My Autistic Point of View

Yeah, that does suck! I started doing this because I couldn't pinpoint if pasta, rice, or potatoes were upsetting my tummy and making my chronic pain flair (I have been tested for stuff, and I am on a waiting list for an appointment with my GP about the negative tests)

If bread isn't a problem, you could make croutons instead (slice some stale bread or ciabatta into little cubes and stick them in the oven/air fryer with whatever veg is best cooked and some olive oil and seasoning - I usually buy the ciabatta rolls and do one roll for salads and the others for breakfast sandwiches)

rhythm-catsandweed

Unfortunately most grains make my chronic pain flair. I can do brown rice though in small amounts.

I usually cook alot of meat and veggies in a crock pot at the beginning of the week then just throw together with a sauce during the week.

I can do rice pasta with meat and veggies too.

I also utilize tuna and canned veggies too.

That's fair. Tuna pasta (pasta with frozen veggies that do well boiled thrown in so that they finish cooking together, then drained, and tinned tuna and mayo and sriracha added) was a staple of mine, but I'm holding off until I can determine if pasta is okay

But that would probably do well as a pasta salad if the pasta had time to cool (I don't know if you would have to replace the cooked frozen veggies with fresh for it to keep, it's been a decade since my last food safety course)

I had brown rice the other day, but I couldn't decide if my problems the next day were to do with that or the thunderstorm...

#food cw

We're back! We're bigger! And we're bolder! Queen Books N… Arwen Greenwood needs your support for Queer Books Newcastle - 2026 Fundraise

Reminder that Queer Books Newcastle are doing a fundraiser for Rainbow Home, a specialist charity in the North East of England, providing relief, assistance and promotion of social inclusion to LGBTQ+ identifying asylum seekers and unsettled refugees. They provide individual case support for people progressing through the UK asylum process, and a facilitated social environment to reduce isolation where people can relax, gain mutual support, and feel part of the local LGBTQ+ community.

I'm signal boosting as a queer author in the North East. There are a lot of flags up in my area, and services like the kind that Rainbow Home provide are invaluable right now.

Just a few days left to donate to the Queer Books Newcastle fundraiser!

The fundraiser ends at the end of the month! They reached their initial goal of £700, but it would be great if they could hit £1000 by the end of the month!

Damn, the bean salad people are right

I've started prepping one every couple of days when I have the spoons, and it does give an answer to "what am I going to eat" when I can't be bothered to cook or look for anything

Anyway, you just drain a tin of ready to eat chickpeas/beans, and add it to a bowl with your favourite salad veggies and your favourite dressing, and you're good to go

Last time, I did chickpeas with celery, spring onions and plum tomatoes, and I made a dressing from harissa paste, olive oil and lemon juice, and this time I swapped the plum tomatoes for cherry tomatoes, the chickpeas for cannellini beans, and made a dijon mustard dressing. I might use some basil, balsamic vinegar and mozzarella in the next one

rhythm-catsandweed

I love beans ...but I'm intolerant to them and they make my chronic pain flair big time..

It sucks!

#food cw #i reblogged to the wrong blog before

Yeah, that does suck! I started doing this because I couldn't pinpoint if pasta, rice, or potatoes were upsetting my tummy and making my chronic pain flair (I have been tested for stuff, and I am on a waiting list for an appointment with my GP about the negative tests)

If bread isn't a problem, you could make croutons instead (slice some stale bread or ciabatta into little cubes and stick them in the oven/air fryer with whatever veg is best cooked and some olive oil and seasoning - I usually buy the ciabatta rolls and do one roll for salads and the others for breakfast sandwiches)

We're back! We're bigger! And we're bolder! Queen Books N… Arwen Greenwood needs your support for Queer Books Newcastle - 2026 Fundraise

Reminder that Queer Books Newcastle are doing a fundraiser for Rainbow Home, a specialist charity in the North East of England, providing relief, assistance and promotion of social inclusion to LGBTQ+ identifying asylum seekers and unsettled refugees. They provide individual case support for people progressing through the UK asylum process, and a facilitated social environment to reduce isolation where people can relax, gain mutual support, and feel part of the local LGBTQ+ community.

I'm signal boosting as a queer author in the North East. There are a lot of flags up in my area, and services like the kind that Rainbow Home provide are invaluable right now.

Just a few days left to donate to the Queer Books Newcastle fundraiser!

#from my author blog

Damn, the bean salad people are right

I've started prepping one every couple of days when I have the spoons, and it does give an answer to "what am I going to eat" when I can't be bothered to cook or look for anything

Anyway, you just drain a tin of ready to eat chickpeas/beans, and add it to a bowl with your favourite salad veggies and your favourite dressing, and you're good to go

Last time, I did chickpeas with celery, spring onions and plum tomatoes, and I made a dressing from harissa paste, olive oil and lemon juice, and this time I swapped the plum tomatoes for cherry tomatoes, the chickpeas for cannellini beans, and made a dijon mustard dressing. I might use some basil, balsamic vinegar and mozzarella in the next one

ecrivainsolitaire

The next level is those ice cube molds for meal prepping. Cook a big batch of whatever comfort food satiates you, then portion it out and freeze it. When you need food and can't be arsed to do anything, just put a cube in a saucepan with a squirt of water and let it simmer until it boils. I recommend Mexican lentil stew. No more cooking while underpowered.

#also for context one of my most popular tiktoks is me trying to get my drawing tablet working on my steamdeck #but yeah i'm def the type of person who would use AI /s

See, I would class bean salad as the level up from traditional meal prepping because it solved a bunch of problems that I had with meal prepping

Sensory issues - I know that this is personal to me and some people might have the same struggle with the bean salad, but I can't deal with the texture of reheated meals, I can use frozen ingredients or processed frozen food like pizza or fish fingers, but the texture of a reheated frozen meal is never right

Cooking time/effort - If I can't be arsed to do anything, I can't be arsed to watch a pan, it's just as much effort to throw together a gochujang* or tuna pasta**. This also goes for the prep end, I find chopping a few veggies and draining some beans easier than watching a pan.

PDA - If I have prepped ahead of time, I might decide that I don't want it, especially if I feel trapped into eating it, and the benefit of the bean salad is that since it takes no prep, if I start to feel like "I don't want that", I can have a small spoonful, knowing that I can put the rest back if I really don't want it, before it can turn into a meltdown. Usually I start to actually want it once I start eating, but if I need to wait for it to heat up, I'll have a meltdown in the meantime.

Portion sizes - Prepping meals only works if you want a full-blown meal, the good thing about the bean salad is that it can work as a snack as well. You can decide how much you have when you dish it out, it wasn't decided ahead of time when you made it.

*pasta in one pot, and pre-diced frozen onions, garlic cube and veg mix of choice in a frying pan with some sesame oil, add some pre-diced panchetta or some sausage meat (you need to break this up with your spatula as you go) to the frying pan once everything seems unfrozen and starting to cook, and then add some gochujang and some tomato purée when it's starting to look done. Once it's all cooked, take the frying pan off the heat and add the pasta with a little of the water (I just spoon it out with a big plastic spoon so some water comes with) and mix it together before serving

**Even less effort than the gochujang pasta, just cook some pasta and throw in some pre-cut frozen veggies that do well boiled in with the pasta as it's cooking (I use a peas, broccoli and cauliflower mix - they typically take less time than the pasta, so I throw them in later). Once they're done, drain them all and then return them to the pan (off the heat) and add a tin of tuna and some mayonnaise and some white wine vinegar or some sriracha, and I usually add garlic pepper to everything.

#food cw

Damn, the bean salad people are right

I've started prepping one every couple of days when I have the spoons, and it does give an answer to "what am I going to eat" when I can't be bothered to cook or look for anything

Anyway, you just drain a tin of ready to eat chickpeas/beans, and add it to a bowl with your favourite salad veggies and your favourite dressing, and you're good to go

Last time, I did chickpeas with celery, spring onions and plum tomatoes, and I made a dressing from harissa paste, olive oil and lemon juice, and this time I swapped the plum tomatoes for cherry tomatoes, the chickpeas for cannellini beans, and made a dijon mustard dressing. I might use some basil, balsamic vinegar and mozzarella in the next one

#food cw

Fully about to lose my shit

People on tiktok keep accusing my book covers of being AI

Book covers that have been on those books since 2020, before gen AI image generation was an accessible thing

But because of actual AI slop flooding Amazon, my earnings have been down the past couple of years, so I can't even afford to commission new covers, never mind have old ones redone in a style that will be less likely to be mistaken for AI (a thing that can't even be guaranteed to be static, so I might be pissing money up the wall anyway!)

Anyway, if you want queer books, often with autistic/ADHD protagonists, from an author who would never touch that shit, I give a bunch of them away for free from my website

This would have had me crucified on tumblr 10 years ago but maybe we are ready for this conversation now:

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

This is a PSA to about 3/4s of the Portland Youth populace

everyone who reblogs this and is like "I ordered my own tea this week" or "I only barfed once when I had to give a presentation'- you are doing amazing sweetie. Have patience with yourself, you are relearning a skill so difficult that people get 4 year degrees to do it professionally.

#i don't know how to be honest without it being taken as me being passive aggressive #okay no that's a lie i do know #but it's masking it takes effort #i'm putting in the equivalent effort of a maths a-level paper to figure out how to be soft and personable enough to be acceptable #and the stress is wearing on my body

I would also add, sometimes you do need to step back

I had an event that I was worried about, where I might have to talk about something that I was struggling to mask my autism about

And I was telling a friend, and she scoffed, saying "just don't be aggy"

And then I admitted what my non-masked response would be

And she was like "oh shit, yeah, that's super aggy"

And I know that

I know that I come across as a bitch when I don't mask

And I've recovered enough that I think I can mask appropriately, but whether or not I stepped back was a reasonable response in this instance

The key is that you need to be able to step back in when it's safe

This would have had me crucified on tumblr 10 years ago but maybe we are ready for this conversation now:

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

This is a PSA to about 3/4s of the Portland Youth populace

everyone who reblogs this and is like "I ordered my own tea this week" or "I only barfed once when I had to give a presentation'- you are doing amazing sweetie. Have patience with yourself, you are relearning a skill so difficult that people get 4 year degrees to do it professionally.