Category Archives: Cooking Fails

Post Traumatic Snacking Disorder

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Good lord. This is a spiral. The more I stress about what I’m eating, the more I’m complelled to stress eat. It’s a weird cycle. I have moved my little dumbells to the office so when I get the urge to boredom eat, I can grab them and do some workouts. It’s working, for the most part. I’m coupling that with eating filling, healthy meals and snacks today and seeing how that works for me. I also need to dye my hair today or tomorrow.

Meal planning is getting harder as the weeks go by, because I’m bored with everything I’ve done. My husband is getting more annoyed with stuff too, like for instance the ribs I made on Sunday. They were amazing but he didn’t want to bring messy food to work. I get it, but I’m just trying to keep it tasty and a little different when I can, and cooking on weekends is when I can take my time and make good stuff.

I think it’s time to take back to my original hunting grounds and hit up Pinterest. I have so many recipes saved on TikTok these days, but that is so hard to sort through. At least on Pinterest, it’s saved into groups and easy to find. What I need to do is move the video links from the recipe videos I liked to its own Pinterest group. Brainstorming out loud here.

If you are reading this and have something new I can try, let me know. I’m getting bored over here and running out of new ideas.

Recipe Fatigue – Surviving Food Boredom

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In my food week, I usually take mid-week to plan my meals and make my shopping list. HEB and Kroger usually publish their sale papers on Wednesday, so I comb through those and try to use the sale papers to help plan what the next week’s meals will be. Saturday morning is my shopping day, so meals get planned Sat-Fri. There is usually one take-out night planned in the week, though lately it’s been a little random. Last week we ate out Friday after kiddo’s performance (And I think I did well! Grilled catfish and shrimp, dirty rice and grilled veggies with a salad). The options for healthy fast food around here are limited, though, so I’ve not been eating a lot of it. But everything in moderation, right?

I’ve been buying things like cucumbers and lettuce boats in bulk because it’s low calorie and things I can grab to eat to fill the void between meals that won’t wreck me with calories. I’ve also been trying to wait longer in the morning before my first meal, but that is a balance. If you wait too long and you’re too hungry it can set the tone for the rest of the day and you’re just gobblin’ all day long. I think next post will be detailing “What I eat in a day!” I might do a video on tiktok for one day too. Not today though because I look awful.

Anyway, I am struggling this week to develop recipes and a meal plan that can both be fitting for me and delicious for my husband. I will see what the sale papers contain this week – hopefully something good!

Adventures in Veggie Burgers Gone Wrong

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A year ago, when I was really considering wanting to start this journey, the one thing that was holding me back was the thought of having to make two different dishes for every meal. I also had all those voices in my head telling me it’s a lot of work and probably wouldn’t even matter. When I tell you that doubt is the Devil, believe me. I was like “you know, you right. Why would I bother with all that fuss if it wasn’t going to help me?” Wrong, Kellz. Stop being wrong.

So flash forward to my commitment to not being a slob forever, and now I am looking at things SMRT-ly. What can I easily change that we can both eat, or what components can I do two alternate ones (like side dishes) to make it more palatable for Mr. Metabolism? I started doing things like using a meat blend (pork/turkey/beef) instead of straight up ground beef. Using pork panko instead of bread crumbs. Mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes. I tried focusing on things that my husband wouldn’t mind or notice. I also started to branch out and consider two different meals altogether. Like if they do take out, I do something from the meal prep stash. This weekend at the grocery store there was a special on wagyu burgers that I grabbed up, so I decided I’d make those for Father’s Day (he got his big meal the night before) and I’d attempt these veggie burgers I saw in the food network mag.

Well, let’s just say these things had potential but fell short. I have attempted veggie burgers in the past, and the problem I always had with them was that they were mush. Like fall apart mush, not a patty at all. This time I followed the recipe to the letter. The only difference is I substituted the barbecue sauce with lower sugar ketchup and replacing breadcrumbs with pork panko (but added a bit more). I even took video and photos along the way because I wanted it to be the first actual cooking thing I posted on this blog. I let them sit in the fridge for longer than expected while I cooked everything else – bacon, the Mister’s burgers, everything then I pulled them out to finish up. As soon as they hit the oiled pan they fell apart. They cooked up but it was just piles of mush. Did I still eat it? I did. I spread it over my bun halves loaded up with veggies and ate it like avocado toast. Later I had the rest of the mush on a lettuce boat and turned it into a little wrap. Would I do it again? Not without figuring out why this happens.

I was so disappointed! I wanted a great cooking experience. Tonight is air fried sausages and fixins, which probably isn’t going to be very exciting. C’est la vie.