For many, cooking is the one habit they can take real refuge and joy in. It’s not only a means by which to focus on something that can distract us in these unsettling times, but it takes our creativity, our willingness to try something new, and of course the tasty reward that comes at the end to help us feel satisfied and grateful for having the chance to enjoy that process.
However, a year long of Covid-19 associated lockdowns is surely enough to make anyone feel just a little stressed out, and a little tired of cooking. After all, if we’re been in isolation for so long, we’ve no doubt been cooking meal after meal for our families, and sometimes, that can rob the joy out of things.
But have no fear! Injecting life back into your cooking routine without having to feel like it’s a job you must grind to achieve is more than possible, and it doesn’t even take spending over the odds or investing thousands of hours of time to enjoy the ‘perfect’ kitchen once more. Simply organizing your space and paying your approach to cuisine a little more mind can help us fall in love with the habit once more, helping us thrive and create beautiful concoctions we could have only dreamed about until now.
Let’s show you why that’s anything but a pipe dream:
Implementing Renewed Storage Space
It’s very easy to get into a little bit of a fray with your stored items. It might take you five minutes to reach the back of your storage cupboard to take out your mixing bowls, or you might find that your cutlery is poorly organized, or your spice rack isn’t listed correctly, meaning you have to turn around every bottle and jar for what feels like an eternity simply to spice your chicken.
Kitchen organization not only helps our kitchen space look nice, it can also save us time. It might be that investing in a new wall mounted spice rack can help us grab what we need in a pinch. Mason jars aligned on top of a new shelf could help us store our baking goods. Reupholstering our pantry with a new shelf could do the same, and having a good old fashioned clear out might help us in that respect. Making sure bowls are itemized by size, and that you purchase new corner trays for cutlery (and throwing out old pieces) helps you streamline everything well.
Finally, why not give the place a fresh lick of paint, or re-varnish the wooden countertops? That might help you look at the place anew. Even placing hooked screws in your cabinet could help you hang mugs, and alleviate space elsewhere. Little additions, ironically, often make the most impact.
Consider Meal Prep Routines
Sometimes, we just don’t have time to cook for our entire family in the evening, and that can be tiring and somewhat disparaging. But you need not have to feel like your time is continually robbed from you, not in this area of life anyway.
A good way to counteract that most annoying of considerations is to consider meal prep Sunday, a real habit that many people keep up. This way, for instance, you might create a large pot of chili and freeze those meals in tupperware boxes, ensuring that over the week your family can eat healthy foods at lunch or work, or that you have a backup when you don’t want to cook. This way you save time, can eat right, and always have a plan B to rely on.
Get A Slow Cooker Or Air Fryer
It can be nice to have something that you can place your trust in, something you don’t have to mother all the time when cooking. A slow cooker or air fryer can serve these functions tremendously well. Breaking down meats, stews, or cooking steaks evenly in this respect begins to feel competent and tastefully done, giving you the chance to more readily focus on the joy of cooking, such as creating new flavor combinations, trying new ingredients, or, even having the widely-useful utilities that help you try new cuisines.
In this way, ironically, having a convenient cooking method can open you up to more advanced and interesting levels of cooking.
Stock Up On Utilities
It can be worthwhile to stock up on both ingredients and utilities to make sure you’re never really having to ‘go without’. For instance, Annapolis Propane ensures that you have fuel for all of your cooking needs if appropriate, and having that stored in a safe place can ensure you never have to be without that most vital of cooking necessities.
It can also be worthwhile to make sure you have the ingredients you need to make a wide variety of items. Stored flour in jars, a freezer full of meat, frozen meal plans, stored long-term items you can pick at such as cured meats or preserved cheeses, having preserves in general for breakfast, or even the ingredients to make your own loaf if required can be a wonderful habit, and may even help you fall in love with planning your meals again. This way you don’t have to worry about making trip after trip to the local convenience store, you can simply rest easy knowing that you have most things on hand. It also helps that when you have leftovers or you need to throw a meal together quickly, you always have something on hand to spot you. That in itself can lessen much of the frustration that comes with bad planning.
Have Fun!
We’ve given a lot of advice in this post that advises you to be on the ball with your kitchen planning, and to always organize. But don’t feel bad about taking a break from time to time! There are many local delivery offers from restaurants trying to stay alive at this time, and it could be that supporting local business and having another night you don’t have to clean the dishes (even if you usually enlist your children to do that), can be a lovely idea.
You don’t have to cook amazing or perfect meals either, provided they hit the important food groups and you eat well. Have fun! Don’t wed yourself to only one methodology. Then, you’ll no doubt have fun in the kitchen as you once did.
With this advice, we hope that becomes more than possible.
Kori
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