I was made redundant last November (to my delight) and had this period earmarked for doing all kinds of stuff, including this blog. Unfortunately, I was on the back foot at the start due to my youngest taking virtually a school term off with a mystery abdomen complaint. Which was a bit selfish I felt.
It dawned on me in the middle of the night early this week that all this baking, cooking, blogging, DIY’ing and so on is all very well, but I should probably get a job. I won’t get paid by anyone for doing whatever I fancy of a day. More’s the pity.
I say dawned up on me. I woke up in the middle of a dream where I had to rescue the food mixer from my house before the zombies turned up. Then went to the loo. Not the zombies, me. I don’t know if zombies need the loo. I guess they must do, after all that human flesh. I doubt they replace the toilet roll though.
When I got back into bed I was uneasy, making it a silly time to start mulling over my CV. Within the space of 10 minutes the following thoughts came into my head, though they weren’t this orderly;
- why hasn’t anyone offered me a job to,
- am I employable to,
- have I been off work too long now to,
- I don’t actually want to do what I was doing before to,
- I’ll never earn enough again to,
- OH CHRIST! I’M UNEMPLOYABLE, WE’LL BE ON THE STREET BY CHRISTMAS, JESUS, HEEEELP!*
This was accompanied by rapid breathing and a sweat. Fortunately (or not), this is familiar ground. It tends to be my way of moving from one phase in my life to another. Sometimes it lasts longer than others, but experience has told me it subsides at some point.
Luckily things feel a bit different in the day. The concern doesn’t go away, but it doesn’t pre-occupy. Making dinner is a nice little distraction, along with Netflix.
So, on that note….
Having various intolerances in the house can require different iterations of the same meal. Frequently I just create something that is OK for all, but when those intolerances include the allium family (garlic and onion etc), wheat and dairy, among others, I crave being able to cook without restriction.
The evening meal was a case of clearing out the fridge and using up some of the veg that was on the edge. I also had some mozzarella to use up.
In order to cater for the differing needs of my family I:
- Roasted some cauliflower, green pepper cubed and carrots in a shawarma mix I found on this website with some rapeseed oil and a small amount of maple syrup. Cauliflower steaks seem to have become a thing now so I cut a large cauliflower into 5 cross sections so that I could be on trend, obviously. The outcome was no different to when I’ve roast cauliflower florets in the past to be honest, other than it’s a bit neater. Still tasty.
- Fried an onion and some garlic then added a teaspoon of curry powder and a couple of cloves, then fried for another minute, then added a bay leaf, some green lentils, a splash of wine and some chickens stock then cooked for about 20 minutes.
- Cut some mozzarella and covered in dried oregano.
Then for 1 of us I mixed 1 and 2, for 1 of us I put 3 on top of 1 and roasted, and for 2 of us I mixed 1 and 2 and put 3 on top and roasted.
Question – so, if one of us is dairy free, and one of us is allium free see if you can guess how you get the chicken across the river without the fox eating it.
Each iteration of meal was deemed a success, which was good. But unfortunately no one paid me anything for making it.
But….I’ll have a job soon, and won’t have as much time to do fun stuff like this, so it’s not all bad.
*Please note this isn’t a sudden move to Christianity, just the language of a desperate man