Rachel is a Jewish bisexual autistic woman (she/her) with ADHD in her twenties. She loves writing and can always be found with her nose in a book! Her plan for the future is to earn her Psy. D. in clinical psychology. This interested in psychology started as a way to help her understand people better and to figure out what it was about others I kept not getting. It is also something deeply linked with her self-advocacy. There is a gap in communication between the autistic community and providers, and she want to help bridge it and challenge others to see things from different perspectives.
View all postsCanned Food and Disability Friendly Cooking
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Last spring, I wrote a blog post about my upcoming move to Pittsburgh, and one of my chief concerns about living alone was having to cook for myself all the time.
We’re coming up on a year to that post, faster than I would have thought possible. Though at the same time, it also feels like I’ve been in Pittsburgh for ages now. I’ve stuck to not eating out better than I thought I would. I guess when you’re really trying to save money, there’s a lot that you suddenly find possible to cut back on.
Cooking for myself has been a surprising journey. I’ve learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes, made a lot of progress, and I’ve found that maybe I like cooking a little more than I previously believed. Only a little though. I don’t think you’re ever going to catch me with the itch to whip up elaborate banquets from scratch. But there’s some fun to be had splashing around in the shallow end of the culinary pool. Along the way, I’ve learned more about how to feed myself despite disabilities that can make that infinitely harder.
The big thing is not to fear canned food. It may seem strange, but canned foods really are the cornerstone of my cooking strategy. There are a myriad of reasons for this. If I were to list them all, this blog post would be longer than any of you want to read. So, I will stick to the most important ones.
Canned foods won’t go bad for a long, long time. This allows me to avoid the ADHD tax of having to throw out ingredients that go bad before I get around to actually using them to cook. Fresh ingredients might as well consider themselves doomed if I ever take them home. I’m frequently haunted by expiration dates. It’s only canned food that will be patiently waiting for me to finally get around to using it.
Canned foods also come cooked and prepared. I don’t need to bother with cutting vegetables if they come already diced in a can. I don’t need to spend time cooking chicken if I already have some ready to go. If I want to make a quick chili mac, I can just dump a can of fully prepared chili into my mac and cheese. It may seem lazy, but often the key to making sure I get things done is to remove as many steps in the process as I can. Despite many pieces of wisdom to the contrary, cutting corners isn’t always a bad thing. There’s no point in trying to do things perfectly if that just means you won’t do them at all.
I think cooking with canned food also helps make cooking more fun for me. It brings back the childhood joy of combining things just for fun. What if I take this recipe and add this to it? No need to think about measurements when everything comes in prepackaged amounts. It makes experimenting with cooking and altering recipes feel safe and approachable in a way only the standardized amounts of canned and jarred food can.
Of course, nothing I make can really be called gourmet. Even if I wasn’t blending most of it into uniformly mushy soup (an immersion blender is a tried and true way to sidestep
textural issues), relying on prepared canned foods limits the exact control I have over my recipes. I can’t do the sort of things an all-from-scratch home cook can. But I’m not trying to do those things either. What’s important is that I enjoy the food I make. Even more important, I made it in the first place.
If there’s one real challenge, it’s probably in keeping sodium levels low. But even that’s not impossible. If nearby stores don’t stock a ton of low-salt canned goods, the modern marvels of the internet leave me with plenty of options to get what I need delivered. I only wish low- and no-salt canned goods weren’t more expensive than their salty counterparts.
Sometimes I see people online talk about the kinds of recipes I use. Many people say it can’t even be called cooking, or express disgust at using canned food at all. But I don’t think there’s any point in getting discouraged by other people’s opinions. If they can’t understand why someone would want to cook this way, then they’re fortunate enough not to have the struggles I do. People can be so dismissive when it comes to challenges they don’t understand, not even realizing how cruel they are most of the time. The important thing is recognizing what’s best for you, not what other people think is best.
No matter how many corners I cut to make it easier, I’m still achieving my goal at the end: cooking for myself. And the sense of accomplishment I get from it is real. I expected that having to constantly manage my own meals would be hard at times, and it can be, but I didn’t realize how much more capable I would feel. Even if I get nothing else done in a day, if I cook myself a meal, then that’s a win. Enjoying my own food each day is tangible proof that there are things I’m doing right. Even at times when I otherwise feel incredibly discouraged.