The deepest cut...

I found this recipe on Facebook a couple of weeks ago and wanted to try it.

These Banana Oatmeal Muffins are what I think baked oatmeal might be like.

It is not the best of photos, but you can see that the texture is a bit different from a muffin, being made entirely with oats.  I was wondering how it would work without flour.  It worked very well!

I bought bananas on Wednesday, but was too exhausted when I arrived home to even think about cooking the muffins I had been dreaming about.  They were worth the wait.  More so than their tastiness, though, I enjoyed the making of them.  Cooking is the one thing that I can do these days.

Of course, I no longer just try a recipe at the drop of a hat the way that I did when I first started cooking.  I study the recipes.  I read them again and again and again to ensure that I understand them.  I also go through the recipes mentally, sort of cooking them in my mind.  And, these days, I try to do all the prep first, measuring things out and putting them into small dishes and chopping or mincing or peeling and the like so that there is little disruption to the flow of following the recipe.

You see, even with all my studying, I still read and re-read whilst I am cooking.  I get confused, after all.  I disremember what I did or how many of this or that I added.  So, if I measure out the flour before hand, then I do not run the risk of adding too much or too little using my oft foggy brain.

Cooking is hard.  But I can do it.  I can have success, as I did here.

Writing used to be as easy as breathing to me.  Okay, perhaps not quite that easy, but nearly.  After all, I wrote my dissertation in a mere two months.  I love writing.  And I still think about it all the time.  I write in my head much of the day, but I no longer write with ease.  Even my blog posts are arduous.  It is difficult to concentrate, difficult to communicate.  I make errors I never did before.  I miss the errors that I make when I am proofing what I have written.  I lose my train of thought.  I struggle to understand what I have written and to remember what it is that I started to say.

Losing my ability to write wth east is the absolute worst loss of dysautonomia.  It is one that I grieve daily.  It is the deepest cut.

Thus, I am thankful that I can still do something, albeit a little clumsily and often a lot messily.  It is something that I can savor myself and share with others.