicious. I had been eating it by the spoonful the past two days, until I looked at the nutrition facts and realized that every tablespoon is 100 calories. I guess that’s why we normally don’t have peanut butter in the house.

I’ve never cared for raisins. As a rule, I don’t like things that can’t decide what they are – like the month of April. April doesn’t know if it’s winter or spring. And raisins can’t decide if they are more like a grape than a prune. Who needs that? Well, actually, for the next six days, I probably do. About 4:00 in the afternoon, my one-ounce serving of Nice! raisins looks pretty nice. And they taste pretty good, too.