pbray: (Roar)
pbray ([personal profile] pbray) wrote2009-10-30 03:27 pm

The new improved Patricia

Working from home this afternoon so I can watch the crockpot as the chili cooks away (as a professional paranoid I won't leave the house while it's on.) Had a mini-meltdown at grocery store when I realized they were out of ground bison which is what I normally use, and there was much dithering before I finally decided the all-natural ground angus beef would be an acceptable substitute.

I still buy ingredients for one recipe at a time, so the contents of my pantry is limited to a few cans of soup, pasta, rice, saltines, and whatever I plan on cooking that night. But I do indeed cook, which makes a remarkable change from the years when dinner was invariably a frozen box with a picture on it.

I cook so I can eat well, but I don't enjoy it. What I did love was baking, but I rarely do so any more. Partly because there's no one to share it with (when you work in a building that's mostly deserted, you can't count on coworkers to devour the extras), and partly because I've changed my diet so that cookies, cake and brownies are rare exceptions, no longer every day snacks. But the holidays are coming up, and one of these days I'm sure the flour, sugar, chocolate chips and etc. will spontaneously leap into my cart and force me to take them home.

[identity profile] sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 02:49 pm (UTC)(link)
And just try being a vegetarian with food allergies ...

(I know, I know, the vegetarian part is my own fault.)

Fortunately I am not as severely allergic as you all -- I have to be directly exposed to the offending substance in order to react -- and fortunately neither peanuts nor walnuts is on my list, so I can eat M&Ms and carrot cake with impunity. But my list does include (raw) carrots, apples, celery, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, and cherries (inter alia), which makes healthy snacking tricky; and it also includes hazelnuts, chestnuts, and almonds, which makes boxes of assorted chocolates a minefield and other people's home baking a somewhat fraught undertaking.

And don't even get me started on stealth chicken broth in the "vegetarian" soup :P

[identity profile] pbray.livejournal.com 2009-11-01 01:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Cooking for vegetarians is easy--I just tell myself that they are allergic to meat (and fish), and go from there :-)

[identity profile] sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com 2009-11-01 09:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Hee :)