Food For Thought

Yesterday I made a pot of chilli for dinner. Making dinner is a pretty mundane achievement, but I'm going to own it!

The fact is, I haven't cooked for a few weeks because I have been so ill. My husband doesn't cook - he is actually not bad, he just doesn't enjoy it - and so we have been getting by on supermarket ready meals and what we like to call 'freezer food'. Freezer food is basically a hodge-podge of things found in the freezer (e.g. oven chips, a random pizza, some leftover bolognaise sauce). To be fair, he does make a mean Toad-In-The-Hole and that has become a regular teatime treat.

Before I became ill I would usually make dinner from scratch (with the odd pizza or takeaway thrown in as a treat). I am a good cook and we ate really well. I love to try new things, so we had a really varied diet - everything except fish and seafood because I am allergic. Going from eating good home-cooked food to regularly eating ready meals is quite a difficult transition to make, even though the quality of the food is pretty good. You just can't beat freshly cooked food that is made exactly to your taste.

One of the problems with home-cooking is that you need to be organised, plan what you are going to cook days ahead and buy in the right ingredients. When you are ill, meal planning goes out of the window. Sure, I could send my husband out with a shopping list but he hates spending time in the supermarket and it would be just another chore to add to his ever growing list of things to do. And the question remains, will I be well enough to cook it? The pile of slowly rotting veg in the fridge probably answers that question.

So what happened yesterday? Well, two things......

Firstly, I discovered the joys of on-line grocery shopping. This has been a game-changer! I am able to order the food I want and have it delivered to the house. That means my fruit bowl is full, there is fresh meat and veg in the fridge and there are fewer snack foods lying around! I went a bit wild in the virtual aisles the first time I tried it, but I think I have got the hang of it now.

Why is on-line shopping so important for an AI Warrior?

• I can shop when I feel well enough to do it;
• I can stop and save my 'basket' if I need a break at any point; 
• Having someone else do the physical work of shopping saves me an afternoon in bed recovering from the exertion;
• I can pick a cheap delivery time that suits me (it probably costs less to have the food delivered than driving into town to get it);  
• I am more in control of my diet; and
• I don't have to rely on others to do a chore that used to be mine (I feel like I am contributing).

Secondly, I found a small window of time in which I felt well enough to spend on my feet cooking. I have spoken a little bit about time management before in my blog. It is important for AI Warriors to break tasks down into chunks and take rests in between. Yesterday, I found an hour when my pain levels were low and I had enough energy to stay active and on my feet. I chose to make a chilli because, with enough liquid, it can cook in a casserole dish in the oven for hours on a low heat.

The chilli was a great success! My husband came home and was greeted by the wonderful smell of home-cooking. All he had to do was put some rice on. Meanwhile, I had been able to rest enough to be able to sit and enjoy dinner with him whilst watching a movie. As an added bonus we now have two delicious 'freezer food' ready meals that are home-cooked, healthy and made just the way we like them.

I guess the lesson I have learned is that illness does not necessarily mean that you have to accept change. You do, however, have to learn how to adapt to change.