Cooking, cats and working with my brain

Notice there is a comma there, we aren't cooking cats, this is about cooking, cats, and working with my brain.  Which of course, yells about that comma /ha

 

I know my 'ADHD' isn't as bad as some... and that I can use my brain to load 'new programming' and sometimes it even sticks.  But I still feel like maybe I can offer something, to someone - that might help things 'stick' for them.  So I'm continuing my collection of 'Neurodivergent Cooking' ideas and recipes at the Patreon website.

 

I was trying to explain this to Esme this morning - how sometimes I have two or three 'alarm locations' for the same thing I had already done - but I find them useful, and encourage them.  It took a while to try to get it written down in something I hope someone else can understand and use.  I tried to explain it in this post about 'Redundancy'.

 

Got the pictures off my phone from the past few days.  A cicada I saw at the end of my mail route yesterday.  I've heard a lot of them - but hadn't been able to catch one up close till then.  When I opened the box because I did have a letter for them - the cicada just plopped down on the ground.  Sorry dude... I can't help with that.

Lyffan (above) said she didn't have any part in spilling coffee on that shelf below, which just doesn't wash clean well anymore, and I tend to put shoes on it, besides cats, and soforth.  This is another example of why are you doing that now?  Because I think of doing it a lot - (cleaning, painting) but I just don't have the energy for a lot of it always, and sometimes I can break it down into a small task that can be done right now - and if I can get myself to do it right now - it takes a chunk off the bigger task.  

So, this picture pushed me to get out the white gloss paint and put a new coat on the shelf -  after it dried from cleaning and wasn't really looking that clean even after scrubbing.  It is just a particleboard garage shelf anyway - it started out that way, and I haven't painted it in a long time.  If I can just keep cat paws off it while it dries.  I scrub the desk down every couple of days, too - but it always seems to have a bit of coffee on it even when I use coasters.  Cats don't fit on coasters, apparently.

 

better, cleaner... for the moment

'make it better' doesn't have to be a huge thing every time.  But it does require that extra push to get over the hump and all the 'buts' (but a cat might walk on it again while it's wet!) and just do it.

Not a Quiche - maybe Strata? recipe at Neurodivergent cooking

That applied for this 'quiche' that was actually perhaps Strata ( a greek egg casserole dish, but usually containing old bread, eggs, and vegetables).  I knew it wasn't an actual quiche, spent time looking that up.. and then realized that I didn't even actually know how long it was going to take or what other people would use for ingredients.  But hey - I know what I'm doing.  But what I'm doing is usually not what others are doing.  What I'm doing falls in between the gaps of what other people do ALL THE TIME... but I still seem to get things done and sometimes I get a lot more done than others, except all over the board and it looks 'painful' to others.  That is why I am making that website - because I feel like what I do now, vs. what I did twenty years ago, works better for me.  I do things at odd times, in odd ways - but it is still good.  In fact, it's great - because I do it, instead of waffling or being stuck in 'but it isn't the proper way'.  I find benefit in that, and someone else might, too.  And it is delicious, if you like eggs and green things.  *ha*

 

Maybe someone else who doesn't have cream or a crust for their quiche, or needs to use brown rice flour instead of regular flour, will find it, and like it.  Maybe it will give them an idea to make something of their own that becomes part of their repertoire of recipes.  

 

for posterity - the boildown

Not a Quiche, maybe Strata : Recipe

six eggs, about 3/4 cup of whole milk? (that's a guess - look at the recipe, I took pictures), assorted green things from my garden, well washed and chopped fine (arugula, parsley, lemon basil, chocolate basil, a green onion, a shishito pepper), stirred together, then added about 1 cup (little less) of brown rice flour, salt, less than one teaspoon of baking powder, all mixed up, bits of hard white cheddar cheese cut up fine and strewn on top - bake at 350 degrees, took about a half hour in a ceramic baking dish.

Languages : I've done French, Chinese, Japanese and Russian the past few days.  I read a children's book in Spanish that used grammar I am still learning about past tense and another one that was in Cyrillic and I'm not sure entirely if it was Czech or Russian because I only got a few words here and there - but it was still practice.  I read another children's book in Japanese, and only got a few things here and there, but was really happy for what I understood before I looked things up.  There was a box at the post office yesterday that I recognized the kanji for 'white' and the kanji for 'wood' in the checked boxes on the side of someone's dresser they had ordered.  That was a 'I bet no one else gets that, or cares, but I smiled anyway because a year ago that would have been garble to me and now, it's words!'

starting to fill out the categories

 

I'm starting to put together the categories I want to talk about at : Neurodivergent Cooking  I've got a couple of recipes up, and a couple of ADHD rants, for lack of a better term.

 

The categories I'm going for are : 

Dinner for Two

Red Plate Specials (getting food to the plate for one)

Less Waste

ADHD Hacks and Habits (and rants, apparently... *roll eyes at self*)

Make Ahead Ingredients (nothing there yet)

and Our Farm - animals and garden and etc etc..

 

But I was tired today - I fell over for a nap, and then pushed myself through to use some leftover things to make a dinner for Esme and I (the Dinner for Two category above).  Mark took some pictures of a mantis outside and also ended up being butted by a little goat so much he tried to take some pictures of her, too - and ended up with mostly out of focus nose, except this one.

 

Melody, our little Nigerian dwarf bottle-raised goat, who is more than 3/4 blind (but she can see some light in one eye)

She had just gotten some of the ends of lettuce and tomato - so she was wondering why he was out there now and what other wonderful vegetables he had to be hiding in his hands (she is blind) way up there with the camera.

I made a salad, and a version of fried rice.  I did take pictures and post a step by step.  Even though it is simple - it is still something.  And I was working on that consistency thing, just as much as the use up the leftovers thing.

Recipe post  : Half-Nicoise Salad

Maybe tomorrow after route we'll make something more ambitious - but I suspect that will actually be Friday.  I work the weekend, as well, as usual.  I'm headed to bed now again (it is 8:30 pm) and up early to get Esme to the bus and off to work.

Languages : I did French today, and Japanese.

Neurodivergent Cooking (at Patreon, link)

I started another thing today - and well, because I'm ADHD I start a lot of things but I'm not always very consistent.  BUT - this is about ADHD, and not being consistent, but learning skills and tips and going forward anyway, to make good healthy food, and to make it everyday.

Neurodivergent Cooking : Rhelynn at Patreon

I will be collecting certain articles and recipes, with lots of pictures and tips for making it 'click', to this site.  This does not aim to be America's Test Kitchen or Martha Stewart - but closer to the: oh right, I'm the buyer, cook and the cleanup crew, and I've got to keep this up, sort of thing. 

I aim to tackle 

    the 'Where Ingredients go to Die' problem, 

    the Make Ahead, I barely have time to Exist problem, 

    Oh Look, a Squirrel issue (not solve, but manage)

    Multitasking is our Friend and Superpower

    and the I'd Rather be Sleeping type issues... 

because really, being neurodivergent or low-energy of any kind brings with it certain issues most other people don't even think about.

 

1.) We love to experiment, but hate to follow instructions

    --wait, so you're going to give instructions for people who don't like instructions?  They're more like guidelines, really.  And most times you don't even need them.. but when you're in a slump or doing the same bad habits (frozen pizza I'm looking at you) it can be nice to have some 'look over there' inspiration.  

    -- we tend to skip over or avoid a lot of things, and miss key information

    -- we're not good at keeping our recipes or even looking them up again

           -- and keep a notebook isn't going to help, where's my notebook?

            -- out of sight often means out of mind, keep things visible! 

            -- I haven't even put hands on that in weeks, where is it?

            -- Ew, I found it.  How long was that in the cupboard? 

    -- be your own best friend - good habits and good results make good memories

            -- making something well means we're more likely to keep it up 

            -- make something often, with variations

           -- learn to grow into your tastes and skills

           -- learn to reflect and say : HEY, that was a good idea 

ALSO : mental exercises are just as important as physical ones for making routines.  Take time in the moment to reflect.  Remind yourself : I'm learning this.   Or:  I've done this before.  I'm doing this.  This is getting done.  And : I've done this, that needed to be done.   It's much more important than you might think.

         

2.) We get excited about things, buy gadgets and ingredients, and then when it comes to the actual doing, wander off and/or eat junk food

We'd mostly rather be eating real food, but Time is a fractured multiverse of other things we'd rather be doing.  Sometimes we forget to eat at all!  Or we inhale the potato chips and leave the fruit we bought on the counter.  Do I really need to eat?  Can I put it off?  Where did the last four hours go? 

    -- I think recipes need to be a little better engineered to 

    ----- contain relatable and sustainable ingredients and substitutes

    ---- understand that purchasing the food is also an important step

    ---- encourage good sustainable habits for prep and cleanup

    ---- understand that we want to start and finish in a reasonable time

    --- have some things we can make ahead when we do have time, but otherwise would fall into the 'I have nothing useful to do' trap and scroll, watch tv or bounce off the walls.   

    --- bring a book, computer app or project with you if you absolutely must bounce, bounce usefully, and in clear view of what you are 'actually doing'  Out of Sight out of Mind is a thing.  Keep things visible.

    ---- use a stable, easy to keep pantry instead of 'Where do I even get that?'

    ---- learn a basic set of skills that we don't have to look up every single time

    ---- adapt, use things multiple ways, learn to size recipes for your needs

    ----- not have so much of the 'wait 10 minutes' and 'in a separate bowl...'

    ---- but also understand how multitasking is our superpower

    ----- not have three paragraphs of history that distract from actually cooking

 

 

Buy the Food

Prep the Food

 

Know what you have (and where it is)

Know what is possible with it

Understand the basic qualities of ingredients

Know the basic skills about how to do it

Actually form good habits to use it

 

Chop, Cook, Eat, Clean

Repeat

 

Pat yourself on the back you made food

Learn more when you're excited

Have goto easy but healthy recipes for when you're tired

 

 Learn to use time when you have it

to help out when you don't

 

and think ahead - be your own best friend

know and observe your own habits

connect your past self and your future self 

to adapt to how things work for you

 

Encouragements: 

I Made That!  That was good.  

I should make that again.

I bought that and USED it.  

That had so many good ingredients in it.

I bought that from the local farmer and it was tasty. 

I will buy this food over the other because there are four ways I can use it.

Yes, talk to yourself, you're listening:

That was easy.

That was easier than last time.

I learned how to make that easier for me. 

I'm reminding myself right now how much easier this is now.

Next time : I will think, hey, let's do that, it was easy! 

Use the Now while you have it

I have five minutes while the coffee runs - that is enough to make a salad.

I have twenty minutes while the washing machine runs, that is enough to make rice.

I can make these two recipes in tandem during the same time and enjoy a really good dinner.

 

ADHD hacks:

I will buy that ingredient when I'm off work because:

 I left a bungee cord across my steering wheel

I can set that to simmering while I'm in the shower and remember it:

because I left my shoes right there 

I'm awake at four o'clock in the morning :

Why don't I prep the rice for fried rice tomorrow? 

 

PURCHASING takes time and effort, too, not to mention $. 

This is me investing time and the three dollars in the me that wants this later.

 

I'm standing at the grocery store - this has taken so LONG

I finally got all the things on this LIST

I want to just go HOME... let's skip the 'X',....

but if I buy the lettuce now,

I'll have it for that five minute salad.

I liked that five minute salad, and so did (other person).

So I'm taking two minutes now to go get the lettuce. 

and Future Me will thank this past me for doing this

by using the lettuce that this me is taking the time to buy.

(the road goes both ways)

 

I have some time and energy : what can I do to help Future Me?

I'm so glad I did that yesterday when I had time.

I'm so glad I did that while I had the energy.

I'm glad I did that between switching the laundry.

I'm so glad I've been growing that in the garden / on the porch.

I took all this time to grow and care for this - now I'm using it.

I remembered that without having to look it up!

I know this doesn't take as long as it feels like sometimes

Having to look everything up every time actually took more time than cooking it!

I cooked and cleaned up and it's all ready again for tomorrow. 

I didn't have to look all over for that pot, or it's lid before I started.

I'm not hung up on using that specific thing because I know lots of ways to do this.

Cooking is a 'chore' but you can work to dread it less.

I can look forward to making that dish tonight,

because I know all the things are there

Isn't it nice everything is all ready to go?

bounce

true story : when one day you set an alarm for 5pm to make sure you get up and feed all the animals and soforth, but you never actually end up going to sleep and miss the alarm while you're doing things, and then day after day you think - but I do fall asleep for a nap sometimes in the afternoon - a 5 pm alarm makes sense - and just turn the alarm off when it happens, whether you're asleep or not - as a reminder 'I should be awake now, things to do'.. and then weeks later realize : this is just my 5 o'clock alarm now, nothing to see here, move along.. no why would I get rid of it, it's the 5 o'clock alarm, right?  

(above : Loki and Minion enjoying our hexagon structure outside above the fenced in yard)

 R(x)=Pi(Chips + Salsa)

For some reason, I thought of that in the middle of last night and it made me laugh.  I enjoy that - when I am sleeping and something so absurd but highly specific comes up, and I have to wake up and write it down.  It's not always so funny once I've done so, but anyway, it's a spice of life.  Much better than the twisty-turny even weirder dreams I have, some of them are great, but usually confusing, cave of wonders type places, foreign libraries with books that don't exist, work in a parallel dimension type thing and time travel paradoxes etc.

It's been the work weekend - short route but got overheated anyway on Saturday, lots of extra work once had gotten home and sorted myself out - we cloned the prettiest of our coleus plants and some more begonias, repotted petunias and other things.  Then I had some more work today, and we talked about but did not repot the ivies - Mark is thinking about what kind of trellis would be best for those.  And I work tomorrow, too, now - I found out a few hours ago.  Been trying to keep my hands in order, and my knee from hurting, and get enough sleep, took a two hour nap this afternoon but made myself get back up at 5 pm.  

we did six tubs of these!

the purples are so vibrant

 

we're cloning the prettiest ones to increase our gene pool as we will be collecting seed from dozens of plants to save for planting next year's crop

found a little non-dangerous brown ringneck type snake under the watering trough, numerous frogs and beautiful little (and very fast FAST) skinks

Have done Japanese, French, Hungarian, Chinese and Catalan (from Spanish) language lessons.  Have played a lot of Stardew Valley in between things (a 'day' takes about 15-25 minutes in the game, and it can only be saved at the end of a day) and that is all in French.  I find it funny sometimes I have a hard time talking to Esme about what is going on in my game because my brain immediately wants to bring up the French word for everything - Tonneau instead of Keg, Bacal, instead of Preserving Jar.

Duolingo main profile : About to reach level 9 in Chinese, level 12 in Catalan (from Spanish), still at level 10 in Hungarian (from months and months ago), but halfway to 11.  Japanese at level 19.   

phone profile: Catalan at 9, Japanese at 9, Hungarian at 5   Definitely see the differences as I've only been playing on the separate phone profile for little over four months (150 days), and usually just about the minimum, as well, compared to years of work on the other profile and 30+ languages bouncing around, and depending on how much time I have etc.   One thing I do like about this 'tandem' of doing the same language at diff. levels is that it shows me where my weaknesses are in the higher level one when I've just done some lower level stuff and vice-versa.  And the phone has the speaking lessons, which boy - I feel like I know some of these until I try to get that combination to come out of my mouth and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised and other times I feel like that cat in the l'eau meme (included below, for completeness) that can't get it's tongue to stop curling.

not my pic, for reference only, as it is a famous meme

Will try to find out this week if they know anything more about what happened with our truck.  Originally, they said it was just low on gas, but then I told him about the water in the gas in the town and asked him to check it a little further to make sure we didn't end up with the same dangerous situation from before.  When it started doing the weird stuff the gas gauge was well above a quarter tank... and by the time he got it started and working again, he said the gas indicator light was on.  Mark says that is a good sign something was 'up' there, and condensation or water in the gas mixed with it being an old vehicle could have caused a false reading there, at the very least. 

 

 

I've done the laundry and need to steer myself towards sleep for another long day tomorrow.  Three pink tomatoes from the garden - they look so strange on the counter with our pink and green eggs.  Speaking of eggs, all of the other chickens seem to be doing okay, so far.

bits of truck gone bad

Had a hard time getting home last night from the farmer's market - and heard there was a rash of bad gas from Paris earlier in the week - wondering if that was the issue or something deeper, truck started acting up suddenly just as we were getting to the market, and then started really hard at the market and was sputtering in low gear really hard just to get it keep going and was afraid it was going to die on the way home - and then we were almost home but it was losing power steering going around two corners (scary) and at that point I just had to put it on the side of the road and get a message to Mark through our online server to come get us as the tow truck was going to be a long time coming Esme kept her head throughout, which I thanked her for, even though it was a scary thing, especially when we were facing that curve with no power steering and I was just cranking hard on it to get us around the corner with people coming and people behind us.

I made a quick dinner when we got home, drank a whole lot of fluids, decompressed for a little and then crashed. Mark said I did good under pressure, and I know I did (since I didn't go off the road and got us ALMOST all the way home through sputterings at every stop sign... We could have walked from the last point in an absolute emergency ie etc.. before finally saying okay, this is as far as we're going to get). So I know it was as good as it could have been, but still. I'd really like a little car that had seatbelts (mailtruck lacks that last bit) that wasn't in the shop all of the time.

 

 

Note for self: I was also stung, or half-stung by a wasp that got caught under my knee at the farmer's market. I've never been stung in my life so far - and this one wouldn't have stung if it hadn't been caught in just the wrong way under my knee while sitting on the truck bed. It was just a string of unlikely events sort of day... my dad was allergic, Esme isn't so far (she has been stung a few times) and I just had never found out. The area got hot and pink but didn't swell too much, then was down by the time the three hours had went by. 

I work the weekend, and school starts after the weekend.  I'm not looking forward to going out to get groceries today but will need to.

 Afternoon :

went to town in the mail truck, got groceries, got home

made oatmeal cookies that were a bit more like pancakes, but tasty - I'll eat them, and that is what counts (of course, the dogs are fans of snacks, too)

called the mechanic and they have the vehicle - they've gotten it to start without issue (we couldn't start it at all after it died yesterday) but it's running really rough. The gas tank had been above a quarter when I left yesterday, and the mechanic says now after all that trouble it is at empty - which does support along with the symptoms perhaps part of what was in there being water or condensation. I asked him to give it a very good look over because I was scared by what it did with the power steering. I told them about the water in the gas reported in the town I had gotten gas in. Mark told me that just running the tank half empty like I normally do can cause condensation in it, as well - and I should be running it mostly full all the time. In this economy, and with two cars which we run both of them, I told him that is so hard. And he said to make to an investment of a full tank on it and then fill it like I'm doing when it reaches half. It's a beautiful idea I told him, bit sarcasm, but I'll try to work towards it. So many other things keep needing to be paid all the time. But he said that method would make sure that water either in the gas itself or by condensation, doesn't have a chance to be that much of a problem. Still, economically, it is very hard to stop every few days and keep it full when bread needs to be bought and milk and so forth etc. and it's already been hard days that I just want to get home. 

 Night:

Gave Charlotte dog a bath, she needed one as bad as Sweetie but she didn't want one!  She told me I got soap in her nose, but was happier later.  

Harvested two shishito peppers from that plant I bought a few weeks ago - they are supposed to be randomly hot or mild, per pepper. I cut these two up and put them in the freezer and my fingers stung for a while afterward, not as bad as that last time with the farmer's market peppers, but still for a while. So, I'm glad I put them in a different container, and can balance what I put them in.

Put onions, peppers, fresh zucchini we got at the market yesterday, porkchop spice and two small cooked porkchops cut up in a pan and then added an egg - and served beside mashed potatoes with butter.

Did French and Japanese, and played the Stardew valley game in French again for a few hours. Finished up two washcloths, laundry, dishes. We watched a 2013 movie called 'Coherence' that was about quantum theory/ parallel dimensions - it reminded me so much of Sliding Doors in the beginning and then halfway through they actually mention that 1998 movie! 

Try to get some sleep for work tomorrow... I have been getting up in the middle of the night and not going back to sleep well.. so we'll see how it works out tonight. 

rabbit rabbit it's August

 

Library books, probably won't finish them but there is a chance I'll read them, the one on the right is about Paris, and magic, but the text is on the small side.  The center one is about a Native American community, and the library has the sequel out which made me go see if they had the first one.  The one on the left was on sale for two dollars and the premise is quite scary and intriguing (future, one child per family, identical twins and mother died, father made an elaborate ruse in her memory to appear as if there was only one daughter and now the daughters are older and trying to figure out how to go on when they only have one identity and fear of death on discovery).  But, now that I own that one - however intriguing it is, I will look at the other two first since they are two weeks loan.

 

our local library had such cute children's decorations I had to take a picture of it - mushroom window, waterfall in the back (out of streamers) and paper chain tree leaves on a column made to look like a trunk (complete with owl)

we had donated a lot of coleus one day after a farmer's market trip - and they put some out front in planters :)  We were so glad they were loved

the community garden raised beds were full of interesting plants

 

Also, little chicken did not improve, and I think perhaps she also had a fractured bone in her leg that had actually caused the other problems and was the reason she could not improve even with warm baths and eye-dropper feeding.  There wasn't anything else we could do for her, and she wasn't eating and barely drinking.  Esme was sad, but we did what we could - cleaned up all the care things this morning and then I continued and cleaned out some garden beds and the dry goods pantry - trying to sort my brain out, by sorting what is in front of me ie ie....  I hate losing one, even when there are twenty - and twenty was a bit much for us, but when you buy them small you almost expect to lose several - and we were lucky in that we raised all of the last batch to adulthood and hadn't lost any of the batch before (which we had also expected).  We let them have as long of lives as they can, whether or not if they are laying eggs keeping up 'production'.    At the same time we don't do anything elaborate, like the heated houses that look better than doghouses that I see, or go out and spend hours with them every day as I see online as well.  We will give them greens and vegetable cuttings and make sure they have layer feed twice a day and clean water, and collect the eggs - that's a pretty good life for a chicken, especially around here.

Knitting a little this morning, going to go take a look at that crochet bear or cat I was working on.  Doing laundry and sweeping and wishing I had more energy to go further and deep clean other things but the pantry did need it.  I want to 'make it better' on a lot of little things but the little things add up.  That is good - because they should add up to better, but they also add up in exhaustion, so a little at a time, easy does it et al.  And I washed one of the dogs, she is always so sensitive she was begging me to give her another bath.  She hasn't quite figured out how to distinctly ask for a bath - but I've been getting more signals from her a few times lately and trying to see if we can get an actual trained signal.    I finally studied amigurumi stitches and see what I'm doing that makes the weave not tight enough - will see on the next if I can correct that.  We do plan, at least Esme and I, to go sell at the market this afternoon, and then we need groceries tonight or tomorrow.

Doing French at the high-grammar level, Chinese at the lowest level when the French grammar annoys me, and Spanish on my phone although that is a higher grammar level as well and I might have to switch down to something else there for a little bit, as well.