cookin' on the ritz

[xihe]

Back in 2010 or so, when I first started college, I had what would be the first sign of what would become the Fainting Waif Disease(tm). It started off as being unable to handle 90% of food, and it ended up with me eventually sleeping 10-15 hours most days in 2014, because the only solution I could figure out to my chronic food problems that involved actually maintaining weight was sleeping any and all symptoms the fuck away.

Eight years later, it's mostly under control. I take my incredibly over-priced pancreatic enzymes, which lets my body actually recognise the food I'm putting in as food, instead of foreign rock invaders. I avoid everything soy, everything avocado / banana / latex fruit-related (except apples, because you have to take risks somewhere), milk, anything with high lactose, anddd most meat. And subsequently: it's been a few months since I last fucking fainted, which is absolutely lovely!

I still get sick if I forget to take enzymes, or just from fucking butter, which is an unfortunate staple to most of my recipes. But it's mostly managable now.

It also means home-making almost every single dish I eat, though, which's proven a fucking moral disaster when I go out. I just want chips sometimes, haha. I've been making it work, though! Slowly. Begrudgingly, while feeling like a batshit vegetarian, but it's something.

No pictures, because I loathe taking them of anything, ever, but meals the past few days:

• potatoes rolled in paprika+lime+ginger+flour, fried in peanut oil, with misc veggies
• smoked gouda macaroni and cheese
• spinach + roasted brussel sprouts + red potatoes + sprouts, with a dijon mustard vinagrette
• pinto bean tacos, stuffed inside of green pepper shells
• herb roasted apples + onions + carrots, served next to celery egg salad
• butternut squash tomato soup + gouda grilled cheeses w/ sofrito
• baked ziti (just - no)
• an amount of stuffing that, in hindsight, was frankly absurd
• endless nights of ricotta ravioli with basil pesto + diced tomatoes

Some of these have turned out absolutely horrible, haha. I've been trying to balance out "things I can safely eat" with "things that are not vile", which is unfortunately somewhat limited when I don't.. actually know what most things taste like! This is making me realise that my vegetable diet was largely "brussel sprouts / broccoli, corn, peas, carrots, cabbage, pumpkin and naught else", which is still heavily represented in the things I have up there.

But, y'know, it's a process. I have a huge chunk of celery in the fridge I still have to puzzle out how to use, and I've been trying to figure out how you use squash, so. x) If anyone has recommendations for vegetarian recipes, or your favourite vegetables, please feel free to share in the comments! As is, tonight, I guess I'm going to figure out how you use arugula, which should be an exciting process.

Comments

[jottingprosaist]

Celery and broccoli soup! Assuming you still have broccoli left, that is. (I made this recipe but left out the fresh spinach, and I actually put the herbs in instead of dunking them in a little bag like tea.) Or I'm sure you could do it as just celery and onion soup. (I haven't tried this one, but I plan to!)

Squash is the devil and I cannot save you from it.

[xihe]

I always have so much broccoli, man. There was a sale and I think I have.. literally 20 bags in my freezer right now? My animosity towards buying things at full price is only matched by my desire to keep my pantry consistently full.

But ooo, perfect, thank you! I've yet to try celery in soup, so this should be interesting.

(And hahaha. What did squash do to you? Or are you just opposed on the grounds of the fact it's so.. squashy?)

[jottingprosaist]

Squash is just... feels bad, man. Some of my distaste may come from having been forced to eat it regularly as a child, when in hindsight my mom was... not that good of a cook. Perhaps squash doesn't always taste that weird if it's spiced or cooked with other things. I could experiment with it on my own these days.

...Maybe I should. Nyehhh.

Did you get a chance to try the celery soup?

[astriferal]

If you feel like being adventurous, you could try ratatouille? https://www.budgetbytes.com/oven-roasted-ratatouille/

I'll look for squash recipes for you! It's a favorite vegetable in my house so I'm sure we have *something.* It just means digging through the recipe books for a little bit.

But hey, congrats on not fainting in a while! o/*\o I'm happy for you, this sounds pretty huge