Help! I've lost my cooking mojo and I want it back!

[gfweb]

42 minutes ago, rotuts said:

@heidih 

 

I understand this completely :

 

consider torching the Dogs after the Micro w a ' torch '

 

dont use your GrandMa's chine for this 

 

keep the torch not as close as you thing

 

if you like toasted generic buns , fine

 

I like mired ( steam'd ) buns , and the micro does this fine

 

the rest you put on this deliciousness  

 

is up to you

 

but simple stuff  ' Before '  is so much more tasty now.

 

 

Almost daily for a few months I put a bamboo skewer down the length of a hotdog, spiral slice it and char over the gas flame.

Very nice.

[heidih]

1 minute ago, rotuts said:

 

[ed.:  probably not the Dog  nor the Cheese . Kraft Slices ?]

 

 

I get the "willies" every time I see cold grated generic "cheese" on a taco or salad here - BUT - many would cringe at some of my stuff. 

[heidih]

4 minutes ago, gfweb said:

 

 

Almost daily for a few months I put a bamboo skewer down the length of a hotdog, spiral slice it and char over the gas flame.

Very nice.

 

I had a room mate that practically kissed my feet when I showed her that one could in fact put food directly on the gas grills like eggplant and tortillas.nAhe adopted your dog method as well. 

Edited September 14, 2020 by heidih (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

7 hours ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

 

I've tried that!

Potential hot food spatter is a serious issue! 

 

You mean wearing shoes?

 

[Martin Fisher]

9 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

You mean wearing shoes?

 

 

 No, naked cooking! LOL 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I do wear shoes or slippers.  Otherwise my feet would stick to the linoleum.

 

[BeeZee]

Timely post yesterday on Epicurious: https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-battle-kitchen-burnout-cooking-exhaustion-article

One of the times when I just couldn't face deciding what to cook, I grabbed a stack of printed out recipes and asked my husband to pick 3 things he wanted to try. Probably once a week my fallback dinner is to defrost some grilled chicken breasts, chop them up, and put them on a salad. Can use up odd bits of veg, too. The variation is in the dressing, I throw together whatever tastes good. No great creativity, just basic food and healthy.

Its the forced nature of the task, rather than the task itself, that I think is driving a lot of us crazy. Not to mention the never ending cycle of dish washing that it spawns. The lack of spontaneity...meals have to be planned out because you are buying your weeks groceries and that's what you have to work with. Is it any wonder many don't feel "inspired"?

[Katie Meadow]

19 hours ago, weinoo said:

JFC - imagine what you’d all be like if you didn’t know how the fuck to cook.

I've no doubt that time is coming.

[ElsieD]

13 hours ago, CeeCee said:

I can totally relate, although it's not due to the pandemic. Except for the negative impact on roaming freely for travel and shopping, it actually helped us with more time and energy on our hands.

We had some stuff going on, so I lost track of this forum for a few years and I didn't cook so elaborately as I used to do. Getting back here has been inspiring, but I don't recommend you all stay away for such a while. It would be very quiet and less informed here!😋

 

What is it that holds you back?

It can differ greatly if you just need a break from cooking, a new routine or new inspiration.

 

 

 

I don't know.  That's what I am trying to figure out.

[ElsieD]

2 hours ago, BeeZee said:

Timely post yesterday on Epicurious: https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-battle-kitchen-burnout-cooking-exhaustion-article

One of the times when I just couldn't face deciding what to cook, I grabbed a stack of printed out recipes and asked my husband to pick 3 things he wanted to try. Probably once a week my fallback dinner is to defrost some grilled chicken breasts, chop them up, and put them on a salad. Can use up odd bits of veg, too. The variation is in the dressing, I throw together whatever tastes good. No great creativity, just basic food and healthy.

Its the forced nature of the task, rather than the task itself, that I think is driving a lot of us crazy. Not to mention the never ending cycle of dish washing that it spawns. The lack of spontaneity...meals have to be planned out because you are buying your weeks groceries and that's what you have to work with. Is it any wonder many don't feel "inspired"?

 

@BeeZee  Thank you so much for the link to that newsletter.  It describes how I feel better than I ever could.  Lots of good advice on there. Thanks to all of you who have chimed in so far.  I'm going to think about the advice offered and try out some of the suggestions.  Also, it sure helps to know I'm not alone.

[lindag]

8 hours ago, weinoo said:

Even @weinoo has trouble living with @weinoo sometimes.

I have to say that one of the few highlights of this Covid time has been the increased frequency of @weinoos humorous postings .  

[CeeCee]

14 hours ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

 

 No, naked cooking! LOL 

 

That's something I'm not doing ever again. I don't eat pork myself, but once fried up some nice pancetta for my lover at the time. Naked except for wearing sky high stiletto heels.  He deemed me not romantic enough. 

 

I have trouble standing up as well at times. Bought an ironing chair and it now lives in my kitchen full time.

[CeeCee]

Also, for people who are cooking for just themselves. Have you thought about food swapping? I trade my asian food for some homemade meatballs with my mom. It's one of the few dishes she still makes from scratch and I generally don't make that. She enjoys asian food, but her roommate doesn't (except for Dutch style Indonesian and Chinese) and when she cooks it for herself she will get complaints about the smell.

 

I cook in bigger batches and stick some portions in my freezer. Then I forget all about it and get surprised when rummaging through my stash😂

[weinoo]

1 hour ago, CeeCee said:

 

That's something I'm not doing ever again. I don't eat pork myself, but once fried up some nice pancetta for my lover at the time. Naked except for wearing sky high stiletto heels.  He deemed me not romantic enough. 

 

Try chicken wings next time.

[CeeCee]

6 minutes ago, weinoo said:

 

Try chicken wings next time.

What next time?😂 

[kayb]

5 hours ago, CeeCee said:

 

That's something I'm not doing ever again. I don't eat pork myself, but once fried up some nice pancetta for my lover at the time. Naked except for wearing sky high stiletto heels.  He deemed me not romantic enough. 

 

I have trouble standing up as well at times. Bought an ironing chair and it now lives in my kitchen full time.

 

4 hours ago, weinoo said:

 

Try chicken wings next time.

 

3 hours ago, CeeCee said:

What next time?😂 

 

You GO, girl!

 

If I wore sky-high stiletto heels to cook, no matter if I were wearing them with a snowsuit, I'd damn well expect appreciation for it. 

[Smithy]

So. Maybe it's time to revisit this topic?

 

The pandemic and isolation that probably triggered this topic have gone, more or less. We're all of us older, and it pains me to see that several of the original participants are no longer with us. Still, the problem remains. What do you do when you used to love to cook, and you remember loving to cook, but just can't get into it now? Is it a permanent or temporary change? If you don't like the loss of enthusiasm, what can you do about it?

 

Personal circumstances have knocked the stuffing out of my cooking enthusiasm. The good news is that I've lost a lot of weight in a good way. The bad news is that one of my favorite regular home projects has become very perfunctory. Dishwashing is down, garbage generation is down, weight is blessedly down ... but so is the fun. I'll be very glad when I finish working my way through a pile of microwaveable packaged sauces and rice, but it's a moonshot-sized leap of faith to think that working my way through packaged convenience foods will lead to the rebirth of the Joy of Cooking.

 

How about the rest of you? This is, after all, a site dedicated to food (and drink) and cooking (and drink). When and if you've found your enthusiasm flagging, what have you done to revive it? Has it worked?

 

I can tell about a ridiculous cookbook-and-baking-vs-catalog-and-buying situation I've gotten myself into, but it perhaps belongs in Food Funnies. Or the cookbooks forum. Or the Pastry & Baking forum. I haven't decided. I am having fun laughing at myself. Maybe that's progress.

 

[BeeZee]

I challenge myself ala “Chopped” and dig into the pantry or freezer to find some odd bits I squirreled away and figure out some way to use them. When grocery shopping, I try to buy something that will enable me to use something I have on hand - for example, saw a nice little spaghetti squash at the market, and remembered I had pesto in the freezer and a little red bell pepper getting old in the crisper drawer, so there’s the veg for the evening’s dinner. Sometimes I just go to an ethnic market and browse the aisles like “window shopping” to imagine what I could use items for, and find inspiration.

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

I believe I posted this under another topic.

My strategy is I have a clipboard with the top page of 'to cook' ideas/projects and the second page a freezer inventory.

Some ideas don't happen immediately but I won't forget about them and will eventually get to.

 

[chromedome]

I have to confess I "haven't been feelin' it" for a while, myself.

 

Lots of factors at play, here. As many of you will recall my GF can't eat red meats anymore, hence raising our own rabbits. Then there are the things she doesn't care for, and the things the grandkids won't eat (stepdaughter works 3-5 days/week, and I do dinner those days), and the rapid shifts in that latter category. When my kids were little I could often pull together a big pot of soup and slices of homemade bread and call that dinner, but my grandkids prefer Campbell's (sigh) and my sweetie, God love her, doesn't think of soup as a meal. Another factor is that she's had to have her molars all pulled for complicated reasons, so most meats must be cooked to a pot-roast consistency.

 

Even on nights when I'm only feeding the two of us it's complicated, because I'm ready for dinner by 5 or 6 and she's not usually ready to eat until 8, by which time I'm in wind-down mode and usually pretty tired mentally and not feeling at all creative. So last night, for example, dinner was two portions of salmon cooked from frozen, with store-bought Olivieri "skillet gnocchi," Costco pesto, and some garden vegetables from the freezer. It's fine, and low-effort, but not especially inspiring.

 

We've just culled the surplus males from our little flock of quail so I have several of them in the freezer to work with. Maybe finding something to do with those will give me a bit of a spark.

[Maison Rustique]

@Smithy I feel like I could have written that post. For me it started a couple of years ago when my husband's dementia began getting bad. He got odd about food and stopped eating much aside from sandwiches and sweets. Then when he went into memory care, I mostly ate crackers from a baggie in the car as I was going back and forth to see him. Then, my hip started giving out and my  subsequent hip replacement. I'm still not really back to normal and am using a cane most of the time, so not cooking  yet. I lost entirely too much weight and have started force-feeding myself but that is mostly canned soup and frozen dinners unless my family is here and they drag me out to eat.

 

I honestly don't know if I will ever feel like cooking again.

[gfweb]

Quote

 

Having no one to cook for, it  is harder to get interested.

I find that when my wife is away I tend to cook little dishes...tapas-ish, rather than full meals.  Not too much work, still interesting.

[YvetteMT]

I find the busier I am, the less I care about cooking. I am in the middle of a 7 week stint working 12 hours/7day per week. I would be happy with a can of campbells or some popcorn or a piece of bologna inhaled in front of the open fridge. Partner however wants food. So things get thrown together,most of which I do not want or enjoy when I do eat. If friends are expected, I make more effort and enjoy it but I halfway resent it too-especially when its last minute and the invite wasnt my idea.

[Smithy]

3 minutes ago, YvetteMT said:

I find the busier I am, the less I care about cooking. I am in the middle of a 7 week stint working 12 hours/7day per week. I would be happy with a can of campbells or some popcorn or a piece of bologna inhaled in front of the open fridge. Partner however wants food. So things get thrown together,most of which I do not want or enjoy when I do eat. If friends are expected, I make more effort and enjoy it but I halfway resent it too-especially when its last minute and the invite wasnt my idea.

 

It seems to me that in that case, the partner should make the meal! But I confess, my darling's idea of "company" dinner and mine were a bit different. Maybe it's the same for you?

[ElsieD]

I find that as I'm getting older, my interest in cooking has diminished.  Not gone, but it's less than it was.  And yet, if I get interested in something, I go all in with great joy.    For example, I recently purchased a dehydrator and hardly a day has gone by that I haven't dehydrated something.  Yesterday it was cilantro, although I think I'm finished with dehydrating stuff for now.  Next year we are going to be growing vegetables and herbs with my SIL at her place in the country so the dehydrator will likely be running 24/7.  Just before that, I read something about the Creami and made (and ate) a lot of ice cream.

 

But things like making dinner?  The routine stuff?  No thank you.  To alleviate that "I don't feel like cooking feeling" I've started to start dinner prep earlier in the afternoon.  I do the chopping ahead of time.  If I'm making a sauce, ingredients are measured and, if suitable, mixed together.  What can be done ahead of time, I do.  That way, the actual cooking doesn't seem so onerous.

 

Baking, though, is another story.  I have always loved baking and still do.  Yesterday I decided I wanted to make a gingerbread cake, and I enjoyed making it.  Today I am making the batter for cannales which I'll bake a couple of days from now.  I'll enjoy every minute.

 

Dinner tonight?  Meh.