Why don’t you like cooking?
First thing first, you need to get really honest with yourself and work out what it is you don’t like about cooking.
It could be a whole number of reasons
1. Feel lonely in the kitchen
You have ADHD and you don’t work well if there isn’t anyone else present with you in the kitchen. Or maybe you don’t have ADHD and you resent being the only one cooking for you.
Ok – there are a number of scenarios here.
If you live with someone who loves cooking with you or you are their sous-chef, then you are on to a winner, if you work harmoniously in the kitchen together, woo hoo.
If you live with someone else and they hate cooking too, that is going to be a big issue - that is my issue – Mak used to come and help me chop up veggies and he would moan and groan and even though I wanted the company it irritated me and took the fun out of cooking. Then, one day, I had a brain-bomb moment and asked him not to chop veggies but play the ukelele instead – now that was a whole lot of fun. These days he doesn’t play the ukelele, but I will ask him to just come and keep me company and make me a drink.
Now, if you live solo, then you are not going to get the company – but you could put my latest podcast on and have me in the kitchen with you, or even put the radio on, I have a friend who watches the TV as she cooks – I am not judging that – if she needs company, good on her.
Cooking together with the right people that make you happy is really a nourishing thing – think back to all the Nonnas cooking together, and I still have the most beautiful vision of all my sister-in-law's family cooking together and laughing in Timor Leste.
If the people you live with don’t float your boat as cooking partners, or you are solo and you want more than my voice coming over the load speaker, then arrange times where you and your friends can cook together – it could be just for one meal a week, or it could be that you batch cook together. You could cook together in their house or your house or alternate.
2. Was never taught how to cook
You are definitely not alone, not many people get taught how to cook. Apart from home economics or whatever is it called these days. Unless we had parents who took us under their wings, like mother birds do, and let us be with them, by their sides, as they cooked, then most of us didn’t really get cooking lessons.
So its like starting from scratch, like when we got our first computer or started learning the piano.
We need to:
1. Start small, find simple things to cook.
2. Look through all the fun cooking tips I suggest in my podcasts and try one out.
3. Learn how to cook with me – I have a new program in the pipeline – Living well with Veet, plant based cooking and nutrition collective.
4. Save any cooking tips you see online – checkout my cooking tips on Instagram – I will start hashtagging # cooking tips to make it easier.
5. Ask friends for simple recipes that they know work well.
6. Ask a friend to show you how to make something or come and cook along with you.
7. Go to my recipes – they are all really easy.
3. Past trauma associated with cooking
Over the years of running cooking classes, I heard so many stories of why people didn’t like cooking, or what got them to the age of 60 and they had never cooked in their life before.
So much of why we don’t like to cook is because of something that happened in the past.
It could be:
A failed dinner that no one liked.
The last time you cooked it tasted dreadful.
Someone told you that the meal you made wasn’t your finest hour.
Your mum shooed you out of the kitchen.
You were never as good as your brother/sister at cooking.
Your mum was a perfectionist and whatever you did in the kitchen wasn’t good enough.
Your mum was never around.
You grew up on takeaways.
You saw your mum slaving away in the kitchen and you declared you were never going to be chained to the stove.
And the reasons go on.
I am no somatic experiencing practitioner, but I do know these memories get stuck in our body, and we need to shake them out, or manage them the best way we can, and find a way to move through them. Because bottom line is, if we don’t find a way to have fun in the kitchen, our bodies aren’t going to thrive.
So few of us can afford a private chef, and even if we could, are we really going to get the food to the quality we like, that we want. So until we can find a perfect private chef, its us, it's all we’ve got.
Identifying where the trauma comes from is the first step – if the trauma is too huge for you to even step into the kitchen, you could seek therapy, or even book in a private cooking session with me as I have worked with plenty of people who have not been able to get in the kitchen and are now cooking on a regular basis.
If the trauma is manageable and you can get over it then take small steps. I remember the first meal I made for my parents, it actually was really delicious but I was so nervous – I was all set to go except for the gravy, I was still stirring that when a big blob of it flew into the air and got stuck to my eye lid – it was excruciatingly painful and my dad bundled me up and took me to the chemist. It was traumatic, dinner was ruined and I had burned my eyelid. It took a bit to come back from that – but I started by only cooking for my then husband before inviting anyone over again.
But I did get back in, I think its like the scenario of, keep getting on the bike or horse.
Make and find time
Once you have identified why you don’t like cooking and then decided you are going to give it a go, make and find time to cook. I allow 15 minutes every day to make breakfast, 15 minute for lunch, and 30 minutes for dinner – that’s a total of 1 hour a day. Then on the weekends, I have one day where I allow 1.5 hours, so I can make more creative things or try out a new recipe.
Have some fun
Ready set go.
Set up the kitchen so it is a space you want to be in. Have a plant in there, some flowers, herbs in glass jars that smell nice. Make your favourite cup of tea or pour yourself your favourite beverage. Light a candle.
Put on your favourite cooking music or your fave podcast (I hope it’s mine).
Have a dance, or dance in between tasks you have to do.
If cooking for yourself, pretend you are cooking for the most important person in the world and then realise you are – that’s you!
Put on a comedy show so you can laugh as you cook.
~ Take photos as you go and pretend you are a famous food photographer that wants to capture real life cooking. Send your photos to me, I would love to see them.
~ Pretend you are on a cooking show and talk to the camera and tell your followers what you are doing.
~ Before you start cooking, set the table. Or if you live with others, ask them to set the table and throw a table cloth over their arm like they are a fancy maître-d in your favourite restaurant.
~ Set yourself little challenges, try a different veg in a dish that you always make, to jazz it up a little.
~ Make yourself a sprinkle – go to podcast #3 for pepita sprinkle and imagine it is stardust for the soul and sprinkle it on with flair.
~ When adding salt, add it in pinches and hold your hand high, like the famous chefs do, as you add it to the pot.
~ Stir clockwise and say positive affirmations into your food.
~ Imagine you are a Witchy Koo Koo, adding magic to everything you put in the saucepan and say bubble bubble, toil and trouble , fire burn and cauldron bubble
Say something like
Double, double joy and cheer,
Good vibes bubbling far and near!”
Or
“Double, double dreams come true,
Stirring up good luck for you!”
Or so you feel good in your kitchen
Double, double spice and flame,
I own this kitchen, I stake my claim!”
Before you start cooking tap into your ancestors and see if they can give you some Juju to cook a really really good meal.
Think up fun and positive affirmations to say to yourself
I am the master of my craft.
I am a sensational cook.
Veet has confidence in me, I have confidence in myself.
My ancestors whisper ‘You can do this as we did before you’.
The secret ingredients is in my hands.
And if you are worried about screwing things up – think of my worst cooking story ever –
The one where the table crashed on me and food went everywhere including all through my hair.
I really hope some of these fun ideas resonate with you.
If you think of more fun ideas please let me know and I'll do a 2nd podcast on it.
OK. Here is a fun little recipe for you to try, and a fun cooking tip too.
Hope you have a deliriously fun time in the kitchen this week, and do let me know what you cook.
Please like, follow, and subscribe to my podcast, and share with all and sundry.
Fun and Quick 10 minute meal for 2
Approx 1 cup dried noodles (cook to packet instructions)
2 tbsp miso
2 tbsp tahini
2 splashes of plum vinegar or lemon juice
Tamari to taste
3 – 4 cups water
3 cups veggies of choice chopped small – I like to use broccoli, carrot and silverbeet
Chilli if you wish
1. Place the water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the veggies and simmer for 5 minutes.
2. In a bowl, mix the miso, tahini and a couple of splashes or water. Then add it, and the noodles, to the saucepan and stir. Add the plum vinegar or lemon juice and taste. Add tamari if it needs more taste. Start with 1 tsp at a time. Add chopped chilli if you like spice.
FCT
Always wear an apron in the kitchen and have a few to choose from that reflect your mood.
Love you
