You can't get the flavor from a blog post

July 04, 2026

You can't get the flavor from a blog post

I'm actually trying to wrap this blog up, along with multiple other inane projects that never gained traction. Blogging is failing to establish an adequate income.

Writing is not really my career, not in the sense of leading to anything important or paying my bills. It's my occupation.

It's how I occupy myself. It's how I pass the time while being a loser with no life because of a serious medical handicap.

It's my occupation in the sense of the joke from The Importance of Being Earnest:

Lady Bracknell: Do you smoke?
Jack: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
Lady Bracknell: I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.

I've just gotten feedback on my Patreon account from one of the few followers I have that I must be confusing microwaved food with frozen microwave entrees.

No, I'm not. I'm very much not.

I made high quality homemade tacos while I had a corporate job and ate some fresh. They were fabulous.

I froze the rest and took them to work for lunch and reheated them in the microwave. The high quality beef turned rubbery in the microwave.

I never did that again.

I was on the phone once with my sister and I was complaining about what a madhouse the grocery store was the day before Thanksgiving and snarkily saying "Do they just have no groceries at home?" And she told me in all seriousness "Yeah, people don't cook anymore. When they go shopping for supplies for making Thanksgiving dinner, they have nothing at home. They get takeout and delivery most of the time."

I mean that's why this blog exists at all: People don't really cook and there's a plethora of meal delivery services trying to fill the void caused by the dearth of full-time moms feeding people -- at least in America that I know of -- and Metafilter and Hacker News and Reddit are full of people complaining "There's got to be a better way! Getting delivered food is both too expensive and not healthy enough."

So this is my take on the problem space because I don't think the commercial solutions selling you their products are really solving it.

But maybe the problem is even worse than I imagine if "one of my biggest fans" who bothers to follow my pathetic Patreon account thinks I just don't understand high quality microwave food.

Maybe he grew up with a single mom who didn't cook and he doesn't really cook and he's comparing freshly microwaved fresh veggies to fast food places and thinking he's onto something. And feeling defensive that I'm "attacking" him.

I'm really not. I mean if you like microwave food, eat what you want. Just don't expect ME to tell you how to up your microwave game. It's not my wheelhouse.

Me saying that is not me trying to pry your microwave oven from your hands while you scream "Over my dead body!"

Does that mean I think microwave food is healthy? No, I really don't. And if you think I'm a loser and you know better than me, why are you reading my blog?

When I was in my teens, my mother brought home leftover whole lobster from a party she had worked at a wealthy clients house and she set it aside for my seafood-loving boyfriend who had spent time in Maine and knew good seafood.

In spite of growing up in Danzig and going one morning a week as a child to purchase fresh seafood at the docks with her mom, she basically knew nothing about seafood because my dad didn't like it and we didn't eat it. So she microwaved the lobster to reheat it when my boyfriend showed up.

He took a bite or two and made a face and didn't finish it. He's not exactly socially smooth and he never explained to me why he made a face and noped out and I don't eat seafood. These days, I'm allergic to shellfish and I never found shellfish appealing other than occasionally having shrimp in my youth.

Presumably, microwaving the lobster did something to the quality. Something really bad. Something probably similar to my high quality beef turning rubbery when reheated in the microwave.

My mom was mad. She was like "That's $25 worth of lobster. I could have sold it!"

This was a zillion years ago when $25 was real money.

I didn't want to get into it with either of them. No one asked her to do that for him and I have no idea why she did. It's not like my parents approved of me having a boyfriend at all. Both my parents were the epitome of the stereotype "No man will ever be good enough for either of my daughters!"

I grew up in Georgia and that means as a child I had no idea why anyone ate pineapple. My exposure to pineapple was canned pineapple -- ewww! -- and half-rotten "fresh" whole pineapple for six weeks in the summer flown from halfway around the world. I thought people were nuts to bother to grow pineapple, much less can it.

Then I moved to Washington State. I might have been thirty years old.

I could not find verification for this online the last time I looked, but I was told that Washington is "the fruit basket of America." Similar to the breadbasket of America, but for fruits and vegetables

Prior to living in Washington State, I routinely bought frozen half cobs of corn as a means to have a higher quality vegetable than canned corn readily available to make with dinner that was also relatively quick and easy to prepare.

The variety and quality of fresh produce available year round in the Tricities where I lived put a permanent end to this practice and I've never done it again. Why?

Because fresh corn on the cob was available most of the year and my children insisted I buy and make THAT.

My elementary school kids demanded I teach them how to shuck fresh corn so their sickly, time-stressed mom would cook fresh corn on the cob for them regularly. After getting high quality fresh corn on the cob, my children adamantly refused to ever eat frozen corn on the cob again and they required me to buy fresh and they enthusiastically volunteered to help prepare it and learned new skills to facilitate it.

Additionally, with being on the West Coast, I was thousands of miles closer to Hawaii and could get high quality fresh pineapple most of the year. I became a pineapple fiend.

If you only know canned pineapple and think it's trash, welcome to the club. I agree with you.

Fresh pineapple on the West Coast is not the same thing as canned pineapple. Please don't make the mistake of believing canned pineapple is meaningfully representative of pineapple.

If you are reading this blog and feeling personally attacked by my attempts to talk about how I eat and why, I'm sorry. That was never my intention.

And I also don't REALLY WANT to keep doing this. What I REALLY WANT is to figure out how to do a webcomic and make clothes to pay my bills. And I'm actively working towards that.

I don't understand why so many people seem to see me as both a loser with nothing of any value to offer and simultaneously a judgy bitch looking down on them and insulting their life choices.

I wish planet Earth would PICK ONE. Either completely ignore me as no one whose opinions anyone cares about in the slightest or wonder if I have an actual point based on lived experience and substantial research and just TRY it and see if it is useful information pertinent to their lives.

A blog is apparently not the means to convince people it's possible to eat better than microwave meals and fast food without breaking the bank or spending all your time on it. I would apparently need to give live demonstrations or something like that.

And I'm simply in no position to do anything like that. And nothing I do seems capable of getting people to take me seriously.

I don't know why. Maybe everyone who is being taken seriously online got there by first establishing themselves in meat space.

I don't have that piece and can't get it. That's exactly WHY I'm online all day.

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You can't get the flavor from a blog post