I don’t feel like cooking
TLDR — I’m no longer making banana bread
Welcome to the year 2021, and if like me, you live in the UK, you’ll have spent most of your last year indoors.
It seems like now may be a good time to reflect on this a little. After a year with a radically altered food landscape, less time out of the house, not being able to share meals with friends, or grabbing a bite while out and about and instead, more time in our own kitchens. I’m sure that for some, this time has been enjoyable, but for others, it can feel overwhelming, or frankly just a little boring.
Managing life, changing work environments, a new form of social interaction and trying to keep food interesting and exciting is a lot to manage. So here’s some radical honesty, I’ve personally never been less interested in food than I am right now. The idea of prepping foods, considering what’s for lunch, thinking about grocery shopping, or baking banana bread (sigh) feels like a lot to me. I know I’m not alone with this. Many, many conversations I’ve had over the last year have been around this topic, with the associated feelings of guilt that we should be getting our Nigella on in the kitchen.
Around a year ago, Instagram was filled with banana bread, sourdough starters, and fermented veg, there wasn’t any flour for a while. I made cinnamon buns for the first time ever, it was a good (albeit brief) time to be thinking about food. The interest in this has certainly waned the longer this has gone on. But, in among all this earlier peak excitement and growing disinterest, we’ve still got to eat, and prepare food every day.
So what do we do and how do we cope with this, if, like me, food has become disinteresting?
- Keep it manageable & give yourself a break
First things first, how do we manage? There’s a balance here between being hungry and needing to eat, but also the above disinterest in cooking and food prep. Consider how we make this manageable, you’ve still got to live, work and watch Netflix — so give yourself a break about how you’re feeling. The media often portrays a standard of modern-day living that is unattainable to most of us — which can bring about feelings of guilt or shame for how we manage our everyday food landscape. What’s realistic for all of us may differ from person to person, so focus on what’s within your reach right now.
2. Redefine what a meal looks like
Let’s park the idea of nutritious and delicious for a sec. There’s no such thing as perfect eating, and yet we certainly have a perception of what each of our meals should ‘ideally’ look like. These are not normal times, the weird stressful limbo most of us find ourselves in may mean we have to redefine what is ‘normal’. Maybe that means breakfast for lunch (still a meal), or beans on toast on the regular (also still a meal). It might mean scaling back a little, re-evaluating, mixing and matching to find things that are easier, filling and sustainable.
3. Food prep
Yep, I know it’s boring and has been said a million times, but prepping food in advance really does make it easier throughout the week. More often than not, food prep is synonymous with sustainability bloggers and fancy Tupperware. I’m not suggesting we dedicate a whole Sunday and multiple trips to the big sainos (other supermarkets are available) to get hold of all the wears we need. What I am suggesting is some simple ideas that may make things a little easier.
My biggest suggestion would be to food prep on a day that you’ve got the energy to do it, the food prepper day of choice is often a Sunday, but at the moment weekends feel more like lunch breaks, in quite a monotonous day-to-day, so Sunday may not be when you’ve got the energy to meal prep.
Prepping can look different for everyone, it doesn’t have to be a whole meal, instead, it could just be getting the basics together which would make dinner/lunchtime a little easier.
This could look like;
- Slicing up veg
- Boiling pasta / rice / preparing grains
- Pre-boiling eggs and popping them in the fridge
- Roasting veg with herbs and spices and leaving for a later date
4. Frozen & pre-made foods
I feel a certain amount of righteous indignation when frozen or premade foods are disregarded, as they often are in wellness culture. They’re incredibly useful for a myriad of reasons, but one of the big ones being that they’re there for us on the days when we just can’t. It’s nice to have something in the freezer for emergencies. If you’ve got the energy, anything you can prepare in bulk, pop some in the freezer for a backup option. This can be as simple as cooking a double portion of something and placing half in the freezer. Or any leftovers that you think you’ll fancy at a later date. As well as frozen fruit and veg, peas and sweetcorn are the obvious choices, but berries, in particular, can be nice and often cheaper frozen.
5. Order in
Ah yes, one of the smaller perks of the last year is the availability of ordering in food. Yep, we’ve got deliveroo and uber eats, but a lot of restaurants have started offering their own delivery service. It’s expensive to do this every day, but the ability to have the option certainly takes the stress out of somedays. A radical act of self-care for me would be ordering a pizza after a rough day. It’s there, it’s delicious and it does the job. Equally, the majority of UK supermarkets can be delivered to your door, with some pretty quickly, like m&s which launched onto deliveroo. Another idea to try could be ordering in a meal kit such as hello fresh or gusto. A Lot of these services take a lot of the decision making out of dinner time and can give us exactly what we need.
6. Do less
Drop the rules and the ‘guidelines’ (which are often rules in the guise of a guideline) and consider the minimum here. Complicated recipes can also be parked for the time being (sorry Ottolenghi). What I’m talking about is meals with 2/3 ingredients, not a whole pantry.
When you’re getting your grocery list together think about things that could make this easier.
- Wraps/pitta breads/rolls & bagels for quick lunch options
- Pre-sliced veg
- Spreads and additions such as humous, guacamole, olives and antipasti
- Salad bags or stir fry kits
- Tinned fish
7. Keep eating
Eating regularly and eating enough is one of the most basic things we can do for our wellbeing, but yet is often one of the most challenging. When we are lacking energy it’s so easy to forget about food. If you’re struggling with this, maybe try to reframe it a little, thinking of it in smaller and manageable chunks as a way to take care of yourself, whatever that may look like. If you feel like this is too challenging at the moment, reach out for help from a registered nutritionist or dietitian if the resources are available to you.
8. Old faves
We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, just get through the day, so going back to the things you had when you were a kid can often feel like a good starting point. Remember all those things you used to have in your pack lunch? I’m talking baby bells, petit filous and dairy lea dunkers. There’s a certain amount of nostalgia I associate with these kinds of foods that make me feel more comforted when eating them.
9. Cover your bases
Sometimes, putting together a list or plan of your meals can help to take that in the moment stress out of cooking and preparing foods. It gives us a hot minute to make sure we’ve got everything we need in the cupboards. It also can be helpful to figure out what we’re going to do with those tins of chickpeas we never really use. In this way, it’s useful to have certain ‘staples’ in the cupboard/fridge. You might find it useful to split these things up into groups ie. grains & bases, fats & dairy, proteins, tins & jars, snacks, freezer foods, fruit & veg and foods for added flavour.
10. Looking after yourself
An age-old message, but still an important one. A good question to ask is — How can I look after myself amongst all this mess? Write down your answers. What comes to mind? It doesn’t have to be illustrious or fancy, it can just be enough for your needs right now. Something like — Netflix and a cup of tea, less time on social media, changing out of your pyjamas, having a shower, getting some fresh air. Or the more regularly known ones i.e mindfulness, yoga and switch off from your phone. Of course, the most important one, reaching out for help.
