10 Ways to Avoid Cooking Burnout
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I don’t know about you, but by the time week three of stay-at-home orders arrived, I already felt like I had fixed dinner 873 times. To say nothing of breakfasts and lunches as well. I generally enjoy cooking. I think it’s a creative and wholesome way to nourish my family and show them that I love them. It’s one of the few basic things in life that I truly appreciate. But it’s easy to forget that I usually enjoy it when stress levels are high, work and parenting feels like too much, and there’s a global pandemic going on. Here are a few ways we’re dealing with avoiding cooking burnout in our household.
1. Plan Ahead
I find that when I’m most overwhelmed and exhausted by the idea of cooking is when it’s 5pm in the evening after a long day and I realize that we haven’t thought about what to do for dinner that night. I’m a working mom so finding time to “meal prep” is not an option when I can hardly find the time to make it into the kitchen one meal at a time. But I do try to take some time to mentally prepare for meals for the week. For me that looks like taking the time in bed on Sunday nights to go through my recipes and my Pinterest inspiration to figure out a loose plan of what I want to make that week and what we’ll need to buy ingredients for. I plan out at least a few of the major meals for the week, thrown in with a few desserts I’m excited about, and a couple of new recipes that I’d like to try.
2. Know Your Limits
It’s important to be realistic about your personal limits. In my mind I always think I can handle making a bunch of meals and recipes from scratch, but I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that I just can’t handle more than one meal or item from scratch each day. Sometimes that’s an elaborate dinner and sometimes that’s a batch of cookies. Knowing your personal limits will make it easier to plan for the week. That means I know that about 2/3 of the meals we eat will need to be made by my husband, leftovers, or something simple from the pantry or freezer.
3. Double Up
It generally doesn’t take that much more time or energy to double a recipe that you’re cooking. We do this with lots of recipes that we make so that at least half of the meals that we eat in our household are reheated leftovers. Freeze some of it if you won’t eat it right away.
4. Vertically Integrate
Cook a large batch of one ingredient to eat different ways. Something like slow cooker shredded pork can be used for meals like BBQ sandwiches, carnitas tacos, or a hearty stew. We eat plant-based in our household so we make a nut “mozzarella” that we use to make pizza, lasagna, or grilled cheese sandwiches. Or we’ll make vegan meatballs that we eat with spaghetti, put into a meatball sub sandwich, and add in a casserole.
5. Keep It Simple
We normally try to eat all fresh, whole foods and avoid processed food when we cook at home, but we also aren’t usually cooking at home every single day with a worldwide pandemic going on. Now is not the time to be principled, it’s the time to do what you need to get by. Give yourself a break and keep it simple. I worked my way through all of my fast and easy go-to recipes in the first two weeks of staying at home so we then stocked up on things like fish sticks, frozen mixed vegetable, jarred sauces (for pastas and for Asian dishes), and frozen burgers and hot dogs. This way we have lots of quick and easy go-to meals when we haven’t planned for anything else.
6. Enlist Help
I am lucky that my husband handles about half of the cooking in our household (it feels like less, but he claims that he feels the same way, so we’ll just call it even at half and half). Sometimes there are days that I just can’t bring myself to step inside the kitchen and I ask him to handle meals for the day. If you have a roommate, partner, older kids, etc., have them help.
7. Make It Fun
The more fun you’re having with cooking, the less it will feel like a chore. Have a picnic in the backyard or family pizza night where everyone builds his/her own pizza. Some families enjoy theme nights—Mexican, burger night, Greek, Indian, etc. Make corresponding specialty cocktails for the adults and dress in costume if you want to kick it up a notch. Or maybe your version of fun in the kitchen looks like pouring yourself a big glass of wine and turning on some music while you’re making dinner. However you can bring joy into the meal and the process, do it.
8. Stay Inspired
For me, finding new recipes that I want to try is usually enough motivation to get into the kitchen. Pinterest is obviously a great place to start with this. Maybe buying a new kitchen gadget or appliance will keep you inspired. I enjoy collecting vintage glassware, dishes, and tableware, so setting a beautiful table scape and planning a lovely meal to serve with it makes my heart sing. Whatever it is for you, staying inspired will help you staying cooking.
9. Rely On Appliances
Take any shortcuts where you can and get the appliances to do the work for you. There are so many great recipes out there for slow cookers where you dump in all of the ingredients in the morning and have a meal ready that night. Or if you don’t already have one, now is a great time to invest in an Instant Pot. Other favorites in our household include the rice cooker (also great for streaming vegetables) and our microwave pasta cooker.
10. Phone A Friend
You know how you have your handful of go-to recipes that you love because they are tasty, delicious, easy, and/or quick? Well guess what? So do you all of your friends. I recently reached out to a few good friends and they were more than happy to send me some of their favorites. It instantly gave me fun recipes to look forward to that also made me think of my friends when cooking and eating some of their favorite meals. Win, win.
xx Jen
