Beating Myself Up Over Failed Intentions… #JusJoJan

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m struggling quite badly yet again. I’m feeling quite depressed and like life is slipping me by. That’s not good, but sometimes it’s the best that can be.

When I set my hopes for this year, I fully intended to experience more, yet here I am, six days into the year and I’ve abandoned Morning Pages, am in bed a lot again or just blabbering on to my staff about whatever.

However, feeling guilty about not having made the most out of the day, means even more of my time and energy is wasted. Rather than beating myself up over a day gone to waste, I’d much rather make the most out of each moment. And sometimes “the most” is pretty little.

About half an hour ago, I was talking on the phone with my wife again and responded to the question of what I’d done today by saying that I’d gone on a walk and played dice, so not much. Then I realized that I’d also made a necklace. Remembering that made me smile to myself.

Of course, my day schedule is still not working as it should and that might never change, but it’s up to me to make my life meaningful. And sometimes, that means hyperfixating on some random thing, like the fact that I almost certainly finally found the perfect recipe manager. It’s my fifth or so, so this did mean having to transfer my recipes from my previous one into this one. However, this did give me another opportunity to look up interesting recipes.

Now it does often frustrate me that, even though I make plans to cook or bake, they rarely come to fruition. However, like I said above, fretting over this means even more time and energy has been wasted.

This post was partly inspired by today’s #JusJoJan prompt, which is “intentional”. One thing I beat myself up over, is the fact that I didn’t blog yesterday and hardly wrote anything else, so in that sense who am I participating in #JusJoJan? There’s however no jotting police other than my own inner critic.

December 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. As I type this, I’m going half-crazy from all the fireworks sounds. I love New Year’s, but mostly for the ability to reflect back on the past year (which, of course, I could do anytime). Today, I’m joining Sherry’s In My Kitchen linky. I only cooked dinner for myself and my fellow residents once, but did enjoy several other kitchen-based activities.

First, like I think I shared last month, I had planned on cooking another chicken curry but two consecutive staff who would be doing the cooking with me, called in sick. When, in late November, I found out that a staff who used to work here until the summer, would be working a shift again on December 16, I asked her whether we could cook the curry then. She was fine with this as long as I made sure the ingredients were ordered on time. And so I did. We used a recipe from one of my favorite Dutch cooking websites. It called for a teaspoon of curry powder per serving, which I thought was over the top, but it turned out to be good. We even added some chili flakes for some extra spice.

Over the rest of the month, like I said, I didn’t cook dinner. However, I did do several baking activities. This started on December 5 with a spontaneous attempt at baking St. Nicholas cookies. St. Nicholas is celebrated here on December 5, although we’d celebrated it at my home a few weeks earlier. I had gotten a package of cookie mixture with St. Nick and Pete (his servant) cookie cutters. Unfortunately, my staff and I had forgotten to get the butter for the dough at room temperature. We decided to add some melted butter to make the dough stickier, but that made it too sticky for the detailed cutters to work. We decided to go for Christmas-themed cutters, which were less detailed, then.

Unfortunately, my staff did comment that the cookies weren’t all that good-looking. I don’t care.

I had also found a recipe for flatbread made from scratch and really wanted to give it a try. I mentioned this to one of the staff on December 8 and she offered to help me make it the next day. It was delicious! I realize I shouldn’t have taken a picture with my phone of the pan while the flatbread was still baking, as it could’ve damaged my phone, but so far so good.

I decided to top the flatbreads with cheese, bell pepper slices and chili flakes.

Another baking activity took place on December 17, so the day after I made the chicken curry. I made a custard cake. I liked the flavor, but the look wasn’t what I’d expected.



In addition to these longer activities, I did make overnight oats and smoothies a few times. One of those times, I’d been frustrated at a staff refusing to do some tasks with/for me because of how time-consuming she thought they’d be. This time factor is a never-ending source of frurstration for me. However, another staff offered to help me make overnight oats after a walk, when we had only ten minutes left in my activity time slot. Guess what? It was a success!

Of course, like I shared earlier, I helped my wife make our Bastogne cookie dessert on Christmas. No picture of that one. I’m determined to make it for my fellow residents sometime soon.

Overall, the month of December was a pretty good month kitchen-wise. Here’s hoping for even more cooking and baking and other kitchen-based activities in the new year.

2025: The Year in Review

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s time for my yearly review. This year wasn’t exciting in any particular way. I’m not sure whether that’s actually a bad thing though. I mean, I didn’t decide to move yet again and that’s a good thing. Most of the bad parts of the year not being exciting are exactly that: it was incredibly boring.

That’s also what led to the most significant lows of this year: the fact that, for a while, an extra cup of green tea at 9PM would be my highlight of the week. I have, over the past couple of months, been able to make this cup of tea a regular occurrence, so in that sense things are improving.

When I looked at my hopes for 2025 a few days ago, I noticed most of them weren’t particularly ambitious. I mean, I was hoping to improve my crafting and do more cooking. I can’t remember whether I had already tried to ask ChatGPT how to build an armature for a standing polymer clay unicorn and, as such, whether this idea was behind that hope. If it was, I can safely say that I didn’t achieve this. I must say I haven’t improved my polymer clay skill much at all. I have, however, picked up jewelry-making again and my wife loved the necklace I made her.

I also did a lot more cooking than I did in 2024. It wasn’t as much as I’d hoped when the behavior specialist promised me early this year that when my one-on-one got approved, she’d allow for a weekly cooking activity. I am cautiously optimistic that this will change in 2026.

I had also hoped to find a physical activity other than walking that I could do regularly. No such luck. I’m not sure this will change in the new year.

Tapering my meds was one of the major successes of this year. I can’t remember what dose of aripiprazole I was on at the start of 2025, but I’m now down to 11mg a day and have also been able to completely go off my pregabalin. I also must say that I’ve been able to stay relatively mentally stable. Yes, I did have a deep low in July, which is once again down to the fact that I had been going through the motions for so long that life felt like I was not really living it.

This year was also the year we had yet another Center for Consultation and Expertise consultation. I haven’t yet found out what the consultant is going to recommend even though she said she was going to let me know by mid-December. I doubt it’s going to lead anywhere significant, but maybe I’m wrong.

Finally, this year was the year my wife and I were trying to figure out our relationship status. Over the summer, we were planning to get a divorce, but this eventually didn’t happen. We’re still unsure as to how to align the legal situation with our actual feelings for each other and it looks likely divorce will be on the table sometime within the not-too-distant future again. Thankfully, we’re both pretty sure that we’ll always be best friends.

One of John Holton’s writing prompts for this week is what letter grade we’d give 2025 and why. I’m clueless about letter grades, so I’m going to rate the year on a scale of 1 to 10 as is the grading system here in the Netherlands. My rating would be a 5, which is just about below-average. Things that would improve the grade I’d give next year, are mostly related to my having more meaningful activities.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 20, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare once again. It’s 7:30PM, so no more coffee for me today. If you’d like to grab a cup of your favorite beverage though, feel free to. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s still been warm for this time of year. Today, the daytime high was 7°C and that’s the lowest daytime temp we’ve had all week but it’s still considered above normal. We had some rain, but not too much and none is in the forecast for the next ten days.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’m still meeting my movement goal each day, but I’m not nearly as physically active as I was over the summer. Not that I care. My cardio fitness level according to my Apple Watch is back in the below-average rather than low range. I doubt that’s correct. My sleep scores are also amazing most days. That makes me wonder why I wake up tired almost everyday.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I’ve had quite a productive week this past week. On Tuesday, I decided to put up a little Christmas decoration in my room after all. These are all my own polymer clay creations, though only the gingerbread figure is new.

Today, I finally created another cheer up frog. In case you don’t know, when several staff were on sick leave last spring, I created polymer clay frogs to cheer them up, the frog being a pun on the Dutch word for “cheer up” (“opkikker”), which has the word for frog (“kikker”) in it. One of the staff who’d gotten one last spring, asked for another one last September, but then we had an argument causing her to withdraw from my care. This staff is retiring in a few weeks, so when we had talked things over, I told her she’d get her “opkikker” after all.

However, by that time I was out of the right color of green polymer clay. I finally ordered new clay three weeks ago, but it took the store two weeks to get it delivered to me. By this time, I’d just ordered from another store. Now I have three packages of tropical green Fimo. This is alright, since I’ve since promised several more staff an “opkikker”.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I also did quite a bit of cooking and baking over the past week. I cooked another chicken curry last Tuesday and baked a custard cake on Wednesday.

Yesterday, the same staff who went to the market with me last week, worked my afternoon activity. He had said last week that he didn’t particularly like the market, so I hadn’t asked him to go with me again, but he came up with it himself yesterday. This time, I bought olives again, but also peppersweets. I had no idea what these are and they tasted quite different than I’d expected, but they were delicious. I also bought fried chicken and mixed salad greens. Later in the afternoon, I prepared a salad using the olives, peppersweets, salad greens and also some onion and bell pepper I’d grabbed out of the care home fridge. It was absolutely delish.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that, yesterday, I attended the town’s annual Christmas lights walk. Two years ago, the staff were being difficult about me attending because it doesn’t end until 7:45PM and my activity time slot ends at 7:15. I made it very clear that I’m willing to think of ways I can cope without one-on-one, but my day schedule shouldn’t be an excuse not to include me. On Thursday, when the staff asked me whether I wanted to attend, i once again made sure they understood this. It was quite an enjoyable walk, though it’d been more enjoyable in previous years.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d ask for positive thoughts regarding the changes to staffing that will take effect next month. My assigned staff (who is also in training to become a support coordinator), today did reassure me that my day schedule isn’t at risk. I hope she’s right.

November 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining In My Kitchen once again. I wasn’t too active in the kitchen this past month, but would love to share the things I did regardless. I keep hoping the next month will be better. I may’ve finally convinced the behavior specialist that I need a more activity-based day schedule, so that I can do a cooking or baking activity more regularly.

First, let me share the one dinner I cooked for myself and my fellow residents this month, cooked on November 17. It was a curry with chicken, broccoli, onions, rice and topped with cashews. I loved it.

I had planned to cook another rice and chicken dish with the same staff last Monday, but she’s on sick leave. I found out a few days in advance, so planned to cook the dish with another staff, but she ended up calling in sick too and I didn’t find out until half an hour before her shift was supposed to start. She was supposed to bring the groceries, so it wasn’t like I could cook the meal with the staff who ended up doing my activity. This is one more reason for set activities: that way I can order or buy the needed groceries on time.

I did, thankfully, do a few baking activities. First, on November 1, I made Bastogne brulée. This is like crème brulée but with crumbled Bastogne biscuits mixed in. The recipe didn’t call for a brulée burner, instead instructing me to put the dessert under the grill of the oven for a few minutes. I think the dessert wasn’t a total fail and it looked similar to the photos in the recipe, but I wouldn’t make it again. At least not like this.

I ran the photos I post here through my screen reader’s image description component to make sure I have them posted correctly and guess what? It claims the dessert looks moldy. Yuck!

On November 16, my staff spontaneously offered to help me bake a sponge cake. We did use a store-bought mixture. When my wife saw it, she wondered what made it look green. She looked it up and it was simply blue and yellow food colorant. Not green food colorant, which made me wonder whether green colorants are even food-safe. At least, when I still made my own lip balms, I knew that all colors of mica that I could buy at the soaping supplies site were safe except for the green ones.



Unfortunately, the staff baking the sponge cake with me, did break my hand mixer by inserting the wrong tools into it. She said she’s going to buy me a new one.

Those were the main cooking and baking activities I did in November. I also created overnight oats a few times. Last Thursday, I also decided to whip up a vegetable smoothie. This was the first time for me creating a smoothie that mainly includes vegetables rather than fruits. I used broccoli, spinach, carrots and lime. The recipe called for a green pepper, but I misread it and got a green bell pepper. Since those are rather bitter and the recipe was supposed to be blazing, I decided to add some chili flakes. And blazing it was! I’m not sure what I think of the smoothie. I did give some to my fellow residents too. I did feel obligated to explain to one of them, who is quite a picky eater but loves smoothies, that this one is a little different. Thankfully, he liked it though.

We had our annual St. Nicholas celebration at the home last week. I hadn’t asked for a gift from the staff (since you actually pay for it yourself), but my sister sent me some gifts. She sent me cookie cutters and several cookie mixes too.

Today, my wife and I were at Hema in Apeldoorn and I got myself a potato peeler (since somehow the last one I had got lost) and a wooden rolling pin for the cookies. The rolling pin has a Nijntje pattern engraved into it. I hope that doesn’t make the rolling pin hard to clean. I took this picture myself just yet, so apologies if it’s misaligned or unclear.

Looking back over this post, I see that, even though I cooked dinner only once, I did engage in various foodie activities over the past month.

October 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. This past month has been quite stressful. I have been struggling to get some meaningful activities in, of which cooking is one. I had hoped that cooking would be a more regularly-returning activity, but then again I’ve been hoping this for a year already… I doubt it’s ever going to happen…

I cooked two meals during October. The first, a chicken stew, I cooked for myself as well as my fellow clients. I followed the recipe, which instructed me to let the stew simmer for 10-15 minutes. That, my wife said, is not nearly long enough for a stew. She was in fact surprised that I’d included zucchini, as, if that’s simmered as long as a stew should simmer, would be pretty soggy. I do agree with her: the veg was too crunchy for a stew and too soggy for a stir-fry. My fellow residents liked it though.

The other meal, I cooked for just myself and my staff. I, after all, wanted to make a gnocchi dish. Gnocchi can be both cooked and fried, but my wife said it tastes better when fried yet then it’s pretty hard to do in large amounts without burning some gnocchi. Since the staff carelessly canceled meal delivery for five days starting yesterday because the freezer was full of meals, but I did not have enough meals in the freezer to get me through, I decided to prepare the gnocchi yesterday just for myself and my staff. The recipe was vegetarian and included lentils. I don’t care for those so decided to leave those out and use minced meat instead. The recipe included lots of vegetables, including bell pepper, zucchini, eggplant and onions. I’m not a huge fan of eggplant, but included it anyway and it turned out to be quite tasty.

When I ran this picture through Be My Eyes, it recognized the gnocchi as such. I hadn’t expected this.

In addition to cooking these two meals, I did bake a cake once. It was a pretty spontaneous decision to bake the cake. Unfortunately, we didn’t have eggs at the time, so we had to go to another home to get one. This and some other things led to me experiencing mild distress. Unfortunately, the staff who baked the cake with me interpreted this as the activity not having been a success. This made me feel rather off, as it gave me the impression that I’m only allowed to do activities in which I don’t experience distress. The cake was from a store-bought mixture and it wasn’t as good as the Biscoff blondies I’d baked last month, but it was still delicious.

Finally, I made a few smoothies and a bowl of overnight oats. No pictures of these, but to the oats, I added apple, cinnamon, cardamom and clove. That was really good!

Linking this post up with Sherry’s In My Kitchen.

September 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s the last day of the month and I’m joining in with the In My Kitchen linky once again. Last month, I said I had a few plans for the first week of September and hoped the rest of the month would be active as far as cooking and baking went too. Well, it wasn’t really, but in addition to there still not being any clarity on when I can actually do a cooking/baking activity, it didn’t help that I was sick with probable COVID for most of the second half of the month. Anyway, let me share what I did accomplish.

First, on September 2, I cooked a pasta dish for this side of the home. I used roasted bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, garlic and chicken. I bought the roasted bell peppers in a pot, but later found out it’s relatively doable to make them yourself.

Then, later in the week, I made another bowl of overnight oats for myself. In the picture, you can see my special spoon. I usually don’t take pictures of my adaptive cutlery or other special tools, but actually why not?

Too bad I don’t think of creating simple breakfasts or lunches for myself more often, as I really wish I could contribute to my wellbeing that way. However, I also blame the day schedule, because I have “alone time” for thirty minutes before lunchtime and I cannot prepare food completely without help.

The next Saturday, September 6, I used my two-hour activity time slot in the afternoon to bake Biscoff blondies. My baking tray was a little larger than the recipe creator recommended, but the blondies turned out great regardless. Most of my fellow residents and staff had one with their evening coffee.


They were delicious but very filling. When, the next day, my spouse and I had two of them, neither of us cared for lunch even though I am usually almost insatiable.

The next week, I didn’t do anything in the kitchen. On the 18th, however, I celebrated two years at this care home, so I wanted to cook dinner again. That day, there was also the institution festival, so I decided to do the cooking on Wednesday the 17th. I made burgers for the entire home, both sides, so 20 residents plus staff.

Unfortunately, the home was short-staffed that day, so I initially offered to eat in the living room as to not need a one-on-one staff in my room. By this time, my respiratory symptoms were getting noticeable and I was easily overloaded. I managed to snap a picture of my plate when in the living room, but quickly decided to go back to my room.

Once in my room, I discovered the staff who I’d asked to do the final work, had forgotten to add the onions, bell peppers and mayo to my burgers. Thankfully, this got sorted and I took another picture of my burgers before consuming them.

The burgers, unfortunately, weren’t as good as I’d planned them to be. I mean, they couldn’t have been all that great, as they were freezer burgers, but I had totally wanted the dish to be more appealing.

Overall, the first half of the month was pretty fulfilling in the kitchen department, but the second half wasn’t. I’m hoping that, now that I’m almost over this respiratory bug, I can start preparing food again. Today, I did get a breakfast box full of yummy things in it to be used on Saturday, when I do the Walk on Sunshine for the Dutch cerebral palsy charity.

The Could-Be COVID Chronicles, September 2025 Edition

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been over a week since I last wrote a post for my blog. I’ve had some ideas on my mind, but I’ve been battling what I believe could be COVID since Wednesday. Here in the Netherlands, all official precautions and regulations were ended in early 2023 and replaced with a recommendation to “use common sense”. Now my institution has always been rather careless when it comes to quarantining people suspected of having COVID and I myself am not the most sensible either when there are no rules.

On Wednesday, in fact, I was cooking burgers for the entire home when this whole thing started. I blame myself for several other clients and half the staff being sick now, but the staff say they would probably have caught it somewhere anyway, just like I probably caught it from a staff coming to work sick on Monday last week.

On Thursday, I was in bed all day, but I felt better on Friday, so I decided to go for several walks and a dance. Not a good idea if I indeed do have COVID, as not resting well enough can contribute to having long-term symptoms.

Saturday, I was in bed again for most of the day but dancing at 11PM in my room again in order to meet my movement goal on my Apple Watch. I then decided I really had to rest, so lowered my movement goal for that day and paused my rings altogether on Sunday until tomorrow.

I’m now feeling okay, but not nearly back to normal. Tomorrow, the Center for Consultation and Expertise consultant is coming. There are no longer any rules prohibiting them to visit me and several other staff are working while having symptoms now too. Besides, I didn’t have a say in inviting them, so I don’t feel in a position to cancel.

I do feel guilty for basically doing what everyone else is here, ie. living my life as if COVID is no longer a threat. I know, I don’t know whether I actually have COVID since testing is no longer a thing here either, but I definitely feel this is more than just a very nasty cold.

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.

July 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been a few months since I last participated in the In My Kitchen linky, because I didn’t do much of note in the kitchen. This month I finally got active in the kitchen again, so I’m participating in the linky again.

First, I got some cake mixes for my birthday last month, so on July 3, I set out to bake one of the cakes. I got strawberry, raspberry and lemon-flavored cake mixes and selected the one with strawberry. To be honest, I had expected there to be more strawberries in it. It in fact looks like a plain yellow cake and that’s what it tasted like too.


Over the next few weeks, I was greatly struggling and didn’t do anything in the kitchen. That is, maybe I created a smoothie once, but I’m not even sure about that.

Speaking of smoothies though, I did create several that I loved over the past month. One, I made yesterday. I used frozen cherries, vanilla-flavored soy milk, cacao powder, instant coffee, a little honey and a dash of sea salt to make the flavors pop.

About two weeks ago, I finally got the idea again to whip something up and I decided to make overnight oats.

I made overnight oats once again this week, topping them with a tropical dried fruit mix that has an E Nutriscore, meaning it is about the least healthy food choice in its category. No photo this time.

A staff who is on sick leave and occasionally pops round as an extra, offered to help me cook a meal for my side of the home the next Tuesday. I cooked curried rice with chicken, bell peppers and bok choy. I hadn’t had bok choy since childhood and incorrectly assumed its green leaves can’t be eaten. The meal doesn’t look as thin as I believe a curry should be, but it was delicious.

The same staff came over here this Tuesday again and I was again allowed to choose a meal and cook it with her help. I chose a vegetarian pasta bake with peppers, onions, garlic, canned tomato chunks and topped with mozzarella. One of my fellow clients said she didn’t like the mozzarella, but I think it was because she didn’t recognize it and I believe she did eat it after all. Everyone else loved my meal. Next time, however, I’m going to leave some of the seeds of the peppers in, because I’d have loved it even more than I did now with a little more spice.



Since I have been cooking more lately, I decided to look for an app to organize my recipes. After trying many apps, I settled on Recipe Keeper. Like I mentioned in my coffee share last week, one of its drawbacks is the fact that I can’t have my password manager save the password. This makes me a little suspicious, but I try not to care.