Cooking together remains a joy, even when one of us has ALS
I take on the actual tasks, but we collaborate on ideas for preparing meals
Before my husband, Todd, had ALS, he enjoyed cooking. He often made omelets on Saturday mornings. He was skilled with a chef’s knife and cut ingredients quickly and finely before cooking the egg to perfection. I miss eating his omelets.
Although I do all the actual cooking now, meal prep is still one area where we’ve been able to work together.
Todd watched a YouTube video on brining chicken breasts in salt water before cooking, and he suggested I try it. We found that it makes the meat more tender and flavorful, and Todd now prefers my chicken over any restaurant chicken.
Todd also coached me in making lettuce wraps like we used to have at P.F. Chang’s, one of my favorite restaurants from our life together before ALS. We no longer live near a P.F. Chang’s, and even if we did, getting out to eat would be complicated, but our homemade dish with minced chicken and diced water chestnuts brings me back, and it felt good to create that experience in our own kitchen.
We say potatoes — and like them
Recently Todd asked me to make hash browns with raw potatoes, because we didn’t have any bags of preshredded potatoes in our freezer. After I grated the potatoes, Todd suggested that I rinse the starch off the strands of potato and dry them. To fry the hash browns, I used a gift I got for my birthday a month ago — a cast-iron skillet that covers two burners on my stove.
The hash browns turned out much lighter and crispier than any I’d ever made from frozen potatoes. Rinsing the starch made all the difference.
“Did you used to do that, or did you learn that on YouTube?” I asked.
“That one came from YouTube,” he said. “I wish I knew how to do that back when I was cooking.”
We liked them so much that I made hash browns for several mornings straight, and I even shredded sweet potato for our dinners. The only downside was that I was getting tired of grating potatoes, and Todd expressed concern that I might nick a finger as he once did.
“I still remember the pain,” he said.
Someone had given us money for an anniversary gift, and we landed on the idea of buying a food processor.
Apart from the benefit of making heaps of hash browns, I also thought a food processor could provide more options for prepping food that Todd could more easily swallow. He’s had many instances of choking on food, and we’ve become more selective about what he eats. He also always has water nearby and takes frequent sips during meals. He has a feeding tube, but for now, eating by mouth is a risk he’s willing to take.
The food processor arrived last weekend, and I’ve already gone through a dozen sweet and russet potatoes. The machine makes short work of shredding, and it helped me make a light, velvety cream cheese frosting for a cake.
We can’t go out to nice restaurants anymore, but the food processor adds to our capability to make fantastic meals right at home.
After one breakfast of perfectly cooked sunny-side-up eggs, oven-baked bacon, and light and crispy hash browns from raw russet potatoes, Todd said, “I’d be happy if I got this meal at a nice restaurant.”
Creating meals together makes life with ALS a little easier.
Note: ALS News Today is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The opinions expressed in this column are not those of ALS News Today or its parent company, Bionews, and are intended to spark discussion about issues pertaining to ALS.
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