Cooking the double boiler eggs last week got me to thinking about cooking. Lately, my focus has been about maximizing the convenience of healthy eating with things like meal planning, simple meals and batch cooking.

The three primary complaints I hear about eating 'healthier' are:

1. Cost

2. Convenience

3. Taste

It's true eating healthier CAN be more expensive, and depending on your budget you may have to settle for varying degrees of healthier (there are VERY few people who HAVE to eat junk, and if you're reading this odds are extremely good you're not one of them). Our grandparents and great-grandparents often ate healthier (than we do) on a shoestring budget by using simple ingredients. My argument is that for most of us the problem isn't cost alone as much as it's cost and lack of time.

And that gets into the second issue, and one of the central thoughts of this article, convenience. Most of us are strapped for time. And reaching for a box, bag or can is faster and easier than having to prepare food. That's where things like batch cooking come in. Having something prepared means all you have to do is reach into the fridge and reheat.

As for taste, something we're also going to touch on here, most people's taste buds have been bombarded by sweet, salty and fatty tastes from processed food, and therefore real food tastes bland and weird in comparison. Once people make the effort to begin eating real food however they find that the food is actually taster, with subtler (less 'club you over the head') and more nuanced flavors than processed food.

Two types of cooking

While cooking the eggs, which took about twice as long as it takes me to make normal eggs, I got to wondering if this was something I would do on a regular (daily) basis. The answer, despite how delicious the eggs were, was probably not.

And so I got to thinking about the two different types of cooking most of us do:

1. Everyday cooking - typically your 'normal' weekday cooking

2. Special' cooking - typically your weekend cooking or for special events like parties, guests, celebrations, etc.

An to understand the difference, we have to look at...

The three variables of cooking

1. Speed/convenience

2. Quality - the quality or healthfulness of the ingredients

3. Taste

You can't have all three unless you have the money to hire your own personal chef. At best we get two. Let's give a couple of examples.

1. Fast food (and most processed food) - convenience, then taste (sort of - sweet, salty and fatty tastes are maximized, 'real' tastes...not so much) Quality/healthfulness not important.

2. Gourmet restaurant food - taste and quality/healthfulness and speed a distant last. Some of these meals take hours to prepare.

So, taking these three variables to our two types of cooking we see:

1. Everyday cooking - we don't want to sacrifice quality/healthfulness in any of our meals, but speed/convenience is going to be primary for those of us with over-busy lives. It's not that we can ignore taste, none of us are going to eat things that don't taste good, but we're going to have to realize we can't have gourmet meals without the time. So we're looking for healthy meals that taste 'good enough' and that are FAST. Luckily with a little kitchen learning and some good recipe books, we can have that.

2. 'Special cooking' - we still want to keep the quality/healthfulness, but here we especially want to bring up the taste, and to do that we're going to have to take time. So these aren't going to be daily meals for most of us, but at the same time, with our regular focus on convenient meals we shouldn't forget to enjoy tastier special meals as well. After all food is one of the great joys of life.

An Example

Source - https://secure.flickr.com/photos/8113246@N02/5463365487/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Here's my super easy crock pot chicken.

1. Take one whole chicken, rinse and place in crockpot

2. Pour some oil and rub on skin, then rub on a 'Chicken spice' blend of herbs.

3. Add water or chicken broth to bottom of crock pot

4. Cook on low until dinner time

Total time to prepare about 5 minutes, and assuming you remember to put it in before going off for your day, super easy. It's tasty 'enough'.

Let's contrast that with a roast chicken from Heston Blumenthal's show 'How to Cook Like Heston'

1. Take one whole chicken and undo trussing which allows the chicken wings and legs to open up

2. Brine - Add 4 tablespoons of salt to every 32oz of water, have enough water to cover chicken. Put chicken in brine, cover and place in fridge overnight.

3. Remove and dry, remove wish bone.

4. Stuff chicken with thyme and a whole lemon

5. Rub butter over chicken

6. Roast at 90C/190F for 90 minutes

7. Then check temperature of breast with probe thermometer. Aiming for 60C/140F internal temperature. Cook longer if needed.

8. Allow chicken to rest out of oven uncovered for 45 minutes

9. Then turn heat in your oven to the highest setting and return to oven for 10 minutes to brown skin

Total time: Overnight + say 10-15 minutes prep + 90 minutes + 45 minutes + 10 minutes

Taste: I'm sure MUCH better than my crockpot chicken, and I plan to try this recipe next week, but not something you're going to do on a regular basis if you're time-crunched.

So there you have my thoughts on convenience, quality, and taste.

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What an utterly exhausting trip - physically, mentally, and emotionally - I feel totally wrung out. I also feel like I have a bit of PTSD, though I honestly can't say I know what it feels like. I woke up this morning, tense and irritable (a lovely way to start the day).

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Unfortunately, a week later, my last post seems really over-optimistic. I now think it's extremely unlikely that my mom is ever going to leave San Diego, and I don't think we have 3 months, in fact, I now think we have between 1-4 weeks.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

In order for this story to make sense, here's a little background. My mom was born and raised in England, and most of her family still lives there. Prior to this trip we'd been talking with one of her brothers and arranged to have him fly in for a surprise visit, as they haven't seen each other for 5 years or so. He had come into town the day before this story.

Here's the story: A few days ago, as I was getting ready to leave the nursing / rehab facility to go pick up her brother and sister (who does live here in the US) my mom volunteers, 'I'm coming too!' Whaaaaa?? So I did a double take, and assuming the nursing staff would back me up I pulled the 'Oh, I did think it's allowed, but I'll ask for you.' And they came back with a 'SURE! Just have her back within 4 hours.' So, uhhhh.... Okay I guess we're going.

I manage to get her loaded and take her home. It was a terrible mistake, and it made clear to me how far things have come.

Within the confines of the nursing facility, with its extremely simple schedule and complete lack of demands my mom's physical and mental deficits are pretty easy to gloss over. Back in a free living situation, they become glaringly apparent.

Physically it became instantly apparent, there was no way she was going to be able to return to her home. She can't take care of herself at all. If you've ever had to be intimately involved in helping one of your parents go to the bathroom, you understand. It's an intensely uncomfortable experience, physically-emotionally because you see someone you remember as strong and capable, reduced to having trouble performing basic, basic things, and (goodness knows I'm not squeamish about bodily fluids but) it's uncomfortable having to get into your parents personal space. I really hope you never have to do it.

The biggest sign / shock though came with her reaction to her house. For my mom her home truly has been her castle. She took intense pride in her home, in renovating, decorating, caring for and upgrading her house. Her garden was always the nicest one on the block, and she had painstakingly at great expense over many years gotten the nice things she liked to be surrounded by.

And when she came back, for the first time in months, she didn't care, ask about, or pay attention to any of it. She didn't ask to be wheeled around the house to check on her stuff, or look at her stuff, or comment on her stuff. She wasn't really relieved to be home, and when we left, she left without any goodbye to her home or emotion about leaving it.

A cup of tea

The brightest moment, but also the most terrible, was when we all sat down, my mom and I, my uncle and his wife and my aunt to have a cup of tea. They're British after all, and it's in my genes, so we had to have a cup of tea. And it was the bright spot of the day, and of the trip. A warm, comfortable 30 minutes or so, all of us sipping tea, bantering, laughing, enjoying each others company. This is what makes us human.

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But it also highlighted how little of my mom was left. She didn't talk a lot, she didn't engage much. As my uncle said, who hadn't seen her in 5 years, 'so much of her is gone. Her sense of humor, her joy...' It was an intensely sad realization.

Leaving

On our last visit with her, we (my wife, son, and I) sat in mostly silence. My mom wasn't able to hold a conversation, she would answer simple questions and then lapse into silence. She was very quiet, and still, and mostly sat staring off into nothing.

The look of someone who is in the dying process. Someone checking out from this world.

I feel like things have begun moving very fast. She was definitely much more lucid and engaged at the beginning of our visit than at the end. I don't know if it's seeing her brother has given her the green light to check out, or...

But I won't be surprised if I hear anytime this week that she's dead. Part of me is on edge, waiting for a late night phone call.  And I think on the outside that we have a month left.

From here

The last of the legal paperwork, we're forming a trust, is in process and should be done within a few days.

We're beginning to make arrangements for her cremation and ceremony.

We're beginning the process of selling their house, and we'll be moving my dad up to assisted living here in Seattle.

She's due to be discharged from the nursing / rehab facility in about a week or so, and since it's now so clear she won't be coming home, we're looking at getting her placed in an in-patient hospice facility for whatever time she has left.

At first I was sad we may not have a 'big' last farewell, but after reflecting on it, I realized it's not about single events, it's about the whole line of events. You shouldn't need to say 'I love you' because you've said it a thousand times before...

Thank you for reading, and for any of my patients, I ask for your patience as we come down to the end of things here, I may have to leave on sudden notice.

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