If you spent 2 hours cooking hopefully you made enough for more than one meal.
For me, 2 hours of cooking would be like 2 weeks worth of food, unless I'm smoking something, of course.
Crack voids the appetite so it’ll last even longer!
Unethical life pro tip
Always use little pauses during cooking to clean stuff. That way the kitchen doesn't like Dresden back in 45 afterwards.
So much this. I can't remember the last time I had a huge pile up of dishes that I didn't clean while something was simmering or whatever. By the time my meal is ready, everything is clean or there's one pot that might need to soak while I eat.
I really think this is one of the secrets to successfully keeping up with household chores as an adult. After I started focusing on cleaning up when I could while cooking and saw how much easier it made my life later, I started noticing stuff that's quick and easy to put away/clean while just walking through the house on my way to do something else. Doing little things all the time instead of saying "Oh I'll clean that up later" and leaving everything as a big project was a switch in mindset that's helped me a lot.
Doesn't this like triple the use of your cleaning products though?
Not really, a pan that needs a spritz of dish detergent needs that either way, if I clean it alone or along with other stuff. And even if I needed a bit more that is absolutely worth avoiding the situation OP posted.
Cleaning as you go is a lifesaver.
Makes it a pretty efficient and fun time.
Mental illness, which is why I as an enlightened man of the 21st century only drink meal replacement shakes
Vybey gang rise up!
so stop cooking dinners for the queen? if i'm lazy i can whip up food in like half an hour and i'll just make 2 portions of it so i have for later too
boil some spaghetti, fry some meatballs, whip up some powder sauce, done.
Oh man, it's been the complete opposite for me the older I get. Cooking has now become a pretty relaxing activity, but I think that's because I've gotten more confident and skilled with my knife, prep, cooking, and cleaning abilities that I can really just focus more on the joy and experience of making delicious things for both myself and the people I love.
It's probably one of the only true forms of self love that I engage in.
But for real, learning to clean as I cook was probably the most important skill I developed that has seriously reduced how painful cooking used to be for me. There's no giant mess at the end and really, once you get good at it, you'll find that there's hardly any big daunting cleanup (unless you're making a large family dinner or a finicky dish).
Cooking is not worth it if you live alone; limited fridge/freezer space and stuff being sold in larger quantities than I need means most of the ingredients won't get used fully and I end up throwing away something anyway or have to eat it for three days straight.
Cook 4 or 5 chicken filets on Sunday, 2 cups of brown rice in the rice cooker, bag of frozen veggies.
Lay out 6 containers in each put about 100g of Chicken into each, 100g cooked rice in each, and about half a cup of frozen veggies in each.
Put all the containers in the freezer. Take one each day for lunch, microwave for about 2 to 3 mins.
All up that's like $15-$20 for lunches or morning tea for the week.
limited fridge/freezer space
or have to eat it for three days straight
Yeah but then I gotta eat the same thing every day, and I prefer to have a varied diet.
Do the same thing every Saturday and Sunday with a different dish each time. Viola now you have a rotating menu. The food will be good in the freezer for quite a while.
I haven't found many dishes I enjoy eating after they've been frozen. I end up cooking the same dish again before I've finished the frozen ones as it tastes so much better fresh.
I've kept up the habit of prepping for a few months but I gave up as I started ordering in unhealthy food a lot more rather than eating the frozen stuff.
That's 3 weeks of prep in individual containers. OP said they didn't have a lot of storage space.
It may not be an option if you're severely restricted on space but it helps if you make enough to freeze a couple extra portions of food and eat them weeks later. Generally when you are cooking for yourself it's healthier than processed or restaurant food and it's cheaper. I tend to gravitate to international markets where they have bulk bins of vegetables so you are able to just buy a single carrot, single potato etc. Cooking in slightly larger portions and shopping that way really helps to reduce waste for myself.
It's worth it if pick a day each week to make a couple recipes, then portion out and freeze them.
Even better is getting together with a friend or family member to meal prep.
limited fridge/freezer space
A small format chest freezer doesn't take up much space and holds a ton of food. A 5 cu. ft. one will hold a month's worth of food ( about 175 pounds) for one person in a 2 ft. by 2 ft. footprint while sipping electricity.
That's the thing: it's a choice with pros and cons. On one hand there's an up front expense, you need to invest time in planning, shopping, cooking, and you need to find/make space to store food.
On the other it quickly pays for itself, it'll bring your food costs way down, and you can make better tasting/healthier meals in lieu of exclusively eating out or ready to eat meals. You can still use the later for more variety: you're just saving money by doing it less.
One mini fridge should be plenty of space to fit about a weeks worth of meal prep for one person. I know this for a fact.
They said they didn't want to eat the same thing for 3 days straight, much less a week. So it sounds to be like that plus their limited storage space really makes their situation different from yours.
It sounds like a bunch of excuses lol
I have like a "babys first playschool refrigerator/freezer" thing that basically belongs in a camper, but I make it work. The key for me is to cook things kinda "basic" as in limited, generic, seasoning and then spice it up how I want when I'm ready to eat it so it doesn't get boring. Then as others mentioned you cook all in one day. I make a chicken dish in the slow cooker that lasts a week in the fridge, so you shouldn't need a freezer for your weeks worth of food.
I buy a family pack of chicken and separate a few breasts to stick in my tiny ass freezer that doesn't even have room for a normal size ice cream tub, I freeze a few rolls, and anything else like vegetables is generally canned so I don't need to worry about waste.
You save so much money when cooking for yourself!
One pot wonders are good for regular cooking. Crock-Pot can make it easier too. Dump it in and come back a lot later.
I think Dan Olsen on Folding Ideas said it best that it is maddening when people talk about cooking at home that they always exclude the clean up.
https://youtu.be/V-a9VDIbZCU?si=IJ1Ffr_luBReNfIV (Folding Ideas, longer video about Jamie Oliver's war on chicken nuggets)
If you clean as you go, there should be very little cleanup after.
For me, the only cleanup after eating is rinsing the pots/pans that had been soaking while I ate.
Victory loves preparation.
Cooking is basically just a choreographed dance, so planning beforehand is important.
ADHD starts playing experimental jazz for you to dance to. Good luck.
I think it depends on how many guests you have for the post-cleanup. However, I generally agree with you.
I sometimes get on my partner's or family members case about things left around when we're waiting for the oven or something and they're like: "I'll just do it at the end". For big meals, the large dish rack plus the dish washer (which seems to be another dish rack for us) almost always gets over crowded and we need to use those drying pads.
Or make the other people who ate help clean up.
I recently thought "God damn it's 2024 where is my potato washing, peeling and cutting robot???"
Potato peelers exist and they're the best fucking invention ever. It's like $15 max on Amazon. The ones for apples work on potatoes too just FYI. Yeah you still gotta cut it unless you get another gimmicky kitchen device but anything is better than hand peeling potatoes imo
I read some reviews on amazon and they said they were total trash. I'll have another look, thanks! But yeah ideally I'd want some smart device.
They're definitely not all trash. I've had mine for like 5 years now and it's mostly cheap plastic lol. It still works and not having to hand peel a single potato for years is lovely. The only issue I have sometimes is that it struggles with really big potatos but I just buy the ones I know it can handle or cut them in half.
If you have a kitchenaid you can also just get the peeling attachment if higher quality is a must for you.
Edit: If it helps, the one I've had for years is called the rotato lol
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