Nope Right Out of Here

i had to make a solution for this for myself, mostly because of depression, but it makes a nice How To for folks who are low on spoons or could use some help in the kitchen.

Fortunately i was a professional cook for over a decade. UNfortunately the first post i made explaining it was suuuuper long. Let's see if i can do better

So you select any protein that you can cook in a frying pan -- chicken breasts, ground beef, pork chops, sausages, steak, chicken thighs, whatever. You also select one or two types of veggie (mushrooms or tubers also work, i just did this with potatoes and carrots for dinner tonight).

[i like cooking for vegetarians, but this is how i cook for myself when i'm low on spoons - perhaps i'll do another post for meatless meals]

You'll also need some kind of oil, and a sauce or two of your choice in a bottle. All cooking gear is a large frying pan with lid (i prefer non-stick) a spatula, a cutting board, and a knife.

You cut the veggies into bite size pieces, cut up enough for two meals. One kind of veggie is fine, or you can do mix two or three

Put frying pan on medium heat with a little oil. Tubers or mushrooms or go in the pan a few minutes before the protein. 2 portions of the protein goes in the pan, about 5 minutes with lid (don't worry you can still get a good sear on both sides)

Now flip your protein if it's flip-able and add normal veggies, put the lid back on another five-ish minutes.

Take your protein out and put it with one portion of the veggies in a microwave safe container. That's going to be your lunch tomorrow. Put the other portion of protein on a plate to rest (you have to let a cooked protein sit a couple minutes before you serve it or when you cut into it all the juices run out and it goes dry - the liquids thicken as it cools, preventing this drying out if you let it rest, the goal is to serve it very warm but not hot hot)

While it's resting, pour some sauce from your bottle in the pan with the rest of the veggies and turn up the heat. A single sauce/bottle is fine, i like to get fancy and mix a couple. Two examples of personal favorite mixes are 1: bbq sauce and a hot sauce like sriracha 2: roughly equal parts low sodium soy sauce and worcestershire (makes something similar to a teriyaki sauce) A swallow of wine is almost always a great option if you want to add that to your sauce too, just add it to the pan before the other sauces so the alcohol has time to burn off.

...

Here is the important bit. While your veggies are finishing, wash your cutting board and chef knife. Then when you dump your veggies and sauce over your protein on the plate, while it is still too hot to eat, you wash your frying pan and spatula before you eat. Now the only dishes you have left to do are your plate and fork. Maybe a steak knife.

...

The whole thing takes about 35 minutes even with washing the dishes, and that includes your lunch for the next day- just pour a different sauce on and stick it in the microwave for a couple minutes (or five minutes back in the frying pan) and you have a full healthy lunch with a different flavor

You can use this technique every single meal and it yields hundreds of combinations, from pork and potatoes bbq, to salmon and broccoli teriyaki, to chicken and zucchini in a soy glaze.

It will keep you down to less than an hour of kitchen time per day total for both lunch and dinner including all dish clean up, uses the least dishes, the least effort, requires the least technique, and is, depending on what you pick out, very affordable

here are a couple more examples from this month; i didn’t take pictures of the salmon i did recently, but you get the idea

it's not super fancy, but it is easy, affordable, quick, and any flavors you want. Hope this helps some folks

good morning to these talented husbands who are both called david and wear the same outfits and to them ONLY

“thirty years + and counting”

wait a minute….

If people are mad at you, it's their responsibility to tell you, not your responsibility to guess

If they're mad at you in secret anyways, they're the ones in the wrong, not you

If people don't like what you're doing, it's their responsibility to tell you

If they say it's fine when it's really not, they're the ones in the wrong, not you

People are allowed to be wrong about you

If they are wrong about you, wait for them to bring it up, because if you try to, you will inevitably overcorrect

Some people are committed to misunderstanding you. You will not win arguments against them. Yes, even if you explain your point of view. They do not care. Drop it

The worst thing that will happen from a first-time offense is being told not to do it again. Maybe with a replacement if you broke something

You can improve relationships and gauge willingness to talk to you by giving compliments. It's like a daily log-in bonus and nobody thinks twice about it

Most things are better after you sleep on them

Most things are better after you have a meal

Most things are better after you shower

Your brain makes up consequences that are irrational. If the worst DOES come to pass and someone acts like they do in your head, they are overreacting, and you are entitled to say "what the fuck"

If your chest hurts after you feel like you've made a social error, that's called rejection-sensitive dysphoria. It means your anxiety is so bad that it's causing you physical pain, which is a good indicator that you're overreacting. Tense yourself, hold it for 20 seconds, let it go, then find a distraction

If you're suddenly angry at someone after you feel like you made a social error, that's also rejection-sensitive dysphoria. You are going to feel annoyed about it for awhile, but being genuinely pissed off is your anxiety trying to find something to blame to take the responsibility off your shoulders, and getting scared because it can't justify itself. Deep breaths, ask yourself how much you ACTUALLY want to be angry at that person, then find a distraction

"Sour grapes" is more healthy for you than stewing. Deciding you don't like someone who's perpetually annoyed with you, won't talk to you, etc. makes letting go of anxiety over them easier

If people don't like you, they will find reasons to be annoyed with you when they otherwise wouldn't. If people do like you, they will find reasons NOT to be annoyed with you when they otherwise would. People do not ping-pong between the two

You DO have to make a conscious choice not to think about something. If you're having trouble circling back to it, say out loud that you're done thinking about it and why. Then find a distraction

When you're upset, part of you is going to want to make false bids for attention (suddenly texting differently, heavy sighs, etc. but when someone asks you about it, you tell them it's nothing). Do not listen to it. You gain nothing from it except more misery

People like to help people they care about. It makes them feel good about themselves

If you think you're insufferable for needing help, see above. Yes, really. They get a serotonin kick from it

If you think you're insufferable for mannerisms you have, you either have to consciously choose not to do them, or accept that they're part of the package that comes with you. Being apologetic about existing does nothing except make you more miserable

If you do things you don't like when you feel meh about it, it makes it easier to do them when you hate it

If you avoid things you don't like when you feel meh about it, it reinforces and magnifies how bad it feels when you hate it

Seriously. Read those last two points again. If you can make yourself make a phone call when you've got nothing to lose, you will slowly lose that panic you get when you have to make a phone call you haven't prepared for. You do have to CONSCIOUSLY take that step

Hobbies that make you care for something get rid of that nagging feeling that you're not doing enough. Go grow some rosemary

If you don't engage with your hobbies regularly, you will feel miserable, and anxiety will spike

Hobbies are things that give you a bit of happiness. They do not have to be organized or named to do that. Go be creative in something. Play with coins. Make up lists. Start a new WIP

No one cares what you look like

If people point out things they don't like about how you look unprompted, they are being rude. You are entitled to say "what the fuck"

People who like you will find you pretty to some degree. Minor things about your appearance go completely unnoticed. Literally, scars and dots and blemishes do not register to someone who likes your company

You looking at yourself in the mirror is 10x more closely than anyone is going to look at you

If you're anxious about your body type, and you're creatively inclined, make/write an oc with that same shape. Give them nice things and make other characters love them. Put them on adventures. You'll start to see yourself in the mirror more kindly

You care about wording and perfect lines/colors way more than anyone who views your work ever will

Sometimes when you're upset, you're going to feel like not eating. Do not do that. Not eating makes you more miserable

Same with things you normally enjoy. Denying yourself helps no one. You are punishing yourself for being sad. Stop it

Both of these will take conscious decision to break the habit of. Make yourself do it anyways, and it will slowly get easier

by their very definition, they are gone forever

there are ones that were truly unique, like Polar Tropical Forests and Fern Prairies, that we just could not have today

but there were ones that have equivalents to today, as well, like the first savannahs and steppes of the Miocene - they just have earlier versions of the plants and animals

there were so many because there are so many today, and each one had its own flora and fauna and was glorious

There's the wetlands and forests of Hell Creek in the Latest Cretaceous

the bizarre Volcanic Lake Forests of the Jehol Biota

whatever the hell the Ediacaran Reefs were

the Scale Tree Swamp Forests of the Carboniferous

"Mesozoic 2" aka pre-human Aotearoa

the Western Interior Seaway dominated by Mosasaurs

that isn't what I mean by "Polar Tropical Forest"

I mean a tropical forest

at the poles

ie, the ecosystems present during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

we have fossils of plants that showcase how different tropical plant lifestyles had to be up at the poles because of the light weirdness

the important part is "tropical", not "wet/rainforest". those are two different things

it first evolved in the latest Cretaceous, but it didn't actually take over everywhere until the Miocene, when grasses that process light differently (look up C3 vs C4 photosynthesis) evolved and just took the fuck over the planet

before then, other plants formed the low ground cover over the earth, and in many places those plants were ferns - spread all over the ground and covering it, much like grass, but significantly less dense. Dirt would have been much more common everywhere.

Like the reefs of the late Devonian, which were made of stromatoporoids, which may have resembled corals but were actually a highly diverse extinct group of sponges!

This is one of my own reconstructions of a stromatoporoid reef off the coast of Devonian Australia (plus anachronistic underwater baited camera):

The Cretaceous also had some wild extinct reefs which are known as carbonate reefs and were dominated by a group of bivalve molluscs called rudists!