But Do It Anyway?

A month ago, I wrote about how much cooking has become a chore for me. And I made a pledge:

“In my next post, I’m going to tell you a little bit about how I am and am not overcoming that. I’d love to know your thoughts on what makes cooking hard or easy for you, or any tips or tricks you have for making it suck less.”

I wrote those words about a month ago, and I did get some good suggestions from my friend Lori in the comments and from folks on Facebook and Twitter. I’m super grateful, but I’m still struggling.

Maybe that’s obvious from the fact that my last post was over a month ago. Because the “next post” had to be about “how I am and am not overcoming” a feeling of cooking sucking.… Continue reading →

Eating In Challenge Update

I last updated everyone on my attempt to eat in a week into the challenge. I’m now three and a half weeks in, and I thought I’d give another update.

The week spanning 18 April to 25 April was basically good, but I ate through two of my meals on the 24th & 25th. One of them was intentional, as it is my monthly meal out with a couple of friends. The other was an embarrassing mistake that wasn’t really worth it.

In essence, Bill talked me into splitting a couple of cupcakes with him, pointing out that snacks out aren’t meals out. Cupcakes are, quite frankly, my biggest weakness and I have struggled most (internally) with snacks. Overall, I have not been inclined to hold them against myself, but I do think my friend Jen would have a point if she called it ‘out of bounds’.Continue reading →

What is home food? What is eating out? What is eating in?

This post started out as part of the progress report I gave on Wednesday. However, that post became so long, I decided to splinter this off into it’s own post (because it was guaranteed to be long). I think this turned out to be a good thing, as the last post had a comment from one of my good friends commenting on the apparent number of grey areas in this new self-challenge1.

She’s not wrong. There are a lot of grey areas, and they do lead to potential loopholes which lead to rationalizations (or potential rationalizations). Part of the reason things were derailed last time was because of these grey areas. I solved them (I thought) which is why I thought I had this “eating in” thing down this time around.… Continue reading →

A progress report

When I announced that I was trying again on my “Eating In Challenge”, I mentioned that I’d had questions about if drinking out was okay, or if I would accept a restaurant meal paid for by someone else, and that I’d come to the conclusion that “no” was the appropriate answer for these things.

So, first a confession. I’ve already gone out to a bar for drinks. I went out with a friend for a few beers after she had dinner at our house. I’m surprisingly comfortable with this. I had said “no” to drinks out because they lead to food out. This very much did not – we had a solid meal at home, then went out for drinks and had only a couple of beers.… Continue reading →

Happy New Year

It turns out I’m not great with the milestones here on MetaCookbook. I realized awhile back that we had crossed 100 entries (a small, but should be noteworthy milestone) and I hadn’t even noticed. Last night, while talking to Kristi L2, I thought we’d posted more than 150 entries, but looking at it today, we’re not quite there yet. I probably won’t notice when we do1. I didn’t notice that we’re actually 7 months into this challenge, not the 6 I was thinking.

I did notice, though, that we’re coming up on one of the most important milestones for the challenge we’ve given ourselves. In fact, I noticed it enough that I’d hoped to hit it by the end of the year. Alas, we did not manage to even cook, much less post, 100 recipes this year.… Continue reading →