Day 216- This Medicine is Kicking My Butt

First- Weekend schedule change. Most of you (and almost all of me) probably sleep a bit later on weekends, or don't plan things as closely, or just kinda relax your schedules on the weekend. I'm doing that here. I'll try and get Saturday and Sunday up by 10am, but may sometimes push back all the way to noon.

Right, food.

I do not like the medicine I started taking. It's making me pukey and actively unhungry. Yesterday I managed to choke down the two rolls over about an hour, but it was really late at night before I even thought about food again.

Now, normally, if I go a bit too long between meals, I'll get a little pukey, and that's a really good sign that it's time to scarf down the nearest eatable anything. This stuff isn't leaving me that option. I feel worse *after* I eat than before.

So, this is a problem, obviously. It *may* go away in a couple weeks. It also may stick around for however long I'm on the stuff (and if I can't eat, it won't be that long...). For an idea of how bad this is, I bought a bag of chips last night. I managed to eat about 10 before I had to stop.

I'm going to hunt down a scale today and get an idea of where I'm at there. If I'm not *really* eating again by Wednesday, though, this experiment might have to take a short break. High calorie/ low bulk, not-dairy veggie food is tough to find and kinda spendy.

Normally, if I haven't eaten and I'm either pukey or just *not hungry* feeling because of it a couple bites of *something* will kick the hungry back on. Not with this stuff, though. I get one good shot, probably 1/2 to 1 cup of food before I can't get anything near my face. I don't even want to eat spring rolls. I love spring rolls.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

Day 124- I Want a Food Machine

First up, I changed the template. The other one was not at all adjustable, and I felt like I was always shrinking photos down to tiny sizes. This one is more my style, anyway. Let me know if it's way too wide for your screens, but otherwise, I think this is what I'm sticking with.

Second-

As I was thinking about cooking yesterday, I thought about the sci-fi and fantasy books I've read with food machines in them. You know, some character presses a button and the food just *appears*. No other cooking involved. I want one installed in every room in every building I'm ever in.

See, I have this thing... I hate (with a fiery passion) doing anything that I have to do.

Quick story-

I read The Grapes of Wrath back when I was probably 12 or so. Before high school, when it was required. I haven't read it since. Not when we were reading it for class, not when I was bored in an airport, not when it was required for reading in a college class. Once it was "required" I lost all interest. I've never read The Odyssey and I've written (very good) papers on the dratted thing. It's always been required reading, and I don't wanna.

Back to the Point-

I'm *required* by this challenge to cook several times each day. For myself. Then required to eat, several times each day, again, by myself. Pleh.

Cooking from (mostly) scratch when there are other options? Crazy revolutionary, contrary thing to do. Fun. Cooking from scratch when I have to? Plodding dull crap I'm starting to hate more every day.

Of course, if I lived someplace where cooking was outlawed and you had to go to restaurants for every meal or get take away, or something, I'd be hunting down black market grocery stores and stoves and who knows what else. But in this have to cook every day world, I dream of magic food replicators. Or maybe a maid, cook, and several attractive guys to cart my lazy behind around on one of those Cleopatra-type chairs.

What this translates to in real life is that... Well, sometimes my food is just ugly. And most of the time it pretty much sucks, flavor-wise. It's really just fuel at this point. I've lost interest in making it interesting. And there are only so many ways I can photograph a bowl of noodles.

True story- I once considered a co-housing opportunity because it included a meal-prep rotation. Everyone only cooked maybe twice a month. Then I realized that I need more mental personal space than that.

So yeah. Yesterday's food was a set of... "burgers", made with my handy dandy batter recipe, about 1/4C wheat gluten, and 1/3 of an onion, diced. It held together really well. I'm going to try it with beans. I think it'd be best with black beans (because I like them the most) but I'll have to get more before I try that. I also made noodles with soy sauce and oil, but it was just noodles, so no photo.

Third- In line with my whole "I hate doing things that are required" deal, I was thinking about taking this weekend off from blogging. I find myself much less inclined to "cheat" now that I've given myself permission (even as limited as it is). I think I'm going to do it. I might give a quick update sometime this weekend, but otherwise, after about midnight GMT, I'm taking "off" until Monday. I'll still be on my budget, just not writing about it- I've got some stuff to do, and no motivation to do any of it. Hopefully this will help change that. Sometimes a mini-vacation (even from vacation) can be just what a person needs.

So that's it. Thoughts, opinions, ideas?

Yesterday and a schedule

First, the promised crumb cake, recipe from vegan yum yum-


I admit, I didn't follow her recipe exactly. Changes I made include-

• half oil, half EB for crumb, instead of 8T of (v. spendy) Earth Balance
• about half the flour in the crumb, probably just use 3/4 C next time
• no molasses, so I didn't use any.
  
• Also no lemon or regular vinegar, so I didn't sour the "milk"
• no corn starch, so I just added an extra T of flour and 1/4C water to the recipe.
• no powdered sugar, so I didn't dust the top
• Oh, and I used regular veggie oil (soy) rather than canola, 'cause I don't have any.

I still haven't made the cinnamon rolls. I'm working on them now, actually. Yesterday all I ate was the other half of the crumb cake, so that's all gone now, along with half my 5lb bag of flour. Oops.

On to the schedule part of things. I'm going to try something new, because posting as I eat isn't working, and makes for lots of randomly timed posts. Instead, I'm going to do what I'm doing today- post what I ate yesterday, with any pictures or recipes.

I'm going to try to have them posted by 7am Eastern time, but they'll be up by 9am no matter what. If I need to change this around (say I get a job that goes 7pm-7am) I'll warn in advance, and slide the times back a bit, but still most likely before noon. Hopefully this will keep me more focused and reliable, and help anyone out there in reader land know when to drop by.