March 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I enjoyed the linky last month, so am participating in In My Kitchen again.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I don’t have my own kitchen because I live in an institution. We also usually get our dinners from a meal delivery service. Last month, I shared that I was hoping to do some more cooking in March. Guess what? I cooked dinner for myself and my fellow residents twice this past month.

First, on March 5, I cooked pasta with pesto, chicken and broccoli. My spouse joked after seeing the picture that the pine nuts were on sale. In reality, I hadn’t originally planned to sprinkle the pasta with pine nuts but my staff had loads of them, originally intended for her parrots, who don’t even really like them or that’s what she said.

A little over a week later, I cooked pasta again. This time, I included shrimp, lots of garlic, peppers, a few packages of mixed veg and, because according to me this was too little for ten people, a few bell peppers too. I needn’t have worried, because everyone had enough to eat and there were still a few servings left to go in the freezer.

I also made a few smoothies using my blender. Unfortunately, last week I found out that, somehow, the ring-shaped thingy that keeps the blades in place, had broken. I erroneously thought this meant the entire blender should be discarded. Yesterday, my spouse and I went to the electronics store and bought a new one, actually I believe it’s the same one I had. I also recently learned that I can actually make more smoothie with my blender than I used to think. After all, when you fill up the blender with fruit, veg or whatever you’re blending, you shouldn’t fill it up fully. Until recently, I however thought that this means you’re left with only, say, half the blender’s content of smoothie and that’s it. I never realized that you can add more food once the blender has finished blending some of its contents. Stupid, I know, but oh well.

In other kitchen-related news, my assigned staff has told me that she’ll add a weekly cooking activity into my day schedule. I don’t yet know when this is going to happen, but I did hear that my one-on-one support has been approved until the end of 2026 again. Yay!

#WeekendCoffeeShare (January 3, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I usually do this on Saturdays, but I want to do it today. It’s 8:30PM, so I’ve had my last cup of coffee and soft drink for the day, but as usual, you can always grab a cup of your favorite beverage. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. New Year’s was windy and rainy. Today, we got a bit of snow. Let’s just say I can’t wait for spring.

If we were having coffee, I’d then tell you that, due to the weather, I didn’t meet my movement goals most of this week. That is, over New Year’s, I didn’t feel safe going outside because of the fireworks. My monthly challenge on my Apple Watch is to burn 335 active calories a day 14 times. This should be easy, but I’m honestly a bit discouraged right now.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that, on Monday, I tried to make a smoothie only to discover that tons of black critters had crawled into my blender. My outdoor cushions had been next to the blender and that’s where they came from. The cushions were horribly moldy too. Needless to say I threw out the cushions. I could’ve washed the blender, but the idea of these critters ever having been in it, creeped me out, so I discarded it too.

Thankfully, when I explained the situation on the phone, my spouse offered me a blender that had been sitting in our house since my spouse’s birthday in 2023, because it was a gift from me. Apparently my spouse hardly ever uses it. It’s a lot smaller than my old blender, so no more smoothies for the entire home. It works okay though, as I made my first smoothie in it yesterday.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that my New Year’s was okay. I had originally planned to stay at the institution, but ended up spending the night with my spouse at our house. For the most part, we just chilled and watched a little TV. We ate a delicious pasta bake for dinner. We hardly made it to midnight before feeling too tired to remain awake. Unfortunately, the fireworks were really bad, so it was 2AM before we properly slept. Neither of us usually sleeps well when we’re together anyway. I left by 2PM on New Year’s day.

That evening, the staff here at the institution had ordered salads, baguettes and various kinds of meat. It was good. I also had a cup of ice cream topped with loads of whipped cream for dessert.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that, like I suspected, I gained weight over the holidays and am now three pounds over my upper goal weight. I’m pretty sure though that, if I gained three pounds in two weeks, I can lose at least part of the weight again before my dietitian’s appt on the 15th. I am actually considering stopping seeing the dietitian, because I know full well what to do to remain somewhat healthy and I don’t think the dietitian helps keep me accountable. I don’t want to ditch my goal (eh, hope) of being more health-conscious, but I honestly don’t see how the dietitian helps me with this. I’ll give it some more thought and may use my weight on the 15th (ie. a factor of how successful I am at actually following through on what I know to be healthy) as a factor in my decision.

Friday Feels (October 4, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I have a ton of ideas of what to write about floating in my mind, but because of this I struggle to pick one. I’m going with Deb’s Friday Feels. I loved coming up with an F word last time.

F word

My F word for this week is “fruit”. Like I mentioned earlier, I bought a slow juicer. My spouse cautioned me against using it daily because of the risk of microplastics getting into my juice, as the juicer is a Chinese brand. For this reason, I’ve only used it once so far and only juiced an apple.

I since discovered that I can do far more with my blender (which is safe to use according to my spouse) than I used to think. I mean, I have one book of smoothie recipes that has a ton of juice-based ones in it, like recipes for which you need carrot juice, blueberry nectar (which I found out is just sweetened, thickened blueberry juice), etc. I decided to look beyond this book, as I have many other books on the topic of smoothies and juicing.

Today, I made my first green smoothie. Of course, I didn’t use just greens, as that’d make the smoothie taste horrible. I used spinach, pineapple, banana and coconut water. I think this smoothie can compete with the smoothie I made a few weeks back that I said was my favorite. My fellow residents loved it too.

What made me happy?

I’m in a pretty good mood, but there’s little specifically that made me happy. Then again, being in a good space mentally is a good enough reason to be happy, in my opinion.

What made me sad?

Not sad per se. More like frustrated. A skin infection on my face. Thankfully, the staff finally saw that it needed treatment yesterday and the institution nurse agreed, so I now have a salve for it.

Oh, and the fact that the entire town was cut off from WiFi yesterday afternoon and it wasn’t solved until this morning. This is costing the institution lots of money, as the night staff rely on WiFi-connected technology to know when we need them, so now each home had to have its own night staff.

What made a difference?

Two things. First, my support coordinator is genuinely listening to me with regards to my struggles in play therapy and in general. I have this issue with being very much behind emotionally and I struggle with this, because sometimes I can explain the theory, but this doesn’t mean I can help myself in reality.

Another, somewhat related thing was the video interaction support I got on Tuesday. Then, it was just someone recording me and a staff interacting on video without any feedback, but I’m hopeful the staff will learn something by looking at the video at a later time.

It’s October

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s October. Several years, I’ve at least tried to participate in blog challenges, such as #Blogtober and #Write31Days. I saw that #Blogtober is running again this year, but I’m not officially participating. Still, I’m challenging myself to blog more this month. I did okay’ish in September.

Generally speaking, I don’t like October. It’s not as bad as November, but it’s not a fun month. Unfortunately, this year so far is no exception.

The weather’s bad, so I didn’t walk today except to a staff’s car to drive to a DHL service point to pick up a slow juicer I’d ordered online on Sunday. It’s a Chinese brand, so I may at some point regret having bought it because of the risk of microplastics in my juice. In fact, I’m already putting a good juicer and blender (my blender is not Chinese but it’s a cheap one) on my wishlist should I decide juicing and smoothie making is a true keeper hobby for me. I’m not buying either until I’ve waited a few months to make up my mind though.

I did start off this month with a new course on Duolingo: intermediate English. So far, most of it is ridiculously easy. Then again, the option I selected on the start screen to determine my skill level made the app think I’m at the early B1 level in the CEFR classification system. My spouse said my writing skills are probably C1 level at least but I’m pretty sure I miss some B level vocabulary. Let’s hope the course will aid in teaching me that.

Lovin’ Lately (July 28, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s time for me to share some of the things I discovered or bought recently that I’ve loved once again. I’m joining Friday Favorites.

1. iOS 16.6. Well, honestly, nothing’s new, but at least a long-standing accessibility bug that had been annoying me for months finally got resolved. Since iOS 16.5, which came out in early May I believe, for whatever reason, the panning buttons on my Braille display, which allow me to scroll, froze in all book-related apps after the first page, allowing me to read only one page and then have to turn VoiceOver off and back on. This made reading on my iPhone basically impossible. So, no shiny new features but yay, I can read again!

2. Books. This brings me to my second favorite thing. Since I can finally read on my iPhone again, I have been doing so a lot. I am currently reading Silenced, Rosie Lewis’ latest foster care memoir.

3. My new blender. I finally took the plunge and ordered a blender off Bol.com last week. I have only made two smoothies with it so far, but it’s good nonetheless. It is a power blender, but not by a high-end brand, because I just don’t have the money for that. Being able to read on my iPhone again, also meant being able to use the collections of smoothie recipes I have on there again.

4. The Water Reminder app for my iPhone. I have had it on my phone several times, but it’s probably Chinese and I at one point deleted all the Chinese-owned apps off my phone for fear of being spied on. Then again, my old headphones that I used with my computer, were a Chinese brand too, so what’s the point? Today, when I looked at the Water Reminder app, I discovered that there are far more drink types you can add than I previously thought. I was looking for “smoothie”, and yay, it’s in there.

5. The Celtic Relaxation Music playlist by SWake on Spotify. I discovered it while searching for Celtic instrumental music playlists. Though Spotify’s own Celtic Instrumental playlist is good too, this one is better.

What have you been lovin’ lately?