@BPD anon ummm vegan snack food. Let me think. Do you like dried fruits? Perfect snack for traveling/stuffing face when everything else looks too much. I prefer banana and apple chips, but there are a HUGE variety of dried fruits and veggies in stores here. dunno about your location but I hope they aren't like hyper expensive hipster food where you live?
@IvyLB Thank you! I personally am more of a salt lover than a sugar lover, so I take chips and crackers and all related things. Anyways, don't feel the need to make special food ideas for me as a vegan, I was just stopping in to point out how a lot of the low spoons foods seem high spoons in case A) that was a general problem that needed to be addressed or B) there was something up with me. Seems like it might be a bit of both!
Definitely worthwhile to remind us that our personal definitions of "low spoons food" can wildly differ, partly because of just how easy we find cooking, what personally works well or badly with our executive function issues, what ingredients we have readily available (sometimes it's the shopping that's hard, rather than the cooking), and stuff like that.
That makes sense. There are time when I actually find it easier to make a batch of pancakes than it is to find a granola bar or something, even if the former is technically more work.
my spoons vary widely, from "pre-make two weeks' worth of food all at once" to "peanut butter sandwich is too complicated" so all difficulty levels are appreciated. my personal solution tends to happen at the shopping stage rather than the cooking stage. i make sure i've got little tubs of cooked rice in my fridge, and have a shortlist of things that go well with it that are easy to do. for instance, frozen wontons, egg rolls, or stir-fry veggies. a local restaurant has this really great marinated chicken breast that they keep on the menu as a side to add to salads and whatnot, but they'll sell it on its own and it's really cheap -- like 3 bucks for a whole chicken breast cooked to perfect tender perfection. so every time we order from there, i buy an extra one of those, and parcel it out over the next few days as rice toppings. slightly more effort: frozen fish fillet, 2 tbsp butter, 1 tbsps lemon juice. fry the fish until crispy, slice in chopstickable strips, put on top of reheated rice. melt butter with lemon juice, pour resulting lemon butter over fish and rice. slightly even more effort: cut up some greens like scallion, pea pods, spinach; scramble an egg; toss rice in frying pan or wok with greens and egg, a sprinkle of chinese 5 spice and/or szechuan spice, and a splash of soy sauce. fried rice!
True low spoon food for me is eating a can of tuna and a piece of fruit and being like, "Yes I have had a protein and a vitamins go me."
Hm, I think mayb the reason "eat right away" low spoons food was mostly omitted was because people felt they had to post recipes. Maybe lists of food suggestions would help there? Also maybe stuff like "These things which need no cooking go well with these things which need no cooking." My lowest of the low spoon food is canned soup, followed by buttered bread.
Most ready to eat stuff is a) super unhealthy and b) expensive. This is very frustrating to me. I like precooked shrimp. Sometimes i dunk it in cocktail sauce or put it in things but ill eat them straight out the package too. Prepackaged salads. I occasionally eat them straight out of the bag without even mixing. The little things of washed fruit are never as good cause they always cut them before they're ripe but things like apples are usually ok. Dont bother with mangos that way its totally nasty. Ditto kiwis. Creamed honey on toast. Wheat with seeds and nuts and stuff is actually tastier for this and also lets you pretend its healthyish. Anyone heard of soylent? My husband does that for breakfast and lunch, and its pretty tasty.
Haha yep pretty much. Its a nutrition shake you can live off of entirely supposedly. https://www.soylent.com
I grabbed a couple of protein/"meal" shakes to try today at the store. Not soylent, actually just flavored stuff with added vitamins. Not something I could really live off of but if I find some I like they might make good first meal of the day replacements when I wake up with hardly any spoons.
carnation instant breakfast is pretty good. i usually mix it into an extra big glass of milk and add a shot of chocolate sauce so it tastes more like chocolate milk and less like vitamin powder. but on the whole it tastes better than slimfast and has more vitamins than ensure. edit: oh, and speaking of drinkable meals, i make virgin bloody marys for breakfast sometimes when i can't stand to eat. v-8 juice has a lot of fiber and vitamins, and spicing it up somehow makes it not run afoul of the "oh god don't make me put food in my mouth" sensory thing i sometimes get in the mornings. my personal bloody mary recipe -- in a large lidded cup (like those reusable starbucks thermos cups), put a squirt of lemon juice, a squirt of soy sauce, and a generous shake of cajun spice. (splash of vodka optional, but not recommended for mornings because it will make you fall back asleep.) fill it to within an inch of the top with v-8 tomato, top it up with ice, put the lid on and shake. stick a straw in it. slurp. not enough calories to count as a meal meal, but it gets me my vitamin c for the day and it's better than nothing.
Low spoons food for me means things that require as few separate dishes as possible. I've devised a way of making and eating beans on toast using only one plate, one bowl and one spoon, but even that is too much for me sometimes. (I can elaborate on this method if anyone is interested. Explaining it turns out to be more complicated than I expected.) Anyway, here are some of my low spoon foods: -Instant oatmeal is great. I prefer the kind that only requires boiling water, not warmed milk, because warming milk to the right temperature is confusing and difficult. -Lately, I've been microwaving Aldi frankfurters (super easy, 20-40 seconds on a plate) and wrapping them in a slice of bread (no prep needed). Very easy and tasty. -Peanut butter and jam sandwiches are usually a low-spoon food for me, and reasonably balanced (compared to plain slices of bread, anyway). -Sometimes I buy a whole roast chicken and just pull bits off. I'm not a huge fan of white meat, so in order to avoid wasting it I have to have enough spoons to cut up the white meat and mix it with something else (usually just mayo, maybe a shake of pepper or herbs) before it goes off. I really love picking the little squidgy bits off of the carcass at the end, though; it can keep me entertained for up to an hour. -Alternatively, buying a thing of cooked chicken drumsticks is good. -If you (or someone you share a house with) made food at some point, but the leftovers require a plate and utensils to eat, wrapping some up in a tortilla is a good way of avoiding dishwashing spoon expenditure. If you have the spoons to wash up more than one dish at a time, particularly pots and pans (which I find very difficult): -Eggs are so useful! I suck at making omelettes, but I'm very good at 'scrambled eggs with stuff in'. Large quantities of onion usually go in there; chives, mushrooms, and various other veggies are good too. -Get a cheese grater. Grate up equal parts carrot, zucchini (AKA courgette), and apple. Optionally, cut up a little bit of onion (substantially less than the other veggies, though) and add that too. Fry the mixture until it achieves the desired taste and texture. -Couscous is very easy to make. You just add boiling water to it, and let it sit; it gets plumped up and cooked in about 5 minutes. If you mix in a few raisins and pine nuts before you add the water, you get a very nice, mild-but-not-bland, easy meal. -Microwaving pasta is a good skill to have. Make sure your bowl/receptacle is significantly larger than the amount of pasta you want, otherwise it'll bubble over and flood your microwave. Put the desired amount of pasta in your bowl; boil a kettle; pour enough boiling water to cover the pasta; cover the bowl with something microwave-safe (a plate works if you don't have anything else); set the microwave for whatever period of time the pasta packet says to cook the pasta; strain it when you're done. My favourite kinds of pasta to use for this are gnocchi and ravioli. If you want, after you strain it, you can add some pasta sauce from a jar, and mix it all up to add some tomatoey goodness to the flavour.
@BPD anon possibly your living situation also? I enjoy cooking and usually have the energy to do it, but right now I share a kitchen with six other people I don't know that well and who don't always clean up after themselves. Dredging up the energy to go cook in a communal space is a lot more exhausting for me than the cooking itself. Low spoons food for me is, yeah, anything that can be eaten straight away or zapped in the microwave, because anything that I have to stand over or leave to cook counts as high-spoon drain. I find frozen pittas are great, though. Chuck 'em in the toaster and fill with stuff: tuna from a can, salad from a bag, hummus.
Or falafel! You can buy little tubs of them in Sainsbury's. Tub of falafel, tub of hummus, toasted pita: easy and yummy. Just be careful when you get them out of the toaster, though - I often find that the insides are much hotter than the outsides, and finger-burning is a risk.
Oh man I am so glad someone else understands this too. (I considered the recipe I posted spoons heavy but it seemed on par with what everyone else was posting so I figure I'd share anyways) I remember one major depressive episode I gained a lot of weight because all I could really eat were snack foods that you didn't have to do anything to. Like chips, crackers, maybe popcorn. My executive function levels basically tank. I think a part of it is self medication too. Like high carb foods are supposed to stimulate those feel good hormones. So in my bad brain I think that it's better than not eating, and if I eat this stuff then maybe it'll help me feel better. I am starting to think that the sad thing is that when spoons are THAT low, there really isn't a "low spoon" recipe. It's practically impossible to grocery shop to begin with to look for things that will lessen the spoon drain that much (too many options!) and there is not a lot of stuff that is just "open bag and then shove in your food hole" besides chips, crackers, ice cream, except maybe something like raw fruits and vegetables. So the options are not eat very well, have someone who cares about you help you with food, or when you have enough spoons than make some medium spoons or high spoons food that will last a little while.
I can chuck stuff in a pot all day long. Stuff like grating and chopping and whisking and basically anything but 'chuck it in. Maybe stir.' counts as high spoon drain for me. Likewise frying anything you dont actually want blackened. I could not cook a grilled cheese sandwich if my life depended on it. Dealing with raw meat gives me the squicks something fierce too. Im responsible for dinner at my house though. So like, i will do weird spoon allotments like 'i have to make THREE meals today? *wibbleface* No. No, were having a handful of cookies for breakfast and lunch can fuck right off. I will cook something basic for dinner." This. Is not actually a great way to eat. :/
Oh hey, you know whats a fantastic thing to make when you have high spoons? Muffin tin fritatta. You can make a fuckton at a time for relatively little extra effort, they freeze like a dream, and you can eat them cold with your hands straight out of the fridge. Saute some onions or shallots, spinach or kale, mushrooms, sausage, bacon, whatever. Mix up some eggs and cheese in a bowl. Put fillings in about a third to half way up your muffin tins, top with egg stuff, pop in the oven at 350 til it sets up. When its cool, pop a few days worth at a time in plastic bags and chuck them into the freezer. Put them in the fridge at night to thaw, by next morning they're all cool and healthy and delicious.
ready to eat food that is not too unhealthy: trail mix! and bulk snack mixes! like those variety dealies with the sesame crackers and wasabi peas and cashews and whatnot. luka just brought me a huge box of different kinds to try from aldi today. thanks bro. :3 i put it in a tupperware box, and when i need to food but i can't spoons, i take a little bowl and scoop out some Jesse Kibble and graze on nuts and berries while i'm reading or internetting. it's got a good amount of protein and fiber, and depending on what all you mix together it can have a fair variety of other nutrients. lots of salt, though, so make sure to drink lots of water with it. also, i've gotten cutting up apples down to muscle memory; as long as i have an apple and a knife, it can happen even if my brain wanders off somewhere. i may find myself carrying the bowl of apple slices around the house in a bit of a daze, i might leave the applejuice-sticky knife in the fridge or on the coffee table, but i have cut up enough apples in my life that i do succeed in obtaining apple slices and not cutting my fingers even so. :D
Amusingly, re: what @Lissiel said about chopped up fruit pots being nasty because they're not quite ripe- I prefer them that way because I am appallingly picky about fruit and if it's squashy I won't touch it. The kind of ever so slightly underripe fruit they use in those pots is perfect though, so long as it's not underripe enough to be more sour than sweet. Do tend to be weirdly expensive though, like Tesco, fuck off charging two quid for a few cubes of melon. Bad Tesco. ...Is it any wonder I don't eat nearly as much fruit as I probably should? I, personally, don't find chopping things up to be too aggressively spoon-draining, so my go-to when I'm running rather low but not painfully low is a kind of weird omelette. The way I do it is basically to chop things like spring onion (uh... scallions I think), pre-cooked smoked sausage, mushrooms and suchlike that don't require much cooking (or sometimes like a potato (you can use pre-boiled) or a parsnip which require more cooking so you can put it on to fry while you cut up everything else), toss it in a pan until it's cooked to your taste, beat two/three/four eggs with some pepper and herbs, pour egg mixture over everything else, prod until egg is cooked through, eat. You can also grate cheese on top if you like though it can be a bit greasy if you do that.
