Mother's Little Helper

So if you don't know, I'm a huge Rolling Stones fan. Gatherer has seen them twice with her dad and would love to go at least once more with him (making the assumption that Mick ain't gonna tour forever, even though he might live that long). This isn't my confession I'm taking any mother's little helper pills, this isn't a post about my mental health. This also isn't a cute post about a native (sorry to disappoint) I just realized for the entire month of November I didn't write a single food review. I wasn't that I didn't enjoy the meals or that the family didn't enjoy the meals, I just didn't feel like writing much, so I didn't. What brings you joy and all. I get the irony with November being Thanksgiving in the US, and me loving Thanksgiving above all holidays and loving cooking above most activities. I woke up this morning and thought, I think I'd like to do a food post today, so here we are. Back to mother's little helper. There's this great line in the song

Cooking fresh food for her husband's just a drag. So she buys an instant cake, and she burns a frozen steak.

This right here was why I went to my meal kit delivery services. It isn't that I hated cooking for my family, it was just such a damn pain pulling open the cook books or websites and looking for something different that met everyone's food preferences that was good and easy enough to make with our schedules. It just felt tired and monotonous and honestly I felt like everything was some version of spaghetti flavors and Gatherer was OVER it. Also pandemic and people and stores and just no thank you very much. The grocery store isn't scary any more (well, any more scary than any public interaction is for me) but I've really enjoyed having a diverse set of menu options between two or three services, the ingredients (usually) all show up so I don't have to worry about figuring out substitutions or quantity waste, or buying an expensive spice combo I may only use once while shopping. I've learned new techniques, my timing is better, I'm more comfortable making adjustments to recipes without worrying it will impact the quality or taste, and most of all my kids now have the diverse palate I always hoped for. I was hesitant on last night's meal because it had rice (which Native 2 previously hated), and ran it past Native 2. Who proclaimed he now likes rice and was fine to eat black pepper steamed barramundi with broccoli and jasmine rice without batting a single eye, raising an eyebrow, or making gagging noises. Said recipe had cilantro and mint on top and be damned if they both didn't eat it without me having to hide a speck of green. Y'all I have grown ass adult friends that won't eat vegetables. My biggest issue of late has been remembering to cancel at least a box or two so we only have 3 or 4 meals instead of 6 (which Hunter may get a little irritated about the money spent when I do that...sorry dear).

I still claim its a drag getting old and I'm still not much for baking (I do it occasionally and its starting to turn out better when I do) so instant cake it is for dessert but cooking fresh food isn't much of a drag anymore. Side note if you type drag a bunch and read it back to yourself trying to catch errors, it really does start to sound funny. I've in some of the photos of meals I made over November, just to show you how diverse the options were. It also isn't every meal I made and I added in my contribution to Thanksgiving for fun. I'd say I'm going to be better about food reviews in December but I know what the holidays tend to look like. Maybe I'll take notes as I cook or something (hahahahahahahaha). For now if you see something that looks tasty and want the recipe let me know, I save them all.