Food For Thought: Burnt Like Toast

Losing your cooking inspiration (and how to find it again)

I hate cooking.

Perhaps that’s a startling statement coming from someone who publishes a twice-weekly newsletter about food, but there it is.

It’s not a permanent condition, but rather how I’ve felt for the last couple of weeks. The craft has degenerated into a chore, and one that feels particularly drudge-like.  It’s the kind of funk that a few nights off doesn’t fix.

Ennui and weltschmerz. Throw some angst in there too.

Cooking is, in many ways, a curious activity.  Many of the tasks of daily living can be reduced to a routine, and most of us are fine to leave them that way – laundry, lawn-mowing, filling the car with gas.  But there is little as unrelenting as cooking.

You can let the ironing (what’s that? LOL) pile up or leave the garden unweeded for a week.  Even if you decide forgo the stove and let takeout takeover you still need to decide what to eat, when to eat it, where to eat it, and how you’re going to pay for it. Even without the effort of cooking and cleaning up food still occupies a substantial amount of mental real estate, upwards of a hundred different decision points in a single day.  

I read somewhere that burnout results from the conflict between expectations and reality. But that shouldn’t be read to mean that your expectations are necessarily too high. Many people are deeply familiar with jobs that cause burnout - the kind with repetitive tasks, rigid process, unclear expectations, and lack of recognition. Add to all that the baggage we drag into our mealtimes: health concerns, finances, cultural expectations, ethical issues, guilt-type stuff, and a picky selective eater or two.

And if you’re the sort of person who reads food newsletters, you probably like to cook more than the average person and see it as a creative outlet. You have expectations of yourself and your skill level and get some satisfaction from your culinary creations. Microwave meals don’t feel very good and turning over the kitchen to someone else for too long just seems wrong. We have a few perfectionist tendencies, don’t we?

It’s all a recipe for something less than delicious: cooking burnout.

But how to snap out of it? How do you keep cooking when you’re cooked?  Is the key to fulfillment what the influencer types would have you believe: self-care, positive thinking, and a meal kit subscription?

I think not.

You can’t do anything about the need to eat, but you can give yourself a break to regroup and shake off the burnt toast brain.

Here are some ideas that have worked for me:

Throw Out the Rule Book. Much of our expectations about food and cooking are self-imposed, whether we realize it or not. Specific meal times, the places we eat, and what constitutes a “proper meal” only exist because we say they do. Eat outside or in front of the TV. Have dinner later or earlier. Have dessert first this week. Kids love it when adults break the rules so this will be the most fun ever. Adults can fend for themselves if they don’t like it - their expectations are not your problem.

Eat Like a Toddler. I’m not suggesting that you slurp on those weird squeezy packs of applesauce and yogurt. But veggies and dip are a perfectly good way to get some vegetables down without a lot of work (buy them pre-cut if it helps). Crackers, cheese, and some interesting ham is not called “Lazy” it’s called “Charcuterie” and it totally counts as a proper dinner. If you vary the types of ham and cheese you can get away with this for several days in a row. A peanut butter sandwich is a balanced meal whether it’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, or somewhere in between. Take the pressure off yourself and graze away.

Play Against Type. Are you usually focussed on “healthy” recipes? Make comfort food with lots of starchy stuff. Make the muffins with so much sugar and butter that they might as well be cupcakes. Do you try to do everything from scratch? Get a frozen lasagna and a bagged salad, and put your remaining effort into making a cake from a box. Make “lowering” your standards into a bit of a game - you might find out which standards really matter.

Change the Subject. Put the cookbooks down, turn off the food channels, and mute the aspirational Instagram accounts. Engage your creativity with something that’s not cooking-related. Get lost in the library. Get out in nature and slow down enough to notice what’s going on around you. Notice textures, colours, smells, and rhythms. You may find yourself enjoying a new hobby or reconnecting with an old one. Eventually you might even feel hungry again.

And when you do get your groove back? Remind yourself of how crappy you felt and start doing your future self a few extra favours. Freeze an extra portion or two of your favourite meals or a pre-portioned batch of cookie dough. Make a few jars of pickles or jam. Grab a food-related gift card and stash it away (where you’ll actually find it!) and consider it an investment in your mental health - self care isn’t just bubble baths.

The path though a creative slump is rarely a direct one. You can force your way through for a while but burnout is insidious. If you don’t cool down eventually your mind will force you to do so, and probably at a rather inconvenient time. Take time to recharge and the inspiration will return. Too much heat will burn your toast.