Food for Humans

A Simple Quarantine Breakfast Hack!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, you might expect me to be at the top of my game during an unprecedented modern global pandemic…and you’d be right! I have everything I need: a stocked kitchen of perishable and nonperishable goods, exactly one container of Clorox wipes, and the sinking dread that life as we know it has changed forever.

When you’re listlessly floating through a hellscape where every person and object feels suddenly suspicious, it’s important to be adaptable to a changing situation. Because no matter how prepared you are, you can always be blindsided by a setback. Like how I’ve spent my whole life catastrophizing about various apocalypse scenarios and never played out the first stages of a global pandemic. OR how I bought two weeks’ worth of food and forgot to get potatoes. So when I found myself craving a veggie breakfast burrito, I thought: hooray, a challenge! Then I cried for ten minutes.

At times like this, it’s important for a successful lifestyle blogger to be resourceful. And what I did have was a freezer-burned instant hash brown from Trader Joe’s, as well as a bunch of compulsions I haven’t thought about in over a decade!

So with that in mind, I spent 20 minutes looking up how much heat it takes to kill coronavirus and then set the toaster oven to 450 for ten minutes.

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Once the hash brown was cooked, I mashed it up, washed my hands, and added:

  • a scrambled egg
  • some raw kale (washed with water only, followed by seven fruitless google searches to see if that’s okay)
  • washed my hands again
  • dried my hands on a communal towel by accident, washed them again
  • diced avocado
  • Victoria salsa (medium spice)
  • a few dashes of Tapatio hot sauce
  • is the Tapatio bottle contaminated? washed hands again
  • will the hot sauce make me congested and, thus, terrified? oh well, too late

And voila! A soothing and potato-y burrito that I was very afraid to pick up. The crispiness of the hash browns added a comforting texture as I stared out the window trying to remember whether I’d remembered to wash my hands after bringing in the newspaper. The burrito was delicious, my inner monologue was not. And that, my friends, is what I call a success right now, I guess. Maybe?

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I’m going back to bed.

 

 

A Nice Dinner or a Cry for Help?

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I’m no stranger to telling you all about what I’m eating. But usually, the meals I share on here aren’t so…balanced. But the times have changed and so have I, and now I am cooking real meals at a frenetic pace. In the last few weeks, I’ve made myself:

  • Stuffed peppers with homemade avocado cilantro crema
  • Sweet potato quinoa tacos
  • Ginger soy cucumber salad
  • Asparagus soup in a single-serve blender
  • Goat cheese pizza with fresh garlic and diced tomatoes
  • Lemon garlic pasta with mushrooms and peppers
  • Kale black bean tacos with homemade chimichurri sauce
  • Hot toddies with homemade ginger simple syrup
  • Almost-daily breakfast burritos using taco leftovers
  • Zucchini noodles with homemade tomato pesto sauce

My lifestyle is good and nothing is wrong.

Cooking a complete, healthy meal can be a way to show yourself that you’re worth the effort. Self care is a must! But after spending three hours making stuffed peppers on a Saturday night, aren’t you sending a smoke signal by way of your greasy stovetop that HI, SOMEONE SHOULD PLEASE COME EAT THIS MEAL WITH ME!

Because while making food from scratch is a very good thing to do, how many homemade sauces does it take to say PLEASE TAKE ALL THE NEWS APPS OFF MY PHONE, I CAN’T HANDLE ALL THE SCARY ALERTS?

So no matter what else is happening in your life, you too can finish out 2017 by learning how to thicken a pasta sauce. I did, and it was much easier than admitting that I HAVE MADE NO SIGNIFICANT CAREER PROGRESS THIS YEAR AND THAT PROBABLY WON’T CHANGE BY THE TIME I GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS.

But if nothing else, at least the sauce was a success. 🙂

 

Cheap Tattoo Hack: Cooking Burns

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I know that individuality is very important. Tattoos are a great way to tell the world how unique you are and turn your body into a work of art! But tattoos can also be expensive, and they require you to ask the question “Is there something I’d like to put on my body forEVER?” which triggers an existential spiral in even the most adequate among us.

Yesterday, I was roasting some tomatillos on the bottom rack of the oven. When I reached in to take them out, the back of my hand brushed against the rack and gave me a line-shaped burn. It was only about an inch away from the toaster oven burn I got two years ago at an Air Bnb, which left a small smudge of a scar near my wrist.


I had two choices: accept that I am someone who should own those potholders that look like big mittens, or embrace my fate. And, because true lifestyle success is marked by acceptance of the inevitable, I choose to treat these burns and scars as an invitation to have a tattoo that I never wanted.

What should I tell people this tattoo is? Tell me in the comments!

I Sliced a Raw Sweet Potato and There Wasn’t ANY Blood

Posted on by Julie Pearson

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As a successful lifestyle blogger, I’m always trying out new recipes that will enrich my life. As an adequate lifestyle blogger, I make sure not to verify that my recipes are safe or possible. Last week, I wanted to make sweet potato fries, so I assumed I should cut up a sweet potato and put it in the oven.

Slicing raw sweet potatoes is harder than anticipated. They’re dense and alarmingly solid. But did I give up, pop them in the oven for a few minutes, and slice them afterwards? Absolutely not. I kept going. And I sliced all the way through two of them without seeing any blood at all! The knife got stuck in the potato over and over again, but I never gave up. Sure, I stabbed myself a bunch of times, but it never broke the skin.

As a reward for my efforts, I got some kind of baked sweet potato wedge things that were pretty soggy and were not fries. But they were also not my bleeding, mangled fingers brutally detached from my hands, so I think we can safely say this recipe was a success 🙂

Health Hack: Eat 3 Meals a Day!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

This was one meal I ate, but there were three in total.


When I started my career as a successful lifestyle blogger, I was working in an office. It meant I got to share exciting lifestyle secrets about morning routines and after-work dinners. Now, after a long hiatus where I had no lifestyle at all, I’m thrilled to announce that I am back and more lifestyled than ever. Only now, I work from home! This means I am very zen, centered, and teetering on the edge of emotional collapse at all times.

When I first started working from home, I didn’t have any groceries. This created a lot of confusion: Was there more to life than bagels and expired oatmeal?  How could I obtain food if I was at home all day? Why did I feel vaguely sick all the time? Surely a cup of coffee and a salad of shriveled greens should sustain me til dinner, but alas… it did not.

But then, I stumbled out of doors one night (there’s a whole world out there!) and happened upon the grocery store. At this miraculous house of food, I bought fresh produce and nourishing carbohydrates. I took them home and the next day, I ate three complete meals.

And oh, the energy! I felt so human. So alive. So adequate. And that’s the thing with miracles. Nobody knows how it works! But that’s the beauty of basic biology: it can’t be understood.

Loneliness Hack: Make Festive Party Foods for Just You!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

If you’re like me, you know that cooking for one can be a bummer. All the work that goes into lovingly preparing a meal only serves as a reminder that you are all alone in the world. (Not even successful lifestyle bloggers are immune to this. It’s lonely at the top.)

But does a lifestyle blogger give up? No, I found a solution! This one simple trick will breathe new life into your lonely habits:

Make fun dishes that are meant for groups, and eat them alone.

 


These veggie stuffed mushrooms are a healthy, decadent party snack. They’re challenging to prepare (hollowing out those mushrooms is harder than it looks!), and the slicing, chopping, and baking process builds anticipation for what is sure to be a warm dinner party in the company of good friends. Or, a semi-satisfying dinner for one! I put them on a plate and washed them down with some wine, but feel free to hold the hot cookie sheet over the sink and go to town.


Cauliflower fritters are a healthy twist on hash browns, and they’re great for a homemade brunch with someone you love. Or, for creating an entire sink full of dishes that you, yourself will have to wash! But hovering over a hot stove and trying to flip these beauties before they crumbled? It was so worth it when I saw the look on my own face as I took the first bite, my reflection in the living room window betraying a mix of satisfaction an existential doom. Yum!


Queso dip is, technically, not food. But it is great for parties! And any event can be a party with the right snacks – even sitting on the couch and admitting that you, truly, have given up. And when you’re eating alone, nobody will ever know that you finished the entire jar yourself. I didn’t even give this picture a border, because it doesn’t deserve it.

I might be a lonely lifestyle blogger, but with this fun life hack, I’m also full of appetizers at all times! And that, my friends, is what I call a success 🙂

Fad Diet: Salad Week

Posted on by Julie Pearson

I couldn’t call myself a successful lifestyle blogger if I didn’t endorse a harebrained dieting scheme. So let’s go with this one:

A few weeks ago, my roommate Inae and I made a commitment to eat salads for a week. The parameters were that we would take turns making a salad every day, and the salad would be dinner. That’s it. No other guidelines. Easy diet, right?

WRONG. No, just kidding. It was pretty successful! We made it six days, which is hereby called an Adequate Week™. And the salads were, overall, pretty healthy. I was surprised how full I felt from just eating a lot of vegetables.

Though Salad Week was pretty successful, I did chronicle it poorly. There were lots of homemade dressings and delicious roasted chickpeas and marinated tofu, but I don’t remember most of what they were. Instead, enjoy these unexplained photos of salads!




Recipe: Magic Eggs

Posted on by Julie Pearson

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I didn’t have a lot of time for lunch today, so I made something quick that is usually a totally passable lunch choice: spinach and eggs. The recipe is simple. You saute some spinach, then crack a couple eggs in as soon as the spinach starts shrinking up. The eggs finished cooking – I swear they were all cooked – and I crumbled some goat cheese on top. I sat down to eat.

Only then, like MAGIC, the eggs uncooked themselves! It was yolk soup. It was a disgusting lunch miracle! It was basically inedible.

I didn’t eat it.

But I didn’t give up. I popped the whole thing in the microwave for a minute, which cooked up the eggs a little too much. It didn’t taste good, but I did have lunch. And that, my friends, is what I call an adequate meal 🙂