State of the Kitchen 6: Will I Ever have Energy Again?

There is a growing terror in me as this period of no energy continues. In August of 2018, I had a period where I had enough energy to do a few things. But it only lasted 2 and a half months before I was right back to where I started energy-wise. Then, my body went back into severe brain fog and fatigue until November 2019.

I’m definitely scared that I’m going back into that cycle of no energy. But I’m trying to just accept it if it does happen.

Last week, I sliced a corner of my thumb off while cutting cabbage, so it could be that the energy drain that I’ve been experiencing is just my body trying to heal from that. But it sucks if I am going to have to deal with a complete lack of energy and ability to comprehend my environment every time I get injured.

I hope it comes back sooner rather than later. But I’m not holding my breath based on my experience with whatever I have.

What I cooked this week.

I haven’t been able to cook a full meal. On Sunday, I tried to make Korean Ground Beef stir-fry, a recipe I made, but I couldn’t do it because of all the steps. I could only make the sauce. But the sauce, which generally takes about 5 minutes to make, took me almost an entire hour because my brain was fogged so bad.

I would look at my phone and it would take a minute to comprehend the ingredient that I was supposed to put in, then another minute to comprehend how much, then look for the spoon, then forget what ingredient and take another minute.

My biggest challenge was the recipe I made calls for 3 tablespoons of fresh ginger, but we didn’t have any of that, but we had dried ginger. The package said that 1/4 teaspoon of dried ginger equals 1 teaspoon of fresh ginger. But it wasn’t 3 teaspoons, it was 3 tablespoons. That took me about 20 minutes, and I still couldn’t figure it out with confidence.

I hadn’t even started browning the meat, frying the eggs, or cooking the rice, and I knew that I couldn’t do it all. So I asked my mom for help in doing that while I tried to figure the sauce out. My head felt like it was swimming in a dense sea of fog, it was a wobbly dizzy.

She followed the recipe, which is actually really simple but a bunch of things going on around the same time: make sauce, cook rice, fry eggs, brown meat, mix everything together, done. I’ll be posting that recipe next Thursday.

So, week two of no energy. Hopefully it gets better, but I’m not holding my breath that it will.