Merm's Profile

Chocolate and/or rice pudding! yum!

California is by far the most strict with plant/ produce moving issues, but since you're moving out of CA and not into it, I would try to see if there are any issues about moving plants into CT. I have flown with plants out of CA before with no problem at all - and they were under the seat in front of me and obviously a plant.

The chef/ sous chef division of labor is totally what keeps things sane in our kitchen when my partner and I cook together. We are both very good cooks and like to cook - but we tend to like to cook alone because we have very different approaches to getting things done in the kitchen. So if we want to share the kitchen and cooking during a single night, it works best to have one of us be the sous chef and one of else do the actual cooking. And music is definitely a great accompaniment!

Also, thank you for having a picture of a (presumptively - they could be roommates/ friends of course) same-sex couple as your image for this post; it might seem like a small thing, but when we're predominantly surrounded by pictures of heterosexual couples at Valentine's day (and year round), a small touch of acknowledging the existence of same-sex couples goes a long way!

I also buy a lot of the pre-packaged veggies listed here and don't consider them a splurge - they are a convenience and often much easier to use and cheaper than a whole bunch of spinach or lettuce.

Regular grocery store indulgences include Beyer's lactose-free vanilla ice cream for my lactose-intolerant partner, chocolate cake by the slice, and Kozy Shack rice or tapioca or chocolate pudding. At Costco it is pretzel rolls (SO GOOD), rotisserie chicken, and occasionally those delicious chocolate lace cookies, which of course, I want some of right now!

Looks delicious! I will have to make some non-dairy substitutes here, but I think it will work nonetheless.

For one possible spice solution - we put our most used herbs and spices (and olive oil and vinegars) on a lazy susan on our counter and keep the rest in the pantry/ cabinet.

I wish I had more counter space to leave out small appliances - also I wish I had more pantry space for those small appliances too!

I wish I could keep our pantry organized over time, but that seems impossible.

I wish I could convince my partner to get rid of some of our mugs and her travel cups; I purged a lot of extras this pas year, but not enough for my liking.

I wish I used many of my cookbooks and cooking magazine recipes more - and relatedly - didn't get into food cooking ruts so often.

@babygrace - Kasha sounds delicious as well. I have some in my pantry in fact ...

Delicious with a poached or sunny-side-up egg on it as well!

quinoa in the rice cooker ftw! i use homemade veggie stock to cook it and it comes out great. i like to cook barley this way as well.

Please don't take what our household calls the "very very brave and special" tack in describing people with disabilities. When our culture uses PWD as "inspirations" for able-bodied people, we are further marginalizing PWD and making them into objects for our consumption at the same time that we centralize able-bodiedness. We make PWD one-dimensional and force individuals to represent an entire, incredibly diverse population of people with all kinds of disabilities. PWD are just people and there are millions of them in the US and across the world who cook for themselves and live their lives on a daily basis, but we don't see that because we are an ableist culture that makes them invisible and tends only to represent them as "brave," "special," and "inspirational."

I have been watching Master Chef and every single time someone singles out Christine Ha for being "amazing" it makes me cringe. Most of the other contestants are shown in a more three-dimensional way (or at least as 3-d as reality TV allows, which isn't much), but Ha is only "the blind one." As much as she does seem to be a great cook, I look forward to her being eliminated so that she no longer bears the burden of representing all PWD and a person with a disability is no longer made into a spectacle b/c she has a disability.