Happy Halloween y’all. I hope you can make it special for your kids even if you can’t do proper trick-or-treating this year. Sigh.
Yesterday my therapist and I discussed self-care strategies for Tuesday. I am DREADING election day. I don’t dare hope… and yet I can’t help hoping a little bit. I know I will make myself sick if I sit there refreshing twitter all day. So anyway Suzanne suggested I let myself check twitter/read the news only every four hours, and do some serious distraction the rest of the day. So I am thinking of either starting my Animal Crossing island over from the beginning, or doing a big redesign of my current island (if I can think of a big project). And maybe binge-watching something excellent like Succession. Wish I could play WoW all day. I miss WoW so much.
I have already voted, of course, and dropped my ballot into a secure dropbox, and tracked it to make sure it was received. Everyone in my family did the same. I cannot imagine that there is anyone who hasn’t voted yet — why wait, when it’s so easy and safe to vote ahead of time? So I worry that maybe all the sane people have already voted and that’s why it looks like Biden is ahead and maybe it’s only Tr*mp supporters who will wait till the last minute and he’ll win or it will be a close race and he’ll dig his heels in and everything will be horrible for EVEN LONGER.
As you can see, I have some ***ANXIETY*** about election day. Lol.
Also, this morning I made ratatouille again. I’ve been making it weekly — it’s so good over polenta or pasta or just on its own, and so incredibly nutritious, and vegetarian so it’s earth-friendly. I’ll jot down my recipe here. It’s easy but a bit time consuming so I sit on the seat of my walker while I chop veggies.
Kara’s Big Pot of Ratatouille
2 big eggplants
2 red bell peppers
1 lb zucchini
1 lb tomatoes
1 onion
a few cloves of garlic, minced
thyme
salt
olive oil
red pepper flakes (optional)
a few bay leaves (optional)
You’ll need a big heavy-bottomed stock pot! Chop all your veggies into big dice. I do one eggplant first and get it started cooking while I chop the next, etc. So when you’ve chopped your first eggplant, put a couple glugs of olive oil in your pot and put it on med. high to high (depending on your stove) and, when the oil is hot, drop in your first batch of eggplant. You’re aiming to brown a few surfaces of the eggplant, not cook it all the way through, so stir frequently while you chop the next eggplant. When the eggplant has some brown edges, dump it into a huge bowl, glug some more oil into the pot, and get the next batch of eggplant started while you chop the zucchini. Repeat with the zucchini and peppers. (you will have burned crud on the bottom of your pan. Don’t worry about it. A soak and a scrub will clean it all.)
Now that the eggplant, zucchini, and peppers are a bit browned and waiting all together in that huge bowl, cook your onion in some more oil over a lower heat until it begins to get soft and translucent. Dump in your minced garlic and chopped tomatoes, some thyme, some salt, a couple bay leaves if you have them, and some red pepper flakes for kick. Cook this for a little while, till it starts to smell amazing, then dump that big bowl of slightly browned veggies in, stir it all around, cover, and cook on low until it’s done. The longer you cook, the more homogenous it will be. Stir, taste, and adjust seasonings now and then. When cooked to your liking, eat it all up!
