vegetarian ⁽²²⁾

It was during the pandemic, stuck at home and with an itchy brain, that I was watching some continuing education content from Appalachian State University in my good old home state of North Carolina, and there was an excellent hour-long lecture (click me to watch) on sustainable cooking using solar. I am cheap frugal, I like sustainability, and I like food. This all seemed like a win-win-win, plus I like to camp so this style of cooking could go camping with me and eliminate my low-key resource-anxiety (like range-anxiety, but for propane).

Through the magic of finding the right influencer for a product I already decided to purchase, I found some sort of sponsorship deal or special to make owning the All American Sun Oven, which I had settled on, more affordable. It was the pandemic. I was sitting at home anyway. So I bought one.

But then the question of what to cook came up. A Sun Oven without recipes is just a gadget and not a tool.

It turns out that in addition to being able to bake anything which can bake at lower temperatures in an oven - my Sun Oven never reports being above 300F and for planning purposes should be considered to be 250F, and that's in full sun at the beach - it can also cook any recipes that could otherwise be cooked in a slow cooker/crockpot.

Bingo.

Happy Neurodiversity Celebration Week!

There are many types of #neurodiversity and #ADHD is just one of them. A lot of times, an Instant Pot is a godsend for the easily distracted, whether that be adult caregivers to children who have the urge to draw a masterpiece all over the living room in lipstick, or a person whose brain is the challenge. Which is why so many of my recipes are written for people with executive dysfunction and low working memory, and cover meals that would be faster and, some might find, easier to prepare without the Instant Pot. And today is no exception.

Today, I present: enhanced boxed macaroni and cheese. It is a mashup of my fancy dinner macaroni and cheese frugalized with the boxed macaroni and cheese recipe found elsewhere on this website.

I make this for breakfast when I am solo-parenting. Kid never rejects it. It is packed with fat, fiber, and protein. And it is made with my personal capsule kitchen's pantry staples.

You know what you don't do when living with someone of Chinese extraction? Flaunt how delicious gochujang is. So, don't flaunt it. Just eat it.

Did you know there is a New York Times Cooking subreddit. Oh yes! There is a subreddit for everything. My library provides us with a subscription to the New York Times Cooking section and I generally find most things there to be far more ingredients and steps than my brain could handle, but some absolutely wonderful soul on the subreddit converted the Strawberry Drop Biscuits recipe by Andrew Purcell into something much more executive dysfunction friendly.

No rolling. No cutting. One bowl. You can use salted butter - which is what you have on hand, anyway, because it is the best bread butter. And to incorporate the butter it is fun sensory play; plus you don't have to keep the butter cold.

And they taste like BoBerry Biscuits. Plus they freeze well.