ADHD Chow

ADHD Chow Blog

  • Fed Is Best

    I’ve stolen the phrase from discussion around breastfeeding: should I feed a baby this way or that way or on the moon or on a chair made of solid gold?  The answer is: if the baby needs to eat right now, the best way to feed the baby is to feed them right now, with whatever is available that is okay for babies to eat.  However works right in this moment is the best way to do it.

    If you want to make moon arrangements, or obtain a gold chair, you can work on that project as you’re able, but until those are obtained the baby still needs regular meals.  Fed is best, as any other option is unacceptable.

    Get yourself fed, first and foremost.

    Food does not have a moral value*. The only “bad” food is spoiled or adulterated or will otherwise harm you if you eat it.  Food is not “naughty”, it isn’t playing pranks on the neighbors or acting up in class.  Food isn’t “guilty” unless it has committed a crime in which case the food is supposed to feel bad, not you – you’ve got nothing to do with it.  Food isn’t lazy, and it would be best if we didn’t categorize it as scary or weird just because we’re not super familiar with it but someone else who is different from you eats it all the time.

    Food can be a pleasure, but it doesn’t have to be – the nutrients all work the same even if it is boring or unremarkable.  Unpleasant food, again, you have to make a determination on safety, and some foods may be disagreeable to your body and that’s a decent reason to avoid them or try to solve the problem over time, but we shouldn’t treat food as unpleasant just because it’s not The Perfect Bite in this moment.  It is okay for food to sometimes just be fuel, it is okay for food to be medicine, it is sometimes reality that food is difficult or unpleasant to deal with because of circumstances or feelings.

    But we believe in Science around here, and Science says you have to consume a generally-defined set of nutrients periodically or really terrible things happen to you, so your options are pretty much: eat, or feeding tube.

    I do think it’s okay to try to maximize – at whatever effort level you’re capable of on a specific day – for the food to taste pretty good and contain the general overall nutrients Science says you should consume.  It is nice when the food is nice.

    I recognize that a lot of people coming here for the name of the blog may have dietary restrictions or sensory constraints.  I will do my best to recommend modifications where helpful, and also to educate on how to figure out how to make changes when changes are needed.  At any given point, anything I tell you to do might have to be modified to suit your needs and that’s okay.

    But principle #1 is always going to be: just get some food in you.  When plans fail and ideas fall apart and inspiration has headed for the hills, just find a food and get fed.  That’s the most important part.

    Your kitchen does not need to be a restaurant.  You do not have to be a chef, line chef, or short-order cook.

    If your entire repertoire of “home cooking” is primarily opening containers, and as a result you (and any dependents) are getting sustenance that roughly meets each person’s nutritional needs and goals, you are doing enough.

    *Yes, food production does, but solving those moral dilemmas requires a systemic set of solutions that are not within any one individual’s reach.  Do your best when you’re able, vote when it’s time, scream at your electeds constantly.

  • This Week’s Meals – Week of 4/5/26

    Highlights of what we ate this week:

    Breakfasts:

    I’m primarily on my Johnsonville Brat + low carb tortilla jam still, but I had a morning where I saw the yogurt I got myself for snacking and had that with All-Bran Buds (fiber of champions) and did that instead.

    Lunches:

    I ate some form of Dump Nachos at least twice this week.  This is my super-busy week at work and it’s just whatever, whenever I can pause to eat.  This did require making microwave taco beef, though I did it pretty passively over half an hour.

    I had over-steamed some broccoli into mush, and mixed a big scoop of that with some queso, diced chicken, and some cheese tortellini.  It was kind of bland but I just needed to eat something, and I definitely got some vegetable.

    We got burritos from our local one night, and they’re so big we usually make 2 meals out of one, so half of that for lunch the next day.

    Creamy tomato pasta with cauli and meatballs, from freezer prep.  I don’t think it was my finest batch as it seemed really underseasoned, but again: busy week, just need to eat, could have used some hot sauce, got a little salad in on the side.

    Croissant sandwiches.  It’s gotten pretty springy around here, and I get sandwichy, and I was having big nostalgia for back at some point in school where I guess Mom was making me sandwiches on grocery store/Costco-style big fluffy American croissants.  I’ve started prepping sandwiches so we have something fast for Mom, as she can still fetch a sandwich from the fridge and get some chips.  If I make them on basically garlic toast they hold up okay and are calorie-denser, but I was pondering how to hide more calories in her few bites of food every meal and figure you can hide a lot of mayo in the holes of the croissant.  I also use a sturdy amount of ham and turkey, we’re not looking for frugality here – we can barely finish two packs of deli meat between the three of us before they go bad anyway – and a good sturdy cheese like provolone, smoked gouda, or swiss.  Dab of mustard, put the sandwiches open-face in the air fryer for 2 minutes to take the bakery-staleness off the croissant, put one leaf of lettuce inside, and close up the sandwich.

    Dinners:

    Fish Tacos, and this time I was actually organized enough to make curtido, with bag slaw and pickled onions.  And I guess I’m not the only one who makes tacos like this, as Gorton’s now makes Taco Tenders. (They’re fine, they are nice and crunchy, I don’t know that the flavoring is enough to be free-standing.)

    Burrito, as noted (carnitas, my go-to).

     

    Mom Meals:

    (My mother has mid-stage dementia and lives with us; this past month she’s been losing the ability to make herself a plate of food from options so we’re moving into a phase of prepping more specifically for her.  She doesn’t have much sense of taste or smell, so doesn’t get hungry and can’t force herself to eat very much, and has no circadian rhythm, but we do keep shelf-stable snacks/protein bars/breakfast drinks in her room plus we coax her to eat something a couple times a day.)

    Croissant sandwiches were a big win!  In the future I will put pimiento cheese, her favorite cheese and fat/calorie dense, on hers.  Might start air frying the croissants alone, this batch from the grocery store bakery had an intensely fake-buttery smell to them that seems to cook off okay.

    Enchiladas!  We’ve tried getting Mom various things from La Bonita, but despite me growing up in Texas her taste in Mexican food barely extends beyond TV dinners, and she has no idea what to do with a burrito.  Ah, but enchiladas – soft but toothsome, saucy, cheesy, simply served with very good beans and rice, that was actually well-received.

    I think she took off this time before I could serve her a fish taco, but she’s had them before and seemed to like it.

  • This Week’s Meals – Week of 3/23/26

    Rounding up this week’s best meals, week of 3/23/26

    Breakfasts:

    2 Johnsonville smoked brats + 1 low carb street taco tortilla torn in half to hold each brat + dab of mayomustard

    3 eggs scrambled and microwaved with a wedge of Laughing Cow garlic and herb

    Lunches:

    Air Fryer Butterflied Chicken (coated with olive oil and Greek seasoning) with a diced zucchini, some halved cherry tomatoes, and half a small nuked potato

    AFBC drizzled with soy sauce and garlic powder with sauteed Superblend in oyster sauce

    AFBC covered in sour cream, sliced and taco’d with lettuce, cheese, and salsa

    Taco salad with from-the-freezer taco meat, iceberg, tomatoes, cheese, salsa-sour cream dressing, tortilla chips

    Dinners:

    We were using up a good bit of random leftovers this week, but I did make a family-size box of Zatarain’s red beans and rice, with sliced smoked turkey sausage and a can of green beans.

    Mom meals:

    (My mother has mid-stage dementia and lives with us; this past month she’s been losing the ability to make herself a plate of food from options so we’re moving into a phase of prepping more specifically for her.  She doesn’t have much sense of taste or smell, so doesn’t get hungry and can’t force herself to eat very much, but we do keep a bucket of shelf-stable snacks/protein bars/breakfast drinks in her room and rouse her to eat something a couple times a day.)

    She liked the red beans and rice okay, but while it’s something my dad would cook when I was a kid I don’t think she’s ever chosen it for herself.

    Pizza and hamburgers are reliably popular, and we keep slices in the freezer and I make her an air fryer burger or two.  She only eats half so I make them heavily buttered and garlicked, sneak in as much cheese as possible, and make a fistful of fries or tots.

  • There Is Probably A Potato Button On Your Microwave

    And it works pretty well.

    Often there’s a cheat sheet for your microwave functions posted inside the door, so you might have a function code (like a Program button and then the number 6 or whatever) for potato, or you may have an actual Potato button on the keypad.

    Generally, you initiate the Potato Sequence with the Program+Number or Button, and then it wants to know how many potatoes you have. This is a bit of a guesstimation based on average potato size, so if you have one average potato 1 will likely be fine. My guess from experience is that “one” standard microwave potato unit is 7-8 ounces, so if you have a ginormous one-pounder maybe say you have 2, or you can use 2 if you have a 1lb bag of wee potatoes.

    Some microwaves are not clear on HOW you tell it the number of potatoes. My current microwave has a Potato button and I push it once to say a potato is incoming, then it shows me a 0 until I push the button again to indicate a measure of 1. Keep pushing it and the number goes up.

    When it’s a Program function of some kind, usually pressing the 1 or 2 button after I do the Potato Sequence sets the quantity.

    Standard instructions tell you to poke the potato in advance with a knife or fork. I am assured by the internet that the potato will explode if you don’t. I have never exploded a potato but legally I probably shouldn’t tell you there’s no point, as that’s clearly just one potato-lover’s opinion.

    Tip: my potatoes often sit in the microwave for a while, because ADHD, but sometimes it’s actually on purpose, and I do this with a lot of microwave foods. Letting it sit, even if that means you need to give it a final do-over of 30-60 seconds, lets the heat equalize throughout. If it’s something stir-able, you should stop and stir, but I don’t want to stir my potatoes yet.

    But sometimes with potatoes specifically I’ll let them sit there to equalibrilize for 5ish minutes, then put them in the air fryer with a spritz of oil to crisp up the skin. They do deflate a little in the waiting time, but I do think this makes the best version of a microwave baked potato.