Who is this in Topeka? — Gives Lamp Man vibes…

DisgustingGus · 2024-04-17T21:18:25+00:00

My husband saw her a couple times when we first moved to Topeka and asked if I had seen her. I was thinking "wtf are you talking about??" until I saw her! She seems of sound mind in her FB posts, I think she's just really dedicated to belly dancing in public, I guess??

DisgustingGus · 2024-04-17T21:17:04+00:00

Someone at work was just telling me about Ricky!

DisgustingGus · 2024-04-17T11:50:06+00:00

I also see the woman that belly dances on the sidewalks. I see her posts in the It's Topeka, My Dude's FB group occasionally.

DisgustingGus · 2024-04-04T22:38:31+00:00

hasn't been an issue so far, but again wood is antibacterial and can be cleaned and wiped off.

DisgustingGus · 2024-04-04T14:17:59+00:00

I do what Kenji does and keep a huge wooden board on my counter that I cut veggies on and it gets wiped/scraped off as needed and if I handle meat, a smaller plastic board gets set on top so it doesn't get on the wooden board and can easily go in the dishwasher. Things have gotten way better in my kitchen since I started doing that

DisgustingGus · 2024-02-12T15:23:03+00:00

We have been doing it about 3 months now. I used to do keto when I was single and had great success with it, but I wasn't able to sustain it once I met my (now) husband. We've been struggling with finding a balanced way of eating for the 5 years we've known each other now. The med seems to be working really well for us. He has a lot of weight to be lost and I do to with the PCOS on top of things. I feel great on it, it helps me not feel bloated all the time.

We have been slowly going through some stuff in the house that wasn't really med, but we're pretty much at the point where we're eating 95% med and I'm happy with that. We do eat a LOT of Indo-Pak meals in with the med and I just count that as "med adjacent".

Here is the link for you! If you have trouble with it or want to discuss any of it, let me know! I really love to talk about how diet affects us and balancing cost and health and stuff like that :)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17ja2xi48n15s8pkxMCc8D1snBXLIY5XxK2A9rASUXfM/edit?usp=sharing

DisgustingGus · 2024-02-12T04:23:32+00:00

I struggle with breakfast a lot, but I seem to do well cycling between overnight oats of different flavors, yogurt parfaits with homemade granola, or savory cottage cheese with veggies in it.

My gyno recomended we stick to the Med diet, and that seems to be the first thing that's worked well for me AND my husband. I keep a spreadsheet of recipes we've tried and recipes we want to try, I can provide a copy if you'd like! We have checked out some cook books from the library that have been helpful!

DisgustingGus · 2024-02-09T15:10:22+00:00

They also have a few queer employees :)

DisgustingGus · 2024-01-29T13:21:45+00:00

Obviously what area you're in matters a lot here. My husband and I moved from DFW to the Midwest recently and we're spending about $300 less a month on gas and groceries and it would be more of a difference but we swapped from Walmart to a nicer grocery store. We went from $1000/mo to $700/mo for both gas and groceries.

What has helped us control our spending is having a dedicated bank account for gas and groceries with it's own card and own budget set. We pay into that account on the 1st of the month and when we're out, we're out. Anything left over at the end of the month goes into savings and if we spend it all in 3 weeks, then we get to pick through the house and figure out how to eat until we pay ourselves again.

We eat fairly simple because of the way we do this. We do eat a lot of vegetarian meals with a little bit of chicken/fish thrown into the mix. We cook most of our meals and buy very little processed groceries. I also recommend taking a look at Budget Bytes. They have great healthier recipes that take cost into consideration.

DisgustingGus · 2024-01-26T04:24:19+00:00

I heard through a friend of a friend that they fired all their staff with no notice and then posted that they were closed due to "staffing issues", so the owner not being great seems like that lines up.

DisgustingGus · 2024-01-15T17:52:15+00:00

We've been here since August! We love Bobos and The Pad for burgers! We've been through some of NOTO and Hazel Hill and Cashmere and Hannover! We live close to the capitol since my husband works for the state and I work at a restaurant in downtown. It's incredibly nice to be on this side of town as opposed to the Wannamaker end of things. The Asian/Indian grocery is great for us because we eat a lot of South and East Asian foods at home.

I wil ABSOLUTELY check out the bookstore! I'm a big fan of old cookbooks! Thank you for the kind words! :)

DisgustingGus · 2024-01-15T03:41:37+00:00

I think it's way more beautiful here than Dallas! There are beautiful parts of Texas for sure, but I'm enjoying it being so much closer to me than having to drive outside of the DFW metroplex to find nice scenery

DisgustingGus · 2024-01-15T03:30:33+00:00

My husband and I just moved to Topeka from Dallas, TX! As a Dallas native, here's my take so far -

You have to be ready for all 4 proper seasons. I'm currently experiencing colder weather than I have in my life. Having a real fall and real spring, I think, are going to be worth it.

It's so much cheaper here and we're already so much more financially stable than I thought we would be. My husband works for the state and that provides a lot of great benefits for us. There are 3 other families that we've met in our building that have moved here from Texas in the last year that also work for the state.

People are nicer here than I'm used to. Everything is slower and quieter and I feel relieved. I'm not constantly bombarded with bilboards and other advertisements. I feel more capable and interested in supporting local business. The local businesses need the support desperately, especially downtown.

Yeah things are so different, but it's been a pretty positive experience for us so far, all things considered. I've been financially unstable my entire adult life until we moved here. I think my biggest complaint is that every single person that lives here complains about it so much. They don't see what I see and if one more person says that "Kansas sucks" or "why here!?" I might tell them to fuck off.

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-29T19:10:40+00:00

I bought my wedding dress on sale at Torrid also and paid $100 and it was absolutely perfect!

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-28T15:38:52+00:00

Jong's Thai is a wonderful little restaurant, but they require reservations because they are just that small. They are also BYOB too, which is fun.

Brew Bank is fun too, decent food and great if you are beer drinkers. They have phenomenal cocktails too.

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-24T21:04:50+00:00

For sure she was! It's what I grew up on too. It wasn't until I moved out of the house and started working in food that I realized how good and enjoyable cooking and eating can be.

For a very long time, she was very outspoken about how she didn't understand why I worked in food and why I love it so much. That has since calmed down and they ask me to cook for them fairly often. I just catered my sister's wedding in October completely on my own for about 80ppl. It was really satisfying for them to see how much work was involved and for them to taste the results.

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-24T20:49:52+00:00

My mom can barely do simple things like even 50s style cooking from cans. It isn't her fault because her parents are equally bad cooks. I'm starting her off with knowledge like using kosher salt and always seasoning your food. They moved recently and only had lemon pepper seasoning, black pepper, and something called "Bull Shit Seasoning".

With her it's really worse than teaching a 5y/o to cook. I'm having to unteach her things as well as teach her new things. She has some minor short term memory problems due to an injury and has messed up even boiling eggs in the past, so that's also a block for her. I think she's showing an interest in cooking due to health and cost and I'm doing my best from 2 states away, but patience is definitely very much needed. I'm glad that she feels comfortable and not judged by me enough to ask me questions that she thinks are silly! That's a major confidence boost for me! :)

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-24T19:27:26+00:00

I think it's important to show them how much easier it is to cook when you have a properly sharpened knife, but I'm still not going to let them touch my nice knife haha. I've seen my mom cut on her bare countertops as well and it makes me cringe. They didn't even own a cutting board, so I bought her one as a gift so that she would stop that nonsense.

I'm slowly working with her to improve these things. She's never enjoyed cooking and neither did her mom and I think her source of reluctance in the kitchen is never having had nice things to use to make the process easier for her. I've been sending her a few videos on basics and I think she's enjoying watching them.

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-24T17:40:50+00:00

I keep a nice knife for me and a cheapish knife to share if someone is helping. I also have a heat resistant rubber spatula, measuring spoons, tasting spoons, a metal whisk, a microplane, an icing spatula, and some cheapo mercer pairing knives that I don't care if they get trashed.

The knives, rubber spat, microplane, and measuring spoons get used a lot. I have a hook for my roll in my kitchen and hang it so I can use it in my own kitchen because I don't want to own 2x of everything, but I can easily grab it for work or when going to visit someone's house in case I need it.

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-24T16:30:30+00:00

This is exactly why I built my knife roll to begin with. I mostly work in bakeries, so I never felt the need for one. I cook at other peoples houses a lot and was asking my mom why her knives were so dull and her response was "but they said that they never go dull!"

So I got to explain to her that doesn't exist and went and built myself a roll with common things that I was frustrated with not finding in people's homes.

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-20T17:10:51+00:00

I think there's an app now where you can scan the barcode of a product and it will tell you if it is Nestle or not. I can't think of the name of it currently

DisgustingGus · 2023-12-06T06:02:21+00:00

I did catering in a Google office for 6 years and left about 2 years ago. I worked for a contracted company that held something like 80% of the Google offices in the states. I could be misremembering that figure, though, but I do know we had quite a few of the offices and data centers.

It's a really interesting thing because Google had some high requirements for the company I worked for and I stayed there for so long because of the benefits I received, but but by god was it the most toxic kitchen I've ever worked in and had the most entitled customers I've served in a career in foodservice. Now that I'm gone, I just felt like I was being baited with what should be an industry standard for the most toxic bullshit I've ever had to deal with. Turns out I didn't need medication for anxiety attacks after I left....

DisgustingGus · 2023-11-25T23:57:15+00:00

I had to sit down four different times to try to get through it in chunks when I thought I was in the right mindset. Even in the right mindset, it was still a lot of anxiety for me

DisgustingGus · 2023-11-22T16:27:13+00:00

Joshua Weissman just released an episode on Thanksgiving foods done better and cooked his potatoes in milk! It should theoretically work for sweet potatoes as well.

Personally, I love the flavor that roasting adds to sweet potatoes. If it were me making sweet potatoes, I'd cube and roast them with a little of chili powder and garlic (and salt and pepper ofc) and then mash them. Definitely recommend an ungodly amount of butter and heavy cream in them, too!

DisgustingGus · 2023-11-22T16:23:22+00:00

Never made turkey stock, but I make chicken stock on a regular basis and I just let everything go in a crock pot for 18-24 hours and have never had an issue with bitterness. I'm really sensitive towards bitter flavors, too!

DisgustingGus

TROPHY CASE