November 2025 In My Kitchen

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.

August 2025 In My Kitchen

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

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.

April 2025 In My Kitchen

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)

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.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 12, 2025)

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. It’s just past 4:30PM as I start writing my post, so I’m going to interrupt my writing for dinner. If you’d like a cup of coffee, you’re free to join me at 7PM, by which time I’ll probably have finished this post. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been sunny most of the week and we haven’t had rain in forever. Today, the temperature climbed to 22°C. This is my favorite type of weather, but I do realize that this high temps in April probably mean 40°C in July.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I once again managed to get in quite a lot of steps. On Monday, a staff and I went to the nearby lake, which I’d visited a few times with another staff before. While there, I did manage to take a few photos. My staff thought it’d be cool to take a photo of me at the bridge, but none of the photos she took were good enough. Here are a few photos that did turn out okay.



If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I’ve been taking some more photographs. On Sunday, I took some sunset shots. I really want to learn how to capture just the sunset rather than the buildings and trees too.


On Monday, I let my staff take my phone to the yard to snap a picture of an air balloon. I love how Be My Eyes describes the second photo with the bird on it.


If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you that I went out for lunch twice this week. On Wednesday, a staff and I went to Deventer to eat out at a restaurant staffed by people with developmental disabilities called Brownies ‘n’ Downies. There, I got the chicken burger with fries.

On Thursday, my mother-in-law came by for a visit. We drove to a pancake place a few towns away that has a play area for children too. Even though there weren’t many people in the restaurant, it was quite an overloading experience.

If we were having coffee, next I’d share that I’ve been hyperfixating on the idea of doing more cooking. I’ve been looking at smoothie recipes too, but I can’t seem to find cacao powder that isn’t super expensive anywhere in a brick-and-mortar supermarket.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that, this week, I’ve unfortunately still been struggling with temp workers being assigned to me. (Of course, my staff will say they’re “regular” temp workers.) Today, the support coordinator assigned me one of the temp workers for the entire morning under the guise of fewer switches. Well, it isn’t like he does this fewer switches thing when my trusted staff are available. IN the afternoon, the other temp worker had to have her one orientation moment with me. We went for a walk and then tried to play a game of dice, but she didn’t understand. The support coordinator told me that, if a staff doesn’t understand an activity, I can choose another activity which does suit them and another staff will explain the activity to them later. This frustrates me to no end.

If we were having coffee, I’d end on a positive note and share that, thankfully, the Center for Consultation and Expertise received our request to get involved. I’m now waiting for the behavior specialist to receive a call planning an orientation meeting. I really do hope I’ll be invited to that meeting.

March 2025 In My Kitchen

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

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.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (January 3, 2025)

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)

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.