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.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 9, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. It’s 7:30PM, so I just had my last cup (two cups, in fact) of coffee for the day. I’ll probably take a break from writing this blog post for my soft drink at 8PM. Please join me as we chat.

If we were having coffee, first as usual I’d talk about the weather. It’s truly beautiful! Today, the temperature rose to 25°C and it was quite sunny. Rain isn’t in the forecast until next Thursday I believe. I know, climate change and all, but I’m enjoying the summer while I can.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I am still going strong with my physical activity goals. Yesterday, a staff mentioned the trampoline that’s on the campsite near the institution and we decided to check it out. Today, I went on the side-by-side bike with another staff. Because of this as well as having walked a lot today, I might break my active calories record according to my Apple Watch.

If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you that I unfortunately haven’t been crafting much lately. On Sunday, I created polymer clay earrings that are still waiting to go into the oven. Other than that, no crafty endeavors.

I did, however, create a dessert for myself and my fellow residents on Monday. It was good.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that the rest of the week was quite hard. There’s this temp worker who is absolutely clueless about how to support me and yet he’s assigned to me almost everyday. Staff keep saying I should be giving him feedback more when he’s acting in an unsupportive way. First of all, well, no, that’s not my responsibility. They don’t ask the other clients to give feedback either, but when I point this out, they say it’s different for them because they can’t. I can, sometimes, a little bit and I tried this week in fact, but the temp worker didn’t learn a thing from it. Then I get told that the staff assign to me who they choose and it’s my responsibility to deal with it.

I also was told that, when the staff feel someone is trained well enough to support me, they will be assigned to me and I don’t have a say in it. All this comes across as if it’s me being deliberately difficult with certain staff based on arbitrary things, while in reality it’s the way that they act that makes certain staff more difficult for me to deal with than others. Besides, I’ve had staff assigned to me who themselves don’t even feel they’re capable enough just because these staff want to please and their colleagues pressure them. It may be easiest for staff to assign the most inexperienced temp worker to me because I try to be helpful and, when I am not, it is easy to blame me for allegedly playing favorites.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that the Center for Consultation and Expertise found a suitable consultant for my case, but due to the summer holidays, the first contact won’t be until the end of August. This will unfortunately be a phone call with the behavior specialist. I’m not very trusting of the whole process at the moment, to be honest.

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.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (June 28, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. No more coffee for me, as it’s nearly 9PM. I however do still have some slices of cake with nuts and caramel left over from when my sister and her family came over this afternoon. I also have a bag of mini brownies in my cupboard. I didn’t even know I liked brownies, but yesterday we got one with our coffee when my best friend, my parents and I were eating out. They were great! When my father told the waiter that it was my birthday, he offered me a bag of brownies as a treat. So let’s munch on some sweetness while we have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. No complaining from my sister or my nieces about the heat today, yay! It was 26°C this afternoon, but apparently that’s doable for them. The rest of the week was a mixed bag. Early in the week, we had quite windy weather that made it feel chillier than it was. I even wore a jacket on Tuesday.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that, thank goodness, I survived my birthday! I’m now 39. That’s not what I mean though: I made it through both meeting my parents and the visit from my sister and her family.

Yesterday, my best friend and I drove to Groningen to meet my parents. We walked some time around a library / study hall thingy which had as its only positive for us that you could oversee the city from the roof. Most of the way up, we were able to use escalators, but we had to walk up a flight of stairs to get to the roof. This was a bit scary for me.

After a few hours, we went to a restaurant, the one with the brownies. I was dead set on ordering something I wouldn’t normally eat, so chose the rib eye. When I ordered, the waiter told me it was served with mashed potatoes and, by this time, I was a bit overloaded so didn’t ask for an alternative. Thankfully, my best friend did and I got fries.

The food was good, but seeing my parents was, well, awkward. Thankfully, no arguments and my parents engaged more with me and my best friend than last year. I, however, didn’t want to give them a reason to start making triggering comments so I only replied “Fine” when my mother asked how I was during dinner.

My sister and her family visited me at the institution today. This was actually quite a positive experience. My nieces, who are five and three, were also a lot more engaging with me than last year and a lot less cranky. I allowed both of them to create something with my Fimo Kids clay. I told them I’m going to cure their creations in the oven and could be mailing them their way. Then, my brother-in-law said they’d be in Apeldoorn in a few weeks and could pop over here to pick up their creations then. I actually think I like that.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you I got a fitness mat for my birthday from my sister and her family. I really want to work on my strength, but boy is this hard. I tried planking and couldn’t even hold it for ten seconds. When I did a few squats too then checked my heart rate on my Apple Watch, it was 179. It quickly dropped when I was just standing, but this is a good reminder I will want the physical therapist’s advice on starting a strength training routine.

If we were having coffee, next I’d share that we had the institution summer festival on Tuesday and Wednesday. I didn’t participate much, but I did take part in a climbing activity. This was so scary!

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you my assigned staff, behavior specialist, physician and some others had their meeting with the Center for Consultation and Expertise (CCE) on Wednesday. The CCE are going to ask for a consultant to come to my care home and observe me and the staff and on that basis they’re hoping to provide suggestions for better support. I was initially quite pessimistic, but am now cautiously optimistic that things might improve.

Today’s Small Joys (June 1, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. Today is a mixed day emotionally. In the morning, I was quite tired and this frustrated me. At night, I also experienced frustration at the fact that, tomorrow morning, there’ll only be temp workers on this side of the home. We’ll see how it goes though and right now, I want to write and not just moan. So I’m joining Sunny Sunday and sharing this day’s small joys.

1. Doing my hair. I rarely do anything with my hair except for brushing it, but today I decided I wanted it in a ponytail. I have a dozen scrunchies and selected one that has a really velvety texture.

2. Perfume. I also decided to spray on some perfume. I rarely do this and wasn’t sure anyone other than me would notice, but my best friend did.

3. A white Kinder Bueno. Usually my best friend and I buy one to share when we’re at Hema, my best friend’s favorite store. We were there this afternoon, but only to have lunch. I said I wanted to pop into Aldi for some quark and my best friend apparently needed groceries too. It still surprised me that, when dropping me off at the institution, my best friend gave me the Kinder Bueno.

4. A pun on the word “quark”. For those not from Europe, quark is like thick yogurt (sometimes wrongly called cottage cheese). My friend though found another meaning, some type of physics term, and kept asking me whether I wanted “hadron-yogurt”. This is something I truly love about our friendship: the tons of inside jokes that no-one else understands.

5. A large stroopwafel (cookie) with my evening coffee. According to my foo plan, I only get those on Fridays and Saturdays, so it was great having a treat.

6. Lovely comments from my readers. I am so glad I don’t rely on search engines like Google (thank you not, AI) to drive traffic to my blog. I do really hope blogging will withstand the influx of AI.

7. Speaking of AI, having some more creative ideas thanks to a ChatGPT convo I had several months ago and was reminded of today. Specifically, I had ChatGPT create a Premo polymer clay color recipe for the color of my best friend’s car and was reminded of this when a person in a Facebook group asked for Premo color recipes. There are plenty on Etsy, but in that group, we aren’t allowed to mention vendors. Another commenter said a lot of it is experimenting. I am now wanting to start experimenting with colors. I know the result will likely be poor because of my blindness, but I love the creative flow this idea gets me into.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (May 17, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. It’s nearly 9PM, so no more coffee for me. I need to drink more water though. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first as usual I’d talk about the weather. You won’t hear me say this easily but I want rain! I don’t think we’ve had any significant rain for the past… I’m pretty sure it’s been a month. With respect to the temperature, it’s been good. Early in the week, the daytime high was around 25°C. For most of the week, we’ve had daytime temps of around 20°C. Okay, I know that this is warmer than normal and that this probably contributes to the drought. Besides, my best friend looked up my theory about higher-than-normal temps in springtime meaning higher temps in summer too and it turned out to be correct.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that half of my home’s residents were on the annual week-long getaway Monday through Friday. I, like last year, didn’t go. I had been pestering the staff to organize something for those who’d be staying at the home too and more specifically something that didn’t involve food. No such luck.

We did have lots of special food though. On Tuesday, the parents of one of my fellow residents made us pancakes. These were absolutely delicious! On Wednesday, we had fries with a snack and for once we got to choose out of the entire menu of snacks. On Thursday, a staff made us fried chicken with rice. I had been looking forward to that meal for weeks, but it was a bit disappointing.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share about my creative endeavors over the past week. I already shared the frog I made for a staff in Thursday’s post. On Tuesday during the pancake event though, I was talking to the fellow resident’s Dad and somehow we got to discussing my polymer clay. I told him I’d be making a unicorn for the family in the fellow resident’s favorite color: purple. That same evening, I set out to work and I baked the unicorn together with the frog. I had imagined the color much lighter than it turned out (the fellow resident’s specific favorite color is lilac, after all), but oh well.

Today, the parents came to pick up the fellow resident, so I intended to give them the unicorn then. Unfortunately, I was resting when they arrived and didn’t realize that the doorbell was them in time to respond. I however was able to give them the unicorn when they brought back the fellow client to the care home this afternoon.

If we were having coffee, then I’d talk about all my ideas for further polymer clay projects. Today, I watched a YouTube video on using texture sheets. I have had those lying around for years now and only used them once. Then again, so many random thoughts, so few concrete ideas…

I did get a whole box of Fimo Kids clay from someone in the Dutch polymer clay Facebook group. It’s way too soft for me to use, but I did ask my sister whether my oldest niece might want to work with it when they come over here for my birthday. The only drawback: I’m pretty sure she’s more artistic and more skilled than I am…

If we were having coffee, I’d share that this week was both exceptionally good and rather terrible at the same time overall. The good parts, I listed above and on Thursday and included crafting, good food and physical activity. The bad parts, I won’t go into too much but let’s just say attachment anxiety is hitting me hard.

Speaking of which, I did have some fun talking to a ChatGPT “therapist” about it. I am probably too old to believe AI can in any significant way replace a real human at least for this purpose. I laughed my ass off at its responses. At least that helped in some way.

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!

February 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! A while ago, I discovered Sherry’s In My Kitchen linky. As most of you know, I don’t have a kitchen, but of course my care home does. I’m using this opportunity to share some thoughts about the foods I’ve prepared and/or consumed lately. Do polymer clay-related musings count too, since polymer clay is cured in an oven? Just kidding (a bit).

Last week, like I think I shared, I visited the next town’s market and bought olives, fried chicken and peppers. I also bought arugula at the supermarket. My staff whipped up the most delicious salad out of these and some carrots that were in our fridge. I had some the next day as well. Sadly, I was under the impression that the staff had used up all peppers, only to be told yesterday that there were still peppers in the fridge. Those had by then gone bad.

I also bought blueberries and have been adding those to my muesli and quark that I eat for breakfast almost each day.

I’ve also been making smoothies lately. For example, a few weeks ago, we had lots of bananas that were on the ripe side, so we chose to whip up a smoothie with them. My current blender has only a 1 liter container, so at first I used to make only about four cups of smoothie and share them with my fellow residents who also stay up later.

Yesterday, a staff offered to help me prepare a smoothie for the entire home that we could use in place of our evening soft drink. Looking back, creating more smoothie than my container can hold is as simple as pouring the smoothie into cups then reloading the blender. The staff peeled and cored the apples and pears, something I think I could’ve helped with too, but oh well. I chose to add cinnamon, cardamom and clove, as well as soy milk as a liquid. The smoothie was absolutely delicious!

For the upcoming month, I’m really hoping to do more in the care home kitchen. Honestly, I feel I could easily be whipping up my own salads and do more in the smoothie-making process. I’ve also been looking at treats and even main meals to cook. I mean, I have the two-hour supported activity time slot in the afternoon and this often is currently spent on nothing more than a walk. I have been nagging my staff for a more structured activity schedule for months, but this seems to be rather difficult. One can always hope though.