Get me out of the kitchen

Cooking dinner for my family on the weeknights is NOT my favorite activity. I never know what to make. I always feel like I recycle the same recipes week after week and nobody likes my food. How did this happen to me? There was a time when I loved making dinner. I was once a big foodie.

Then finally I had a very important breakthrough. I went away with my two awesome sisters for the weekend and I shared my lack of enthusiasm in the kitchen with them. Since they are both really good cooks they gave me so many great recipes and ideas. When I got back home I had a new energy and I was ready to try to love cooking dinner again. Somehow when I tried to implement their ideas I still dreaded cooking. What was I doing wrong?

My breakthrough occurred when I realized I had control over this situation. I was making it much more complicated than it had to be. I decided that I would find some delicious raw food recipes that my family and I would simply love and pair them with their meat dishes. I looked for recipes that were simple and full of flavor. I went old school and got some blank index cards and wrote the recipes on the card. If they were too long to write I skipped over them. It made making dinner a pure pleasure again. Somehow writing the recipes down caused me to get excited about food again.

I also realized my sisters loved cooking because they found a way to make simple and delicious recipes. They recited their recipes with so much enthusiasm,they loved food and they loved to cook and it showed. I needed to create that same feeling for myself, and I finally did.

Instead of trying to make two dinners I started to make one dinner that always included raw vegetables plus a cooked dish. Sometimes I ate the cooked dish and sometimes I only ate the raw one.

I also realized that I like to chop fruits and vegetables and make beautiful salads, but I don't like cooking on the stove. I have always been this way even when I was on a primarily cooked diet. I'm glad that making dinner is no longer the huge stress that it once was. It has made my nights so much more enjoyable.