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What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
Note: this is not about an eating disorder but it is about struggling with hunger/appetite.
I'm struggling to both enjoy and cook food recently. It's a mix of Adderall and exhaustion and I would love ideas for "anytime" foods - Foods I feel like I can eat anytime even when it's not appetizing but not just desserts.
Cheese is almost always a win for example and relatively good for me, and cereal, while less optimal, is usually ok. Sometimes I can put together a "girl dinner" or bread/cheese/meat because that's basically a sandwich, but when my meds are still working at home after work I get things done and don't want food or water and I end up sipping ice water and not eating much.
Tonight is a pot pie but I'm sort of staring at it because while I'm hungry, I don't want food, ya know?
In my experiences the best low-appetite foods are 1. Salty foods (your monkey brain is wired to just love salt all the time) and 2. Broths. I guess also 3. Sugary foods but yknow carbs and health and all that. I'm not on any meds though, and you know what works for you.
My go-to low-effort food is just rice with random stuff in it. I nearly always have rice handy, either cold rice in the fridge that I can heat up, or warm rice sitting in my rice cooker on the warming setting (it's the best thing I own honestly). In regards to "random stuff", normally that's a shake of furikake (storebought normally but I sometimes make my own), a spoonful of soy sauce, maybe something a bit spicy like lao gan ma or sambal (la-yu and/or togarashi for the Japanese vibe). If I want it to be slightly more substantial of a meal I can fry an egg or two and mash it into the rice, or some jar kimchi.
Of course, me having a rice cooker makes rice an incredibly easy anytime food, since it takes 3 minutes to wash the rice and then I can do something else for an hour does the hard part for me. I am a rice cooker evangelist (you can get one for $25 and so far I have never met a single person who has got one and regretted it), but I accept that it can be a pain without one.
Other things I do sometimes:
Greek yoghurt with peanut butter, granola, berries (this is mostly a breakfast thing for me, but "breakfast food" is a social construct designed to keep you complacent, wake up sheeple!!!!!)
Miscellaneous soups - Miso soup takes 5 minutes with store-bought stock, and can be easily made into a meal by adding pantry ingredients. Dried udon/ramen/soba noodles, dried seaweed (wakame/hijiki), tofu (silken tofu lasts for months in a pantry). You can also buy various soup broth concentrates in stores and they generally last a while: Cook some noodles, stick them in broth, maybe a handful of frozen veg, that's food!
Porridge (oats) - It's an easy thing to make and can be quite nutritious, if not particularly exciting.
Banana - banana. eat it by itself, or with something else
Salty makes sense. I don't have a rice cooker but I'm starting to feel like I should.
Peanut butter and bananas is a good option for me, with or without bread. Fruit is just hard sometimes because it often goes bad before we get to it. I do have some miso soup packets (I haven't seen miso stock or is it a different stock I should look for?)
Once I get to cooking noodles and adding to broth + veggies though I'm hitting a level of cooking that won't work on the really rough nights. (Complicating things is my partner wants to and plans to cook and then doesn't feel well and isn't hungry and doesn't cook and I am not prepared for the decision making process of finding food and cooking when I thought he was handling it. Especially when my appetite is also shit.). I do like a good oatmeal with frozen berries and some brown sugar and butter. Maybe "brown" Splenda.
Thanks for the ideas!
I'm dealing with chronic constipation and the associated stomach pain and have switched from trying to eat more to just trying to eat more calorie dense. I know this isn't what you asked for, but as an alternative strategy if the appealing route doesn't pan out, you might want to consider mixing in high calorie things into your normal meals. I've started adding nut butters into shakes so I can wang out a drink with 800 calories or adding olive oil to like anything else I eat (or at least the thing where I might not notice it, i.e. baked chicken, potatoes, sandwiches, etc...) It's an odd thing to navigate in a world that is usually pushing calorie reduction, but I've found that following food advice for infants and toddlers has been helpful.
The most successful meal for me has been rice bowls. I can throw in a few eggs, sesame/olive oil, spices, and usually a little veg and end up with like 800 calories. It's easy on the stomach and goes well with kimchi for gut health.
No it makes sense, especially if I'm not hungry getting enough calories as easily as possible is better than grazing a bit and eating something shitty later because I'm now starving.
Everyone is so good at rice here though!
Nice! Yeah, that's my logic too.
I was terrrrrible at making rice until my last housemate took the time to teach me. (I never grew up eating it). It's a 1 part rice to 1.5 part water ratio (can vary based on type of rice). Bring to boil covered and immediately turn to low and let it simmer for 10 minutes (don't touch the lid, this is key). Then turn it off and either eat then (good) or let it sit with the lid on for another 10 minutes (best).
Rice was always such a mystery to me and after that it's the easiest side!
Rice cookers are pretty idiot proof. A lot of people have them and use them. We make rice in our instant pot and it never burns because the machine turns the heat off.
Oh I know they're very popular. We don't eat rice super often but tbh I think we could easily. I just didn't grow up with or around them so I never felt like I knew what I was doing. (We had more pasta or potatoes than rice as our starch/grain)
For the rice cookers I'm familar with, add rice and water in the correct proportions and push the button. It turns the heat off at the correct time.
Oh I mean literally yes but like, more like doing other things to or adding things with the rice and making it so I knew what to do with all the rice itself. Something I don't eat super often for no particular reason I can think of
Since I've got my own appetite issues thanks to GLP-1 agonist use, here's what's working for me:
Premade protein shakes and bars, e.g. Fairlife, Orgain, Premier Protein, etc. They're not terrible for you if you avoid anything that contains erythritol, and help to prevent muscle loss if you're not getting enough calories otherwise. Although they're advertised as meal replacements, I find it's best to just drink them down or eat them whenever and then try to eat regular food when I can.
Ramen noodles and freeze-dried toppings like this. Throw in some extra frozen veg, an egg, or a can of tuna, even a sprinkle of Parmesan, and it's not nutritionally horrible except for the sodium content.
You like cheese... my "can't be bothered" meal is a chunk of cheese and an apple. Just enough fiber to keep everything moving, and not so much food that it feels like I can't get it down. If you find that giant grocery store apples are more than you want to eat, you can get apples in children's lunchbox sizes in 3 lb. bags, which I prefer. Apples are great for longer keeping than most other fruits.
Castelvetrano olives. They're less bitter, and have some beneficial nutrients and fatty acids that are hard to get on a restricted diet. They're calorie-dense by weight.
Nuts and nut mixes with dried fruit, preferably low or no sodium or sugar. The fats are generally healthy, nuts are high in protein and trace minerals. The major drawback is that they can be extremely filling, so eat them in moderation, with other foods so you're not just eating nuts.
Precut or baby carrots, celery, and other snack-cut vegetables. Easy to nibble on throughout the day so that you're eating without feeling full.
Whole-grain crackers and breads. It's easy to wind up constipated on a restricted diet. The convenience factor applies - slather some peanut butter, slap on some cheese and meat, scoop up a fried egg, use a smear of cream cheese or miso paste and a sprinkle of furikake or sprouts.
Overnight oats or grain mixes. When you're feeling up to it, you can pre-prep a batch and portion it out in whatever serving size containers you're comfortable eating, then enjoy it for a few days.
I like rice, but it's got to be brown rice just to make the fiber match my protein intake. I find brown rice to be much more filling than white rice, though. As others have mentioned, there are easy ways to make rice more like a complete meal. But if you like cereal, brown rice with soy sauce, a pat of butter, and a dash of maple syrup is easy and completely snackable.
If you've got a Costco nearby, they've got numerous variations on cooked, ready to eat protein. Precooked hard-boiled eggs, Greek yogurt, cheese, falafel, tofu, chopped chicken or steak, egg bites, tinned fish, all kinds of things that just need heat, or putting on rice or salad greens, or in soup or a sandwich, or eating as-is.
Sounds like me haha, not enough time in the day plus meds and I'll accidentally do an 18 hour fast. I have a long term love for cooking and handle all the meals in my household. Lately I'm just burnt out and doing anything extra sounds exhausting. I used to be all excited to look up new recipes and try something out. Now I'm like nothing sounds appetizing because effort. If my partner wasn't expecting food I'd definitely be skipping meals more often than not.
I try to focus on just having some generic protein cooked or reasonably ready to go at any given time. Cooked chicken breast in the fridge is just a quick sauce away from a stir fry, or cheese/tortilla for a quesadilla.
Rice cooker has been helping me a lot too I just make some in the morning and will leave it on the keep warm function if home. I was raised in a "clean your plate" house so seeing it prepared triggers that part of my brain so ymmv. But I just throw in whatever like frozen dumplings, veg, spices to switch it up.
This is why I love tofu. Take it out of the package, eat it raw or slap it in a toaster/oven grill/airfryer for a few minutes, take it out, and you've got yourself 25 grams of protein ± you can reasonably eat in whatever way you want. My favourite quarter-assed way is with olive oil, pepper, and lemon, but if you want to half-ass it you can easily just add something else. Sprinkling nori on it (or wrapping nori around it) is really tasty, for example.
I used to keep small precooked packages of chicken in the fridge for a quesadilla. Maybe if I crack open a can of refried beans and have it already in the fridge in Tupperware it'll feel less like cooking and more like putting stuff together.
Can you just toss dumplings into a rice cooker with the rice? I do not have one and am being swayed.
Air popped popcorn is healthier than other snacks and can be eaten while watching tv etc. Likewise cut carrots, celery, cucumber with some kind of dip.
Popcorn - usually stove or Costco bagged but with Creole seasoning and nutritional yeast - is one of my frequent snacks but I don't really want low calorie so much as "can eat". Veggies and dip can go ok with cheese or something else but are not great solo since I usually need something filling to go with. (And thinking that through when everything sounds like trash is hard).
But I do try to keep baby carrots around for that.
I made my first ever curry recently. My history with curry doesn't go back far and isn't cultural. I'm a white a guy from the deep south US lol.
Anyway a friend of mine has made many over the years I have known her and I wanted to try my hand at it. Going on the knowledge I acquired watching her make them I managed to no recipe one myself.
The first key element was proper curry powder from a local expansive Asian store. I don't remember the specific powder used but that plus cooked and mashed green beans and sweet potatoes, ginger, an onion, half a garlic clove, at least a half stick of butter, plenty of additional seasonings (a specific blend my father makes himself), some lentils, and water and gumption I was left with a delicious and flavorful paste that went excellently with my freshly cooked rice.
It came out very close to how friend's curries always do so I know I'm on the right path. I will be fine tuning and trying different variations on my next attempts.
So for those of you out there that have not delved into the world of homemade curries I would highly recommend this.
I want to make curry but garam masala is intimidating and my partner isn't a fan so I end up chickening out and making other things and ordering Indian as a treat instead.
ETA: I should have asked what kind of curry? Indian? British? Thai? Japanese? Something else?
Not who you asked, I'm spoiled by living in a city and region that is known for foodies but I visit a chef supply grocery store that stocks containers of thai curry paste. I mix some with coconut milk when I want curry and add vegetables etc.
Yeah I was thinking Indian but Thai curry I could easily get the ingredients for if I get the time and energy (and the willingness to "waste food" if I screw up. It's a weird mental thing) and I don't think partner has tried it yet.
From the best of my knowledge this is a Thai curry. I'm still learning about it in general. And I could understand your partner not being a fan. Certain flavor profiles are not everyone.
Thanks! I love a yellow Thai curry in particular. I was thinking of (Punjabi) Indian food when I replied. Maybe I should get some curry paste and try it at home.
if you want some super simple curries and more, Chetna has a good channel that covers the basics — https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC1VkNUPA6ieOuwXmk4SSJZw
I was really craving Pad Thai and I had some dry rice noodles but no sauce. Decided to try and mix some up following an online recipe. I had soy, rice vinegar and quality peanut butter but I didn't have any fish sauce so I used chicken stock instead and then chopped up some sugar peas in place of sprouts. It turned out amazing!