Food Cures All Ills

Ramping back up in the kitchen!

July 9th, 2023

Since my previous blog iterations, our food lives have changed substantially. The Hubs has been a vegetarian since I met him, and much longer than that, which was a slight adjustment for me, but I took it in stride. If you read the old blog, you’ll remember me trying things like home made St. Patrick’s Day “jello” made with agar agar… I am no longer doing that, mainly because it was terrible, partly because he had no sense of nostalgia for it, as I did! But one day Hubs said, I am trying something new with my diet. I feel physically miserable most of the time, and I think it’s the way I am eating. As usual, he did loads of research and landed on carbohydrates, indeed most sugars, and all grains and vegetables that were starchy. So, out went the rice, pasta, oatmeal, bread (OH NO NOT THE BREAD??), corn, potatoes, carrots and lots and lots of pantry staples that he loved, and that I depended upon.

I developed a sort of “bread roll” from nuts and eggs, with a few chemistry cheats I landed on, which he seemed to like, and started making every little bit of everything from scratch. It started to work, he felt better and more energetic, started riding his bike and walking more, he had less issues with tiredness and insomnia, and dare I say it? He lost weight! He has been, since that time, a much happier person, all down to diet. What do I cook for him, you ask? Just about everything.

He makes a trip to the farmers market each Saturday and grabs whatever looks good to him, and I cook with every scrap of it. When “zoodles” became a thing, I made them. He said, why do all that work, just chop them up and cook them with whatever sauce ingredients. And that worked. Rice from cauliflower? Did it. Then took the same advice and just started chopping things small and using it the same way. He still eats things like tofu and tempe, and the meat substitutes that you can find in almost every shop these days, just nothing breaded or rolled in corn starch. It’s been about 5 years now (maybe more, Covid has me still unable to tell how long it went on for), and he’s in greater shape than ever.

We don’t ever eat the same meal though, which is a little time intensive, and a lot sad, because I lean towards whatever is quick and easy to grab. A cheese plate with some olives and a meat? Yes, please! Picky dinner? Yeah! That’s not really a healthy way to go about it, but at the moment it’s where I find myself. Perhaps that will change some time soon, but not for the moment.

Now we are both obligated to be in the building for work (me twice a week, him one day a week), its a little trickier. I don’t always feel like cooking when I get home, but most days I do, I feel strongly it’s helpful to Hubs. I don’t always eat dinner, my big meal is usually lunch. I might graze or pick around rather than sit down for a meal. Another issue we have is that we don’t have a dining room, and thus no dining room table to eat around. Perhaps that will also change in the near future.

For the time being, we each are on our own food path. I am finding that now I am out and about more, I want to cook more. I recently made sour cherry brownies, because we had sour cherries in the freezer (YUM!), and cheese scones. Hubs can have them within reason, and he has dietary supplements he uses that help him with digesting them.

I am curious to hear if anyone out there has had similar challenges to their food routines. Children change the eating and cooking habits? Similar dietary changes to ours? Lack of supply made you seek out easier to source meal planning? Has anyone tried the meal prep services available? Talk to me, let me know!

I’d love to start a dialog around this, and exchange ideas!
And after the lockdown….

June 11th, 2023

I was the absolute worst over the whole epidemic. Ask my husband. But we had something precious we had to protect, my elderly father in law, who was in the midst of a pretty severe mental health crisis. On top of that I have allowed myself to become not the healthiest person in the world, and was struck with the terror of the horror stories I read early on, of people being in care for months and perishing.

I suppose that is as good a place to start as any. the Hubs and I were, and to a degree still are, my father in law’s sole caregivers, and that was a huge undertaking just on it’s own, but with the whole world lockdown, we had to pool resources, figure out doctor appointments, medications, all kinds of caregiver things that neither of us ever thought we would be tasked with, being childless by choice.

When things started to ease up a bit, I kept the terror deep in me that we would still, somehow give him “the cooties” and it would be catastrophic. Or, that one or the both of us could responsible for that. Even worse that we would have it ourselves and not be able to care for him. As the restrictions lifted, he got better, and now almost 6 months later, things are in a place we never thought we would be again, he is healthier both mentally and physically, much more self sufficient, and our caregiving is mainly making appointments and driving him there, and the occasional food run. My remaining big task is cooking hot food for him to eat during the week. And that’s where this story can mesh with the other blogs I have written for the past 15 years, what do I cook and how do I do that? I had to be creative when supplies were low, shop the sales to stock up, and generally cook in a fashion I never had before! It was a lesson in how to make food appealing for someone with highly challenging physical issues (i.e., inability to taste or smell food, needing highly seasoned meals, all packaged so that all they had to do was to put it in the microwave and eat it, no portioning out). As his taste and smell started to come back, but the supply chain was still fairly stalled, I started to see all these stories on Instagram about “Alabama pot roast” and things I would never ever have cooked previously, me being the make it all from scratch devotee, became easy. Using the slow cooker, long slow braising, cooking lots of meat dishes again, all of this was setting me back to an old way of preparing food, mainly for someone we were not eating with!

I was struggling to start a new blog, having lost 10+ years of writing and subscribers of the past blog I wrote, Detroit Foods. So this first post is to start me on the new path, find old recipes and update them, and mainly get my original premise, cooking isn’t hard, and it’s certainly not rocket science. If I can cook it, you certainly can too!

So, here I am again my friends, be patient whilst I get my old writing muscles back into shape, and lets set to cooking and enjoying each other’s presence again!

I hope you all join me, and enjoy what I can offer!

Elizabeth (also known as “E”)

Ramping back up in the kitchen!

And after the lockdown….