Cooking up ideas

Sometimes it seems as if everything I do is about cooking, literally or figuratively. I often share the literal version of my cooking here or elsewhere online, and I sometimes talk about the non-edible plans I cook up, too, even if many—most?—never make it to the plate. Win, lose, or fail utterly, these efforts fill my days.

The photos above and next in this post are of some of my latest literal—and ordinary—cooking efforts: Yesterday’s meals. Up top is my brunch, poached eggs on toast. My brother-in-law mentioned recently that refrigerated eggs aren’t as good for making poached eggs, so this week I took the eggs out of the fridge when I got up and let them warm up to room temperature. The whites definitely stayed together better than straight out of the fridge, so I count that as a win.

Next up, last night’s dinner:

This was some frozen battered fish, along with some frozen vegetables and the last of a packet of frozen mashed potatoes. I wanted to use up the potatoes, and kept thinking how my mother-in-law calls them “magic potatoes,” which I think is funny. I wouldn’t have chosen the fish because it was Southern Blue Whiting, a type I think is extremely bland (which means it might appeal to those who don’t like fish?). I got it because the version I ordered from the supermarket, Hoki, (a fish I prefer) was out of stock so the supermarket substituted the whiting version (both by the same manufacturer, and both on special). In this case, I used up some stuff in my freezer, which was really the point.

Recently, I’ve also been cooking up various plans for what I might do around the house, but most of that’s gone nowhere, as usual. Still, this past week I took measurements for small projects I’d like to finish, and I completed a mini-project that hadn’t been planned at all:

This is a before and after shot of my shower, when I removed the shower caddy and hung the squeegee on a hook on the opposite wall. I talked about this in Thursday’s episode of my podcast, but the gist of it is that the shower in my en suite really, really annoyed me because it’s so small. In fact, I’d been thinking about using the shower in the main bathroom instead because it’s a much bigger.

The problem was that I kept bumping the shower caddy in the en suite shower, sometimes backing into it or hitting it with my arm as I washed. This week it suddenly dawned on me that the only thing on it that I need access to was my squeegee for cleaning the glass after my showers. The rest of the stuff on it was cleaning supplies, some men’s grooming products I don’t actually use, and a dish for holding my shampoo and conditioner bars, something I’m not using at the moment because I’m using up some large bottles I had on hand.

Nigel and I bought the caddy so we’d have a place to put bottles of my shampoo and his body wash, as well as my bar soap, because the shower at our last house didn’t have a soap dish, and they worked well. We bought another one that we used in the teeny, tiny shower in the main bathroom. I brought them both here and put them in the two showers.

I put the squeegee where it is because it’s completely out of the way, and the hook is on the wall so I don’t have to squeegee around a hook. This past Friday was the first time I cleaned the shower since making the change, and it was so much easier to do! The shower also feels much larger than it did, though I suppose that feeling may wear off. I still need to find a soap dish solution to put the shampoo and conditioner bars on when I resume using them, buy I have some time to do that.

None of these things is particularly important, but they’re nevertheless noteworthy if only because they’re typical of how my life is running these days: I’m always cooking up something or other, literally or figuratively, and that also includes looking for ways to improve things I’ve already cooked up, literally or figuratively, to improve on what I’ve already made.

The realty is, I still have absolutely no idea where my life is going, and there’s certainly no recipe to follow. However, it’s through my trials and errors that I’m slowly finding my way. Even I don’t know what I’ll cook up next—literally or figuratively.