12thdoctorfan - Unbetitelt

i had to make a solution for this for myself, mostly because of depression, but it makes a nice How To for folks who are low on spoons or could use some help in the kitchen.

Fortunately i was a professional cook for over a decade. UNfortunately the first post i made explaining it was suuuuper long. Let's see if i can do better

So you select any protein that you can cook in a frying pan -- chicken breasts, ground beef, pork chops, sausages, steak, chicken thighs, whatever. You also select one or two types of veggie (mushrooms or tubers also work, i just did this with potatoes and carrots for dinner tonight).

[i like cooking for vegetarians, but this is how i cook for myself when i'm low on spoons - perhaps i'll do another post for meatless meals]

You'll also need some kind of oil, and a sauce or two of your choice in a bottle. All cooking gear is a large frying pan with lid (i prefer non-stick) a spatula, a cutting board, and a knife.

You cut the veggies into bite size pieces, cut up enough for two meals. One kind of veggie is fine, or you can do mix two or three

Put frying pan on medium heat with a little oil. Tubers or mushrooms or go in the pan a few minutes before the protein. 2 portions of the protein goes in the pan, about 5 minutes with lid (don't worry you can still get a good sear on both sides)

Now flip your protein if it's flip-able and add normal veggies, put the lid back on another five-ish minutes.

Take your protein out and put it with one portion of the veggies in a microwave safe container. That's going to be your lunch tomorrow. Put the other portion of protein on a plate to rest (you have to let a cooked protein sit a couple minutes before you serve it or when you cut into it all the juices run out and it goes dry - the liquids thicken as it cools, preventing this drying out if you let it rest, the goal is to serve it very warm but not hot hot)

While it's resting, pour some sauce from your bottle in the pan with the rest of the veggies and turn up the heat. A single sauce/bottle is fine, i like to get fancy and mix a couple. Two examples of personal favorite mixes are 1: bbq sauce and a hot sauce like sriracha 2: roughly equal parts low sodium soy sauce and worcestershire (makes something similar to a teriyaki sauce) A swallow of wine is almost always a great option if you want to add that to your sauce too, just add it to the pan before the other sauces so the alcohol has time to burn off.

...

Here is the important bit. While your veggies are finishing, wash your cutting board and chef knife. Then when you dump your veggies and sauce over your protein on the plate, while it is still too hot to eat, you wash your frying pan and spatula before you eat. Now the only dishes you have left to do are your plate and fork. Maybe a steak knife.

...

The whole thing takes about 35 minutes even with washing the dishes, and that includes your lunch for the next day- just pour a different sauce on and stick it in the microwave for a couple minutes (or five minutes back in the frying pan) and you have a full healthy lunch with a different flavor

You can use this technique every single meal and it yields hundreds of combinations, from pork and potatoes bbq, to salmon and broccoli teriyaki, to chicken and zucchini in a soy glaze.

It will keep you down to less than an hour of kitchen time per day total for both lunch and dinner including all dish clean up, uses the least dishes, the least effort, requires the least technique, and is, depending on what you pick out, very affordable

here are a couple more examples from this month; i didn’t take pictures of the salmon i did recently, but you get the idea

it's not super fancy, but it is easy, affordable, quick, and any flavors you want. Hope this helps some folks

Happy Cooking!

i think one of the most depressing things about having severe mental illness is that i spend so much of my life observing, but not participating. i watch people get better jobs, join clubs, make other friends, go on outings, and cultivate hobbies. and what do i do exactly?

i rot in bed and scroll online even though i don’t actually like the internet that much. i’m too scared to leave the house regularly because i feel unsightly. i have no pictures of myself to look back on, and nothing that really marks the passage of time except which classes i’m taking that semester.

i wish i had a completely new brain.

thats my fat old man!!

context: @sexyman-contest-2025

I wish more people were outraged about this. More people should be. In the span of what? A month? Netflix has not only cancelled Dead Boy Detectives, an incredible show with great acting, writing, film quality, etc... and characters that are queer, but they've announced a "modern retelling" of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, you know, the book that was so gay it was used as evidence in the author's sodomy trial, and they have chosen to make Basil and Dorian Gray siblings. I have seen so little talk about it, because people are feeling exhausted and defeated, but you know what? Exhausted silence only sends the message to this bloody company that they can continue to do this type of shit and nothing bad will come of it because people don't care enough to fight back. What choice do we have but to fight? We have to fight and show people that we won't tolerate this kind of thing. Dead Boy Detectives was a brilliant show, and this isn't the first time such an incident has happened. Dorian Gray does not deserve this atrocious "modern retelling". I am sick of being met with silence and really, it's overdue that we let these companies know how exactly they can fuck off. I so desperately want to see given to these works the same treatment that people gave to OFMD when it got cancelled. No one else is going to do it for you. Not enough people realise how strong their individual voice can be if they stand up and shout it out. Let's show these companies what fucking happens when they pull these kinds of stunts. Every action has a consequence.

the neurodivergent experience:

20% of the time: wowwieee!!! i love my passions and interests!!!!! they make me so happy i want to jump up and down!!!!! weee!!!!!!! :3333333333

80% of the time: this mind is a prison

"comrade in arms" yeah i bet he was in your arms. every night. fruit

I wonder how long it’s gonna be before Miss Piggy x Morticia fanart or fanfiction is posted after this, I bet fanart will be released first

My doctor and therapist: now with this autism + ADHD diagnosis you need to learn to unmask because masking all the time will make you burn out again and feel like shit

Other people: well it's just interesting how after getting the diagnosis you suddenly start behaving like that I mean I'm not saying you're faking it's just funny how you suddenly cannot be normal like you were before