creativity-exhausted

For the past 2 weeks or so I have spent a lot of time staring blankly into the fridge at the ingredients in there. Peppers, spinach, lettuce, all delicious, all completely unappetizing. All of that stuff needed to be assembled for it to be good, and the thought of even cutting up peppers for a salad was too much to bear. I ate a lot of cheese and crackers and one late-night-post-ultimate box of mac'n'cheese (sidebar: when you don't have milk, you can use margerine + a little sweet-with-heat mustard from superstore and it is DELICIOUS!). Jake, too, has been struggling with this and we've both been defaulting to easy and repetitive solutions to the food problem: potatoes in foil on the grill, some kind of meat, asparagus or some other veggie thrown on there. Never quite enough for a leftovers-lunch, or conversely, too many left overs and then you overdose on a good ol' standby (I won't be eating baked potatoes for a while - how sad is THAT!?). 


The other day I finally diagnosed the problem (it definitely isn't our temporary kitchen, which is just fine - the only thing we can't do is bake, except you CAN on the BBQ - maybe I'll try cookies on there): My powers of creativity, problem-solving and solution-finding are MAXED OUT. The renovation decisions are never-ending, and because we are looking for deals/don't want to get taken advantage of/ are trying not to buy things we don't need so we can afford the things we want, we often make this process even more difficult on ourselves. My head goes something like this: 'Counter colour - grey? Light grey? Sand? Could we use sand from Patricia beach? Wouldn't that be cool? Where should that light switch go? How many switches in the bank? Report cards are due tomorrow! Crap! Can we get pot lights at Home Depot? Is it really worth all the money they want for the fancy lights? Which design decisions are worth the money because we'll kick ourselves every day if we don't and which will we be glad we skipped? Is it too soon to talk about the paint colour for the walls downstairs? 


Exhausting, right?


So when it comes to food, I am maxed out. The temptation to eat out is ENORMOUS. Someone else makes it and cleans it up. All you have to do is pick what you want. However, if we have to roll an 'eating out' budget into this project we may literally eat ourselves out of our home. Back to the grocery store we go.


On Sunday we stocked up, and I spent some time actually looking at one of my cookbooks. I never do that. Recipes are something I consult for an idea, and by the time I'm done with them, it is totally different. However, since my creativity is on strike, yesterday I made salad dressing (almost) EXACTLY according to the recipe - and it was good! Who knew?! I also made a salad (almost) EXACTLY according to a recipe. ALSO GOOD! So amazing! Today I had a lunch that was healthy and delicious! And it wasn't left overs! Tres exciting. 


If you've got an easy, no-bake, veggie-ful, light-on-the-dairy, recipe you'd like to share, PLEASE PLEASE do so. I will actually follow it.