Tales from my One-Year Cooking Experiment, Part II: The Magic Fairy Dust That Makes It All Work

(See Part I for the intro to this post--but to briefly sum it up:) For the first time, I learned how to cook and started cooking dinners for the week on Sundays last year, and it has been a huge learning process. Here is what I've learned, and what has worked for me:

Mental Energy Regulation & Conservation is Key
Though I have been successful in implementing my once a week cooking for about a year, don't get me wrong--cooking is still a chore and constant energy-suck. I still sometimes have to drag myself out of my bed/watching shows on my laptop on Sundays to do it. I have learned a lot about myself and my energy levels through this process.

A few times, I went out with friends on a Sunday to do something. When I got home, I had no energy at all to cook. I am an introvert, so even friends can sometimes drain me of energy. On those weeks, I reverted to my old ways: reheating stuff up from a can, ordering expensive and/or unhealthy takeaways like Pizza Hut and Thai delivery, throwing insta-meals together, and last minute rushes to the overpriced convenience store next door to grab junk food. I have learned: if I have another activity on Sunday, that means there is no energy left to cook. I have learned to be very, very strict about keeping Sundays free. I am not able to plan ANYTHING except the bare minimum on Sundays. It does cripple my social life a bit.

I've also tried grocery shopping or cooking on week nights in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure off of the weekends. Unfortunately, during the work week, I have even less time/energy than I do on the weekends. This strategy doesn't work. Anything extra I have to put energy towards doing during the work week cuts into the energy I have to work, big time, so I HAVE to get cooking, etc. done on the weekends.

I also have tried doing the shop and cooking on the same day--it cannot be done. Again, my energy levels can't support that level of activity, and I end up a useless blob on Sunday AND at work on Monday.

I have made some progress, though: at first, I couldn't do any social activities on the weekend without it hurting my meal planning and cooking process. Now, I am able to work in a social activity on a Friday or Saturday, as long as I get my other chores and meal plan and grocery shops done. Sundays, however? They are to be kept pristine and free of any other energy-sucks.


I Need to Express My Creativity or Else I Get Bored
These days, I start thinking about next week's dinners on Weds or Thursdays. Luckily, it has started to become automatic and...dare I say it...easier. As has choosing recipes and combining them. I get very rebellious and feel hemmed in and bored if I have to follow just one recipe, so what I love love love to do is pick the top 3 or 4 five-star recipes for a certain dish and mix and match portions of each together. Each recipe will invariably differ, sometimes in major ways, like in ingredients or cooking techniques. I grab the ingredients I like from each, and combine them how I like, in the cooking technique I favor on the day. That way, I feel like I have some freedom, spontaneity, and creativity in the process. Involved in this feeling is that there is some experimentation and a sense that I have no idea of how it is going to come out--a surprise every time!

I think this need for creativity is why my cooking always came out awful before--I was combining things that weren't meant to be combined or cooked the way I was cooking them. I am a methodical scientist and an experimenter at heart, but I wasn't applying that to my cooking--all of that haphazard throwing things together in non-tested ways meant that I'd end up with a ton of wasted food to throw away and a sense of failure at the end of my cooking attempts. NOT good for your cooking mojo! Now, with the course at my back, I am starting to learn what goes with what, and when and how to chop various foods efficiently, and what to add to make a dish better when I inevitably screw it up.

I also add veggies to almost every dish to make it healthier. It feels good to take control of what I am eating, and to have something healthy and delicious to eat, ready to go as soon as I come home, every weekday.


See my next post, Part III, for the official Results!, some of my favorite (and not so favorite) dishes, and a little nostalgia from my past to show how far I've come.

Tales From My One Year Cooking Experiment, Part I: Breaking the Barriers

The results are in from a whole year of experimenting with cooking! But first, some background:

The Problem
About a year ago, I got really, really fed up with myself and how I haven't been able to meet some of my goals. One of my main frustrations with myself is that I cannot cook. I don't like cooking. I hate everything about it. It just takes up a ton of time and energy, and the results were usually...lacking in the tastebud area. I hate that I have to stop my day and what I'm doing because my body demands fuel (my metabolism is extremely high, and my stomach capacity is small, so I have to eat 5-6+ times a day. Hunger is a huge interruption and nearly constant.). If I could, I'd just hook myself up to an IV and forget about the whole process of eating altogether (mostly--I'm fine with eating when I have time for it or when I want to eat, I just hate being in the middle of something and have my body demand I stop doing it to eat...). In our foodie/food-obsessed culture, I feel like an abnormal, weird human being every time I discuss any of this with anyone or think about how this makes me different.

So I decided to do something about it.

A 30-Day Cooking Course Saves the Day
 After doing a ton of research, I discovered the Summer Tomato healthstyle blog and eventually signed up for her Foodist Kitchen course in June 2016. Did I feel ridiculous and nervous paying nearly $100 USD for someone to tell me what most 12 year olds know about cooking? YES. But did it work?

 YES.

I do very, very well in structured learning environments. Her course does a great job tackling our beliefs about cooking first, before delving into things like how to chop an onion (for real. I was this bad.). This is what makes it work for people, I think. My beliefs were that cooking was a total chore, I didn't know what I was doing, and that everything I cooked came out tasting pretty bad. No wonder I stuck to baking (it is really hard to mess up butter + sugar in terms of the end product!).

While I didn't fulfill every single task that the 30 day cooking course instructed me to do, I did a lot of it. And I adapted it to my lifestyle: let's face it, me cooking every.single.day. is never going to happen in my lifetime. I just don't have that kind of time or energy or patience or love of it. However, I am GREAT at eating the same thing every day for a week. I decided to use that to my advantage.

My Weekly Meal-Plan/Cooking Schedule Is Born
I started cooking dinners for the week every Sunday. In order to do this, I basically have to give up most of my weekends and a few weeknights. Honestly, it takes a ton of time (still)--

• first, on Thursday or Friday nights, decide what I'm eating next week,
• search for recipes that look doable with my meager skill set, 
• choose which recipes to follow, 
• look in my pantry for ingredients I already have, 
• make a list of ingredients I still need (plus stuff for breakfasts/lunches/snacks), 
• visit the farmer's market and grocery shop on Saturday, 
• clean out last week's rotting food from the fridge, 
• put groceries in my tiny fridge and freezer, 
• and then on Sundays: wait til the kitchen is free/my flatmates don't need it for about 3-4 hours,
• clear kitchen area to use it (flatmates are a bit...all over the place)
• review recipe several times before starting, 
• get out/clean all the kitchen implements, 
• chop everything up/prep ingredients,
• prepare dinner, 
• store it in tupperwares for the week/rearrange fridge (again...there is just not enough space!)
• clean all the dishes, 
• and finally, clean the kitchen.

And then start the process all over the next week.

Whew...

It is a huge list of tasks, and that became a real barrier to getting it done every week.


The Process of Change
After my 30-day course was over, my new weekly process of meal planning and cooking took up most of my mental energy for MONTHS. I would have a brief reprieve maybe Monday through Wednesdays, but then I'd have to start thinking and planning what to make starting (at least) on Thursdays.

Still, I kept at it.

And it started working.

Around last October, I realized I was doing OK at it. I was learning and using my new cooking skills. I started discovering the changes I could make to keep going. I realized that I could sustain my once a week cooking schedule if I  just made a few simple ground rules and played with my psychology a little.


See the next post, Part II, for what changes I realized I needed to make, the sacrifices I had to make, and what I learned in the process.

Therapy Costs

I've finally done the thing I'm probably most scared of personally (outside of television interviews for work!): I went to a therapist this past week.

I'm not sure WHY it is so scary to me, but it is, on many levels.

Firstly, until now, I was the only person in my immediate family who hadn't sought emotional help. Somehow going to a therapist meant that I had failed my family, because they then would have no one that was emotionally stable to count on. (???) I haven't told my family I'm doing this, and I'm not sure I will. Even if I did, I'd probably blame it on the PhD and say that that was why. I am not sure why this is an issue, but luckily I have a therapist now to talk this out with!

Secondly, one thing that came out of my previous online therapy course was that I feel like a total fraud in life. Every week when the questionnaire came up, I'd check the box labeled "If people really knew me, they wouldn't like me." I honestly feel that way, so I end up pretending to be someone I'm not some of the time, and hiding certain aspects of my life and who I am. In therapy, I'm paying $275 AN HOUR. Eff pretending, I'd better be myself so I can start working on my issues.

It is almost $275 for the first session, and $175 for every one thereafter. Talk about expenses...this is coming out of my PhD fund for sure.

So, what was it like? I can honestly say that I am glad I went. The therapist was immediately kind and accommodating (I was late, can you tell I was avoiding?). She asked a lot of questions, and was super understanding and I felt like she was really listening.

To be honest, I haven't gotten into all of my issues yet. It is so hard for me to admit, even to close friends, what is going on in my head a lot of the time. I just couldn't meet someone new and spill it all out right away. I hope I can get to that point eventually, but I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

So far, I've only chatted about difficulties and anxiety around my PhD and my supervisor, and how I am frustrated with myself that I cannot seem to go to bed on time and wake up early on workdays. This is the first and only issue I have brought up so far, but it is the one I am most ashamed of and have to do the most hiding about. I also think it is wrapped up in a lot of other issues, such as being lonely when I come home from work and have no one to talk to. That issue leads on to issues with dating, and also maintaining friendships and how I avoid social interaction. It also is wrapped up in how unhappy I am in NZ because committing to the PhD means being really far away from my family for a much longer period of time, plus I cannot afford a house here, plus I cannot have a dog, plus I cannot find a date, and therefore I cannot have a real life here...I am in life limbo. So there is a lot there to unravel already, just with that first issue. It all just seems so impossibly intertwined and horrible and without a good solution!

I have about 5 more sessions to dive into all that, but I'm not sure it will be enough. My homework this week was to go to bed at 10 pm one night and set my alarm for 8 am every day, even if I don't get up. One day I do need to get up at 8 am. It is is a start. So far, though, I haven't been able to do either one of those things. It feels a little hopeless, but I think I can do it because I know someone is watching me. Why can I only do things when there is accountability and some sort of social consequence? I cannot seem to do this one thing for just myself.

Well, the therapy thing is something that I am committed to, now. I think it will be a really good thing for me, in the long run.