cooking challenge
now browsing by category
catch up
Oy.
Yeah, I made it four days before I went dark and here I am a week later, finally getting back to tapping the keys. I have not done the best job ever returning to this blog.
Let me share a few things, though.
Last Thursday night John made a truly delicious meal of shrimp, gnocchi and edamame. I was only responsible for the edamame, and that was definitely the weak link of the dish. Lesson Learned: always let John cook when you can.
Last Friday I went into the city bright and early for my Tysabri infusion. It went well. John and I came home. We put together a charcuterie plate and watched junkie television into the evening. We both fell asleep on the couch. Class, that’s what it is.
On Saturday, much to John’s chagrin, I began cleaning the house while he went fishing. So our house got a nice little shake-up and then we headed to a birthday party in the evening. I barely ate anything but I did cook a piece of salmon when we got home. Go me!
Sunday. Sunday we definitely cheated. I was dying to see “A Star is Born” and so we went to a matinee at The Movie Tavern and ordered brunch. I have to admit, it was pretty yummy. Chicken & waffles. Chocolate mousse with caramel popcorn garnish? Yes, please.
This week has been a little weird. On Monday we made butternut squash ravioli with sea scallops and sauteed spinach. John made a yummy white wine butter sauce (that he hated but I loved).
And then John left for a work trip. So this little girl had steak, potatoes and zucchini on Tuesday night and totally cheated by having dinner at her parents house on Wednesday (salmon, baby potatoes & broccoli). Last night John was home again and before watching football (urgh, it was ugly football) we made fennel, butternut squash rice and steak (cuz I had a sirloin filet leftover from my Tuesday night steak binge).
I have zero idea what we’re cooking tonight. I had a photo shoot for a magazine article and right now all that matters to me is that my hair looks pretty (and is full of hair spray …. whomp whomp) and I wrote three excellent pages of my probably-won’t-ever-get-finished novel that I began in 2016.
Additionally I tried (and failed … miserably!) to make chocolate chip cookies for John. I definitely only added one and one quarter cup of flour when the recipe very clearly stated TWO and one quarter cups. I also have used our rice cooker to excellent affect to make Lucy’s supplemental food (if I have never mentioned it, she is the most sensitive, fussiest dog on the face of the planet …ever). I absolutely adore our rice cooker despite really not enjoying rice at all. And we finally got some glass storage jars for our pantry, which I very happily filled with anything I could think of (oats, panko, Israeli cous cous and rice … so far!).
I vow to make a better effort for the rest of October. I really do mean to blog every day. It is constantly amazing to me that as a woman who is currently not gainfully employed, I run out of hours every day to get the things done I’d like to accomplish.
breathless
Life has a funny way of constantly catching you off guard. Sometimes everything feels good, and conversely, sometimes everything feels awful. Sometimes it takes every ounce of energy and concentration just to get from one day to the next, one hour, one minute to the next. It feels like walking underwater – slow, and muffled and everything just slightly out of focus.
Last night John cooked again. I was supposed to, but life felt like it spiraled out of control halfway through my day and John rescued me. I’d marinated steaks and planned to do baby golden potatoes and asparagus but luckily, John is more creative than I am, and he swapped out the potatoes for riced butternut squash. It was insanely delicious. He cooked it simply ~ in the oven for about an hour with butter and salt & pepper spread out in a glass baking dish. He made some whipped cinnamon sour cream as a garnish.
The asparagus and steaks were cooked on the grill. Probably about ten to fifteen minutes for the asparagus and a minute per side for the steak (we like our red meat rare). The marinade keeps them tender and is (if I do say so myself) delicious. It’s my mother’s recipe and when I finally focused long enough to make it instead of just winging it (as I did for the first few years John and I lived together and when I began to cook) it was so worth it. Now, steak feels naked without it.
We ate outside at our new bistro table. John and I have a small spending problem ~ when we see something we like and can envision it in our lives, we tend to buy it. Lowe’s was having a sale and this little table with two bar stools spoke to us. We brought it home, assembled it (ahem, John assembled it) and have been using it at every opportunity since. I picked a nice bottle of Pinotage and we had a really wonderful evening.
I have to admit that when we sit down and eat dinner and talk it’s truly wonderful. There are certainly nights when we are both so exhausted and wiped out that it’s about all we can do to put a meal together and collapse in front of the TV. But last night was a good night.
Tonight? Not so much. I keep reminding myself that it’s only October 4th and I can’t give up on my challenge this early. That throwing in the towel at the first sign of difficulty is really pretty weak. And there will always be hardships. Life is not habitually sunshine and roses. But today feels heavy, like Sisyphus leaning against his boulder at the bottom of the hill, knowing that all the effort and all the energy will be for naught and yet must be expended. That tomorrow, I will have to begin again at the beginning. That it will still feel heavy and damn near impossible. And that won’t change.
Last week one of my closest friends lost her father. And amongst everything she said in the wake of his death, she echoed the sentiments of Gretchen Jackson following the death of her race horse, Barbaro. That grief is the price we pay for love.
And love is wonderful and all-encompassing and lifts us up and allows us to believe that anything and everything is possible. But grief — grief is absolutely awful. It is the coldness of Harry Potter’s dementors and the bereftness of Frodo’s Ring Wraiths. It is emptiness and loneliness and hopelessness and unendurable aching pain. Grief sucks the air out of your lungs and leaves you helpless. Grief is agony. Grief is how I feel today.
So, that being said, I know that tomorrow I must get up and be strong again. I must smile and be positive and focus on all the good. But yesterday and today I spent some time feeling irrevocably sorry for myself. And John, as always, saved me.
staying focused
Last night hubs took lead dinner preparing duties and made chicken parmesan with cauliflower rice. I may be the only person in the world to feel this way, but I vastly prefer cauliflower rice to regular rice. I am a huge, huge fan. And dinner was delicious.
I, however, failed to take any photos or note any cooking methods. Perhaps this challenge will catch me up earlier than I anticipated. But I do love having a meal at the end of the day that’s warm, and home-cooked and filling. I will make a better effort this evening to document!
This morning I ventured to yoga for the first time in nearly three weeks. My knee injury has been harder for me to deal with than I anticipated. To be fair, the last injury that really sidelined me was five years ago when I accidentally broke my foot on John & my honeymoon. That was a pretty tough one. But memories of the difficulties of being out of commission faded with time. And that was also in my first year of MS, so everything felt much more confusing and challenging. That broken foot took nearly four months to heal. That’s a long time for a hairline fracture.
Back in April when husby encouraged me to get back to yoga and I trepidatiously ventured out to a new studio, it was pretty hard. I think I sweat nearly a gallon and I smelled terrible and I was fairly certain that I was going to pass out or collapse after sixty minutes of heat, chaturangas & downward facing dogs. Today was a different kind of hard. Poses that were never difficult proved nearly impossible. My heightened awareness of both my knees made my movements slow and labored. I saw myself in the mirror and felt clunky and puffy (Can you balloon up after merely three weeks of inactivity? Yes, yes you can). But strangely, after my awkward triangle poses and extended side angles and my near inability to do a simple warrior one, I finished class feeling better than I did before I went in. Yoga just does that, I guess.
Getting injured hasn’t just been physically difficult for me. It has been mental torture. I’ve wallowed in the frustrations of lack of movement, fear of the increased MS-ness of my body, and slowness with which every task has had to be completed. When you favor one leg (either consciously or unconsciously) it throws your whole body out of whack so not only does my left knee hurt in uncomfortable ways, but now so does my right knee and both my hips from my strange, labored, limping walk. I’ve tried to focus on other things ~ writing, cooking, etc etc. But I get distracted by the disorder of the house and the need to clean (something I haven’t tried because of my lack of fluid movement). Yoga helped with all that mental clutter, too. Therapy has been good in so many ways. But not the calming, meditative way that yoga is helpful. The feeling of just being on your mat and everything else fading away. Being present. Being fully in that moment. (Sidenote, that sh*t is hard, sometimes. I feel like my mind never stops – it’s constantly whirring and buzzing with a million thoughts at once).
I want to make a conscious effort to stay positive and stay upbeat as I move through the recovery of my knee. I want to make sure I am not dipping into depression and putting to much emphasis on having MS. I think people who say “I might have MS but MS does not have me” are either the healthiest MS people ever or slightly in denial. I’m okay saying that sometimes, MS does have me. Sometimes it wins the power struggle and I have a really bad run of days. Sometimes, pathetically, I feel super duper sorry for myself. But the trick is to feel those feelings. Get mad, be sad, wallow. And then wake up the next day and move forward. Give MS its space. Respect its tantrum-throwing, infuriating ways. But don’t let it control you all the time.
Going to yoga today – if I’m completely honest – was terrifying. I was so afraid. Of how it would feel. Of what I would or wouldn’t be able to do. Of hurting myself again. Of everything you might think I would be nervous about and so much more. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to drive home after class. I was scared of everything.
But here’s the thing, here’s the trick. I did it anyway. And that’s what makes the difference.
and so it begins
I am going to confess that cooking dinner last night was not a challenge for me. I made one of my favorite go-to meals, albeit I did make it slightly differently.
Sheet pan dinners are a huge trend and I have been so intrigued by them for a few years now. Sort of like how I am intrigued by crock pots and all the deliciousness that can be made in them, if only I ever gave it a try (sidenote: I have not, as of yet, ever used our crock pot).
I habitually collect magazines with featured sheet pan recipes. They are lovely magazines filled with yummy ideas and easy dinners. I have not made one yet. But yesterday I thought to myself, why not try to make dinner on a sheet pan? And so, I did.
I had wild salmon from Wegmans (the mecca of all grocery store chains) and spiralized zucchini that needed to be eaten. I also own a spiralizer and am not afraid to use that (to be fully transparent, I am delighted every time I do use it ~ so many options, all equally beautiful and tasty!).
I am half Italian and believe in using salt, pepper and garlic liberally and frequently so I tossed the zucchini with all three plus some EVOO and jauntily spread it out on one side of my aluminum foil clad cookie sheet. I popped it into the oven at 375F for eight minutes then added two filets of salmon dressed in salt, pepper and lemon juice for an additional 12 minutes (**cook it longer if you like your salmon done further than medium but be wary of the zucchini getting soggy!). Hubs and I enjoyed it with a little dollop of sour cream on the side.
Not only was it scrumptious and filling, but it was also a snap to clean up. I am in for sheet pan dinners. What a revelation!
experiments
I’d like to say I’m a consummate reader as though I read Dickens and Faust and thought-provoking interviews and opinion pieces about the state of our world and current affairs. And sometimes, I do. But when I say I’m a consummate reader I mean I read a lot … of everything.
Which includes, but is not limited to, daily email blasts and articles from Mind Body Green.
It was one of these articles that started niggling in my head until I felt I had no choice but to give it the attention it felt it was due.
Which is how I have found myself pledging to cook all our meals for the entire month of October.
Wait, wha?
I have read many articles on various diets, both fad and health-related. I have read about Paleo and Keto and the benefits and drawbacks of vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. I have read about the Wahl’s Protocol and OMS (Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis). I have read articles (upon articles) about the benefits of various food groups or individual foods helping with specific issues (um, inflammation, I’m looking at you).
But …. I’m also a little bit of a cynic. In addition to being wildly stubborn and pouty.
What I loved about the article I read was the idea that sometimes, we lose track of our food and how we are consuming it. Life gets busy, it gets stressful, there aren’t enough hours in the day. And take-out or ready-made food is a really great solution. Which maybe we think we only do once in awhile, but then all of a sudden, I’m getting sushi take-out twice a week. Not only do I need a second mortgage to afford all the sushi, but something is getting lost nutritionally.
The author also wrote about how relaxing it was to get home and prepare meals with her husband. I think that’s what really hooked me. Because when the hubs and I do make dinner and stand together chopping vegetables or prepping fish or meat for the grill, we talk and laugh and interact in a way that is far healthier than sitting beside each other scrolling through our phones as our pre-made dinner cooks in the oven.
And then there was the idea that just cooking fresh food could actually be healthier than any kind of restriction or diet. That the act of cooking meant that I would know exactly what went into it, I could control the portion sizes and I would be responsible for what went into my body. Every day. It wouldn’t be about counting cups of dark leafy vegetables or measuring fat grams. It would be about eating whole, healthy food prepared daily by yours truly.
I was really into this idea. And so, to keep myself accountable, I thought why not revisit the roots of this blog, and share my cooking adventures through the month of October?
If you’d like to read the article that inspired me, you can find it below (along with the rules she outlines!). So … here goes!
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/budget-30-day-home-cooking-challenge
D5 Creation