Why You Need to Get Back in the Kitchen

Eating food is unavoidable.

Have you ever dreamed about a futuristic world where humans become robots? No eating, no toilet breaks, no old age… no worries!

Sadly, until we become a robotic nation, we need to eat. And we need to eat real food. Not processed ‘post-it’ cheese slices on bleached white bread. Not microwave meals encased in plastic. Not 2-minute noodles with MSG flavored soup.

Your health needs to become your priority or it’ll be your death.

“Yeah, sure, but I’m young and It’s so hard and time consuming and boring and stupid and expensive and I just don’t have the energy and… — “

Make all the excuses you like, but deep down, you know that unless we start making our own food again, both our personal health and our planet’s health will be in some serious trouble.

Its time for us to grow up and cook like the adults we are.

Have you thought about why you don’t cook in the first place?

Back in the dark days (AKA before women’s rights), women were the cookers — the real providers. That all changed when us gals joined the workforce. From then on, parents served up microwave dinners and took us out to pizza resturants. Cooking was simply too time consuming for a society hooked on Capitalism and 80-hour work weeks.

These days, our free time is spent checking status updates, catchin up with friends and trying to stay relevant in our careers. Cooking the old-fashioned way seems so tedious, so outdated and almost unviable

Don’t get too excited about that ‘unviable’ word. You still have a responsibility to your body and your planet to fix your eating habits. All those Chinese takeout boxes are adding to our landfills, our waistlines, and a whole bunch of other problems.

So now what?

Change your mind, change the world

I know I’m never EVER going to convince you that cooking is easier.

That’s because it’s not. Cooking is hard, it takes time to get good at it and dishes are a drag.

But your aversion to cooking is a worldwide issue that you need to help solve. Remember all those times your teachers told you “children are the future?” They weren’t joking around, they were telling you that you are important to the world, that your individual choices can result in a worldwide change.

I could lie and give you a bunch of regurgitated advice on how to spark your inner chef. Ever heard some of this advice?

“Go to cooking classes! It’s fun!”

Yes, I’m sure it’s delightful Susan, but I don’t have $100 in couch change right now. I have $1… and that gets me pizza.

“Do the dishes as soon as you finish cooking and they’ll never have the chance to pile up.”

Really Susan? You think I don’t know that? My Mom says that to me twice a day when I was in high school. It didn’t work then, what makes you think it’ll work now?

“It’s so much cheaper. Just try making pasta and see how much money you save!”

Ahh, Susan, you are so naive… cooking for one is not cheaper than takeouts. It’s more expensive. Do you know how many spices you need? All that adds up fast! Plus, the Italian place down the street even gives me organic Parmesan shavings for free!

Yeah… not the most actionable advice I’ve ever heard. So here are some tips I’ve collected along the way that have helped me get my act together.

5 things you can do that help you sort out your fear and general dislike of the kitchen area

* Disclaimer: Effort will be required. Cooking is like getting a college degree, it sucks, but at the end, you will be rewarded … depending on the economy.

Tip 1 — Set tiny goals

Stop thinking you are going to change your dastardly ways and only cook from now on. You’ll wear yourself out in the first week and revert to your takeout ways. Set yourself micro goals that are easy to reach and get you feeling good about yourself. If you don’t cook at all, start with one meal or one day a week and move on from there. Baby steps, be gentle with yourself.

Tip 2 — learn 2 recipes by heart

I’ve wasted so much time sitting in my car outside of a supermarket trying to choose a recipe from the internet. I used to choose something complicated and buy a load of groceries that I would only use a quarter of and forget an ingredient with suprising relularity. Instead of putting yourself through all that pain, pre-decide on a dish or two and learn the recipe off by heart. Learning recipes by heart is the secret to speed cooking. Choose something you like to eat and make it every week without fail. No ingredients wasted and no uncertainty in the checkout line. My two recipes are Spaghetti Bolognese and Tuna Mayo Sushi Handrolls.

Tip 3 — Don’t buy all the spices

Spices are a big hassle for me, mostly because I don’t trust them. My mother always used to put turmeric in rice, which turned it into a sickly yellow mush with a flavor that I hated. Because of that experience, I’ve never taken the time to learn what all the spices taste like. Over the years I have challenged myself to explore more options, but these are the ones I use on a regular basis:

1. Salt & Pepper — Remember, salt enhances natural flavours and pepper adds to them.
2. Oregano/Organum — It’s the stuff they put on pizza. If there is cheese or tomato involved, chuck it in with wild abandon.
3. Chili Flakes — If you like a little heat, these flakes add a lot of flavour.
4. Garlic Salt/paste/anything — Garlic is great for almost anything.

Tip 4 — Lose weight by procrastinating

Do you want to eat all the yummy things? Go for it! The chocolate cookies? The butter-soaked pancakes? All the white bread you can possibly cram in your face — eat it all! The only condition is that you must cook/bake these treats yourself. Can’t be bothered to find out to make chocolate chip cookies? Well, then you don’t get to eat them. Voila, weight loss by procrastination and cooking by desperation.

Tip 5 — Let the dishes pile

If you live alone*, let those dishes pile up, but let them pile up in the sink. The moment they start to overflow, it’s time to wash them. If you have a small sink, I feel for you — mine’s huge.

*If you live with other people, ALWAYS do your dishes immediately.

I still can’t be bothered to cook, what should I do?

You should sit for hours on Instagram looking at pictures of other people’s home cooked food. Look at how everyone else in the world can do this… feel the shame. Find out out to make Spagetti Bolognaise.

Just kidding! If you still don’t want to cook, the least you can do is source your food from a good restaurant. By good, I mean not junk food and with sustainable business practices. Depending on your area, there might be some sort of home delivery service for healthy food that you can take advantage of.

…

Or you could pay Mom to make you a weekly supply of frozen dinners.