Life This Week: Better Eats

I didn't take any photos this week...turns out nothing too eventful happened. On Thursday we went to our med school's career fair to plug radiation oncology, but other than that it's been pretty routine.

This weekend was perfectly low-key, which was just what I needed after spending too much time in the hospital last weekend. I only headed in to round yesterday morning, then had the rest of the weekend off to get caught up on all things neglected -- groceries, laundry, cleaning, emails... I watched Beauty and the Beast on Friday night, slept at 8:30 pm on Saturday, and worked on research today (hence having nothing to write about).

I'll just talk briefly about food, as I've been thinking more about it after watching some Brothers Green on YouTube yesterday. I'd really like to cook more things, but not have cooking become a big thing. I'm not talking about seeking inspiration from recipes or Blue Apron. That's nice and all, but real life is me standing in my kitchen at 6 pm triaging wrinkling peppers and sprouting potatoes. I want to be more creative with food I have on hand and make good food without worrying about it turning out perfect. I started watching Josh Greenfield challenging himself to make a week of creative meals off $21 initially for entertainment, but came away more inspired to make what I'm feeling with what I've got.

Here was today: Breakfast was a huge plate of pancakes, because I woke up hungry and I couldn't think of anything I wanted more. Protein-wise, there's milk and an egg in there.

For lunch I made a pot of soup. I didn't follow a recipe, just added a ton of vegetables -- potatoes, carrots, butternut squash, celery, cabbage, beans, a can of tomatoes, and a handful of pasta. The pasta kind of disintegrated and the soup was a not-so-appetizing shade of grey (n.b. cook dried black beans separately!) but overall it was decent. After I ate a bowl I went back and added cumin, which actually made a big difference (as Josh says, don't accept defeat -- if it doesn't taste great, do something about it!).

Around 4:30 pm I felt like frying up some potatoes. I put a generous amount of oil into the pan and sprinkled on salt, pepper, cayenne, paprika, and cumin. While they were cooking I spotted an old yellow pepper in the fridge and some mushrooms, so figured I'd fry those up too. They cooked faster than the potatoes so it was all done around the same time.

Inspired by Josh I used salt, which I never do. I think it did make a big difference. Anything in moderation. With a runny fried egg on the side it made a great dinner.

There's a lot to be said for just rolling with what you have to create whatever you're feeling like eating at the time. I know I've got only myself to feed, so it's especially easy, but it's still easy to default to the same meals every week. Thanks, random YouTube videos, for the reminder to mix it up a little.

And no worries, I'm still going to eat frozen pizza and ramen whenever I feel like it, because obviously they're delicious.