#A Good Meal is Hard to Find

[localrobosexual]

i think i'm gonna try one of those weekly meal prep delivery services because genuinely at this point trying to plan meals every week and setting aside the time to grocery shop and prep and cook and all that shit is really getting to me and it's not lookin good here folks lol

[edge-oftheworld]

honestly I’m never a person to fall for a celebrity endorsement of any product but I’m only now realising that the vegetarian meat pies were exactly that. they became a staple in my diet and now I can’t find them anywhere and I’ve genuinely never been so devastated about any food item luke please do your magic and bring the pies back

[piplupod]

trying to decide whether i should leave the house or not today and ,, i probably should, but also. urghghghh i am tired and i have mold to clean and i have dishes to clean and i have vacuuming and dusting to attend to (guess who hasn't dusted in probably over a year now! ruh roh!!! <- has an actual dust allergy) and laundry baskets to empty and crochet to start and projects to work on !!!

[aftermathing]

.

[bluejaybytes]

💘🍛 I like both of these. What's most important to your oc (of choice but I'm thinking of Maggie), and what their usual dinner looks like <3

Hiiiiiiiii <3

💘 HEART WITH ARROW — what and/or who do(es) your oc consider the most important to them?

Maggie has sooo few people she's close with BUT the people she IS close with she is VERY close with, the three main ones would be her brother, Hawke, her Girl Best Friend (come to your own conclusions on this one, they'll never have an actual discussion about it), Jenna, and one of the ghosts that hangs around her, Opal. Hawke she was always fairly close with as a kid, while he never actually believed her when she would talk about the ghosts and their various shenanigans, he was always one of her strongest and most reliable supporters, and would claim to believe her. She knows now that he never actually believed her (She figured that out as a preteen), but she definitely appreciates the fact he was still always there for her and standing up for her when she'd get talked over by others. When she wakes back up after her murder, finding where he lives is one of her first priorities, because she's basically having like a million crises at once and figures he's the person she trusts must to be able to help her.

Paragraph break because I'm going on longer than anticipated WHOOPS. For Jenna, she's close with her for several reasons. The first part is... honestly just a bit of necessity. Maggie's lost and scared and has no idea what's going on, and Jenna's the first person to approach her and is someone willing to try and help her figure out what's going on, during a situation where anyone else would've just forced her to go to a hospital (Which... to be fair Jenna definitely should've suggested they go to some sort of medical help, given that she was passed out in the middle of a field and wakes up talking about being murdered). Outside of necessity, however, she and Jenna just like... basically instantly latch onto each other. They're frankly both a bit obsessive with each other because they both... really don't have anyone else? Once the plot ends and their lives calm down they'll get some other friends and their dynamic will become more sustainable longterm, but in the moment they've only got each other and GODDAMN do they have each other. Jenna's like 90% of the reason Maggie wants to actually take care of herself, because if she's not doing it, Jenna just does it for her, and she doesn't like feeling like a burden, even if Jenna's doing it willingly and without viewing as such. Their bond is so largely based on their willingness to support each other, so. yknow <3

For Opal, she's known Maggie since she was only a few months old! Ghosts took notice of Maggie's ability to see them LONG before Maggie would be learn this was Not normal, AKA, as a several month old baby, she'd track ghosts with her eyes and try and interact with them like any other person, which alerted the ghosts to the fact she could actually see them. This made her essentially a bit of a celebrity/VERY weird and kinda creepy to the ghosts, so word of the Magic Baby Who Can See Dead People spread, and tons of local ghosts would hang around just to see her themselves. Opal ALSO heard of her, and she just generally loves kids, so she went to go see baby Maggie, only to realize that oh man. This is going to be. a tough life for this kid. So she takes it upon herself to watch over her, and chases away other ghosts who bother her so that Maggie doesn't have to spend her entire life being harassed by ghosts. Their dynamic is a bit weird throughout Maggie's life, as Opal tends to be a bit overbearing, and also tends to talk over the living people Maggie's trying to talk/listen to, making it difficult for her to concentrate, but as frustrating as Maggie finds her to be, they still are very close, Opal's someone Maggie can be actually open with, and someone who is always trying to look out for her and protect her any way she can. Their dynamic gets WAY more strained after Maggie's death but this is already a VERY long ramble and that would involve a LOT more so I'll save that for another day

🍛 CURRY AND RICE — what does your oc's typical dinner look like? do they usually eat dinner?

Bad it looks bad.

Okay the actual answer is more nuanced <3 Prior to her murder, Maggie was still living at home (She was only 17 and had JUST graduated highschool, graduating a year early), so her typical dinner was just... whatever her mom made! Nothing too fancy, just pretty generic dinner items. Maggie's never really had much of an appetite, but also stayed up extremely late every night, so typically it'd be eating like half the normal portion of whatever dinner was -> stay up until 2am -> Get hungry and finish off the other half of dinner -> stay up until [god knows how late]. Her favorite meal is probably stew, though while she is an extremely picky eater, of the foods she's okay with she doesn't tend to have really any standout favorites.

Once she wakes back up after her murder and has to care for herself, her dinner is... crackers. As mentioned, she's an extremely picky eater, but she also has no skill in cooking and is also just deeply depressed, so she can't really give the effort to care about it enough to want to eat properly, so she just. doesn't! However, once Jenna starts hanging around more, specifically hanging around for long enough stretches of time to see Maggie's abysmal self care and eating habits, THEN Maggie's typical dinner stops being "crackers" and starts being whatever Jenna makes her. This is typically things like easier to prepare meals like mac n cheese, but Jenna always adds things to them that aren't included to make them nicer, so it's always more than just "box of kraft mac n cheese", its got some added vegetables and meat added in there to make it better!

Once Maggie actually starts trying to learn how to cook herself, her typical dinner consists of one single bite of whatever she tried and promptly failed to make, and then a plate of Whatever Jenna Made Instead. She's trying her best but oh boy. its not great.

[backfliips]

As seasonal depression continues to make my life hell I have to keep remembering that even if the sun setting so early makes me miserable it doesn't make the sunset any less beautiful

[thisisyourdriverspeaking]

Non meat eater rant here but why don't all restaurants & cafes have vegetarian & vegan options available at all times on their menus? It's so frustrating having to research places beforehand to see if I can actually go to eat there & even more frustrating knowing most places in my area don't do any meat free options. Why do I have to constantly miss out on going out for a nice meal just because I don't eat meat???

[prettypangolins]

What really sucks about gluten free stuff (apart from it never being as good as the original) is that it's often lumped in with dairy free/vegan and I'm just sitting here like whyyyyy where am I supposed to get protein from huh?? And my calcium for my thrice-at-risk-of-osteoporosis bones??? And have you ever tried vegan stuff/food made with dairy alternatives that aren't pure rice or coconut milk? They're gross! Macaroni cheese, but you're not allowed the fuckin cheese on top of not being able to have real pasta???? Hell. Nightmare. Gimme my DAIRY! I bet anyone with a dairy allergy isn't having fun with the gluten free side either. Yuck. And while I'm on a Rant, why the FUCK are you putting fuckin apple in the gluten free version of JAFFA CAKES?????? Just... why why why are they trying to cater to all these things at once. Terrible. The only overlap I'm thankful for is the nut free thing, bc if you're ever in a cafe or wherever their gluten free cake is 95% likely to contain nuts bc apparently anyone wanting gluten free is also a fuckin vegan and capable of eating nuts?? Bleh. Even the shit in shops is more often gluten & dairy free/vegan than it is gluten free & nut free. I'm dying here. I'm starving. I'm withering away and I'm full of spite and rage at the predatory pricing and the extorionate shit I have to face any time I want to eat food.

[grumpyoldsnake]

Making a double batch of zucchini bread after a solid month of drawing way more than I normally do and being busier than normal at work was, uh. Not the kindest choice, as far as my poor wrists and hands are concerned

Hello paresthesia I did not miss you >_>

On the other hand: Bread is being made! :D

And between the zucchini bread and the zucchini pasta I made yesterday I have used up… a grand total of 2/3rds of this week’s zucchini harvest fffff

(The garden is growing well and I am v. happy! But planting two zucchini plants for a 2-person household was a Mistake ™ )

[knife-em0ji]

Do you ever take a chance on a pre packaged sandwich from a national chain and get absolutely fucked up by how good it is. Anyway I could eat the falafel-tomato salsa broodje from panos every day for the rest of my godforsaken life

[rj-anderson]

I am credibly informed that some otherwise healthy people don’t enjoy eating food and some of them actually forget to eat food for hours or entire days but I just??? can’t??? imagine???

[jane-friend]

I really want to learn true rustic Italian recipes. My Nonna taught me some stuff, but I want to understand the true heart and soul of my heritage’s cuisine. None of this heavily modernized Italian-American stuff.

[eyeballcommander]

It's funny how me trying to do a good thing for once is what riles everyone up...

[waspyards]

come home to find my brother has thrown away the meat i had been slowly over a few weeks been making a little stack of just to have frozen for meal prep. bitch that was like £60 worth of meat overall this stupid incompetent fuck. tell him & all he does is shrug his shoulders & go whatever yeah i guess when you're not the one buying & carrying most of the groceries its whatever. i need to fucking move out.

[ame-to-ame]

the thing abt btr is i really wanna see more characterization/ ixn but i don't think anything i write will be able to capture the essence of the source material :(

[asteroidtroglodyte]

5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

10 years ago, I was watching my Potential and Opportunities dissolve and evaporate in an ocean of cheap gin and expensive whiskey.

But 5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

One of the exercises they had us perform was to imagine ourselves happy, 5 years in the future.

Many of us in that room had forgotten how to imagine nice things happening to them. A few snorted (well, I snorted), finding the notion that we’d even still be around in 5 years grimly humorous.

For about half of us, it was the last stop on the way down.

But I indulged the therapist. I was there, after all, because I did not want to die. So, I imagined myself, 5 years hence.

Happy.

It came to me all at once; an artistic remix on Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, reframed with myself placing food at the table.

Sunday Dinner At My Place, I answered, when it came my turn to share my fantasy. I was asked what food I imagined eating.

It’s not the meal itself, I said, it’s the implications framed around it. Sunday Dinner At My Place means that I have a Place. It means that I have Family that will actually speak to me and friends who actually want to see me. It means money enough not just to feed myself but others too. It means having the time to spare to take the time preparing the meal.

A lot of nodding heads all around me. A struck chord. Many people with no Place, in that place. Nowhere that would lament their leaving.

5 years hence, as I lay down to sleep in my Home, with my Wife and my Son, surrounded by my Art and my Flowers, I reflect.

It was a long road. It was hard. We lost people. So many people. There were long days and long nights and hospital stays. Angry arguments with ghosts. I changed, in ways I never hoped for, or expected. Good ways, finally, for once. Slowly, against the backdrop of a world in chaos, I found my mind.

Sometimes, My Wife wondered aloud, what she did to deserve me. After some stumbling with my feelings, I eventually settled on an answer.

I’m a Rescue.

She gave me a Home.

And, so, I gave her a Family.

It seemed fair

This Sunday, my folks, which whom I have not had a shouting match in years, will come over for dinner. We will cook and eat together. My Friend became My Wife, and she took a piece of me and with it she made Our Son. There will be many hugs, and no violence. Good Things Happened.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t know what the future holds.

don’t give up yet, ok?

It could get good, even.