A simple crock pot dump dinner with no prep and no extra dishes dirtied! Five minute prep time.
Brown sausage or ground beef (or substitute sausage links)*
Dump frozen tortellini, canned tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, chicken broth, sausage links, garlic, basil, condensed milk, shredded cheese, and chicken broth into crock pot
Cook on low heat 4-6 hours
*Note: these two steps weren't included in the recipe, because if you don't have ADHD you can manifest already-browned ground beef and already-minced garlic cloves from the aether using your executive function telekinesis.
**Note: "Stir" was listed as part of the same step as "dump" in the recipe, because if you don't have ADHD your executive function telekinesis can stir the ingredients in mid-air as you're dumping them in.
Haul out the crock pot; congratulate yourself on remembering where you stuffed it
Lube up crock pot with olive oil; discover something burned crusted inside one corner. You have too much ADHD to typically try crock pot recipes so this is from the roommate that recently moved out, but ex-roommate also has ADHD so this is still an expected stage of the "cooking with ADHD" process.
Try to scrub out the burned flakes without removing the greasing up you've already applied to the rest of the pot
Lube up the formerly burned corner.
Tear open frozen tortellini bag; dump it in. Congratulate yourself on how smoothly this is going.
Pick up the canned tomatoes
Grab the can opener Search for the can opener in the kitchen tools drawer
Search the utensils drawer
Search the pens & matches & leftover expired sunglasses from the solar eclipse drawer
Search the pot holders drawer
Search the shelf with the canned sauces left behind when your roommate left because sometimes you stick kitchen tools next to the food item that needs the tool, for ADHD reasons
Try to remember whether, when roommate moved out and you split up the kitchen supplies, a can opener was included amongst the supplies bequeathed to you
Realize with the weariness born of long experience that you're about to have An Adventure
Comfort yourself with the knowledge that this will at least make a funny tumblr post
Make mental note to include friendly shout-out to ex-roomie so when they read this they know you don't resent them for taking the can opener(s), something you should have thought to ask about yourself, and also something you would have discovered sooner if not for the fact that you have too much ADHD to typically try recipes that involve opening a can
Inspect the rim keeping the lid on the tomato can
Squeeze the sides near the top hoping perhaps you can just pop it off like Popeye; slightly dent can
Optimistically try to pry the lid off with your fingernails, knowing in your heart that cans were designed the way they were specifically to prevent the lid being removed by such flimsy tools but remembering some kind of youtube video about the the way the rims of cans are rolled over each other.
Google "open can without can opener" while aiming the evil eye at the search results to ward off useless AI sites that spend 1000 words droning about situations when someone might want a can opener before poorly paraphrasing other people's advice
Click on Wikihow with relief
Realize the sink's been running since before step 1 because you're trying to wash off a really gross spoon that was in the fridge with cheese on it for about a week; observe the spoon, nudge it back under the stream, and decide it could use a little more rinsing so you don't have to touch it.
Scroll past "rub a spoon's edge over the weak metal until it wears through," looks too time-consuming
Scroll past "stab lid with knife," looks like too much effort
Scroll past "rub lid on concrete to wear off the metal," you already know that one and you're not THAT desperate
stop at "stab lid with the back corner of a chopping knife," shrug in defeat. You're gonna need to dirty a chopping knife to slice up the sausage anyway.
Stab lid with the back corner of a chopping knife Attempt to stab lid with back corner of a chopping knife; conclude it's too much effort and you're more likely to slip and lose a finger
Attempt to rub spoon through lid; conclude it's even less likely to get through
Suddenly remember with glee that your swiss army knife has a can opener
Grab it from the Specific Spot it lives on the kitchen counter so you Never Ever Lose It Discover your army knife isn't in its Specific Spot
Vaguely search the shelf in the living room where tools sometimes congregate
Remember seeing the army knife on the bedside stand organizer you got to ensure you Never Ever Lose your glasses and ADHD meds
Walk to the farthest room at the very other end of the house
Find your army knife exactly where you thought it was, congratulate yourself; realize it's the LITTLE army knife
Check it for a can opener anyway
Realize you must have removed it from the counter a month or two ago (you don't remember how long due to The ADHD) when The Ants found a way into the kitchen from behind the dishwasher and you scrubbed down the entire counter with ant-repelling flower essential oils to curb the invasion.
Return to the kitchen; realize the sink is still running; decide the spoon could stand to rinse a little more.
Search the table that you meant to remove from the kitchen when you got a new table but that instead has become a Gathering Spot Of Stuff With No Home
Remember that the utensils used to be in the pantry for ADHD reasons
Search the pantry for a can opener; find nothing
Go to the other end of the house again and vaguely search the shelf by your computer desk where tools sometimes congregate
Return to the kitchen and remember that you moved all the stuff from the counter to the other ant-free counter, three feet away from where you started.
Triumphantly locate swiss army knife
Flip open can opener attachment; realize blade is blunt; hopefully tell yourself that must be the bottle top opener.
Flip open the other can opener attachment; realize its blade is blunt as well
Nevertheless, watch a youtube video (from inside the DuckDuckGo search results instead of on youtube itself, because you have youtube blocked on your phone for 6 hours a day with an app you paid real money for to actually lock you OUT of distracting apps rather than merely pop up an easily-dismissible "teehee you shouldn't be on this app right now!" screen, because you have ADHD) on how to open a can with a swiss army knife can opener
Attempt to open can with blunt can opener.
Resort to the "rub can's lid on concrete" technique; grab one of the bricks you got for free a few months ago for some kind of half-baked backyard project you haven't started yet and that's been sitting in the kitchen nook ever since.
Discover that the can is sanding down the brick faster than the brick is sanding down the can; also discover that the lid's acquired a tomato juice-dripping puncture half the size of a vampire bite, but that was probably thanks to the can opener
Wash off the can so that when you finally get it open, you don't get brick and metal shavings in the tomato juice
Move the sausage from the counter into the fridge. You might be here a while.
Decide that you've tried this WikiHow's way; now you're trying it YOUR way. Go to the craft room where all your crafts have been packed in boxes since the last time you moved two years ago and haphazardly opened and strewn about whenever you need something specific.
Locate your toolbox exactly where you knew it was: sitting right in the middle of the floor. Convenient, easily visible.
Take your pliers from your toolbox Discover your pliers aren't in your toolbox.
Vaguely search the shelf next to your computer desk where tools congregate Spot the pliers on your desk on your way to the shelf; have no recollection of what you were doing with your pliers at your desk.
Return to kitchen with wrath in your heart
Start attempting to bend and wiggle the rim of the lid of the can a little at a time in hopes of it snapping off or something. You still vaguely recall that youtube video watched long ago about how cans are constructed.
Discover you've punched a hole through the side of the can when tomato juice starts dripping down your fingers
Try to pour juice into crock pot; get about eight drops
Begin to wonder if it would have just taken less time to drive 20 minutes to Target to buy a can opener
Resume going around the edge trying to pry off the lid. Experience only extremely moderate success
Attempt to pour more juice from the widening wound into the crock pot; get about four drops.
In frustration, jam the pliers into the hole you've already made and attempt to wrench it open wide enough to pour the tomatoes out
Peel off the wet wrapper around the hole
Repeat process 4-5 times until hole is big enough to free all tomatoes
Set the can aside in triumph
With the weariness of a World War I soldier preparing to march back into the trenches, set your eyes on the can of condensed milk
Go to rinse off your pliers so the milk isn't cross-contaminated with tomato juice; realize it doesn't matter because it's all going into the same crock pot
Experience 5 seconds of lost time and come back to reality to discover you're washing your pliers anyway even though you just decided not to. You have no recollection of this.
Continue to let the sink run, for the spoon. It could use it.
Start plying the rim of the condensed milk can; console yourself with the knowledge that at least this can be a much smaller hole since you're not trying to pour tomatoes out.
Punch a tiny hole in the side that drips all over you.
Try to pour can into crock pot; it's dripping out at a rate of 1 drop every 2 seconds.
Remind yourself yet again that at least this will make for a funny tumblr post
Attempt to widen hole. Really maul that one bit of the rim. Get more milk on your counter.
Attempt to pour again; suspect that it's dripping even slower now
Consider driving to Target again
Wonder how you've ended up with ten times as much milk on the counter than poured into the crock pot
Peel the wet wrapper from around the hole
In frustration, take out the screwdriver on your swiss army knife and jam it into the hole on the lid to wiggle it around and expand it
Pour the world's slowest stream of milk into the crock pot. Decide it's not worth it to try to expand the hole. Just wait for it to do its thing.
Realize that holding the can this high doesn't make the stream any faster but DOES make tiny drops splash outside the crock pot. Lower the can.
Realize the sink's still running; decide to let it keep going, the spoon could use it.
Pour in the spaghetti sauce which came in a sensible glass jar with a twist lid
Pour in the chicken broth with sensible twist lids. Ruminate on the wisdom and convenience of twist lids
Add a tablespoon of dried basil
Try to remember the rough conversion rate of garlic cloves to pre-minced garlic, because you have ADHD and you're not about to mince your own garlic. You think it was one clove to one teaspoon. You would check, but the conversion you found was on reddit (after scrolling past a dozen AI sites) and you can't check it again because your app blocker keeps you out of reddit so you don't get distracted.
Add four teaspoons of pre-minced garlic
Dump in the shredded cheese; realize you didn't put it in the fridge with the sausage; decide it's fine, it's cheese, it hasn't been that long.
Grab a plate to chop the sausage on
Slice open the package, dump out the sausage
Attempt to imitate the super fast chopping you see in cooking videos but when you do that the knife doesn't go all the way through the skin; reluctantly slow down
Once again, resentfully think about how many "one pot" "no prep" "dump dinner" crock pot recipes you've found that assume browning meat is a freebie action that magically takes zero time; wonder where people without ADHD magically find the spare time to complete tasks they've allotted 0 seconds for in their prep schedule
Muse that you probably could've browned half a cow's worth of ground beef in the time opening that tomato can took; remind yourself that if you actually had tried to brown your own beef, it would have probably turned into An Adventure as well.
Think to yourself that tumblr had damn well better enjoy your suffering because SOMEBODY here needs to
Dump sausage in crock pot
Nicely wipe the tomato juice and condensed milk splatters off the rim because a few weeks ago while looking for ADHD cleaning hacks you found the quote "you can wipe it now or you can scrub it later" and you're trying to incorporate that into your life.
Plug it in scoot aside the detritus of the ingredients until you've made room to scoot the crock pot next to the power outlet
Set it to low heat and 6 hours
Check the clock; realize that it will finish cooking at the exact same time that you're supposed to be leaving for two and a half hours to pick up some free tiles you found on craigslist for the half-baked backyard project you haven't started yet; decide this is a logistics problem for future you
Throw away all the empty stuff that doesn't need to be rinsed.
Put the basil in the cutlery drawer, which is naturally where all the spices live because you always need to grab the forks, salt, and pepper at the same time
Realize the sink is still running; decide it wouldn't hurt to let it go a little longer
Put the minced garlic jar in the fridge; remove the last half-empty minced garlic jar that you THOUGHT you'd had, but you don't know when it was opened so you'd decided to get a new one anyway
Double-check to make sure there aren't any other leftover ingredients that need refrigerating because you don't want to have another Mayonnaise Incident (bought a big jar of lime mayo, used it once, accidentally left it on the counter in the spot where it had been sitting when it was unopened rather than refrigerate it, had to throw away the whole thing)
Tiredly tell yourself that you can wash the tomato juice and condensed milk off the counter later THE ANTS THE ANTS THE ANTS. Resolve to wash everything now so that you won't get another invasion.
Reluctantly pick up that spoon that's been soaking and scrub the rest of the cheese off with your thumb. It takes like twenty seconds. You could have cleaned it in twenty seconds at the start of all this.
Stick it in the dishwasher
Rinse out the glass tomato sauce jar and put it in the half of the sink dedicated to letting recyclables dry out.
As long as you're here, remove the actual dishes that are sitting in the half of the sink dedicated to recyclables that you put there when you made room to rinse the cheese spoon; put them in the dishwasher because you want to be able to give yourself an "emptied the sink" point in the gameified habit-tracking app you got for your ADHD (not to be confused with the life skills coaching habit-tracking app you got for your ADHD)
Bemoan the fact that you can't award yourself points this week for getting groceries on Monday because it's Friday. You were willing to let it go as far as Thursday and still award yourself credit but Friday's just too far.
Artfully arrange the cans and their "can openers" so you can take a picture of the carnage, because dammit you're getting SOMETHING out of this
Rinse out the tomato can and put it in the drying recyclables half of the sink
Direct a stream of water into the little hole on the condensed milk can; only realize your extremely predictable mistake when you try to drain it and the world's slowest stream of water pours out
Shake out the rest of the water and chuck the condensed milk can in the trash
Wash the swiss army knife and all three extensions you tried to use even though only one was useful; tiredly recall that you didn't wash them off BEFORE opening the cans and decide you'll just live with that risk
Put your army knife in its Specific Spot where you'll Never Ever Lose It
Forget whether you've washed the pliers
Look at the pliers Accidentally look at your phone on the counter instead; your mind immediately ejects all thoughts like a bomber plane dumping its bombs and you stare blankly at the glowing screen, which isn't even displaying anything interesting, for at least ten seconds, trying to remember what you were looking at it for
Notice that there's condensed milk splashes on your phone; remember the pliers; check the pliers; remember you did wash them already
Wipe off your phone screen
Glance in the kitchen tools drawer while grabbing a paper towel, thinking about what a fool you would have just made of yourself if there is a can opener after all; be relieved to find no can opener
Wash off the counter; congratulate yourself on doing such a good job keeping the counter clean and the kitchen ant-free, except for that one time a week ago when one drop of orange chicken sauce fell on the counter without you noticing and you crushed four ant scouts before you managed to find what they were looking for. But other than that you're doing so good
Realize you didn't plan what you'll eat for lunch.
Times I interrupted myself while writing this: 32
Verdict: remarkably low number of interruptions
The most deeply nested distraction-within-a-distraction Matryosha doll experienced while writing this: 4 (plus five separate 3-layer Matryosha distractions)
This includes remembering THE ANTS THE ANTS THE ANTS and going downstairs to toss the trash bag with the half-rinsed condensed milk can outside
This also includes two separate daily alarms I have set to deliberately disrupt my focus in case I've accidentally started hyperfocusing on a task I'm not supposed to be doing and one time tumblr got locked by my distracting-app-locking app
More important tasks I'm ignoring to write this post: 11
Amount of time it took me to realize I mentioned the casualties twice and edit this post: 21 minutes
Not including writing this post, total prep time for the five-minute-prep-time dump dinner: one hour and twenty minutes.
