Today we’re going to talk about how to get re-inspired; how to get a new passion for cooking. Hopefully, at some point you’ve had a passion for cooking, or you’ve felt inspired about making food for your family. Today, I want to talk about what to do if you’ve lost that passion a little bit; if you’re just feeling tired or if it’s been a crazy season and you’re a little overwhelmed. Having less mental energy to focus on cooking and planning food makes it harder, so hopefully this will give you some ideas of how to renew that passion, how to get excited again, or how to try something new in the area of cooking in your family.
My first idea is to grow some herbs in your kitchen. You can buy potted herbs, or you can grow them from seeds. When you come into your kitchen, the herbs look fresh, smell fresh, and you just know they’re going to add amazing flavor to your food.
How about a pot of basil? Usually this does well in a warm area, and you need to prune it regularly. Use it often so that the basil keeps growing and it doesn’t flower. Basil goes well on so many things – you can use it on pizza, you can break it up and add it at the end of cooking ground beef or mince, you can add it to any kind of pasta, or you can add it to a salad. Try doing a caprese salad, which is one with tomato, mozzarella, and basil.
Thyme is amazing because it enhances any meat dish. Whether you’re cooking meat in your crockpot, in a pot on the stove, or in the instant pot, adding some thyme is amazing. You can add it to lamb, chicken, beef, or even fish – all of those are great with thyme on them.
Rosemary goes wonderfully with lamb as well. You can also add it to dough for bread or bread rolls. It gives it an amazing flavor, especially when paired with onion powder. You can grow oregano for your pizza and other Italian dishes, and you can grow some parsley to add to any soup or stew that you’re making, or even to your salads.
Those are all inspirational and delicious herbs to have in your kitchen. When you need them, you just have to grab them. You don’t have to wash them or anything because you haven’t sprayed any pesticides on them! You just grab or cut an ad from the herbs in your kitchen.
This is a different kind of idea – play your favorite music, podcast, or audio book while you’re cooking. Try to set aside half an hour to an hour to just cook one thing that you used to enjoy cooking while listening to some of your favorite soundtracks or audio books.
You could take a recipe book every day and choose one recipe from it. Start with your favorite recipe books and look through things you used to enjoy cooking. You could even look through your recipe file and choose one thing you’re excited about – just one thing. Buy the ingredients for it and cook it from scratch. See how much you enjoy the fresh flavors and making it at home. Also, the fact that it’s something you haven’t cooked for a while can make it interesting and fresh.
You could just add some interesting sides, like some fresh baguettes or a lovely little salad. Just do something that’s different to what you usually do to make it interesting. The thing is, though, we want to do it without it being too overwhelming, so start small.
You could try to reorganize part of your kitchen. Take out all the things from your drawers and declutter them. Arrange them in a way that makes sense, so that they’re close to where you’re chopping, for instance. Move things around a little bit, or invest in a fun new item like a lovely cutting board – something that’ll inspire you to use it.
Experiment with one ingredient. Choose something that you really love, that you feel like you’ve missed for the last while, and that you’d like to try again. For example, there’s mushrooms. Have you used those lately? Try some with your breakfast. Try some in a stroganoff or a stew. Try making a stuffed mushroom appetizer – anything that’s going to excite you about cooking mushrooms again. You can be creative and have fun without it being overwhelming.
One of my favorite ways to get re-inspired is to watch some food shows or even some clips on YouTube of cooking. I like to watch well-known chefs like Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey with their home cooking series because in those they usually cook very basic, healthy food for their families, and they’re very inspiring. Just choose one video, or look at a couple and find one that really inspires you, and then try that.
Yesterday I saw a video by Gordon Ramsey of making a spiced sausage and rice all-in-one dish. It’s very easy to do. He uses sausage that he takes out of the casing and cooks, and then he adds various things and mixes them with the rice. In another video, he made an amazing bacon and pea pasta. It was very simple, and again, in one pot, but it looked really delicious.
So, find things that inspire you that you’ve never done before, or think of your grandma or your mom. Look in your recipe file for recipes of things they used to make; recipes from your past, things that they made you loved as a child. Find anything that they used to do as a specialty so that nostalgia can reignite your joy in the cooking. Find a recipe of theirs that you used to love to make or love to eat, and try and make it your own.
Use an old classic, and maybe add a twist of your own. Take these things that you find from YouTube or from your recipe file, your recipe books, or from your grandma, and start to either collect the recipes and put them into a new place, or photograph them with your phone or bookmark them. Try to gather them in a new place as your new repertoire; what you’re going to make daily or weekly for a while. Let it help you to build your new meal plan, perhaps with things that are different to what you were doing before. It’s a different season. It’s a different year in your life. Maybe your kids are a different age from the last time you did a lot of cooking. Try to gather the recipes together, and build a new repertoire that you love.
Another fun idea is to cook with a friend. Get together with a friend and just decide to cook two or three dishes each, and then you can learn from each other, and see what each other does. Have fun doing it. Also, you can cook two of each item and give one to your friend, and they give one of what they make to you. You make two dishes each, and then you end up with four dishes, and they’ll be interesting, and you’ll learn something while making it. Have lots of fun together!
You could do a themed meal night. You could have a taco bar, a pasta bar, or a baked potato bar. You could even choose one evening to do that every week. Either you can do the same thing every week, if you like that, or try a different topping or a different sauce each time. Do a variety; whatever works, but get your family involved and engaged, and your kids interested. That helps you keep momentum while doing that.
You could visit a farmer’s market if you have time. Those are always so inspiring because there’s such bright colors – the peppers, the tomatoes, the herbs – and everything’s organic, fresh, and heirloom. Maybe try a vegetable you haven’t cooked with before, perhaps an eggplant. Try making a vegetable dish that you haven’t done before, or instead of putting a vegetable on the side of a dish, try to use a vegetable as an appetizer, like zucchini with pesto. You can add some steamed red peppers on top of that. Think about unusual ways to use your vegetables. Maybe you can steam some broccoli and grate some cheese over it as your appetizer. Use the long stem broccoli for interest.
Explore new cuisines; again, you can do this on YouTube. Try different things. You can search for “Korean appetizers”, or you can search for “broth based Indonesian food” or anything that you’ve been interested in. Now’s the time to try it. Try something unusual, but try to find something that you don’t feel overwhelmed by.
I know we’re so busy as moms, and we don’t always have time for creativity or for searching on YouTube and all those things, but if you just try one or two things every so often, it inspires you enough to keep you going for a while. The key is to get out of that rut and decide, “Okay, I’m going to make fresh food that’s more nutritious for my family.”
I recently came out of a bit of a rut where things were crazy busy, the water was off, and there were other issues. I just wasn’t cooking much and I had ordered some frozen meals for our freezer. It didn’t take long – just a few days before, I thought “Ugh, this is all such dead food. I want to make fresh food.” I started to think of a plan.
Now my current plan is to have some kind of meat on the bone for dinner, and then to use that to make a broth during the night by putting the bones back in the crockpot. We use chicken bones, beef bones, lamb bones, and then whatever we need for the broth, like water, vegetables, and a little bit of apple cider vinegar. It cooks overnight as the broth, and then for lunch the next day, we make a broth based soup. It can be chicken soup, split pea soup, lentil soup, or cauliflower soup. Any soup that has healthy broth in it is great.
This way, I don’t have to put the broth in jars and put it in the fridge or the freezer, and then defrost it and all of that. I just have to take the broth from the previous night’s meal, make the soup for that day, and add some fresh sourdough or something to that for lunch. So, that’s my current plan.
Instead of having a side vegetable, which I’m kind of tired of, we’re going to have appetizers made out of vegetables for every meal. It makes the dinner more interesting and more fun, and I look forward to it more. You must do what works for you.
Now I’m going to talk about a few ways to prepare food to make it feel easier when you’ve got to cook. Here are some practical ways to prepare some items in advance so that when you’re feeling tired and overwhelmed, and you don’t know what to cook, it’s easy because there’s something really in the fridge.
So, there’s marinating your proteins. Choose something like chicken, shrimp, or small pieces of beef like you use for stroganoff, and then marinate them in advance in a glass dish in your fridge. You can use a barbecue marinade, soy sauce with ginger, lemon and herb, or honey mustard. Put the pieces in the freezer in a freezer bag to marinate as they thaw, and then you can cook them in your crockpot.
You could also just put them in the fridge, and then it’s quick and easy to cook them. When you’re ready, you can grill, bake, or stir fry them for a quick meal. There’s something about having a protein ready that makes it feel so much easier to cook something. It’s really helpful to have some marinated chicken that you can quickly make into kebabs in your fridge, or some shrimp that you can make into a nice stir fry.
You can even cook a protein in advance and have it ready either for that evening or for the next day. For example, I did some beef fillet steak this morning, and I added some butter, garlic, and herbs and cooked it at a high temperature for about fifteen minutes until it was about 120 degrees. Then I let it cool, and I sliced it up and put it into the fridge for tonight. In our family, some of us like medium rare steak, and others like it medium well, almost well done. Slicing it up but leaving the juice over keeps it juicy, and it keeps it ready for whatever you want to do with it later. Those who like it to be medium rare can warm it just a little in the oven, and some of us will pan fry it a little longer if necessary. You can see how much it’s done because it’s cut up, and it definitely doesn’t dry out because it’s got all that butter and it’s sitting in the fridge with the juices. Having that steak cooked makes dinner really easy.
I’m going to make a cucumber, cream cheese, tomato, and pesto starter from my recipe book, which is called Elegant, Easy Appetizers. It’s on our website at familyfoodformoms.com/product/elegant-easy-appetizers-5-ingredient-recipes-physical-book/. We’ll have that appetizer with the steak and the potatoes. I cooked the potatoes this morning because sometimes if I leave it for dinnertime, they don’t cook fast enough. Now they also just need to be warmed and then we’re good to go, and we can have a nice, casual, relaxed dinner together without me having to be rushed or busy.
So, you could also cook some chicken, maybe grill it with a Greek style marinade, and then just briefly warm it and serve it with tacos or tortillas and some salad ingredients. Having those things ready is really helpful.
Pre-chopping your vegetables makes them so easy to use, and you could even cook them in advance. For example, if I’m going to do butternut squash, I’ll chop it up and bake it in the oven or steam it, and then simply warm it again at dinner time, because then I’m going to be sure that it’s ready. If it’s something like broccoli, though, I’ll probably just do it fresh because it doesn’t need as long and then it tastes better. Just deciding what you want to pre chop or pre-cook is really helpful. If I’m going to do something with zucchini for dinner, then I’ll get the kids to cut it into ribbons a little bit early. Then it’s easy for me to come and steam it, add salt and basil pesto, and serve that.
It’s the same with grains, whether it’s rice, quinoa, or anything you’re going to use – you can cook it a little bit in advance and then warm it, or just let it stay warm. It’s helpful. By about 3:00 or 4:00 PM I like to start the rice in the rice cooker or cook some kind of starch that’s easy to warm. Then I’ll just add a little bit of boiling water to the rice cooker and reheat it in the evening.
Here are a few last tips to keep you inspired when you’re feeling overwhelmed or like you don’t want to cook. Cook up some hard boiled eggs or some shredded chicken to add to a salad. If you have some baked chicken breasts in the fridge, you can slice them and put them on top of a salad. If you have leftover cooked vegetables, you can put them over a salad. Any kind of roast or grilled vegetables are also amazing for this. Any kind of sauce or dressing is always delicious on food. If you have one of those in a jar, maybe some barbecue sauce, then it’s quick and easy to add to something you’ve reheated.
If you make a soup or a stew base where you’ve already cooked the onion, the carrot, and the celery, and you’ve added some chicken stock, then all you need to do is add something extra to the soup, like cauliflower or lentils from tins, or some other kind of protein. You can even do this when you’re in a hurry. Then it’s very easy to finish off your soup because you’ve done the chopping and you’ve done the base of the soup.
Also, having pre-made spice blends that you like is helpful. You can make some of those for your cupboard. It’s also good to decide in advance when, for instance, you’re going to do a potato bar on a Monday. You’ll do baked potatoes, and then while you’ve got those in the oven, you can think about what to add. Maybe you can add some leftover chicken and some chopped salad ingredients. You can decide which day you’re going to have a salad with toppings, and then you can have all those ingredients like artichokes chopped, and some protein ready to add, like chickpeas, haloumi cheese, or feta.
This way, you’ve got a plan to make a salad, a baked potato bar, or a taco night or lunch. When you have that in your mind, it’s much easier to follow through. Once you have that plan, maybe you can put taco meat or cooked beans in the freezer, or anything that’ll make having those meals easier.
So, I really hope you feel inspired again and you’re getting excited. Go and have a look at your recipe books and see what you can find. It’s not easy as a mom juggling everything, filling it in, and finding the inspiration to cook from scratch, but you can do it. It can be fun, and you can involve your kids in a way that’s not overwhelming. Try to alternate a more complicated meal with a simple, easy one or alternate making something fresh with eating something that you already made, so that it’s not too much at once. But have fun cooking!
