Refried pinto beans we eat with breakfasts or in burritos.

Black beans from cans, reheated with some cumin, salt, pepper, vinegar or jalapeno brine. My family (except for me) prefers black beans above all others.

Bonus easy recipe - get a can of cannelini beans and a can of pureed butternut squash or pumpkin. Heat these together with some olive oil, curry or berbere, salt. When they are hot, hit it with an immersion blender until it’s a puree and adjust the consistency to your preference with chicken broth, veg broth, or just water is ok.
Serve with lime slices, pepitas, queso fresco if you have it or a splash of cream or sour cream can also be good.

Beans. I know on Lemmy beans are memes, but beans are how to get enough fiber each day. 2 cups of cooked beans has the total fiber you need for a day, and it’s hard to get there without beans.

It takes about 3 -5 cups of cooked veggies to get the fiber that is in one cup of beans. So 1 cup of cooked beans and some greens with supper, a big salad for lunch and oatmeal with raspberries and yogurt for breakfast would get you there. And should leave room calorie wise for some meat and bread or rice or pasta.

My kids make fun of me for making beans for so many meals but delicious, cheap, healthy, they are an ideal food.

We have a pride flag & an American flag. And sometimes a Jolly Roger. I agree, you cannot let the conservatives define themselves as the real Americans. I am here, I’m from here, wanting a better America is patriotic.

Opposite for me. I try to always fall asleep sober, going to bed drunk gives me interrupted sleep. Fall asleep faster, sure. But always wake up in the night. Sober, I sometimes have trouble falling asleep but once asleep generally sleep until morning.

More than one a day is pretty unhealthy, could you just time a small nightcap right, and drink less not none?

That’s our cats. They can get through the door without you even seeing them do it. The dogs just sit and look at the open door unless we tell them to go through.

Once my cat ran out the door and back in, with a lizard in her mouth, before I could close it or yell for her. Most efficient hunt I have ever witnessed.

Seaweed is the way to go. As others have noted, miso soup with kombucha is good, seaweed salad, maybe tofu wrapped in seaweed, nori snacks (I like the wasabi ones).

Think of the tentacles shape, too. Maybe make a dense shallow cake and cut it into tentacles shape before frosting it? I don’t think it all has to taste of the sea to be thematic.

4 hours of work 5 days a week. 5 weeks off per year.

Enough money to not worry about money.

A short run in the morning, short weightlifting after work, yoga in the evening. Two non consecutive rest days with just stretching and walking. To feel good enough to do that so I can keep feeling good enough to do that.

Going out on one weekend night to do something, staying in the other nights.

Pet cats, and maybe one dog.

Traveling somewhere every year.

And having enough money also to get the house in the shape we want.

Basically I want a well funded partial retirement.

Our library did a “big book club” thing where they made infinite e-reader copies available, and I thought hmm, I’ll give it a try and wow I did like it. Later my penultimate kid read it, not knowing I had, and recommended it as one of the best books she’d ever read.

It was fantastical and strange, I can imagine not liking it but wow I sure did, and so did my kid.

Life of Pi is the one people seem to like that I hate. I want my 2 hours back, feel it was wasted.

Some written stuff I love, erotica, stories. Video no, I’ve not found much I like at all.

Maybe some enjoy flammable? My lunatic ex took an old Christmas tree out to the backyard and set fire to it because he wanted to see how fast they burn. He nearly did burn down the house, that was a BIG fire, very tall fire. But if you have a big enough space, or broke it down to burn more slowly and reasonably? Fuel.

We get a real one from our neighbor, he does yardwork & sod most of the year but at Christmas he gets some trees to sell from some guy he knows in N Carolina and they are always amazing all of them. Yes it costs a lot, we have a large family who come for Christmas and it’s nice, I categorize the expense as entertaining.

When I was poor, I would just make a “tree” each year out of something. One year the coat rack, one year on the wall in construction paper, one year I found a inflatable one like a beach ball, one year my ex cut the top off a bush & hedged it into a cone - that went on for almost 20 years, always something different. My kids didn’t mind at all, nobody ever said “you need a tree” only “cool”. You don’t need a tree. Don’t feel obligated at all.

At work I have a wee artificial one.

Same here. I wash my pans with soap if they need it, dry them well and hang them up. Occasionally will rub a little oil in once they are all the way dry. Have been going for about 30 years, most of them. I did have to train my husband, he was soaking them overnight and that does mess with the seasoning. Now he either cleans immediately and dries it or throws it in the oven dirty to do later.

IME they are nearly indestructible and you don’t need to be so careful. The cast iron is my daily driver and I am not a gentle fussy cook. Just don’t soak them in hot soapy water for hours.

For me, cast iron are by far my most used pans. You know how flannel starts out sort of awful but gets better and better as it gets older? That’s cast iron. Starts out sticky PITA but over time becomes satisfying satiny nonstick surface. I’ve always used them a lot so that’s how my cooking style evolved.

We also have one steel pan we call the Stick pan, sometimes you want food to stick so you can deglaze. My kids use it for potsticker dumplings, and they like it also because it’s lighter, cast iron is heavy. And of course a rice and pasta pot, those are steel.

I don’t buy “nonstick” pans, they don’t last and I’m not convinced they are safe.

No, my kids call me mom and yes I’d think it kinda rude if they first named me.

But

My step-kids call me by my first name, and my kids call my husband by his first name, and that is fine with both of us somehow.

When kids are small here, they usually call adults Mr. or Ms. First Name. Older kids to teachers Mr. or Ms. Last Name, but my kids friends who are older still called me Ms. First Name. Not much Sir and Ma’am anymore but I still hear it sometimes.

Water for sure #1

Cafe con leche favorite caffeine drink. Diet coke distant second, but I like it.

Cocktails, tie between margarita and paper plane I think.

Wine? A dry Sauvignon Blanc.

I dunno, they have the same ones in grocery stores here, still. Toledo No Springs. I haven’t been back lately, they may still have it. And yes it was in a sort of lobby where the line for the tellers waited.

No. I have had dreams that happened later in real life, precognitive (I used to set an alarm early, jot them down, and go back to sleep.) Not big, predictable events. I’d dream of someone I hadn’t seen in years, seeing them in a location, and then see them. Sometimes comically. Never in any way that was helpful.

Most notable example, I dreamed that I went to the local bank, they had a scale to weigh people. I got on the scale but it went backwards! I turned around and saw this girl Joann who I’d not seen since middle school. Wrote that down in my dream journal.

Couple weeks later - I am at the bank I dreamed about. I get on the scale, but it’s broken. Tells me I weigh 30lb. I turned around and who did I see? Joann, who I hadn’t seen since middle school.

I do not say this to convince anyone. It’s my own evidence, and I personally know the dreams were precognitive, only because I wrote them down and often wonder if everyone does this, are we all dreaming the future? It really pissed me off when it happened because it made me feel like the future had essentially already happened and we had no free will.

I guard my sleep more now and don’t do the dream journal, but do still have them somewhere. If I hadn’t written it down when I dreamed it I would have just thought I had deja vous.

One day as I was leaving for work, my penultimate daughter said “mom, that fit shreds” and I was like, excuse me, WHAT did you call me?

“Your clothes are great!”

My outfit, it shreds. Apparently.

I don’t hate it but don’t remember being very slangy as a teenager.

I’m from here. The cities are still ok. The culture war bullshit is at least partly smoke and mirrors, there was still a teacher doing a drag routine at my kid’s middle school talent show at the performing arts school (and if you’ve never seen the talent show at a performing arts school, I recommend it.). Teachers still addressed my trans kid as they preferred. They broke New College for sure, though , that is terrible. The beaches are still ok.

If I EVER run for office here, my slogan will be MFFA, Make Florida Freaky Again. The conservative assholes trying to squeeze us into a mainstream tight laced conservative hellhole have mistaken our mix of freaks and diversity for something homogeneous, like they think you can just average us out and squeeze it farther to the right, but that average was made up of a population that is so diverse no matter what axis you spin it on, I don’t think you can bleach & iron it out like they seem to.

So yeah it’s getting worse, but is not yet as bad as when I was growing up (it was extremely violent down here). So my hope remains. All my kids are progressive.

Generally I just wing it, have been cooking so long I can develop my own recipes for most things. But sometimes I do have to look for tips, and will read recipes for inspiration.

Food:

Bon Appetit

Recipe Tin Eats

Boy who Bakes

Perfect Loaf

Food and Wine

NYT Cooking

Cocktails:

Punch

Imbibe