The Cooking Burden

I see myself slowly recovering from the spate of risky-food indulgence that came on mostly (it seems) in response to the visit with the vulvodynia specialist. Ah, psychology. Go work that one out.

I haven't had a white mocha in days. In fact, I can't remember the last time I had cane sugar. Cane juice, maybe, in the form of Peanut Butter & Co.'s ridiculous Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter. Don't buy it. Just don't. There's no point. It's gone in minutes.

I'm not feeling particularly deprived or angry or frustrated about my food intolerances anymore, and I'm pretty happy with what I've been eating. But then I think about what I've been eating -- salami & kale on rice-almond bread -- and I remember that I have a few more steps to go before I'm back to legitimate healthy eating.

(Salami & kale are a GREAT pair. Also, any meal plan that includes salami automatically pleases me.)

So I have to return to my old cooking ways, ways that involve more than toasting bread and choosing how many slices of salami to eat while the bread toasts. The problem is, of all creative forms, or crafts, or whatever, cooking is the least appealing to me. I browse all these awesome food-allergy blogs and wish I were one of those people who love to be in the kitchen, but I'm just not.

But I try. Tonight I made gluten- and dairy-free (and therefore vegan) mac & cheese, recipe by Karina, the gluten-free goddess.

That's part of the mac & cheese before it headed into the oven. Wow, it is really good! The sauce was so tasty good that I scraped it out of the pot after I poured it out, just like it was real cheese sauce.

After the oven.

The good thing about cooking like this is that since I live alone, I just made food for three or four days. The bad thing about it is that it's time-consuming, and it seems even more so when it's not your hobby of choice.

Luckily, I accompany my lack of interest in cooking with easy-to-please taste. I really am happy eating steamed zucchini and tilapia or meals of equivalent investment most of the time. But add it all together -- the constant cooking plus the gluten/other substitution -- and it starts to feel like a pretty big pain in the ass.

Keep on keepin' on. Yes, I did use va-jay-jay pasta.