Self love in the time of Coronavirus @jegfikstress - Tumblr Blog

swimming

Bear with me for a moment.

I have been in the process of drowning for years. I still know how to swim, but my body and brain can’t do it anymore. I am treading water, but I do not know how much longer I can keep it up. I don’t know what it would actually take to make me drown, and I really do not want to find out. It sucks.

Spoiler alert: i’m not actually talking about swimming.

It’s been a very difficult past few years filled with pain, grief, exhaustion, uncertainty, and now a global pandemic. All of the fun stuff. Don’t get me wrong, there have been countless positives as well, but the negatives kept pulling deeper into the water. Both my body and brain were in constant pain. I thought to myself, “is this just part of being an adult?” “Are things exacerbated by the current state of affairs?” “Am I over reacting?” “What is happening to me?”

It’s been a rollercoaster of a year so far, as it has been for everyone. I had the summer off of work, but I knew with the start of the new school year I needed to reclaim some of my old self from years ago. I decided to focus on my mental and physical health and to not waste my emotional energy on anyone or anything that didn’t deserve it. Easier said than done though. It felt selfish, like I was running away.

But then I realized so what.

I am running away. I am running away from pain and running towards myself. I am running towards being a healthier person and a better teacher. It’s been exhausting seeing so many healthcare professionals, but I’m not in as much pain as I used to be. It’s been a bit isolating at times, but it’s working. I stood up for myself, I stood my ground, and I didn’t hold back. So I am going to keep running. I am going to keep running in the hope that maybe one day I will swim again.

Dinner parties

I started hosting dinner parties my sophomore year of high school. Granted, they were mostly pasta dinners, and we would often have to run to the grocery store, but they were dinner parties nonetheless. Sometimes there would be a theme, sometimes a dress code, sometimes the evening would end with everyone rolling down the hill or running through the streets. We would cook together, laugh together, and throw water balloons at each other. In my mind, they were like the scenes in a coming-of-age film; perfect summer nights. They helped us all escape whatever stress our 16-year-old selves were facing.

In college, I tried to keep the tradition alive by hosting an annual post-thanksgiving brunch and various soirées throughout the year. For a while it worked out, but this past year fall, it wasn’t the same. I don’t know if everyone felt this way, but they became more of a hassle rather than fun. I was stressed about the guest list, the food, the table placements, all while still being stressed about work. Instead of relaxing during the brunch, I was overwhelmed. The food was good, the company was great, but something was missing. I told myself it was because we all grew up. We were in different places in our lives. Some of us are still in school, some of us have jobs, some of us are leaving town soon. We were not the same people with the same relationships as before.

This past week I learned that I have anxiety. My mental health has been a bit of a roller coaster the past few years, but this news took me by surprise. Looking back though, it makes SO. MUCH. SENSE. I often get caught in what my sister calls “analysis paralysis” where my thoughts race and I overthink seemingly simple things such as friendships and meals. Why didn’t I figure this out sooner? Sometimes I get so nervous I faint. Like hello, no shit Sherlock.

I think that’s why the Thanksgiving brunch was draining... I mean, yes, also partly because we all grew up and were on our own paths, but also because I was stuck:

What if they don’t come?

What if they don’t like the food?

What if they hate me?

What if I always feel this way?

How will I feel next time?

Will there even be a next time?

Tonight I am having am having a dinner party with my anxiety. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I light all the candles, Got flowers for all my rooms, I care for myself the way I used to care about you

Lorde, Hard Feelings/ Loveless 2017

Lorde gets it.

I started my selflationship three years ago after getting out of a longterm relationship. I mostly missed going on dates so I decided that I would take myself on dates and buy myself flowers. It was fun and silly, but also empowering as hell.

Over the years, it has evolved into a more serious relationship.

Self-care isn’t just coffee dates, flowers, and bubble baths. It’s not a white woman’s instagrammable hobby. It’s remembering to drink water and eat, it’s giving yourself a bedtime and sticking to it, it’s allowing yourself to feel painful emotions and giving yourself the time and space you need to heal.

Like most relationships, it’s unique to you. It’s complicated.

#buyyourgalflowers #selflationship

April Apricot-Peach Goo

I like to think that I am a very organized person, and anyone who has seen my color coded planners and calendars (yes, plural) would certainly agree. But all of my Type-A personality traits disappear in the kitchen.

“It’s fine, I’m fine!” I tell no one in particular as I inevitably spill, drop, break, or burn something. One time I made bread with 2x the amount of water, 3x the amount of oil, and 1/2x the amount of flour.

Maybe my dad was on to something...

It’s fine!

Most times, I take a recipe and change half of it, especially now that I am experimenting with gluten free baking. I know very little about gluten free flours, other than them more types of flour you use, the better. The end result? Goo. Delicious goo, but goo nevertheless. Case in point: Apricot Peach Goo.

I generally don’t bake with fruit because I have a tendency to eat it before we get a chance. However, we got peaches in our CSA box back in April and they conspired to foil my plans. In a mere 12 hours they went from being underripe to overripe, so to avoid wasting them, I threw them in a cake/cobbler/ thing.

I used the following recipe as a starting point, but like I said, ended up changing half of it: https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/easy-peach-cobbler. Instead of AP flour, I used a combination of almond flour and gluten free AP flour. I used 1 and 1/4 cup of sugar instead of 2 cups, I used vanilla instead of cinnamon, and I did not cook the fruit first. While it turned out mostly OK, the end result was not ideal. When the sweet bubbly mess cooled, there were pools of peach butter. Though this is not a bad thing per se, it was difficult to serve, and not as beautiful as it could have been. In short, it was delicious, but not something I would serve at one of my dinner parties.

If I make the recipe again, I am going to cut back on both the butter and the milk to make the whole thing more solid. I will let you know how it turns out!

50 shades of purple and blue

Every year I visit my best friend and her grandmother at her grandmother’s lake house, and almost every year we go blueberry picking. One year we decided to have a blueberry dessert bake-off. She made a wonderful blueberry kuchen, and I made a similar-yet-different blueberry Roly-Poly. Both recipes use a basic dough, and depend on the fruit for flavor. The difference is that a Kuchen is more of a cake that is baked in a square tin, and a Roly-Poly more like a jelly roll baked in a bread tin in simple syrup.

Even though a Roly-Poly only has 9 ingredients, I could not remember the recipe and frantically texted my dad. This was not the first time I texted my dad for a recipe, and definitely not the last. He sent it within a matter of minutes, and the bake off was a success. I pretty sure we tied. We were 12.

Fast forward to earlier this week, when we had a ridiculous amount of blueberries sitting on the kitchen counter. It’s been warm and humid lately, so we are trying to eat our fruit quickly so it does not mold. The first thing that came to my mind: Roly-Poly. Spoiler alert: I did not remember the recipe.

My dad died about a year ago, so I cannot text him to ask for recipes anymore. Still determined, I went into the basement to search for his recipe binder. I could not find it, and was on the verge of panicking. His recipes are not organized; most are written on random bits of paper. It’s not like I can look them up on the internet. They are either in the basement or they are gone. I started to feel the walls closing and tears started streaming down my face.

A few minutes of frantic searching later I found the binder. It was conveniently placed in a stack of plastic bins, buried underneath bins of winter clothes. I opened the binder, and there was the Roly-Poly recipe, sure enough, written on a scrap piece of paper from 2003. It was one of those “he’s here with you” moments that I don’t really believe in, but the fact that I found it along with seeing his untidy handwriting calmed me down.

Below are the gluten-filled and gluten-free versions of the recipe.

Step 1: Preheat the oven at 350F. Combine all of the ingredients above the line with your hands or a fork. Add enough milk to get a pie-like dough.

Step 2: Roll out the dough and place 1-2 C of blueberries on top. Roll the dough similar to a jelly-roll. The more you can fit the better! Place the roll in a bread-tin.

Step 3: Prepare the simple syrup. You can also use 3/4C of sugar and 3/4 C of water, depending on your tin. Pour the syrup over the roll. Depending on your sugar tolerance, you can sprinkle the top with Sugar in the Raw.

Step 4. Place in the oven and bake. The syrup should be boiling.

Step 5: Take out of the oven and cool. As it cools, the fruit with shrink, and the color will ooze into the syrup. Sounds super good, I know.

Best served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a warm summer evening. Preferably outdoors. Or by a lake.

Gluten Free: Replace the 1C AP flour with 1/2 C almond flour, 1/4 C potato starch, and 1/4 cup of rice flour. Chill the dough before rolling it out, or else it will be a sticky mess.

#blueberries #glutenfree #baking

It is bread pudding? Or baked french toast? What’s the difference? You tell me.

Like every other middle class white woman in America, I have been baking A LOT of bread since March. This is wonderful, but only half of the people in our house eat bread. As a result, if the bread doesn’t get eaten in the first two days, it goes from being soft and wonderful, like your tummy, to rock hard, like your abs. Instead of throwing it out, I have been trying to reuse them in one way or another. For instance: making croutons, making baked french toast, and using it as ammo for the occasional bread fight with your neighbors.

Step 1: Take old homemade or store bought bread of any kind, and cut it into cubes. For this recipe, I used 6 my whole-wheat dinner rolls with 25% whole wheat flour.

Step 2: My bread was break-your-tooth-on-it rock hard, so I knew they would need a lot of liquid and fat to soften up. In a bowl, mix ~1 and 1/2 C milk, eggs (maybe 3), and ~1/4 C of full fat yogurt. Similar to my quiche recipe, this one is not an exact science. You could also use cream. Whatever is in the fridge and looks good.

Step 3: Add a TB of sugar, some vanilla, cinnamon, and any other spices you may want. Add the bread cubes and stir together. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, or a clean dish towel if you are not using plastic, and let sit in the fridge anywhere from 2 hours to overnight. You want the bread to soak up most of the liquid.

Step 4: Preheat the oven to 350F and chop up some fruit of your choosing. For this recipe I used and apple and ~1/2 C of Crasins (very atumnal!). Add your fruit to your bread mix.

Step 5: Pour your bread mix in a loaf tin and sprinkle the top with Sugar in the Raw. Bake for ~45 minutes, or until it passes a shake test.

Enjoy!

#leftovers #0waste #brunch

Q U I C H E

I am not a technical baker. I am a firm believer that nothing needs to be exact, and that everything will at least kinda-sorta turn out. My father on the other hand, the former Executive Pastry Chef for the Four Seasons Hotel wholeheartedly disagreed. So much so, that he informed 8-year-old-me that I would never make it in a professional kitchen because my chocolate chip cookies were not the same size.

YIKES. It’s fine. I got over it.

Lately, I have been very successful with making brunch foods, because they are 100% inexact. You can put whatever you want in it, and it generally turns out OK. I have never followed a recipe for quiche, but here is one that I wrote, and then illustrated during a virtual hand lettering session with SS Letters.

You can use this as a guide in your own quiche-making adventures. I generally use 1 egg per person and eyeball the milk (remember, not exact!), but if it seems too liquidy, or not liquidy enough you can either add more cheese, or add another egg.

Remember, quiche is made from the heart, not from the head.

This is a gluten-free crust recipe, but you can use any crust recipe. My favorite for quiche is 50% AP flour and 50% whole wheat flour. With the gluten free crust, make sure that you give it enough tie to chill. It is very delicate, and will stick to everything if you try to roll it out at room temperature. You also don’t need to leave any hanging off the side of your pie-tin. It will melt off, burn at the bottom of your oven, and cause the smoke alarm to go off.

#csabox #glutenfree #quiche #brunch #ss letters

flamingointhemicrowave

Why would we take your mother to Costco? How are we supposed to make any new friends?!

David, being sassy af (via flamingointhemicrowave)

Still relatable AF

Tomato Toast

When I was little, I would run around the backyard eating tomatoes as if they were apples. The seeds would drip down my chin, onto my clothes, and get all over the place. Shockingly, my mother did not share my level of enthusiasm for tomato tag. However, on the bright side, we always had some surprise tomato plants the next year.

While Tomatoes are still my favorite fruit-vegetable, and I do still eat them raw while running around the backyard, I have also discovered tomato toast.

Step 1: Heat up some olive oil in a small frying pan

Step 2: Smash a garlic clove and add it to the pan. (If you really like onions, you can also use a few onion slices)

Step 3: Slice up some tomatoes and throw them in the pan as well.

Step 4: Season with salt, pepper, and basil.

Step 5: Cook for about 2 minutes, or until it looks “jammy”

Step 6: Add ~1 tsp of apple cider vinegar and ~1TB of butter

Step 7: Cook for another 2-3 minutes. Meanwhile, toast a piece of bead.

Step 8: Put your lovely tomato jam on your toast.

Enjoy!

#csabox #vegetarian #tomatoes

Korean vegetable pancakes

In March, my sister and I decided to splurge and sign up for a weekly CSA box. Now we get fresh fruits and vegetables every week, and we don’t have to go to the grocery store as often. Now I have to practice what I preach, and actually eat my vegetables.

Step 1: sauté some of your favorite veggies and flavor with salt and pepper. For this recipe, I used onions, peppers, zucchini, carrots, mushrooms, and corn.

Step 2: Follow the directions on the Korean Pancake Flour of your choice to make the batter. I use Beksul Korean Pancake Mix. I generally only make 1/3 of the suggested amount.

Step 3: Add the vegetables to the pancake mix.

Step 4: In the same vegetable pan, heat up ~2TB of vegetable oil.

Step 4: Take ~1C of your batter and plop it in the pan. Use an offset spatula or a wooden spoon to spread it as thinly as possible.

Step 5: Run away or duck to avoid getting sprayed by hot oil

Step 6: After about 2 minutes, or until you think it might be cripsy, slip the pancake using a spatula.

Repeat Step 5.Cook until both sides are crispy, flipping again if needed.

Enjoy!

#csabox #korean #food #frying #vegetarian

Baking up a storm

I always bake when I am stressed. It’s an excellent distraction, and if I’m still stressed when whatever it is I’m making comes out of the oven, then at least I have a yummy snack.

While we’re all stuck, I’m sorry, safe at home, it’s not that my stress levels have changed, but now I have much more time on my hands. I also now have more than 15 minutes to eat lunch, so I’ve been getting creative. In the next few posts, I will be sharing both gluten-containing, and gluten free recipes from the past few weeks.

Enjoy!

Selflationship

So I’ve been on this selflationship kick for a while, and now that we’re all stuck at home, I am going to share my wisdom with the internet. Emphasis on “wiz and not the “dumb”. Buckle up for a lot of baking, maybe some reading, gardening, and TONS of pictures of flowers. <3

#selflationship #buyyourselfflowers