I'm a Gem too, and have been known to end up either bored with a thing, or way over-stimulated by it. Either way, nothing good ever comes of it until pause is taken and a few deep breaths --- and sometimes different coloured glasses besides rose helps me for sure
I'm alone too, and hate leftovers. My fridge/freezer is a dinky little thing that came with the apartment, so not much space. My own thoughts about recipes ... has been influenced by 4 weeks participating in the LC V.2 project (today's my final day). For the strict lean protein fasts, and the restrictive calorie boost days .. at first I wasted a lot of angst and energy trying to dream up recipes to make the food "interesting". This last week was a breeze ... I thought to myself, Screw the Recipes ... I just cooked plain meats and vegetables ... maybe a sprinkle of herbs or squeeze of lemon juice here and there. But there again, oh Gem of Gems I'm sure I'll get bored with plain soon enough.
I agree with you on the deficiency of vegetables. Although what is listed as "salad greens", which is permitted 3 cups a day ... includes cucumbers, spinach, kale, bok choy, mushrooms, celery, radishes (would include daikon radish), bell peppers, olives, fennel and bean sprouts. Funny, I ran a sample day's menu through fitday, and got around 1350 calories, but I didn't use maximums, I just made it up to be something I would consider reasonable ina day for ME.
Sometimes, it all comes back to this little snippet of advice I got from a fellow fibromyalgia sufferer during a "class" we were sent to in order to "learn" how to cope. After the "expert" finished speaking, and the pamphlets and hand-outs went around the room .. all I could do was shake my head in disbelief at the B.S. Maybe it was the look on my face, but a woman sitting next to me leaned over and whispered
Great piece of advice, and it's helped me a lot over the years. So much information and knowledge will come your way, often whether you seek it or not. You can spend forever knocking yourself out trying to do it all OR ... you can filter out what isn't useful to you, and hang onto the stuff that's really important. The challenge comes down to recognizing which is which
... And also recognizing that not all good information will come from one source. Nor will you necessarily LIKE the information that's really good for you.
Life's just one big learning curve.
Doreen