August 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this last day of August. We had rain in the weather forecast for the last few days, but it wasn’t more than a drizzle. Hopefully tomorrow there’ll be more.

I’m joining In My Kitchen again even though August wasn’t all that exciting with respect to kitchen-based or other food-related activities. I have a few plans for the first week of September. Here’s hoping I can be more involved in the kitchen over the rest of the month too.

I didn’t cook dinner at all in August, but I did create a few little treats for myself and sometimes my fellow residents. Like, on August 4, I made a mascarpone-based dessert with raspberries and blueberries on top.

I also prepared overnight oats again. The next morning, I added the toppings and enjoyed my healthy’ish breakfast. Now I doubt that it’s actually healthier than my regular breakfast, but who cares?

I made a few smoothies too. In one of them, I put pineapple, spinach and almond milk. My idea was to prove to one of the staff, who didn’t like spinach, that you won’t taste spinach in smoothies. Guess what? We didn’t taste the spinach, but we didn’t taste much of anything else either. I eventually added a banana and some honey, but it still was one of the blandest smoothies I’ve had.

Like I said on Friday, I also have been making coffees with foaming milk on top. The truth is I don’t really like them, but my milk frother was €70 and now it feels less like a waste of money. Besides, my fellow residents like the coffees.

Lastly, yesterday I spent the day with my spouse in our house. We had originally planned to cook dinner together, but ultimately my spouse ended up doing everything. We had an easy broccoli and chicken stir-fry with hot sauce and noodles. My spouse asked me whether it was as good as the meal delivery service meals. 😉 It was a lot better!

Speaking of which, the meal delivery service now has “2.0” written on many of its foods. I get Siam sauce 2.0, for example. Once, I even got “cauliflower 2.0”. Well, what can be improved or changed about just cauliflower? The brown rice doesn’t have 2.0 written on it, but it’s been horribly undercooked lately. I am of the opinion that the higher-ups deciding which meal delivery service to contract, or that the institution even has to contract one rather than operating its own kitchen, should be forced to consume a meal delivery service dinner once a week.

How I’m Feeling (Or Something Like It)

Posted on by Astrid
Daily writing prompt
How are you feeling right now?
View all responses

I’m not sure how I feel right now. It’s past 11PM and I badly want to write, but don’t have the slightest idea what about. That’s probably why I’m turning to the WordPress Daily Prompt, which is quite generic today if you ask me. Or is it? Maybe it’s just that I, being quite intellectually-focused, don’t know how to answer this.

Wait, I was an Enneagram type 4, right? I guess not. I’m perpetually confused as to whether I’m a 4w5 or 5w4. Maybe that means I’m some other type entirely. Or the Enneagram is just pseudoscience (which I know it is but feel in my heart that it’s not).

But I digress. I’ve been feeling all sorts of things today. In the afternoon, I rode the side-by-side bike to the next town to buy some groceries. I also bought a hand mixer and a baking tray, because next week I’m going to bake Biscoff blondies. This was a fun activity, so I felt good. Retail therapy, I guess.

In the evening, I felt overloaded because my spouse was telling me a story on the phone at the same time that a staff entered my room. This had me feeling stressed out for an hour or so.

Then I felt excited again, as I was going to craft a special coffee for my fellow residents and staff. It’s special because it had hazelnut-flavored coffee syrup in it and foaming milk on top. I’m no barista or even close, but I liked the activity. One of my fellow residents, the last time she got my special coffee, was over the moon about the “liquor” in it.

Now it’s 11:30PM and I’m probably supposed to be in bed, but I don’t really feel tired. I think I’m just going to read some more blogs and then go to bed.

Thankful Thursday (May 15, 2025): An Active and Creative Day

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today is Thursday. I used to join in with (now angel) Brian’s Thankful Thursday occasionally a long time ago, but mostly pet bloggers joined in there. Recently, I discovered another Thankful Thursday blog hop. I’m joining in with both just because I can. 🙂

Today I had a really productive day in both the physical activity department and the creativity department.

In the morning, I went for a walk on institution grounds. Then, in the afternoon, my staff and I rode the side-by-side bike to the next town, where another staff lives who is currently on leave for family-related reasons. I went there to bring her a polymer cay “(op)kikker” (frog).

The staff invited us in for coffee, which was lovely. She really appreciated my little gift, which in turn made me grateful.

Later, I went for another walk on grounds and, in the evening, I crafted a unicorn out of polymer clay. My staff asked whether it was for yet another staff member, but I think I’m keeping this one myself. 😊

The staff, who had been doing all my support from 1PM on, also asked me whether I want to ride the side-by-side bike again tomorrow. Well, of course! I want to go to the market!

I am intensely grateful for a productive day. Here are some things I especially appreciated about today:


  • Coffee at the staff’s house.

  • Minimal pain even though I was quite physically active.

  • Being able to create again (I’ve been exceptionally crafty lately).

  • Excitement for tomorrow’s visit to the market.

  • And finally, the fact that I figured out how to use emojis on the computer! 🤣

April 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Phew, I made it to the end of the #AtoZChallenge! It’s 11PM now, but I still badly want to write a post for Sherry’s In My Kitchen linky. I could of course write it tomorrow, as it’s technically a beginning-of-the-month linky in Sherry’s timezone, but that feels off to me. Sadly, though I had planned to do some cooking, I haven’t actually prepared any dinners this past month. However, I did enjoy several other kitchen endeavors.

First, I downloaded several new cookbooks off Bookshare. One of them is Coffee Creations by Celeste Wong. I really want to be able to create my own coffees. That being said, being the scatter-brained person that I am, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that most coffees I felt like creating (lattes) are espresso-based. I did buy a milk frother last Monday, but not an espresso machine. Now I’m either having to be creative by deciding that a regular coffee can be the right base for a latte, or consider the milk frother an impulse buy that isn’t for me. And to be honest, I’m not even sure I like lattes, as I enjoy most specialty coffees more for the syrup and add-ins. I did buy a few bottles of coffee syrup that are probably way too large for me to use up before they’ll go bad.

Other than that, I’ve also been creating smoothies. I created the best cherry chocolate mocha smoothie. When starting the blender, it made a weird noise, so I was worried that some cherry pit had remained in my store-bought packet of frozen cherries. I guess not though, since there were no pit remains in my smoothie as far as I could tell and I didn’t get sick either.

I also made a mango-passion fruit smoothie. Yuck! I used mango, passion fruit, banana and coconut water and I guess I don’t like the taste of passion fruit, as I’ve used all other ingredients before and had no problem with them. My fellow clients did claim they liked this one though.

Lastly, I have one kitchen adventure to share that was a success: flat bread topped with cheddar, sun-dried tomatoes, red onion and bell pepper.

When running the photo through Be My Eyes, an image description app, it identified every ingredient correctly, including correctly naming the flat bread. It however did say the flat bread was topped with “orange cheese”. I was apparently already totally blind by the time I saw cheddar for the first time, as I can’t remember its color. I asked my best friend whether this was the pinch of cayenne I had used or whether cheddar is orange. It turns out in the Netherlands, cheddar is colored with annatto and as a result is a little orangey. Originally, it is a white cheese. Isn’t that interesting?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 19, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare tonight. It’s almost 11PM here, so definitely no more coffee for me. If you’d like to grab a drink, feel free to and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. We finally got rain. Not as much as was originally thought and not nearly enough, but we got rain. The temperatures have also been lower, usually around 15°C. This is still warmer than normal, but I still yearn for 20°C.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that, as a result of the rainy weather, I haven’t walked as much as I did in previous weeks. I still kept my perfect streak with respect to my movement goal on my Apple Watch, but didn’t meet my exercise goal everyday.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I’ve finally been crafting again. I created a polymer clay bear holding a heart for my support coordinator, who is on maternity leave. Unfortunately, one of its ears fell off during baking, but thankfully I noticed it in time and was able to add a new ear.

I also made another attempt at creating a polymer clay trinket dish today, but failed once again.

If we were having coffee, I’d report that I had a meeting with the intellectual disability physician, who prescribes my psych meds, on Wednesday. The good news is that I’m allowed to further taper my antipsychotic. The bad news is no answers regarding my tremors. She thinks they may be related to my spastic cerebral palsy and this means that they can get worse when I’m stressed.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I had a dietitian’s appt on Wednesday too. This went well. I’m staying in a sort of acceptable weight range and not having binge eating episodes or purging. My next appt will be in three months.

If we were having coffee, I’d moan about the temp worker situation once again. On Wednesday, when like I said I had two appointments, the staff wanted to orient a new “regular” temp worker to me. As soon as they told me, I told them that this wasn’t going to work out that day, but they kept telling me to see what’d come out of my doctor’s appt first and then we’d discuss it again. Well, no-one ever allowed for any discussion after the appt and, when the time came for the worker to be oriented, the staff doing the orienting kept pushing me in overt and covert ways to accept him. Like, the temp worker was constantly sneakily, without talking, being in my presence. This gave me a horribly unsafe feeling, because I, being blind, couldn’t be sure whether he was there or not.

The staff doing the orienting at one point seemed to show some understanding and told me she was going to talk it over with the other staff. She came back to tell me that it’d been agreed between my assigned staff, the support coordinator, behavior specialist and the team manager that, if I refused him now, I’d had my chance. She never told me who’d told her that when she was “talking it over”, so I assumed it was my assigned staff. I still refused the temp worker and to this day feel horrible about the whole situation. I mean, this whole agreement among the powers-that-be is showing that they believe I refuse staff for their one orientation moment just because I feel like it. Honestly, I still disagree with that whole thing about just one orientation moment and then they’re as regular as the regular staff who’ve worked here for years.

At one point, I went into the communal room and another staff, one of my “favorites”, was there. She asked me what was up and I explained that I had two appts that originally the staff didn’t think I could handle in one day and now they added this orientation thing to it too. The temp worker was present too and I told him it wasn’t that I didn’t like him, but he hadn’t even spoken a word to me during his previous shifts here and now he was creeping up on me. He apparently had been instructed to do so. The other staff understood and I actually talked a little to the temp worker.

Unfortunately, when I read my daily log notes for the past week today, I saw there wasn’t a single word about how I’d talked to him eventually. Neither was there anything about how I’d accepted the other temp worker (who’d had her orientation moment with me last week) for my activity on Tuesday, nor that I showed the new student staff my clay yesterday on his first shift here. This is relevant because it signifies that they’re still only reporting my challenging behavior and not the things I do accomplish in spite of the stress it gives me.

If we were having coffee, I would once again end on a positive note by sharing some small pleasures of the week. First was the BBQ on Thursday. It was good. Next up is a visit to the next town’s market yesterday. My spouse was a little surprised that I didn’t buy olives, as I usually buy those when going to the market. I did buy candy. I also went to the supermarket to buy some ingredients for my smoothies. We also went to that town’s coffee shop run by disabled people and had the most delicious caramel latte.

Speaking of which, I’d tell you that I’ve been having a new interest lately: coffee brewing. I’d really like to be able to create my own coffees. Still need to look into all the necessary supplies, but it should be fun.

Today’s Small Joys (March 16, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m struggling a bit but don’t want to share why. Instead, I’m sharing some small joys from the day again today. I’m participating in Sunny Sunday. Here goes.

1. Sunshine. It’s chilly (about 9°C in the afternoon) but sunny. With this being the case, my partner and I were even able to sit outside for our lunch.

2. Good coffee. The lunch we had was a bit disappointing to me especially considering how much it cost, but the coffee was good.

3. Being able to wear a nice, handmade necklace and being complimented on it by my spouse. I bought glass beads and wire a few days ago and I created my first necklace with them yesterday. I wore it today, which made me feel good.

4. Finding a couple more necklaces, most handmade by me many years ago, in the bag my spouse brought me after clearing out the house.

5. Unicorn soft toys. I was clearing out my box of stuffies this evening, because my spouse had also brought me some stuffed animals and my box was already quite full. I didn’t seriously know how many unicorn soft toys I have. Those, I all kept.

6. Looking forward to the sensory room the staff are creating on the other side of the home. I actually plan to donate some of my unwanted soft toys to that project.

7. Finding one of my first polymer clay creations in the bag too. It’s a baby. It’s extremely ugly, so I threw it away. However, remembering my making it, as well as realizing how far I’ve come along on my creative journey, made me smile.

Honestly, many of these things are more nostalgia-inducing than purely joyful. Remembering the good times is a positive thing though, so I’ll still focus on that.

Share Our Life (March 2025): An Average Day

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! Today I’m joining Share Our Life, a linky with a monthly theme. This month, it’s to describe an average day in your life. Unfortunately, taking pictures is not part of my average day. I really want to change that, but for now, just text will have to do. I didn’t pick a specific day to describe.

I usually wake up at around 7:30AM when the staff are helping the resident in the room next to me with her morning routine. Since my first support moment isn’t until 8:15AM, I usually have a little snooze.

8:15AM is when my staff come to wake me up and help me with my morning routine. I hate showering, so don’t do it each day. I get dressed and have breakfast – usually quark with muesli and blueberries. My morning routine, including breakfast, can take up to an hour.

At 9:15AM, I’ll usually lie back in bed for a little slumber while listening to music on my music pillow.

My first activity time slot starts at 10AM. I sometimes extend my lie-in until 10:15 or 10:30AM. I start my activity time slot with coffee and then I’ll usually either play a card or dice game or go for a walk.

By 11:30AM, my staff leave to prepare my lunch. I usually eat two slices of bread with peanut butter and a cracker with speculoos (Biscoff). I also consume a serving of veg with my lunch. My lunchtime is at noon.

By 12:15PM, I’m done eating and will be on my phone for a bit, reading the news or texting or calling my spouse, who is then usually taking a break.

My two-hour activity time slot starts at 12:45PM. This time slot was originally intended for more time-consuming activities such as a bigger polymer clay project, going out to the nearby town, etc. Occasionally, I’ll use this time slot for cooking dinner for myself and my fellow residents. Often though, I can be found walking grounds with my staff. I’ll end my activity time slot with coffee, although I might also have a cuppa by 1:45PM already.

My staff go into handover at 2:45PM and I’ll most days use up the 45 minutes until my next supported moment with some online activities. By the way, handover doesn’t take 45 minutes, but it’s not like I need one-on-one all of the time.

During my 3:30PM activity time slot, which lasts an hour, I commonly play a dice game. I sometimes also go for another walk. I have unsupported time again for 30 minutes after this while my staff help the other clients with their dinner. My dinner is at 5PM. I am a rather fast eater, so am frequently finished by 5:15PM. My staff have their break at 5:30PM.

At 6PM, my final activity moment for the day starts. I have an activity list, from which I can choose what we’re going to do. What we’ll do, is too often related to the staff supporting me. I really want to change this, but it’s hard.

I’ll have my final coffee at 7PM and then have unsupported time again until it’s time for my late evening meds at 8PM. I’ll most commonly use this time and the rest of the evening for blog-related activities.

Like I’ve shared many times, I usually have Dubbelfrisss in apple-peach flavor with my evening meds. I also will eat a serving of fruit. Then I’ll be told which staff will be in the home the next day. Some days, I’ll hang out in the living room for some time then, while at other times, like today, I’ll head straight back to my room and go online. I used to be phoning my spouse a lot late in the evening too, but now we’ll often talk at other times.

At 8:45PM, I’ll sometimes have a little snack. Then I’ll go online again until my staff come to supervise me brushing my teeth and to close my door to the yard at 9:30PM. After that, the staff will leave the home and I’m supposed to rely on the night staff in the main institution building for support. My fellow residents all go to bed before then, but I’m allowed to stay up. I’m a true night owl, so most days it’ll have been past 11PM before I’m in bed.

All this sounds incredibly boring and unproductive. I really want to put my unsupported time to better use, because currently most of the time I just end up scrolling.

Share Your World (March 3, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today, I’m joining in with Share Your World. I love the gratitude section at the bottom of Di’s original post. In fact, I may use it as a jumping point for another post later. For now though, let’s move on to Di’s questions.

1. Which of the following could you NOT do without?
Automatic washing machine, TV/cable, Microwave oven.
I don’t need any of these just for myself and don’t personally use any, although we have all three in the home. If I had to choose which of these to keep in my care home, it’d be the automatic washing machine. Not because I have to do my own laundry, but because the staff are busy enough with it now that they don’t have to do it by hand.

Life without a TV would be so relaxing, as the TV is blaring all day long in the living room that’s adjacent to my room and with the TV directly attached to the shared wall.

2. Which would be your priority of these:
a warm coat or a comfortable pair of shoes.
Comfortable pair of shoes. Simply because, without the right shoes, I just can’t be outside because it’d mean constantly falling.

3. Would you rather have a hot cup of tea/coffee or hot soup?
Hot coffee all the way! I don’t like the feel of soup in my mouth.

4. If you had the choice rather than necessity/cost effectiveness, would you rather rent a property, buy with a mortgage, or share with family/friends and split the cost?
I have no idea. My spouse and I currently own a house (with a mortgage) and it’s stressful with all that we have to do by ourselves (that is, just my spouse) in terms of renovations.

Then again, our rented house was stressful because we were dependent on the housing corporation. In fact, I’ve had more stressful situations with them than I’d like to share.

Sharing with family/friends would also be quite stressful though, as I can’t get along with my parents or sister.

Let’s just end this by saying I’d stay where I am.

Today’s Small Joys (March 2, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m struggling intensely today. I often say that these days are the best for gratitude lists, but I don’t feel capable of doing an entire ten things of thankful. Instead, I’m going to list some small pleasures from today. I’m joining Sunny Sunday.

1. Coffee. My staff brought me an extra cup of coffee when waking me up.

2. Crunchy muesli. I treated myself today.

3. Earning some top commenter achievements on Reddit. Don’t ask me how.

4. Beautiful weather: it was quite sunny and mild with a daytime high of 10°C.

5. A delicious burger at McDonald’s.

6. A hug from my spouse. In fact, the entire visit was good. Having my spouse on my side genuinely helps.

This was easier than I thought. In fact, the E-mail newsletter I got this idea from, suggested listing only one to three things and I made it to six.

10 on the 10th (September 2024): This or That?

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m participating in 10 on the 10th. This month, it’s a fun this or that. Let’s get into it.

This or that: A long term meaningful relationship with someone you see only once a year (platonic or otherwise) or lots of short term relatively meaningless relationships with people you see regularly.
This is a toughie, as I’m not sure what “relationship” means. Do professional relationships count too? In other words, would I be completely on my own aside from the one time a year I’d see my significant other? That’s impossible for me. However, if it means not having any real connection with anyone else but they could still help me (yet how would we define “connection”?), I’d definitely choose the one meaningful relationship. I, after all, would choose my spouse even for a once-a-year visit over all the meaningless interactions with my staff. I however do need to receive care.

This or that: A bouquet of fresh flowers every week or a flowering bush every year.
A flowering bush every year! I don’t really care for bouquets of flowers and I’d love a flowering bush in my yard-space-thingy at the care home.

This or that: A luxury, all expenses paid cruise to the Antarctic or a week in a beach shack off the beaten path.
A cruise to the Antarctic. I’m not a fan of the cold, but no-one said we had to leave the ship. And I don’t care for beaches.

This or that: Pumpkin spice everything or pumpkin spice nothing.
Pumpkin spice nothing. The only thing with pumpkin spice in it I like a little is coffee, but it isn’t like I don’t enjoy coffee without it.

This or that: Warm, sunny days with high humidity or cold, sunny days with little humidity.
You’ll probably be surprised here, but I’d choose the cold but sunny days with low humidity. Having recently experienced warmer, high-humidity weather, I feel that as much as I loved the heat, I hated the humidity. Last night, in fact, was my first night of not sweating profusely and I am so glad for it.

This or that: A vintage real fur coat or a new faux fur coat.
New faux fur coat. Until I read Marsha’s answer, I didn’t even realize faux fur is bad for the environment, so I thought choosing the new faux fur coat would be a win-win: new coat plus less animal cruelty.

This or that: The car of your dreams wrapped with a logo of some kind or the car you currently drive.
I don’t drive a car, since I’m blind, so I’m going to choose for my spouse and we’re both happy with the “Freezer Fiat”, my nickname for the car my spouse currently drives. My spouse, in fact, only started the lease on it last January and this one is pretty much our ideal car. In this sense, I get it both ways. Although I personally wouldn’t mind a logo, I know my spouse wouldn’t tolerate it.

This or that: Beautiful stilettos crafted specifically for your feet or sneakers you’ve worn and molded to your feet.
I guess the point of this one is to choose between beauty and comfort and, if you’ve read about my shoe saga, you know I’d choose comfort. My orthopedic shoes are quite ugly but they’re comfortable. Same for my walking shoes, which I actually think are sneakers. Besides, I absolutely cannot walk on heels so stilettos would basically mean a life without walking.

This or that: The house of your dreams painted in colors you despise or a small cottage you can paint in colors you love.
I would personally choose the house of my dreams, but since that basically is a small cottage because I’d get lost in anything larger, I get it both ways again. I am blind, but still would love to have my little living space painted in all pastel lilacs and pinks.

This or that: Your favorite food every day for a year or foods you’ve never tried every day for a year.
My favorite food everyday for a year. I don’t like to try out new foods and would hate to have to try new foods each day for a year. Of course, it would get a little boring eating the exact same food everyday, but I’d take that over having to try out something I probably won’t like.