Does this involve cooking?

What food would you say is your specialty?

I have very little interest in food. I can easily forget to eat, and like my mother, I could live on toast. Except that I’m gluten free and the bread is mainly uninspiring. So I don’t live on toast. It’s hard when your staple diet is wiped out.

I used to cook, but ready meals were a really bad thing for me when they came out. Open pack, place in oven, wait for smell of burning. If no smell of burning, go back downstairs and switch oven on.

I even tried a microwave but really couldn’t go that far. My baked apples exploded.

What? They’re desserts, that’s a completely different thing from food.

I was better when I had regular meal times, but hubby has never really had them, his job requires him to work on at night, seemingly every night for over 30 years. He also rarely works within an hour of home, when he has that’s just meant he can work more and travel less.

As such my already minimal interest in food deserted me. However, between the ages of two and three I ate three digestive biscuits a day and was the only child in my nursery class that was never ill. So I don’t tend to worry about bulk as it were, or appearance, or content…or actual food presence really.

Changing

Life is a progression, I’m old enough now to know that it has phases. The work we do in my Spiritual Empowerment Groups brings about subtle changes that take time to recognise.

One is that I am now going through all my cookbooks looking for the kind of food I want to cook.

Yep, it’s practical spirituality for everyday living. Who you are, what you do, nothing fluffy. On the ground, at the coalface, creating change surprisingly effortlessly.

Be yourself

I tried cooking a few months ago, landed up with a house full of ingredients I didn’t have time or the interest to cook. I’ve realised that I need fresh, tasty, but ten minutes preparation time.

I also find cookery books annoying. They’re big, bulky, and get in the way. If you’re a messy cook they also get covered in food.

So I’m going to do the unthinkable to some people. I’m going to take a scalpel, carefully cut out the recipes I want and put them in a folder. Then I will recycle the rest.

I know it sounds like heresy, but I need the photos (so that I can say “It’s meant to be this”) and I know I will not get round to typing out all the recipes. Photographing them with your phone can be problematic if the paper is glossy.

The thing is that every extra step you add in to doing something, every complication, makes you less likely to do it. Especially if the subject isn’t that interesting to you.

I want good fresh food fast.

So I’m going to do this in a way that ensures that I will do it. Watch this space.

There may be some specialties coming…or not…or a tasty mess…any of the above really…or biscuits.

🤣

Deb xx