There are some days where all I’m feeling motivated to do is lay like Nikki-dog here. Seriously. Winter especially lends me days where it takes a lot of effort to crawl out of an emotional hole, or to actually enjoy myself. That has been the case for nearly half of my lifetime. I am learning, however, that being in the kitchen helps. On days where I’m feel a multitude of things along the emotion spectrum–things that make sense, lots of times things I don’t have any reason to be feeling aside from sheer lack of motivation to push myself to feel differently–I like to pour myself into new recipes. Or old recipes that need re-visiting. Maybe it’s the distraction. Or maybe it’s knowing that I’m doing something that will be appreciated, enjoyed, and creating something literally filling.
Today was kind of like that. So… I made a 12 ½ pound lasagna, filled with tofu, spinach, cheese, homemade marinara sauce, artichoke hearts, and crimini mushrooms. I made garlic-basil-parmesan dough knots. And a cake (which came out successfully — a non-flop cake!) — brown butter honey banana to be exact. With whipped honey buttercream.
I’ll get some recipes up in the next day or so. In the meantime, I think I’ll go to bed.
Julie Hashimoto-McCreery
