Cooking nightmares

Warning. 

This will sound like an insane rant from a rambling drunk  autistic having a nightmare.

It's see strange how  antxieties (spelling ok ?) from the day enter our dreams and turn them into nightmares.  Imp

I am a poor cook and often buy ready made meals to microwave.

Yesterday, instead of buying a  complete meal for one. I decided to buy and cook the components separately.

In a cheap supermarket I saw cut price, cooked chicken slices and cut price sauce which included veg and spices.

I measured, washed and cooked my own rice.  (I hate the overpriced precooked packages of rice which just need microwave).

I read the chicken instructions carefully.  I'm terrified of getting food poisoning again.  It was pre cooked, cooled and packed in a vacuum.  Packaged in UK but sourced from Brazil. Why Brazil? I thought we had enough chickens here in the UK.

My anxiety levels went through the roof.  Is the meat safe am I going to get poisoning Nauseated face

Ate the whole meal and during the night my nightmares started.

I was shopping at two shops or was I running a shop ?  A rival had cheaper bacon because the had a cheaper source.  My shop burnt down or did it explode because of a chemical reaction in the food. INauseated faceot food from the new source, is it clean?  I don't know?  How did the shop explode/burn down? Which town was I in ?   What year is it?  Nauseated faceSmiling impJapanese ogre

Where am I?

  • Some therapists believe people dream when they get too much rapid eye movement sleep, and they dream about the day's unresolved issues. I think they are on to something, and it seems that might be what is happening to you. But yes, anxiety. & depression also. You might get some benefit from adjusting your sleep habits. Meditation, yoga, philosophy might all help that. I find for example going to bed very tired helps.

  • don't like/find it difficult to peel and cut fresh veg. I have frozen veg but find it hard to coordinate to do the veg with the meal.

    The trick seems to be starting to boil carrots at about 10 minutes before main dish finishes cooking. 

    Once carrots start boiling, start a 7 minute timer and turn carrots down to a simmer. Begin boiling broccoli.

    When the timer gets to 5 minutes, begin boiling beans or peas, since they only need a couple of minutes. 

    For veg prep, take a look at videos like this one:

    https://youtu.be/G-Fg7l7G1zw

  • unidentifiable meat

    That seems to be a recurring theme in this country. During the war, folk would apparently retort:

    "Oh no! Not tinned air-raid-victim again..."

  • I've heard from many people that gas cookers do actually cook the food better / nicer than electric ones - especially re. home baking / pies

    It does depend on what you're cooking. In terms of a hob it used to be that the instant control of heat with gas was very important vs old electric rings. Now modern induction hobs are just as good.

    In terms of the oven gas gives a more humid atmosphere in the oven, burning the hydrocarbon gas creates CO2 but also water from the H and atmospheric O so it increases the humidity within the oven. If you're cooking in an electric oven and you find issues with pastry you can add a small dish of water at the bottom of the oven (often partially covered with foil to adjust evaporation). Things like pastry will generally cook better with the fan off in an electric oven as well as the air blowing over them can tend to dry them pastry too much.

  • I also am not a good cook. Too many ingredients and steps and I get flustered. I'm very much a one casserole dish/frying pan or Wok/saucepan and chuck it all in merchant. Occasionally I use a slow cooker.

    I eat some ready meals and also things like sausages with a pack of microwave rice or breaded chicken pieces with the rice. I've yet to find a way to incorporate veg into the meal. I don't like/find it difficult to peel and cut fresh veg. I have frozen veg but find it hard to coordinate to do the veg with the meal.

  • In all of the schools I've visited over the years, the menu itself is the tastiest thing on offer! 

    Wilting salad, boiled-to-mush vegetables, rock-hard pastry, unidentifiable meat ... still, I'd rather have any of those than liver  :@   (although I could probably do with the iron)

    At my daughters school they only serve chips once a week but if you lift up one, the rest are attached in a clump! The pre-packaged sandwiches etc. are probably the best things on offer. 

  • To be honest, she was probably right about the school dinners too, they're still awful!

    Do they still serve spam fritters with chips?

    Funnily enough, I think offal is rather under-rated these days. Tripe is not something I've tried, though my grandfather loved the stuff. Calf's liver with sage, freshly cooked at home, is actually delicious and has me buzzing with energy the next day. Must be the iron. 

  • You know, I did wonder at the time whether I needed to make that explicit Thinking

  • To "California", mainly...

    Back in the 1980s (...y'know, those Dark Ages before "Internet Forums" like this one...), there was a thing known as "A Square Meal". A Square Meal entailed: Carbohydrates + Protein + Vegetables. (E.G. - Potatoes or Rice + Beef or Chicken + Something Green.)

    Have a go at buying things which are like these, and where you feel "unhealthy", buy something separate and eat that as well, not necessarily cooking it with regards to Fish and Greens. Cooking removes a lot of nutrients, which is why I myself prefer Fish and Vegetables Raw. Never mind the "taste", it is the Minerals which are needed...

    I prefer that someone else can add to (or counter) this advice, yet this advice is a start, maybe... if this is indeed a sort of "Cooking" Thread...?

  • Breakfast ~ either chocolate porridge made with water or occasionally non dairy milk, with frozen fruit mixed in and nuts, chopped up chocolate and banana on top, with either hemp seeds or whatever other seeds I have. 

    Or, maybe avocado on toast or a breakfast wrap/burrito with my favourite beans, salad, and a home made oil free dressing. 

    Or depending on how hungry I am when I have my first meal it could be sautéed vegetables with lots of potatoes, lots of mushrooms and onions and peppers, it could be anything really. 

    Lunch I’m going to start having a huge fresh salad with beans etc and if I’m still hungry at tea time I’ll my favourite which is a huge bowl of fruit, lots of fresh mango, bananas, raspberries etc, whatever I’ve got really and I’ll have that with some non dairy yoghurt, chocolate granola with extra chocolate chopped up and sometimes I have maple syrup drizzled all over again it. Delicious Yum 

    I usually try to have a green smoothie each day as well or maybe a delicious chocolate and almond butter smoothie that I like to make with Belgium chocolate protein powder. 

  • I've heard from many people that gas cookers do actually cook the food better / nicer than electric ones - especially re. home baking / pies and, from my own point of view, toast! They're certainly useful in a power cut, we use a gas camping stove during power cuts which has a grill.

    Your mother's cooking peculiarities do sound a little extreme (!) but I also think it would have been good to have REAL food growing up - my mother's idea of cooking involved putting a frozen pie from a cardboard box into the oven. It was only as an adult that i learned that people actually made things like that themselves from fresh ingredients and I've tried to learn to do that for my own children (about 70% of the time anyway) unless I'm being deliberately lazy. 

    To be honest, she was probably right about the school dinners too, they're still awful! Not as bad as they used to be I suppose but nowhere near as good as fresh, home-cooked food made with fresh ingredients. 

    Of the few occasions I remember my mother 'actually 'cooking, some of the things she cooked made me gag (still do remembering them) as anyone who has tried 'tripe' will appreciate. (Basically looks like boiled white carpet.) Was anyone else subjected to this atrocity? Similarly 'liver and onions' one of the most disgusting things I have ever encountered. I've never even fed my dog these things!! (I'm not a vegetarian but I draw the line at eating entrails like these.)  

  • I will elaborate this post about cooking with my memories of how I grew up and lived in a household where cooking played a big part of life.

    I'm still unsure if my parents were autistic.  But a lot of their behaviour is similar to that of autistic children being described on this site.

    My late mother had a cooking and food obsession.  And a fear of modern appliances.  She insisted on a gas cooker and that's it!!!!  I owned a microwave and electric kettle, which I kept in my bedroom.

    She finally accepted a fridge in the house around 1990.  Before that it was all poo poood . That fridges/freezers are only for supermarkets and restaurants and she'd never heard of people having fridges in their homes.  Milk was kept fresh overnight by being put into a bucket of cold tap water and placed in a cupboard.

    Teabags had to be rectangular.  I once bought a packet of round teabags, she threw a tantrum and threw the  whole 80 bag packet into the bin.

    Cakes had to be dry, no cream or custard.  She told me an anecdote about how she was once invited by another lady to the M&S café. ( Around 1958, my mother arrived in the UK in 1957).    That woman bought her a cup of  tea and  a slice of cake.  When she went to the toilet, my mother exchanged her cup with an empty cup from another table and scrapped the cream off the cake and ate the dry cake.  I heard this story over fifty times!!! Of my mother's one and only visit as a customer to a café/restaurant in her entire life.

    Milk had to be boiled.  Placed first in a milk pan and then as it boils, it rises, just before it reaches the top of the pan, taken off the gas cooker.  I once made her coffee with fresh milk.  The whole cup went down the kitchen sink and she spent years complaining that I was useless and unable to make even a cup of coffee!!!!

    She avoided visiting other people's homes because of the fear of being offered tea/coffee and being expected to drink something she hadn't made herself.  Took me years to discover this fear.  

    My sister kept inviting all of us over to her house for Christmas every year.   My mother went maybe twice.  Then refused point blank to go.  It took me over ten years of arguing with her to discover that the tea/coffee phobia was behind the refusal .

    Then as she got older I discovered more details from the distant past.  

    I mentioned previously that I started school three months late when a neighbor became concerned why I wasn't in school and it was the neighbour who took me and registered me with the local school.  When I argued with my mother about it, she came up with a list of excuses, one was that she was protecting me from other people's cooking.  If I had gone to school then I would be eating school dinners and they were being cooked by other people.

    My father also had his quirks, one was that he always filled the kettle full.  And I mean full to the very top.  Even if he was making just one cup.  This was a traditional kettle used on a gas cooker. As the kettle boiled and water volume expanded. We had boiling water spurting from the sprout and from the lid, flooding the cooker and floor.  No amount of reasoning made any difference.  He continued filling the kettle FULL right to the end.

    Rant over, for now!

  • Greetings, for 'Tis I, Posting things which are, perhaps not helpful...!

    1 - At last, a new Cooking/Cookery Thread. In the Related section, this word has not been in a Title for at least 3 Years...?

    2 - I also offer support to a "Raw Food" diet, always. I despise "Cooking" and use the Microwave, because Methane Gas and Iron makes me feel very unwell, and so the Kitchen is my own least favourite place in any House. "If in doubt, Nuke it," is a popular vernacular for Microwaving a food...

    3 - I have always wanted to tell this little story to complete strangers, a little life-experience...

    As I child, I hated Spinach. It looked like "Snot", smelt like "Snot", sounded, acted, and felt like "Snot", and then finally, it always tasted like "Snot"...
    Then, one day, in my Twenties... I encountered RAW Spinach. I could not believe that it was the same thing! Years later, feeling brave, I took it home, and I ate it raw. The sight was wonderful, the taste was beautifully crisp and light, and I could actually see and smell where it had wilted or had been badly grown, and so I avoided Leaves which looked like that...

    Nowadays... I love Spinach. Raw, only. And Cooked Spinach *still* seems like "Snot" to me!

    After saying all of that... I might not Post again, for "cooking" is that much of a thing which bores me. Processed food is somewhat distasteful, yet highly difficult to avoid (in London), and so I know as much about Cooking as I do Plumbing (only the basics). I do know a lot about Nutrition, however, as it relates to Scientific Chemistry. Finally, of course, I offer apologies to those who might have been eating Spinach whilst reading this Post... (!)

  • I miss takeaways   :(    We can't get deliveries where I live.  

  • I try to eat a varied balance.

    Breakfast I prepare at home.  A choice of cereals with milk or boiled eggs, or fried bacon & eggs.

    Lunch sometimes at home, other times a pub meal if I'm in the city centre.  My current favourite is a carvery with choice of meat (chicken, pork, gammon, turkey) with Chips, roast or mashed and several vegetables. All for under £5.  Or a £2 box meal from Morrison's, chicken & chips which I eat sitting  on a park bench.

    Evening dinner, at home raw salad with eggs or pork slices, or a microwave meal.

    Sometimes I buy Chinese takeaway or traditional fish and chips.

  • I’m moving towards a mainly raw vegan diet, not because I can’t cook because I can and I love cooking, but there’s everything else that goes with it and currently, my energy levels etc are low so I realised that if I eat mainly raw, I will be able to spend less time preparing food, thinking about it etc and there will be less dishes to wash etc, so I can give my energy to something else. I’m currently in the process (still) of setting up a daily routine and have decided I’ll have my main cooked meal for breakfast (I don’t mind eating dinner for breakfast, when you’ve lived in India, all rules of what to eat and at what time, go out of the window) and if I’m going to cook, I’d rarher it be in a morning. Eating at least one raw meal a day is highly beneficial anyways and if I want anything else to eat (at tea time) I’ll have a massive bowl of fruit and maybe some soya yoghurt with chocolate and nut granola with some extra chocolate chopped up and added and maybe some raw cocoa added to the yoghurt to make it chocolate flavour ~ this is one of my fav meals, especially with a ton of juicy mango :) 

  • Do you remove your thumb before boiling the rice?!  hahahaaa :-D 

  • Have you considered switching to a raw or mainly raw diet?