Losing Your Cooking Mojo

Has this ever happened to you?

I seem to have lost interest not only in cooking but in food altogether. The result is eating crappy and ridiculously late dinners and then not sleeping well, and then feeling stressed out the next day at the prospect of cooking; lather, rinse, repeat.

I feel totally uninspired. Usually I'm chomping at the bit to get cooking by a browse through a good cookbook or even there Here's What I had for Dinner thread...but not at the moment.

Ever been in a food and cooking rut and got out of it? Any suggestions to help?

Gloomtastic!

If I was Catholic, I'd probably cross myself and say a little prayer at this stage. :eek:

Roesy

Yep, last time I was pregnant. Previously tried and tested and favourite recipes lost their appeal. I was getting boggled by new recipes, generally was a disaster in the kitchen. This time not so much thankfully! Was lucky that my husband enjoys cooking too or I probably would have spent the entire time eating cereal and toasties once the sickness passed!!

Merkin

Me too Roesy. I'm obsessed with food and cooking but when I was pregnant I lost interest a little or at least lost interest in the very punchy/bold flavours that I love.

Could you have a little egg ready to hatch Mystery Egg?

Stheno

I'm not a great eater, and generally eat as I need to rather than for the love of it.
But I love going out to a very good restaurant and experimenting with the food on offer, it's almost as if the act of prepping the food puts me off.

However I love cooking, and feeding others, and I love coming home knowing there is plenty of choice around dinner, or that I've defrosted a meal that means minimal prep required.

I rarely eat anything other than a banana for breakfast, and if working from home will often get past lunchtime and then realise about five o'clock that I'm hungry. I need more discipline around eating as if I'm not onsite and office based it's something I ignore

I also regularly spend a day at the weekend eating very little almost like the 5/2 diet

A lot of it is due to my lifestyle, I travel a lot and have to eat out and get sick of it at times.

dear god lads are ye trying to give me heart failure :eek:

Stheno

Mystery Egg wrote: »

dear god lads are ye trying to give me heart failure :eek:

Nothing worse than coming home hurngry, realising cooiking is involved and heart failure

You're fine, it's normal to go off this stuff.

gjc

In a food rut at the moment also, I think it's due to the fact that i find myself eating the same dinners week in week out. Also the fact that I cook the family dinners and no one cooks for me . When a dinner is just handed to you it will always taste better.
Your post was for suggestions not in anyway trying to be funny but perhaps be nice to yourself for a while lay off the cooking and phone your local Chinese for a while until your mojo kicks in again??

Minder

OP, as you say yourself, normally you are chomping at the bit, getting inspiration from a good cookbook. If I was in your shoes, I'd spend a couple of hours in the cookery section of a good bookshop leafing through the books. I find that I can usually find something to spark an interest (and then go order it on Amazon :eek: )

livinsane

Anytime I find myself in a food rut, I realise it's because I have been basing all my dinners around meat. I find looking for some vegetarian recipes, or recipes that are based around a non meat ingredient, gets me inspired again.

MissFlitworth

Oh you can sing this one. I go through phases where I just cannot be bothered food shopping and I can't be bothered thinking of what to eat and I absolutely cannot be bothered cooking and I would punt a puppy through an open window rather than do any dishes. This leads to a few weeks of 'golden' foods. Things from the general nugget & goujon family. Generally it's when I'm busy or broke, thinking of planning and shopping stresses me out to the point that it's better to avoid it and just shake another bag of stuff onto a baking sheet and get the bbq sauce bottle out.

Loire

I thought it was just me! I find, as I cook all the meals, that Mon-Thur can be pretty monotonous. In reality though it kinda has to be...we have 2 kids and when I get home I want to spend time with them rather than spend the time in the kitchen. Hence we tend to eat the same dinners on a regular basis. The weekends are different though...there's just more time and myself & Mrs. Loire generally wait until the kids are down before we eat.

Having said all that, I think Jan & Feb (I know it's March now, but it's freezing outside) is the worst time of year for cooking. We've had enough hearty stews already since they were on the go since October. Christmas got us all going but now we're just ready for Spring/Summer. It's on the way though...there's a stretch in the evenings and 6 short weeks from now people here will be posting salad recipes!!

Chin up!

Loire.

kylith

I find this occasionally as well. It tends to be in winter that I lose the mojo because my kitchen isn't heated, which makes doing anything more than putting something in the oven or sticking something on to boil a test of endurance. Sometimes though, it's just been a long day in work and I'm fecked if I'm going to spend an hour trying to think of what to cook and cooking it, not when those nice Chinese people will deliver straight to my house.

In summer my problems stem mainly from being Irish, so to speak: I can cook soups and stews and casseroles, big joints of meat, and spuds by the new time, but cooking light food for warm weather? That's hard!

Dizzyblonde

Sometimes I feel as though I'd be happy to never cook again, but at this stage I'm programmed to cook most evenings.
The nicest thing anyone could possibly do for me is to cook a nice meal and hand it to me

Faith

I've been totally off my game since moving to Canada. First it was a new kitchen, then it was financial constraints. Groceries and especially meat are extremely expensive here so I just got into a rut of cooking the same few dishes over and over again.

I do love cooking, but I'd also far rather eat out/get take out most of the time. But I'm aiming to buy a couple of cookbooks soon and get my groove back. I find preparing a really tasty meal is extremely satisfying, and makes it worth the effort.

Uncle_moe

Definitely get spells of this alright. Sometimes I think its in between seasons that does it. Don't want wintry hearty food but summer dishes are too light. Then there's the whole lack of appetite and appeal of anything. I always think going back to basics works.

Try simple stuff but do it well like really good mashed potatoes with sausages, grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup, or my favourite lazy food mccain home chips with loads of garlic mayo and the cheap "mature" cheddar from dunnes melted on top. Once you enjoy eating again you'll want to cook again.

Hermione*

I have completely lost my cooking mojo of late. Over the last few months, working until 7 and 7.30pm has become more and more of a regular thing, and by the time I get home, I'm much too tired to want much more than tea and toast. Or else I stop at M&S on the way home :pac: I'm lucky in that I have a great canteen on site so I usually eat my main meal at lunch.

Not cooking very often is quite distressing to me. I love food, and have a vast collection of cookbooks, which fill nearly an entire bookcase. But I'm working on a project to reorganise my kitchen, and hopefully when that's done, it'll be easier to organise myself at weekends to be prepared for the week ahead

dee_mc

This thread inspired me to crawl (marginally) out of my cooking rut and do things a little bit differently this evening - did some turkey breasts on the griddle pan, finished in the oven with lime juice and baby plum tomatoes, fired some hassleback potatoes in the oven with the roasted veg too, it was simple and lovely
Most days I've been doing pasta with tomato sauce (I make and freeze litres of it every few weeks) and peppers with meat/fish, or potato wedges with the same 3 or 4 veg and the same 4 or 5 variations of meat/fish... zzzzz... definite loss of mojo!

vicwatson

gjc wrote: »

In a food rut at the moment also, I think it's due to the fact that i find myself eating the same dinners week in week out. Also the fact that I cook the family dinners and no one cooks for me . When a dinner is just handed to you it will always taste better.

+1 and when you ask what they fancy for dinner, and all suggestions gratefully received, you get "I don't mind, whatever" throwing back the task of finding another meal from somewhere !! Very annoying altogether.

Faith

Lost: One cooking mojo. If found, please return

I bought a couple of cookbooks yesterday, and I've just flicked through a whole one thinking "meh" to every recipe. I'm recycling the same 5 or 6 recipes constantly at the moment. I just cannot be bothered to cook! We eat out/get take out at least 3 times a week at the moment because I just can't be arsed cooking (or, more precisely, shopping for ingredients!).

I suspect it may have something to do with trying to lose a few pounds before my wedding, so I'm aware of the calories in everything right now. But I also just can't bear the thought of having to go buy groceries!

Mrs Fox

Faith wrote: »

I suspect it may have something to do with trying to lose a few pounds before my wedding, so I'm aware of the calories in everything right now. But I also just can't bear the thought of having to go buy groceries!

But wouldn't this be the more reason you'd cook things yourself? You're more aware of what you put on your plate rather than trusting the takeaways to provide you the actual calories.

Faith

When I say take away, I don't mean things like fish and chips, I mean like small portions of sushi, versus the heavy calorie-laden dishes I'd cook at home, like pizza or risotto.

Anyway, it's mostly a total lack of interest in food, whatever the reason for that is. And no, I'm not pregnant before anyone suggests it :pac:

kylith

Just watch out, sushi isn't that low calorie unless you're going for sashimi. Rice will pile the calories on.

Mrs Fox

When's the wedding Faith?

Joolzie

Mystery Egg wrote: »

Has this ever happened to you?

I seem to have lost interest not only in cooking but in food altogether. The result is eating crappy and ridiculously late dinners and then not sleeping well, and then feeling stressed out the next day at the prospect of cooking; lather, rinse, repeat.

I feel totally uninspired. Usually I'm chomping at the bit to get cooking by a browse through a good cookbook or even there Here's What I had for Dinner thread...but not at the moment.

Ever been in a food and cooking rut and got out of it? Any suggestions to help?

How are you doing now? Feb is a gloomy time of year, a time when it's vital to stay positive. Excercise, getting out, and spicing up your life came to mind. I too, like the others thought you might be pregnant, till I saw you were a man, and not a seahorse! Did you get your mojo back?

Dizzyblonde

Faith, if you're working hard and planning a wedding you won't have much head space - or time - for cooking new things. And with access to yummy takeaway food why would you try right now?
It'll be different after the honeymoon

Faith

I was just looking to offload, everyone, but thanks

tampopo

I was going to volunteer to join the search party!

AmyPL

Add me to the list moving abroad has killed my cooking mojo!

I don't have many complaints about moving to Canada but access to decent and affordable ingredients would be one. Back in Ireland I had a routine of picking a new recipe on my lunch break and be able to grab 90% of the ingredients on the way home in Lidl. I just don't have that luxury here- to get the same level of quality I could expect to fork out $20-30 for one recipe. Quality meat and dairy is expensive- I wanted to make a dish with mozzarella recently and immediately abandoned the idea when I browsed my local supermarket (supposedly the cheapest supermarket chain around) and found that the mozzarella balls I used to pay 75c for in Lidl were $6+ for an equivalent amount here. To think I would even splash out on organic meat at home can't imagine doing that here. Takeaway options are cheap, decent and plentiful- hard to motivate myself to spend $20 on mediocre ingredients when I can grab a lovely bowl of pho for $7-8 (and have enough left over for lunch).

I'm not a fan of food wastage but I wouldn't lose sleep over a recipe failure resulting in food being thrown away, here it's much more costly to screw up a recipe!

There's also the fact that I'm restocking my kitchen from scratch- hard to do bulk/batch cooking without enormous pots or my beloved slow cooker, likewise I have no interest in baking without my books, decent tins and decorating equipment.

I was in an amazing bookstore (in a state with no sales tax...) over the weekend and found myself browsing the cookery section without any temptation to buy normally I'd have to be dragged out of a bookshop and have my debit card confiscated. I was taking a look at Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi, which has been on my wishlist for a long time but just thought 'meh... it'd cost me a fortune to cook all of these meals..." and put it back.

I think I just need to adjust my cooking habits... my old level of spontaneity is not going to be practical here. I probably need to try bulk-buying more ingredients (especially meat) and doing some actual meal planning. But I'm only two months here and cooking is not quite top priority yet. So for now, takaway pho/sushi/ramen it is

Faith

God, the cost is a killer alright! A medium-sized chicken that's not totally battery-farmed costs about $20 (~E15). I haven't so much as looked at a steak in over 9 months now because it would cost upwards of $15 for one, depending on cut. It cost $10 for a pound of lamb mince, and it's about $8 for a chicken breast. I used to buy 125g of Serrano ham in Aldi for ~E2; here's it's ~$7. When you take into account time spent shopping, preparing, cooking and cleaning up, along with the cost of ingredients, it's much better bang for your buck to eat out/get take out for sure.

Mrs Fox

Are they relative to the wages?

Faith

No. Across the board, average income in Vancouver is about E32,000 (data is from 2009, so it may have increased slightly). Meat and cheese are just disproportionately expensive here for some reason.

That being said, a lot of things are cheaper than home, particularly eating out, so it weighs heavily in our favour in other ways

YellowFeather

Yeah - my cooking mojo is so gone too. I'm also away foreign. Working long hours and supermarkets near me are closed by the time I get out.

Went to a market the other night with great hopes of picking up lots of yummy food ingredients, then got a call from work half way through and had to abandon it all.

My staple now is frozen veg, some sort of meat/fish, and beans. There's no satisfaction in making that.

Alun

I experienced the same thing as Faith when I was over visiting some friends in a decent sized town in Oregon, and I offered to cook for them. It was a University town with a bit of an 'alternative' vibe to it, but even there I struggled to find some quite ordinary ingredients (leaf spinach, sweet potatoes, chickpeas) without going to some quite niche shops and paying a small fortune for them. Like you said, eating out was still ridiculously cheap, so there must be a strong disparity between wholesale and retail otherwise the restaurants would also be affected by the prices for their raw ingredients.

Alun

Alun wrote: »

I experienced the same thing as Faith when I was over visiting some friends in a decent sized town in Oregon, and I offered to cook for them. It was a University town with a bit of an 'alternative' vibe to it, but even there I struggled to find some quite ordinary ingredients (leaf spinach, sweet potatoes, chickpeas) without going to some quite niche shops and paying a small fortune for them. Like you said, eating out was still ridiculously cheap, so there must be a strong disparity between wholesale and retail otherwise the restaurants would also be affected by the prices for their raw ingredients.

I had this experience in Oregon too! I went to Trader Joe's to buy ingredients to cook for dinner and one red pepper set me back $4.

$4!!

Alun

Mystery Egg wrote: »

I had this experience in Oregon too! I went to Trader Joe's to buy ingredients to cook for dinner and one red pepper set me back $4.

$4!!

I think that was the place I went to as well, come to think of it.

Taboola

Mine is gone as well so in an effort to stop eating lunch out everyday I've bought some salads from M&S to try get some inspiration.

Faith

Surprised you found Trader Joe's so expensive! We travel down to Washington every so often to do our grocery shopping in Trader Joe's because it's so much cheaper than anywhere in Vancouver*. It's actually owned by Aldi too, so it should be quite reasonably priced.

*This is such a common occurrence in Vancouver that it triggered Pirate Joe's . TJ's aren't interested in opening in Canada for some reason.

In August 2013, Trader Joe's, which has no stores in Canada, filed a lawsuit in Washington state against the owner of the Vancouver, B.C.-area Canadian shop, Pirate Joe's, for trademark infringement, false designation of origin and false advertising, among other claims.[31][32][33][34] The owner of Pirate Joe's bought large quantities of products from Trader Joe's stores in Washington, and resold them at a slightly higher, grey market price in Canada.[35] In October 2013, Judge Marsha Pechman dismissed the case, ruling that Trader Joe's did not provide sufficient evidence of any economic harm caused by the operation, and that the store's owner could not be convicted under the Lanham Act because the alleged trademark infringements did not occur within the United States.[36]On April 12th, 2015, Pirate Joe's Owner, Michael Hallatt was featured on CBS Sunday Morning national newscast where he discussed the lawsuit and took the cameras behind the scenes to show his system of buying Trader Joe’s supplies and hauling them up north to Vancouver, Canada. [37]