You are here

What do you think --- is cooking a chore?

I recently spoke with Annie Mahon, who is writing a book on mindful cooking. She would like to hear your thoughts and says: "I'm especially interested in hearing from people who practice mindfulness and also find cooking a chore, or used to find it a chore and how they got through that." Feel free to leave your comments below or send me an email ([email protected]) and I'll post them.

Cooking is no chore for me. I enjoy it. Even the prepping, often a time-consuming feature of vegan recipes. The only problem with cooking is that I am slow and usually misjudge how long it will take to prepare dinner. Often I mistrust recipes that say they are "quick." Sometimes I try them but find a way to make them more complicated and time-consuming. This is why I miss most of the NWVeg potlucks--just don't have time to plan and prepare a dish. Unfortunately, due to my tendencies, my husband and I eat dinner rather late. I have the feeling most Portlanders dine around 6. We are eating around 9 these days. Even when I start early, say 5, I think of a reason to go to the grocery store, and the whole process adds about 2 hours onto dinner time. Sometimes I imagine that an ideal way to spend Saturday will be to cook all day, making several recipes that will provide dinner all week. But by the time I've made my list, gone shopping and returned, it's 3 pm and I really need to start on dinner, given how long it takes me. Probably there are many easy solutions to my problem, but apparently I'm not interested in solving it.

Cooking is at an all time low for me at the moment. I've hardly ever found it a pleasure but in recent months I get a strong feeling of irritation at the thought of shopping for and putting together a meal. I'd like to try and find a way of enjoying cooking though. Any ideas?