The Kiwi Mental Kitchen

What a roller coaster life has been over the last few months. My health got progressively worse for a while then and my household went into coping mode. Dinners became simple and sometimes even straight from a "gasp" packet but we did what was needed to get through the day to day. It has been nearly a month since they finally got my medications right again and I'm still working my way though destressing from it all. As such, I still have limited amounts of energy for cooking but I am starting to make the basic things more interesting again. In some ways, I'm turning into my mother when it comes to cooking. I now understand why she served us mixed frozen vegetables so often growing up. They are quick, easy and rather cheap, though I must admit they are nicer boiled than microwaved. Much cheaper than buying fresh veg and not getting around to cooking it, which was a common occurrence in the coping mode we have been in. I never really liked them growing up and to be h...

So in my 1-month update, I commented that my meds were being put up. One of the side effects of this is sedation, it is meant to get better as time goes on but because we uped the dose again before the sedation wore off I have had nearly 2 months now struggling not to sleep my days away. Over this time I have been doing a lot better at cooking for us most nights but I have fallen back into old habits about what we are eating. So it's time for me to go back to the 10 rules . I have sat down tonight and written up a meal plan for the rest of the month as I was finding it too easy to forget to do the weekly plan and then muddle on through, but when I do this I tend to forget about the greater variety and increasing seafood. I have also decided to theme the nights of the week to make it a bit easier to plan so I have made a vegetarian night so that we eat more plants, a seafood night for similar reasons, a slow cooker night for when I'm out in the afternoon, a new dish night so t...

So it's been a little bit over a month now, and I think it is time to give you a little update of how I have been finding and what difference I have found. Though I will state that I feel it is very early in the game. I start off with a rip and a roar and was really loving the cooking and the newness of it all and in some ways, this hasn't really worn off. In saying that though It has been a really rough couple of weeks. Not too long before all this started I went through a medication change and initially it looked like this were really good and that it was better than previous mixes but I crashed down into a fairly major depressive episode. This really affected my motivation and ability to cope which in turn affected my ability to go the gym and cook well. I muddled through and have been cooking as best I can but I'm back to see my doctor on Thursday to discuss meds. I'm now seeing just how much of a struggle implementing something like this while depressed can be ...

Well, it's been a bit of a week of kitchen failures, first the cornbread then last night I lost count of how much milk I put in the toad in the hole and ended up putting too much in. It looks like 50% white spelt and 50% rye flour will work but I need to try again to be sure. I've asked a couple of friends about corn bread recipes and seem to have found one to try next time. Tonight I'm trying an Asian-inspired chicken noodle soup so hopefully, that goes better for me. Wish me luck!