half the fun of marriage is these silly disagreements

by

Stressing When I Should Be Sleeping, Inconsequential Frets, and Unearned Despair

What day is it, anyway? I have been off-kilter, day-wise, all week. And I just checked the date and was very surprised that it is somehow the 19th. I guess I think it should be Friday but also only November 15? Well. Time has taken on very strange and malleable properties this year. I should be accustomed to it, by now, but am very clearly NOT.

Last night was a 3:30 a.m. wake up night. I hate nights like that. They happen so frequently that I feel like I should have a better handle on them, or at least know how to get back to sleep. But somehow, in the dark, with the wind doing its best freight train impression outside my window, and the gate shrieking in protest, none of my getting-back-to-sleep techniques occurred to me at all. Instead, my brain decided to first fret extensively about the pandemic and how everything is so much worse than it was in March and yet no one seems to care, and so many people are dying and my loved ones have been spared so far but that extreme good fortune simply cannot hold for much longer. Well. I couldn’t go on thinking about THAT. So I forced my brain to choose a different line of thinking, and it decided to chart exactly how I am a failure, and how I am nearing forty and have not yet finished the book I have been working on for far too many years and how it is now too late and I should just give up in disgrace. Great second choice, brain. You dick.

This is when I pulled up Swistle’s archives on my phone and started reading old pre-Trump, pre-pandemic posts. Very cheerful and soothing. At around 5:00, I fell back to sleep.

That’s when I had a dream about being at some sort of ski resort where four little girls went sailing over a cliff and three of them died in a horrible, violent way. Really, truly gruesome. And in the dream, not only could I do nothing to help, but no one else seemed to register the horrific tragedy that had just happened in front of them, and everyone sort of shrugged and kept on skiing. Thanks, brain. 

So today I am fretful and draggy. Going to walk on the treadmill for a while would probably help, but the act of getting TO the treadmill seems unsurmountable. In terms of productivity level, I score a solid Low. I did have to go to Wal-Mart, for a “contact free” pickup, where I had to wait in a smallish area with another person for the staff member to go get my item. (A present for my niece. She lives in a different state, and I want to wrap her gifts and mail them to her because her mother does not need to wrap extra gifts.) (I do not need to wrap extra gifts either, but I have resigned myself to doing it as I have been doing for several years now. Grim it’s-not-really-as-big-an-imposition-as-it-feels-like face.) (I GET it. Sometimes it just much simpler – and MUCH less expensive! – to order from a website, often with free shipping, and have something shipped directly to your recipient rather than shipping it to your house, wrapping it, then paying to ship it to the recipient. And sometimes gift wrapping isn’t available through online retailers! I totally understand! Occasionally wrapping gifts on behalf of a family member is totally fine!) Then, after eleven minutes of standing around, counting the number of Wal-Mart staff members whose masks covered their mouths but not their noses (final count: 3 of 5), and telling two other staff members who approached me that yes, I was pretty sure I was already being helped, the staff person who’d gone to get items for me and the other shopper returned. He handed the other shopper his item. And then went to a shelf right beside where I was standing and fetched my item. Sigh. Well. I never considered Wal-Mart and efficient to be synonyms.

I was counting the minutes because I needed to get home for my microwave installation. (I made it home in time. And had enough time to wrap my niece’s gift and put it in a box to ship.) Turns out that our old microwave had been installed… badly, is the word I am coming up with. And it’s a good thing a) we never needed it repaired, because the way the previous owners installed it immediately voided the warranty and b) we never had a FIRE. Because they had “installed” it by cutting the wires of the microwave and basically hot-wiring it to the wall. Good times. But! The installation company put in an actual outlet and installed my new microwave correctly and it works and looks basically the same as the old one, so I am pleased. 

(The microwave installation people, by the way, were very nice. They wore masks. I kept the doors open while they were here and also wore a mask. They were gone in about forty minutes. But I asked one of them if they’d been extra busy during the pandemic, you know, just to make awkward conversation, and he said yes, and then went on a [very] little rant about how so many people are going SO OVERBOARD with precautions, and using too much hand sanitizer and wiping everything down, and people just need to chill out a little. Omg.) (After they left, I kept the doors open until the frightful wind started slamming them for me and I also washed my hands and wiped down the entire microwave and everything else they possibly could have touched.) 

What else can I fret to you about?

Oh yes. In Completely NOT Important In The Grand Scheme, Or Even In The Small Scheme, Really, Frets: I am worrying about Santa gifts. 

Let’s take a step back here and offer context: I grew up with Santa. I believed in Santa much longer than most children, in part because my parents were magicians at making Santa gifts appear beneath my watchful eyes, and in part because the magic was so special to me. My parents always gave us gifts, but Santa would give us the big, splashy gifts. A new bike. A Barbie Dream House. A new guitar. A kayak. Skis. (These were not all gifts for me, but various big Santa gifts I remember various members of my family getting over the year.) Anyway, they were the most exciting gifts. And it was such a delight to venture into our living room and see all these fabulous things that Santa had managed to sneak down our chimney. I have always sort of thought of Carla’s Santa gifts the same way. Santa got her a play kitchen one year. Santa brought her a Barbie Dream House a couple of years ago. Big, splashy gifts that really wow her.

My husband did not have the same experience growing up. He has never seen the gifts for Carla as “Santa gives the big gift,” but more along the lines of, it makes more sense to have a Barbie Dream House appear as from nowhere on Christmas morning rather than sit, wrapped, under the tree. And while we have discussed our different views on Santa gifts, and have very carefully said to one another that we know our own personal experience is not The One True Way, neither have we come up with a Defined Way to proceed.

With that context in mind:

As I mentioned in the Gift Guide post, we were planning on getting Carla a sewing machine for Christmas. In my mind, this was going to be her Big Gift from Santa.

But this year, another family member also had the idea to get Carla a sewing machine. And it’s a very generous gift, and very appropriate from this person. But now I am agonizing over giving up our “claim” on the sewing machine because a) now what does SANTA get for Carla? and b) what if the sewing machine doesn’t get here on time? Because this person has a lot going on this year, some very out-of-the-ordinary things that are occupying a lot of time and energy… Plus… even in normal years, this person has a very spontaneous, last-minute type of personality and gifts often arrive the day of a birthday/holiday/event or, sometimes, after the fact. In a year when shipping times and product availability are unreliable, I admit that I am extra concerned about gifts arriving in a timely manner. (That doesn’t give a lot of credit to the family member, I know, which is unfair.)

This is good practice in serenity and flexibility, isn’t it? I can only control my own actions, I cannot control the actions of others. Carla does not know she is supposed to get a sewing machine; she has not even asked for one. So if it doesn’t work out for Christmas this year, we could always get one for her next Christmas, or for her birthday. It will be fine. And, of course, Christmas is not ABOUT presents. It is about family togetherness, and the joy and satisfaction of generosity, and gratitude for all the blessings in our lives. (Yes, I realize Christmas foremost has significant religious meaning, but we are not particularly religious so it is much more of a secular holiday around here.)

And yet the anxious, catastrophize-y part of me is worrying and worrying this not-really-a-problem-problem to death, because I feel like there is tremendous extra pressure to Make Christmas Special this year. What if this is our last Christmas on earth? my doom-and-gloomful brain intones mournfully. What if one or all of us get sick and die and this is our final Christmas together? I realize, fully, that EVERY Christmas has the potential to be our last Christmas because terrible things happen all the time. But that very cheering reminder that this year is, in fact, no different from any other is not as comforting as one would hope.  Instead, it has plunged me deeper into despair and ignited within me a desire to counter that despair with retail therapy. A fleeting and overall ineffective therapy, yet a very appealing one. Except I don’t know what Big Splashy Gift to buy in place of a sewing machine, and I don’t know that I can get my husband on board even if I find one. 

I feel stupid and petty, stressing about these very inconsequential and privileged things when there are so many BIGGER and MORE IMPORTANT things to stress about. But that’s what this is, right? At least partly, it’s a reaction to how helpless I feel about everything else going on in the world. I am trying to regain control over my own little corner, and even that is proving difficult. 

I cannot be the only one wasting energy and angst on ridiculous things, right? RIGHT?

Okay, while you tell me about the inconsequential (or very consequential!) frets you are having right now, I am going to try to climb out of the pit of despair I have mired myself in. Or maybe take a nap.

by

Too Many Words About Sneezing

The weather is wreaking havoc on my allergies. One day it’s 75 and sunny, the next we have thunderstorms, the next there’s a low of 38 degrees, the next it’s 55 and drizzly. Any time the weather changes, I wake up feeling like an elephant is standing with its forelegs on my brow furrows and its hind legs on my cheeks. The elephant has taken up permanent residence of late.

To add dust mites to injury, I skipped the thorough housecleaning this week. I did the bathrooms on Friday, but Sundays are for dusting and vacuuming and cleaning the floors and I just… didn’t do it this week. Listen, it was a grey, dreary Sunday and my family just wanted to sleep in and pursue solitary, quiet activities all day and I could not drum the energy it would have required to badger them into doing housework with me. Nor the energetic resentment it would have required to do the housework by myself. At the time, it felt like I was getting away with something, but now I have Regrets; apparently one week plus one day’s worth of dust is too much for my overly touchy immune system.

All this means that I’ve been sneezing a lot. A lot a lot.

Oh – and I have observed something interesting, which is that my sneezing habits have changed over time. I used to be a one-and-done sneezer. But in the past few years, it’s usually a one-two punch of sneezing. I’ve always felt a mix of sympathy and curiosity toward those people who sneeze multiple times in one go – you know, like five times in quick succession, and it’s always five on the dot. It must be so irritating/exhausting to be in a work environment and to KNOW that you will sneeze no fewer than X times and have coworkers say “bless you” after each one, thinking your sneezes are complete. Perhaps this is less of an issue now, in The Time of Zoom. I don’t know.

I do know that my family gets curiously irritated with me when I sneeze. Especially my husband. Look, I get it. Sneezes can be startling and they require a response, so you have to be on the alert when someone gets that watery-eyed look that means an achoo is imminent.  And I am also painfully aware that when my allergies are all hot under the collar, I can sneeze A LOT. Like… a dozen times. Not all in a row, but with a few seconds’/minutes’ pause between each one. 

My husband typically gets annoyed first. “Geez,” he might say. “What’s wrong with you?” But not in, like, a caring/concerned way. More like in the way he might say “What’s wrong with you?” if I started making a spit fountain with my Diet Coke in the middle of a restaurant. (We don’t go to restaurants anymore; this is just an example.) You know. A mix of disdain and annoyance. 

(He has also taken issue with the MANNER of my sneezing. I apparently don’t… let it out enough for him. And I admit, my sneezes are fairly contained. But that’s just the way I sneeze. While I maintain that my sneeze technique just bugs him for whatever reason, he claims that he’s afraid I will rupture an aneurysm in my brain or something; this is apparently a real thing; I just googled it. To appease him, I have tried to be more extravagant in my sneezing, but a) it’s very difficult to change the way you have been executing an involuntary function your entire life and b) it’s gross. It gets saliva and snot all over the place, and by “the place” I mean the interior of my elbow. If most people are sneezing like this, and you KNOW not everyone is making use of their elbow, no wonder colds and flus and other viruses get around so much. Ew.) 

I have pointed out to him that getting annoyed with my sneezing is a ridiculous response. The sneezing is involuntary. As soon as I start on one of my sneezing fits, I try to resolve the issue by blowing my nose and/or taking an allergy pill. He has eased up his cranky commentary with time. (But I’m betting he isn’t less annoyed; he is just biting his tongue.)

(And I get it – really, I do. Anyone who has been around a coworker or a family member with the sniffles or a persistent cough or a throat clearing understands that a repetitive sick noise is very grating indeed. But I kind of feel like the sneezing is slightly different? It’s not daily; even when I have a sneezing spasm, it goes on for minutes, not hours. And it – so far – has NEVER HAPPENED when either of us is trying to fall or stay asleep. Okay, maybe it IS super annoying but it’s TEMPORARY at least.)

Even Carla has to make some sort of comment when I get going. At least she’s not annoyed by me (yet). But she will pipe up with something like, “You’re sure sneezing a lot.” 

Yes, I know. Thank you. I had also noticed that I have just sneezed twelve times in the past three minutes. It’s not fun for ME EITHER, I ASSURE YOU. 

Maybe the REAL issue is what I mentioned before, that social convention requires a response to sneezing. (A POLITE response; “geez” doesn’t count.) And if you feel like you have to respond to every sneeze… and there are 15 sneezes… well, I can see how that would be indeed trying. 

We have a little tradition in our family where you say “bless you” for the first sneeze, and then, should there be a second, you say “gesundheit.” (And the sneezer responds in English to the first blessing and in German to the second. I know. We are weird.) I suppose we could do French for the third sneeze, but no one does. Instead, by the third sneeze, everyone is annoyed.

I propose that, universally, we should acknowledge the first two sneezes, and then – if others follow – we ignore them and move on with our lives. Honestly, I would be FINE without acknowledging them at all; after all, sneezes should belong to the category of other bodily emissions that come with being human – hiccups, gas, sweat – that we all pretty much pretend don’t exist when we encounter them in the wild. I don’t know why sneezes get special treatment; I think originally blessings were meant to ward off the plague, which, okay, perhaps we can all use ALL the blessings we can get these days.

by

Report on Last Week’s Super-Simple Meal Plan (or A Lot of Words About Food)

As I told you earlier this week, my husband read an article on The Kitchn about a super easy five-day meal plan, and it sounded intriguing, so we decided to try it out.

I had misgivings from the get-go. The first of which is that if you are going to call something “brainless” or refer to a week of meals as “super-simple family-friendly dinners that require next to no thought,” you should include the actual recipes in the article. Requiring your reader to go to five separate blog posts (plus a bonus post by another chef), read them, and figure out the recipes negates the “super-simple” moniker pretty quickly.

My second misgiving was that this Lazy Genius blogger was so loosey-goosey with things like instructions and measurements. Sure, it SOUNDS lazy to not have to measure things and to be able to throw in any number of proteins or vegetables, but it is NOT. It is a recipe (unplanned pun) for disaster. I want a real recipe at least for the first time I make something, if for nothing more than to understand the proportions of things. Well, I suppose the Lazy Genius did give me some proportions; perhaps I am being overly rigid which would not be out of character.

My third misgiving was that the last two meals call for ground pork, which I do not like.

Okay. Now that I’ve set the stage, here’s how it all turned out.

First, I would like to talk about my husband’s role in all this. I am the primary cook in our household. I plan probably 98 percent of our meals and prepare probably 80 percent of them (15 percent of the meals I do not prepare are takeout). This is just how it is, and most days I prefer it this way; I am the pickier eater, I like things a certain way, I am a control freak, etc. Of course, I am always whining about how hard it is to plan and cook for all the meals, and I often ask for my husband’s input. I would say that he typically offers one to two suggestions per two-week period.

So when he read this article and suggested it to me, I definitely wanted to follow through. I want to ENCOURAGE him to continue recommending things.

But I quickly found out that he did not actually read any of the recipes. And this made me Very Irritated. First, because he had NO IDEA what went into the making of any of these dinners – like needing to peel two heads of garlic or slice a thousand mushrooms. Second, and worst, because he did not fully understand my frustration when the recipes said things like “stir in a sauce” or “add a glug of something creamy.” He kept saying, “What does the recipe say?” and I kept replying, “It’s not really a recipe! It’s a suggestion!”

He did, however, help me with things like interpreting the loose guidelines and deciding what pan to use and chopping up pork and chicken. So that was good.

Day 1: Shawarma with Grilled Zucchini 

Report: There was an actual recipe for this one, thank goodness. I mean, the blogger says you can really do whatever you want. But she has some specifics, if you want them. (I WANT THEM.) It’s basically just spices and some oil, and you drop the chicken in and let it marinate for many hours. Easy peasy.

I grilled some zucchini alongside this chicken because I had zucchini and wasn’t really sure what else to do. I made four chicken breasts, so that we could each have one for this meal, and so that my husband could have one breast for each of the next two nights.

It was very tasty – good flavor on the chicken. I would probably make it again. Next time, I might do something with a sauce. Like make tzatziki or do broccoli with a lemon sauce or something, because it was kind of dry. Not that the chicken was dry, it was just… a meal without a sauce. My husband disagreed with me, by the way. He thought it was fine the way it was. 

Day 2: Chickpea Bowl

Report: This was the recipe where I started to panic a little bit. Sure, there were some actual measurements involved in this recipe, like “two 15-oz cans of chickpeas.” And “1-2 tbsp tomato paste” (although there is kind of a large difference between one of something and DOUBLING it). But when it came to the spice mixture, you got more guidance than actual instruction. (And the guidance was not consistent? In one place, the blogger suggests doing equal parts cumin and garam masala, but then when she gives more specific suggested amounts, there is a lower proportion of garam masala… I found that perplexing.) I ended up doing ½ Tbsp each of cumin, coriander, and garam masala; 1 tsp of cardamom; ½ tsp of paprika; and ¼ tsp each of cinnamon, turmeric, cayenne, and fenugreek (the last is something I threw in on a whim because I can be easy and breezy sometimes too) (I was NOT easy and breezy about this meal and groused to my husband about the lack of specifics the entire time).

And then one of the instructions is literally “a glug of something creamy”???? What the hell is a glug? A tablespoon? A quarter cup? We ended up using some leftover heavy cream and I let my husband decide what a glug is so lord help me if I ever make this meal again.

Then – and I have already complained about this extensively but it turns out I am not done – you have to go to another website to get the recipe for this special garlic ginger sauce that the Lazy Genius recommends. In the actual recipe, she references it briefly. But in the meal planning article, she places far greater importance on it; in fact, she says to use it for THREE of the five meals. So I grouchily went to seek out the recipe, which is basically equal parts garlic and ginger blended with some vegetable oil. I happened to have a half cup of garlic and a half cup of ginger on hand, so made the full amount called for in the recipe. (I normally use exclusively jarred garlic, but I had two heads of garlic on hand for the purpose of dropping it into a groundhog hole near our back deck; but I poured some cayenne mixed with water into the hole one day after I had finished painting my baby tomatoes with the same mixture, and the next day the hole was filled in. The groundhog was DONE with us.) I was very irritated by having to peel all the garlic cloves and peel all the ginger, but I was Invested, so I powered through.

The garlic ginger sauce was POTENT. I mean, I don’t know why I was surprised. It’s nearly half garlic. But I do think it worked some sort of magic when added to meals.

Now on to the actual meal. Which required a LOT of prep work for something touted as “lazy.” What I did was: Chop up a shallot. Combine the spices. Make the ginger garlic sauce. Chop up a red pepper and a yellow pepper. Chop up some cilantro. Chop up some scallions. Open my cans (I used two cans of chickpeas, one 28-oz can of tomato puree, and two tablespoons of tomato paste). Make some rice. My husband chopped up his leftover chicken.

I added about two tablespoons of canola oil to a large pot and turned the heat to medium high. When it started to shimmer, I added a big dollop – probably two tablespoons, maybe three – of the ginger garlic sauce and stirred it for a count of ten. Then I dumped in the shallot and spices and stirred for another ten count. Then I added the tomato paste and stirred that around for about twenty seconds. Then I added the tomato puree and the (drained) chickpeas, stirred everything together, and let the whole thing boil. I had my husband “measure” out the “several healthy pinches of salt” called for in the recipe. Then we left it alone for ten minutes. At the end of the ten minutes, I put rice into bowls and added sliced bell peppers on top of the rice, plus some chopped cilantro. While I was doing this, my husband added the requisite “glug” of heavy cream. He stirred it into the sauce, let it simmer for another minute, tasted it, added a bit more salt, and it was ready. We spooned the sauce/chickpeas onto our peppers and rice and topped them with a tablespoon of plain Greek yogurt, some chopped scallions, and some more cilantro. My husband added his chicken to his bowl at some point as well.

This was absolutely delicious. A++, incredible, flavorful, satisfying, yummy. This meal alone confers a lot of credibility upon the blogger calling herself a Genius, even if we have already disposed of the Lazy part of her title. I want to eat it every day. My husband said he likes the flavors much better than my adapted chicken tikka masala recipe. That hurts a little, I have to admit. But he’s not wrong. I don’t know if it was the garlic ginger sauce or the combination of the spices or some magic that happens when you put it all together, but it was SO GOOD.

I am DEFINITELY going to make this again.  Maybe once a week. 

Day 3: Sheet Pan Nachos

Report: Listen, I am no stranger to a plate of nachos. This was a nice break from stressing out about ingredients and ratios and vague instructions.

I chopped up some leftover bell peppers from the night before, set out leftover cilantro and scallions, and my husband and I decorated some chips with cheese, black beans, leftover chicken (for him), and frozen corn. We put the cheesy chips into a 400 degree oven for ten minutes. While they were in the oven, I chopped some avocado and put out some sour cream and hot sauce. When they came out, we put veggies and hot sauce and sour cream and VOILA. Dinner was served.

You can’t go wrong with nachos. And I think if you are building your own, you don’t really have to worry about ratios; how much hot sauce to cheese to sour cream you want is a deeply personal preference.

It was really fun to have nachos for dinner. It felt very decadent, like we were snacking rather than dining.

Day 4: Asian Pork Rice Bowl

Report: This was the day I was dreading. I do not like ground pork so I did not buy ground pork. (Which, of course, means that I VOLUNTARILY made this meal less simple than it could have been; it’s truly so easy to brown grown meat, and I gave up that ease on purpose.) I dithered all day long about what I should do. Should I use my grinder to make my own ground pork? My husband pointed out that doing it myself would not change the texture of the ground pork, which I dislike.

So what I did instead was turn the oven on to broil. Coat a pork tenderloin with salt, pepper, and vegetable oil, and put the tenderloin under the broiler. I turned it over a couple of times, at ten minute increments, until it was browned and crisp in places and the temperature was 145 degrees.

While it was cooking, I washed and sliced mushrooms. I did one package of plain button mushrooms and one package of baby bella mushrooms, even though I cannot taste the difference between them. My daughter came over and pilfered two raw mushrooms from my while I was chopping them. I also reheated rice I’d made earlier in the week and chopped some fresh scallions and cilantro. Scallions and cilantro all day, every day, around here.

Now, the meal plan article calls for rice bowls. But the recipe it links to is for lettuce wraps. Be warned.

Next I had to figure out the sauce. The recipe says “stir in a sauce.” Okay, okay, it does have more specifics for those of us who can’t conjure a sauce out of thin air: “2  tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp water, a dash of sugar or mirin, and a tsp or so of cornstarch.” I also added a tablespoon of sriracha.

Once the sauce was mixed, I turned to browning the mushrooms. At first, I did what the recipe recommends, which is to give them plenty of space so they can brown. But after the first batch, I just threw them all in the pan and hoped for the best. Some of them browned nicely, others less so. But it was okay.

While I was browning mushrooms, my husband was chopping the roasted pork into teeny bits. He wanted to approximate the ground pork without the texture. (He is very tolerant of my food peculiarities.) When he was done, he dumped the pork into the mushrooms and then we mixed in some (probably two to three tablespoons, I would guess) of the ginger garlic sauce from the chickpea bowl night and then added the soy/mirin sauce. It took very little time for the pork/mushroom mixture to suck up all the sauce. So we spooned it onto rice, topped with – you guessed it – scallions and cilantro – and ate it up. (I added some sriracha to the top of mine, and my husband mixed in a little sambal, which is a chili paste.)

This was DELICIOUS. If it weren’t such a Massive Pain to slice mushrooms and roast pork, I would make this every week or so. We gobbled it UP. We were supposed to have leftover pork and mushroom mix for the next day’s noodle bowls, but we did NOT. All that was left was enough for my husband to take for lunch.

Day 5: Noodle Bowls 

Report: I have never cooked ramen before. Well, in college, I would occasionally buy those Maruchen Instant Lunch cups that you just add boiling water to? But I have never purchased ramen and made it as a meal. So my main concern was how to cook the ramen. I really wasn’t sure which vessel to cook it IN, and my husband and I went back and forth. (“What does the recipe say?” “It says variously ‘pan’ and ‘skillet.’”) I ended up using my big chili pot. I cooked the protein in it first, then the veggies, then put all of those aside while I filled the bottom of the pot with “an inch” of water. (I think it ended up being about three cups.) The water boiled and I nestled three squares of ramen noodles into it, waited a minute, turned them upside down, waited a minute, and then separated all the noodles. The water did NOT get fully absorbed, so I drained the pot.

We did not have any leftover pork/mushroom mix from the previous night’s rice bowls, so I sautéed some shrimp for our protein, and thinly sliced some red peppers and sugar snap peas for the veggies. I added some ginger garlic paste to the sauce (which again was ¼ cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup water, 1/8 cup mirin, 1 Tbsp cornstarch, and 1 Tbsp sriracha) and poured it over the noodles, added the shrimp and veggies, stirred it around, and then topped everything with some chopped scallions and cilantro.

My husband’s main takeaway from this was that a) it had a good flavor and b) it was “potent” because I’d used too much ginger garlic sauce. When he said that, I wanted to cry because THERE WAS NO MEASUREMENT. The instruction was literally “stand at your counter, mix a little here and there until you reach delicious Asian alchemy.” I thought it was tasty, if a bit salty. But I had MAJOR heartburn for the rest of the night.

Making this meal was pretty easy, though. Minimal chopping. Shrimp are easy to cook. The noodles — now that I know how to do them — are very easy, and the sauce is super simple.

Overall Verdict:

Okay. I think the Lazy Genius is indeed a genius. (Also, I have since read a few of her blog posts and she seems kind of awesome???) The flavors of all of these meals are SO GOOD. And it was really fun to try things that we’d never had before. Well, okay, sometimes it was less FUN than NOVEL. But novelty can go a long way toward livening up a life that’s been rendered very small and stressful by a global pandemic.

But calling this week of meals “super simple” and “brainless” was wholly inaccurate. The whole thing required a lot more chopping and prep work than I would have expected, and the stress of having to figure out how to turn her vague instructions into actual meals ALONE made it the opposite of brainless. But maybe, again, I am being too rigid. And maybe next time I will be looser and more breezy about ratios of ingredients. And maybe I will find that everything STILL tastes good.

Would I do this again? I would not do all five meals in a row again. But I will DEFINITELY make… yes, ALL of these meals again at some point. If I had the ingredients for the garlic ginger sauce I would make the chickpea bowl again RIGHT NOW. And I have already bookmarked the Lazy Genius’s recipe for chicken tikka masala, because I now trust that she knows what she’s doing. (Even if she has too much faith in my ability to throw things together rather than follow a very specific set of instructions.)