What did the tomato say to the burnt bean?
Don’t you just love how my brain works? I’ll tell you this. It’s much better to laugh than to lay down in the dark crying.
So here’s a little secret. Do you know why I know so much about depression, PTSD and anxiety disorders?
The enemy of our souls likes to pin us down with “labels”. So my label has yellow caution tape that says,” depressed, PTSD, anxiety disorder, asthmatic, allergic”... you get the idea. I could walk around wearing the label “broken , unlovable...”
To be honest with you, sometimes the unkind labels pop up out of nowhere and try to define me.
People have asked me “why don’t you cook?” I usually say that I play the piano instead. Or that I don’t like to cook. Want the truth? Cooking causes me great anxiety. Cooking for other people is a high anxiety trigger. Have I let it stop me? Yep. Pretty much.
So. God sent me a roommate. Yes he does that kind of stuff. I’ll explain later. But in order for me to have healthy food to eat and not run screaming (lol) our agreement includes her cooking 5 times a week. Just dinner.
She’s been cooking and making things I never heard of or thought of... such as... salad without lettuce! She used “English cucumbers “. I bought the wrong cucumbers! "English cucumbers"are dark green and wrapped in Saran Wrap. They are sweet and easy to chew. Who knew?
The result has been amazing. I haven’t craved as much junk food and I’ve eve experimented in cooking myself. Watching her try new stuff gave me courage. She buys fresh vegetables and fruit and cooks with them. (Meaning they don’t sit in the refrigerator until they die and end up getting thrown away).
So I had some ground turkey and decided to make vegetable beef soup. I’ve made it before. It was easy. I opened a package of seasoning, opened 2 cans of diced tomatoes, added a package of frozen vegetables and “tada!” Soup. Even used dried onions. No fresh products were involved in any of my cooking and my family said it was good. I only got the nerve to cook a couple of things a couple of times during their stay at home. So anything I cooked was better than frozen dinners.
Tonight I got brave! I used fresh tomatoes real garlic ( squished, or whatever you call it...) I used sea salt and the only can I opened was tomato soup to add consistency and the only thing frozen was the corn. I realize now that it takes s lot of salt to cook with when you don’t use pre-packaged food items.
Which brings me to my story. Tonight I decided to go ”all in” with my homemade chili. I cooked the beans from scratch! Only one flaw in my plan. The package said to boil them for 2 hours. So I put them on to boil and set a timer. Pause and reflect. What happens to water when it boils? You guessed it... it evaporates. So my roommate was in the kitchen and said, “I think something is burning “. Yep. The beans were burnt to a crisp. There was no saving them.
So, anxiety kicked into overdrive. I cleaned out the pot and scraped out the dead beans and my roommate got out two cans of beans. But I had neglected to buy the hamburger for the chili!!!
So , in my panicked state I drove to the grocery store and bought fresh hamburger, the chili seasoning I normally use and started over.
This was very hard on me physically. I shook the whole time because my mind was in what they call “flight or fight “ mode. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins and I wanted to go to my room, close the door and wait for the shaking to stop.
Instead I explained to my roommate the difficulty I was having physically and asked for her help. I was determined to use something fresh! So I got out tomatoes and prepared to dice them. They literally ran off the counter and hid under my feet.
I laughed and said, “ they are running for their lives because they heard what happened to the beans!" We got a good laugh out of it, the shaking stopped and the chili was delicious.
Never let labels throw you off! And never let the tomatoes see what happened to the burnt beans! Lol!
So here’s a little secret. Do you know why I know so much about depression, PTSD and anxiety disorders?
The enemy of our souls likes to pin us down with “labels”. So my label has yellow caution tape that says,” depressed, PTSD, anxiety disorder, asthmatic, allergic”... you get the idea. I could walk around wearing the label “broken , unlovable...”
To be honest with you, sometimes the unkind labels pop up out of nowhere and try to define me.
People have asked me “why don’t you cook?” I usually say that I play the piano instead. Or that I don’t like to cook. Want the truth? Cooking causes me great anxiety. Cooking for other people is a high anxiety trigger. Have I let it stop me? Yep. Pretty much.
So. God sent me a roommate. Yes he does that kind of stuff. I’ll explain later. But in order for me to have healthy food to eat and not run screaming (lol) our agreement includes her cooking 5 times a week. Just dinner.
She’s been cooking and making things I never heard of or thought of... such as... salad without lettuce! She used “English cucumbers “. I bought the wrong cucumbers! "English cucumbers"are dark green and wrapped in Saran Wrap. They are sweet and easy to chew. Who knew?
The result has been amazing. I haven’t craved as much junk food and I’ve eve experimented in cooking myself. Watching her try new stuff gave me courage. She buys fresh vegetables and fruit and cooks with them. (Meaning they don’t sit in the refrigerator until they die and end up getting thrown away).
So I had some ground turkey and decided to make vegetable beef soup. I’ve made it before. It was easy. I opened a package of seasoning, opened 2 cans of diced tomatoes, added a package of frozen vegetables and “tada!” Soup. Even used dried onions. No fresh products were involved in any of my cooking and my family said it was good. I only got the nerve to cook a couple of things a couple of times during their stay at home. So anything I cooked was better than frozen dinners.
Tonight I got brave! I used fresh tomatoes real garlic ( squished, or whatever you call it...) I used sea salt and the only can I opened was tomato soup to add consistency and the only thing frozen was the corn. I realize now that it takes s lot of salt to cook with when you don’t use pre-packaged food items.
Which brings me to my story. Tonight I decided to go ”all in” with my homemade chili. I cooked the beans from scratch! Only one flaw in my plan. The package said to boil them for 2 hours. So I put them on to boil and set a timer. Pause and reflect. What happens to water when it boils? You guessed it... it evaporates. So my roommate was in the kitchen and said, “I think something is burning “. Yep. The beans were burnt to a crisp. There was no saving them.
So, anxiety kicked into overdrive. I cleaned out the pot and scraped out the dead beans and my roommate got out two cans of beans. But I had neglected to buy the hamburger for the chili!!!
So , in my panicked state I drove to the grocery store and bought fresh hamburger, the chili seasoning I normally use and started over.
This was very hard on me physically. I shook the whole time because my mind was in what they call “flight or fight “ mode. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins and I wanted to go to my room, close the door and wait for the shaking to stop.
Instead I explained to my roommate the difficulty I was having physically and asked for her help. I was determined to use something fresh! So I got out tomatoes and prepared to dice them. They literally ran off the counter and hid under my feet.
I laughed and said, “ they are running for their lives because they heard what happened to the beans!" We got a good laugh out of it, the shaking stopped and the chili was delicious.
Never let labels throw you off! And never let the tomatoes see what happened to the burnt beans! Lol!
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