16 - what's for dinner
For MicroBlogVember
As I write this, it's 10am. I don't know yet.
I usually eat dinner at around 4:30-5pm (Pacific), because my east coast friends generally want to hang out at 8pm (Eastern), and I (generally) also want to hang out. It being socially acceptable to begin drinking alcohol at 5pm and the fact that you really shouldn't drink alcohol on an empty stomach are also factors in this.
(Aside: "Breakfast" [usually a protein smoothie] is usually around 7 to 8am. Lunch tends to be about 11am - noon.)
Cooking meals in this household is a bizarre experience; I have ADHD and my mother probably also has ADHD (if not also autism and dementia), and the act of cooking a full meal requires a certain amount of foresight that we don't always have. She is a very picky ovo-lacto-pescatarian who refuses to eat onions or peppers (if they're visible, anyway) and will smother any given dish that isn't PB&J with either yellow mustard, supermarket shredded cheese, or chocolate. The latter point has caused me serious grief in the past and I've only recently started to calm down on it because I learned about the concept of autistic "safe foods".
So, let's say, hypothetically, you want to cook a meal instead of getting expensive takeout or eating some kind of processed frozen meal, because you want to become healthier and save some money. You also want to eat low-carb, to be a bit healthier both mentally and physically. The only other person in your household eats primarily carbohydrates, unless you cook fish, but fish is expensive. You have ADHD, so you completely lack the ability of foresight to prepare certain things ahead of time, and you can only utilize a fraction of your fridge space because if something is not immediately visible when you open the door, it does not exist.
Thank goodness my mother is capable of cooking herself an omelette and toast in the morning; I think I'd go insane otherwise. She refuses to use kitchen knives or cook literally anything more complicated than that.
(Aside: when I was a child, she cooked dinner for the four-person family every night, and it was the same every night: unseasoned chicken breast broiled from frozen, unseasoned white rice, and unseasoned mixed vegetables microwaved from frozen. I categorically refuse to return to this and I think it's a big part of why I have such an interest in food and food entertainment.)
It's tough. I'm sure there are certain dishes that would be perfect, but I don't know them. I can barely take care of myself, so the options are either to destroy myself mentally trying to also manage my mother's nutrition or to simply accept that she is old and is going to eat PB&J or tuna salad sandwiches or frozen enchiladas all day no matter what I do.
Anyway, all that said, I was thinking about making some tomato soup or something. We'll see if I even remember that idea by the time I'd need to start cooking so that it'd be ready by 4pm.
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