Welcome And The Adulting Premise

Welcome to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life? That you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting. While doing so, with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. Today I'm going to talk about cooking. I know that I've talked about this before, but I had kind of a funny thing happen to me in the last week or so, and I just wanted to share it because it well, it made me laugh. And I thought you'd enjoy it too. Now, Bill and I, my husband, we don't spend a lot of money really going out anymore. We don't go to the movies because we have all of our streaming apps on the TV. We have a big TV. It's fun. We enjoy doing that. We haven't been to concerts lately because Bill's been recovering from his herniated discs. Um, and really we haven't been traveling because our cat, who is uh an asthmatic diabetic, is pretty high maintenance. And he's also a mama's boy. And last time we tried to travel, he wouldn't let um our pet sitter give him his insulin shots. So we pretty much had a turnaround trip to Vegas because we drove out and he gets two insulin shots a day, and he wouldn't allow anyone else to give him an insulin shot, so we came right back, and that was a pretty tough trip because it's a lot of driving, a lot of being on the road. So we're pretty much homebodies recently, which is fine. So what we do a lot though is order out. I mean, yeah, sometimes we do go actually out to eat in restaurants, but for the most part, we stay home. And what COVID taught us is you can get almost anything delivered, right? So we get, yeah, we're pretty spoiled that way. So we get food delivered from different restaurants, I would say almost every night. And once you start adding up how much that's costing, I mean, I I have the membership with DoorDash or Grubhub or whatever. Um, and I try to be cognizant of the extra fees, but still, it's it can get pretty pricey, right? And it's not really so much of an issue, but uh when you add it up, it's a lot of money. Okay. Well, recently I thought, you know, it would be better for both of us and our bank balance if maybe I cooked something or made something at home one night a week. I can commit to that. I mean cooking, making food, preparing food does take time, and I don't always have time or the energy because I do so many other things, but I thought I'd try. And it's also healthier for us. Healthier? Is that what they say? Well, I know a lot of his doctors have said, looking at me, of course, because I'm the woman, you don't cook, you should cook. Okay, so I was at the market recently, and I thought I could make turkey burgers. I could get the ready-made or ready-formed turkey patties, right? Uh, they had fresh asparagus on sale. We like asparagus. I could get some sourdough bread, and you know, I had sliced cheese at home. Um, I had a tomato, I had some lettuce, so I could make turkey burgers on sourdough bread and um asparagus, right? You know, we have to be really careful because my husband has various medical conditions, and there's certain things that he can't or shouldn't eat or shouldn't eat a lot of, and there's things that I probably shouldn't be eating. So I thought, well, this is kind of an easy menu, right? Okay. Well, my first issue was that I couldn't find my spatula. Um, and I I had a spatula before, but for whatever reason, I couldn't find it now. And this was after I put the turkey burger patties into the hot frying pan. Uh so I found a workaround with my uh cake cutter thing, you know, where you scoop, you can you can cut the cake, but you can also scoop the cake out. Yeah, that's that's what I use. It's pretty sad. I tried the tongs, but that was just gonna make the turkey burger patty kind of fall apart. So yeah. Uh, not a pretty sight. And then I got the sourdough bread that's kind of the bigger piece of sourdough bread, right? So I had I was gonna have to cut it in half, but I didn't want to cut it in half before I put it in the toaster. And I didn't want to grill it because that would add more fat and calories and grease, right, to the whole mix. So I thought I'd put it in the toaster, let it toast, and then switch it over and let the other side toast. Okay. Well, here's the problem. If you multitask in the kitchen, you have to be aware of what you're doing. Yes, I burned the toast. Yeah. I just radically, crazily burnt the toast. Uh it was just, it wasn't pretty. And I and I looked at my, I just I well, I looked at it as the toaster was, you know, smoke was pouring out of the toaster, and I thought, Tracy, what are you doing? What do you think you're doing here? It's it's embarrassing. But uh yeah. I didn't burn the turkey burgers though, so that's a plus. Uh and and it was I I think I had used some of the bread. I had gotten a small loaf of bread. So I had to I had to rescue this, these two pieces of bread that I had burned on one side. Uh, so there comes a knife. I could scrape off the charred parts of the bread. And so I told my when I took the plate in to give to my husband, and I said, Look, you know, I might have burnt the toast a little bit. And he said, That's okay. I I like it crispy. Um, you know, my husband is he's not an adventurous eater, but he'll pretty much eat anything that I make. Um and he's very complimentary and he's very easy-going in that way. He's not like a gourmet. He's not, he's not very as long as it's lukewarm, pretty much, as long as it's cooked fully, you know, fully cooked and lukewarm, he will eat it. Um and so I'm lucky in that regard. We're fairly well balanced in that regard. So yeah, so I this is why I don't really break out uh in many ways in the kitchen. You know, I've seen recipes that for dishes that I I look at them and I'd say, wow, that looks really good. But the problem is then that you know, you look at the recipe and there's like maybe 20 different things in the recipe. First of all, I don't have those things in my kitchen because I don't cook. And maybe if they are in my kitchen, I haven't used them in a long, long time, and they're probably not good anymore. So so I'd have to go out and buy these things uh again, and then you know, making that one recipe would cost me not$20, you know, for the meat or something, it would cost me$50. And then it would probably turn out bad anyway because I would probably burn something, let's face it. Yeah, this is why I don't cook. People look at me, don't judge me. People look at me like you don't cook. I don't cook, it's always a disaster in the kitchen. You I just I'm not I come from a long line of bad cooks. I mean, listen to my Thanksgiving episode. Anyway, I digress. Um, I really marvel at people that are good cooks and that can do this well because I can't. And so this is another reason I love to go to a restaurant and be served a wonderful meal because I'm I'm truly in awe of people that do this, and I think it's a wonderful talent. Anyway, that's all I've got for today. I'm gonna try to go find a snack in the kitchen now, and next week we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries Podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on. And consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page, Only Child Diaries, or Facebook, Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace, and these are the Only Child Diaries.