Every January, I’m tempted to hop on board the health and wellness marketing train along with others starting their New Year’s Resolutions. I can’t help it. It’s like how after being out of school for 13 years, I still want to buy new pencils and notebooks every September. I’m trying to be more conscious of consumerism and how marketing contributes to these waves of interests, but sometimes I like to get swept up in it.
This January, even though I initially wanted to put some focus on my health and re-evaluate some things, instead I decided to focus on something that actually benefited us as a family. My husband, Mark, and I have been letting the pandemic be our excuse for ordering out and getting drive-thru a lot more in the last two years. But with prices rising and our growing boredom with the usual places around us, I had the idea to challenge both me and Mark to cook at home more.
This may be one of the trickiest challenges for us and I’m glad he came onboard with me, since I don’t think I could have done it alone. I say this and it’s only been 5 days 😂
I’ll say it right now: Cooking is not fun for me in any way.
A lot of reasons have to do with my ADHD and neurodivergence:
Boredom while waiting for the oven to pre-heat or for water to boil
Unclear or hard-to-understand recipes or instructions
Overwhelm at big lists of ingredients
Working with the food for so long by the time it’s ready, it’s unappetizing or boring
Sensory and texture issues
On top of that, we have some picky eaters in the house including a 4-year-old who is a connoisseur of chicken nuggets and fries but not much else. We’re slowly getting there. In fact, one of the reasons I wanted to attempt a cooking challenge was to get different foods in front of him to try. In fact, I’m just now realizing he’s probably tried more new foods in the last few days than he has in months, so I can already say at least one benefit of this challenge is already worth celebrating.
He’s also expressed interest in cooking more this year so I wrote it on a sticky note and taped it up on a cabinet he can see in the kitchen so he can start setting little goals of his own.
For this challenge, I kept my goal simple: We would cook at least 7 meals at home every week.
Now for those of you doing the math and thinking, “that doesn’t seem like a lot,” I need to give some background to our eating habits first.
Our son eats a regular three meals a day. I prepare his breakfast most mornings, but since he’s the only one who officially eats breakfast, that doesn’t really count as one of the meals in the challenge.
Provided for educational/informational purposes only.
Since I do intuitive eating and intermittent fasting (18:6), I tend to have two larger meals and a small meal or snack in between during a 6-hour window. Mark’s day starts later in the day and his first meal of the day is usually lunch, the same as mine. We also have dinner together before my intermittent fasting window closes, and then he usually has another smaller meal later in the night while he’s working. Our kids are on the most “normal” eating schedule. It works for us and that’s all that matters.
But for those two meals a day when most of us can eat together, lunch and dinner, the goal is to cook at least one of those.
This challenge, though, is different from the last few challenges I’ve done — I don’t actually like cooking. For November Writing Focus, I love writing and it was something I looked forward to! For December’s Relax and Recharge Focus, I didn’t really need to keep track of myself. In fact, that was the whole point. This challenge, though. This is actually something that I need some extra help with.
One of the problems we've found is finding recipes the whole family likes AND that are easy and quick AND offer nutritional value.
Bonus points if I don't have to scroll through their life story to get to the recipe!
I asked in my IG stories and in the Hate to Weight Facebook group for suggestions of websites, social media accounts, or hashtag suggestions for easy cooking, and here are your suggestions:
Air fryer! (Everyone I know who has one swears by it, maybe this is the year!)
Ina Garten @inagarten
Jake Cohen @jakecohen
Nikoli's Kitchen (A positively delicious podcast by my wonderful friend Nick!)
Got any more you think should be on the list? This is giving me some great places to start and if you’ve ever done a cooking-at-home challenge or something similar, I hope you’ll let me know!
I’ve been posting daily about how we’re doing over on Instagram in my Stories and you can check out the month so far by looking at the Jan. Focus Highlight in my profile 🙂
Goals for the Month — January 2022
Cook at home for at least 7 meals every week.
Enjoy building our cooking skills. All of us!
Give ourselves grace on low-energy days or days when the world is too much and ordering a pizza seems like the only thing we have the strength to do. It happens. It’s cool. There’s always the next meal.
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