Cooking is at once child’s play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.
Craig Claiborne
Being in the kitchen can be intimidating for some, especially if you are new to cooking and/or have the pressure of a parent or a teacher looking over your shoulder. I only started enjoying cooking in the peace of my own home to be honest, where I allow myself plenty of time to prepare food, put on some music, let myself be silly with a little dance, let the ideas flow and allow myself to make a mess and mistakes.
Think back to a time when you baked a cake or cookies as a child a try and recreate that curiosity and joy you felt when you cook now. I don’t know when we stopped playing and being silly and thinking its ok to make a mess or make mistakes, but somehow along the way we started to believe these things are wrong and that we should act properly and do everything right, which is an impossible expectation to put on ourselves. There are so many lessons to be learnt from the entire process yet we don’t let ourselves go to those depths.
Cooking should be a joyful process, after all you don’t want to be putting any stressful or negative energy into the food that you’ll be eating!
So relax, have fun, give yourself extra time if need be by preparing meals at the weekend or whenever you have more time, and find ways to make it more fun. This could be listening to music, making your meals more colorful, using ingredients and foods you like, trying crazy new recipes, anything to bring you more joy!