Plague Beastie

So yesterday was only a partial success. I really have to remember that I am me, and as me I am not glamorous, nor are things as easy as they appear to be for other people (I'm talking about you, Pioneer Woman!) 

Yesterday I set out on a journey: Work a 6 hour over time shift, get sick, then cook meals for the whole week or more for Squidgelet. From scratch. Based, of course, on nebulous recipes and thoughts of what the Squidgelet likes so far. Which is everything.

Of course, most of the things I was cooking were things I have never cooked before, much less eaten myself. To try to figure out how to cook such arcane things as sweet potatoes and acorn squash, I searched the Pioneer Woman's cooking site. That woman makes me feel unusually sad and frumpy and just....myself. Her beautiful pictures and simple step by step instructions and witty commentary are wonderful, amazing, and make me turn green with envy. You would think her wonderful, amazing, and beautiful directions would be easy to follow. 

I can tell you that the acorn squash, at least, looks like it does in her pictures. I couldn't eat it last night as I had planned to because I am now the plague beast and the entire 4 hours I was cooking I had to fight the urge to hurl the contents of my empty stomach all over the kitchen. (For the record, I did make it to the toilet first).

I did learn some things yesterday. I learned that is best to eat something, if only so the acid doesn't burn quite so much on the way up (no matter how unattracted you are to everything in the food category). I learned that sweet potatoes need much longer to cook, or else they don't mash well, and don't blend well to make baby mush. 

I learned that when the Pioneer Woman says "Peel the carrots before boiling them" that this is a critical step. Failure to do so results in carrots not boiling down to the softness needed to make baby mush (and you loose your key ingredient for every meal you had planned, as the Squidgelet's favorite food group is carrots).

When making baby mush, the key ingredient is liquid. There will be no baby mush without liquid. I used water, butternut squash soup, and sweet potato soup. I really should have used more, possibly formula. 

That all aside, I was mostly successful. I made up three recipes for the Squidge to choose from this next week: Sweet potato soup, chicken, 

green beans, carrots & spinach; Sweet Potato, peas and Butternut squash soup; and Chicken, sweet potato and peas. Plus the chunky applesauce 

(to be mixed with oatmeal), which came out the best of everything I 

made yesterday.

Now it's Sunday, and I would like to go crawl into bed and not come out until sometime in Mid April. But alas, the laundry monster must be 

tackled, and it is not intimidated by the plague.