A reach out my fellow "old" members

I cook for 1 most of the time, although thats not really true as I never manage and almost always have left overs
Anyway, I like cooking, maybe because I like eating
I do have times when I don't feel like it, but not often.
Going back on topic:
Maybe just lay of cooking for a bit and you'll find you miss it.
Or spend 1 day to make 3 or 4 meals/sauces in one go and freeze in portions.
1 big cook, 1 big clean, just small cleans and heat up for the rest of the week
(I used to do this when I worked long hours, left home early, came back late. It works for me as I like stews, curries, pasta etc).

Or think of a cuisine you know nothing about, but would like to try?
Put a map on the wall, throw a dart, and thats your country for the week, or month?

taxlady said:

I had a thought. We used to have contests. Maybe we could come up with an idea for a contest or challenge. Maybe something about meals for one or for two. Anyone want to try that?

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Great idea. There are so many more single person households now than when I was younger. Even with a couple, one or both of us want to eat different foods and not make 6 servings. Go for it.

taxlady said:

I know that I have lost a lot of my interest in cooking. No, that's not exactly it. It's more like it doesn't seem like it is as much worth the effort as it was before my husband died. Not only is it almost as much effort to cook for one as for two, I have to do the stuff that DH used to do. So, I have more chores and less helping with the chores that are easier for two. Altogether, that just makes cooking and the cleanup more effort than before without the pleasure of sharing the meals.

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I can identify with that. My ex-wife and I cooked together pretty much every evening for supper. We actually worked well as a cooking team.

CD

taxlady said:

I had a thought. We used to have contests. Maybe we could come up with an idea for a contest or challenge. Maybe something about meals for one or for two. Anyone want to try that?

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Cooking challenges are fun. We could do challenges without them having to be contests. A lot of people aren't into contests, but some of those people would enjoy a challenge from time-to-time.

CD

taxlady said:

I had a thought. We used to have contests. Maybe we could come up with an idea for a contest or challenge. Maybe something about meals for one or for two. Anyone want to try that?

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I have always LOVED the cooking challenges. Meals for one or two is a great idea. Also a cook once and eat twice where the two meals are based on the cooking once. I'm game for any sort of contest as long as I don't define what the contest is! LOL. It could even be a cook, post, and discuss meal where we could determine "who did it best" in various categories such as plating, use of seasonal items, healthiest, quickest, fanciest, etc....whatever categories we want to discuss.

Kathleen said:

I have always LOVED the cooking challenges. Meals for one or two is a great idea. Also a cook once and eat twice where the two meals are based on the cooking once. I'm game for any sort of contest as long as I don't define what the contest is! LOL. It could even be a cook, post, and discuss meal where we could determine "who did it best" in various categories such as plating, use of seasonal items, healthiest, quickest, fanciest, etc....whatever categories we want to discuss.

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Yeah, I would like to see us do some challenges, but not contests. No winners, losers or runners-up. Just something that challenges us to use our noggins, and pushes our cooking skills out of our daily routine boxes.

I'd be willing to come up with some challenges, and post them on the forum, if enough people post up and say they want to do this. Meals for one/two is one possibility. One -pot meals, where the only rule is that you can only use one pot/pan for cooking is another one that immediately comes to mind.

CD

@caseydog If you plan and post it, I'm in! Just give us a bit of time to post our results. And, please, let people post them when they can and not on a given date.

Kathleen said:

@caseydog If you plan and post it, I'm in! Just give us a bit of time to post our results. And, please, let people post them when they can and not on a given date.

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I'm not big on rules, so if you all want me to do this, I'll keep it really loose.

CD

Kathleen said:

@caseydog If you plan and post it, I'm in! Just give us a bit of time to post our results. And, please, let people post them when they can and not on a given date.

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Count me in too. And I like the post whenever idea. We just need to encourage people to post all in one thread, maybe post a link in that thread to a recipe. But, it would be nice to be able to find it all from one thread per challenge.

I also prefer challenges, without winners or losers.

taxlady said:

Count me in too. And I like the post whenever idea. We just need to encourage people to post all in one thread, maybe post a link in that thread to a recipe. But, it would be nice to be able to find it all from one thread per challenge.

I also prefer challenges, without winners or losers.

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Okay, I'll post a challenge up by tomorrow. It's a Monday, so a good time to start something. It will be something everyone can participate in, and the rules will be minimal. One thing I will ask is that, if possible, post a picture. It can be a blurry cell phone picture, but I think we all like to see pictures. That is not a rule, merely a request.

I think I know what I want to do for the first challenge... Stay tuned.

Oh, the most important rule is to have fun. Challenge yourself!

CD

Casey, you tease you. Doing this might just get me back to wasting time visiting DC on a regular basis. I've kinda gotten out of the habit what with this move-and-kids-again thing.

I used to do posts like these - "Let's talk ..." Or "Let's play with ..." and you would post recipes (and pictures if you want). No deadlines, no winners, just fun, and new ideas.

@caseydog on a personal note about retiring or partially retiring, this past 10 years has been an adjustment for both of us.
Sometimes we start a new interest, apply ourselves, then find we didn't have a sustained interest in going further with it. The only way to really know if a new interest area will work, is to apply ourselves and go from there.
Be brave enough to suck at something new. That's been our motto.
Mr bliss didn't know he'd love the beekeeping, and he still does. He enjoys the bees, the weather, the honey, working with others, teaching and learning from others, and belonging to bee groups. I'm supportive of it and I help and plan the flowers in the yard which is great for medicinal herbalism and they are beautiful. I didn't know I'd love learning watercolors and I'm still learning and interested and using some mixed media. A good friend took up watercolors recently so we paint together, it's been a blast.

It's been both the interest area plus the level of socialization that works for both of us.