4 Ways to Make Cooking Fun!
Let’s face it….. cooking is not fun for everyone. Some people really dislike it. When you get home from a long day and have to cook, it can feel like a hard, pointless job. It's very tempting to cheat and get takeout or microwave a frozen meal.
But guess what? It can actually be fun, easy and fast to create healthy and delish meals at home. When you eat more home cooked meals, it can also help you to reach your health goals. If you’re struggling with cooking right now, don’t worry! Here are 4 tips to help make cooking fun!
Tip #1: Love Your Cooking Space
Make the kitchen a place you love spending time in. The kitchen can become a place of your favorite beautiful equipment, gorgeous design and functionality. Look at some kitchen designs and select a few features that will make you want to spend time in the kitchen. Think about lighting, color schemes, and anything else that you like. Make sure every piece of equipment is working correctly. Get rid of all the extra stuff and keep only the best cooking tools. Music or the TV in the background can also help you enjoy cooking more. So, look around and make your kitchen a place you want to be.
Tip #2: Cook Your Fave Foods
Cooking your favorite foods helps you to connect a positive connotation with the kitchen. Even though many of our favorite foods may not be super healthy, remember you don’t have to change your cooking completely overnight! Simple swaps is the way to go. Think about making one healthy swap to the recipe, such as swapping traditional refined sugar for monkfruit sweetener, a no-calorie sweetener that can help balance your blood sugar levels. Many gluten-free flours can also be used in place of traditional white flour in many baked goods. You can also use herbs and spices - you can buy affordable bulk spices here - in place of salt and fat, to add healthy flavor to your dishes.
You can also experiment with some of your favorite restaurant meals at home. Something like a garlic butter grilled lobster recipe looks fancy, but is actually easy to make at home. You can also try this Simple Salmon Supper that looks stunning and is secretly healthy too.
Tip #3: Have A Plan
Create a simple plan on what you’re going to cook, and eat, this week. This helps you to take the cooking pressure off yourself, especially if you have yummy leftovers that you can have for lunch or dinner the next day.
Having a plan can help you to make a good shopping list so that you get all the necessary ingredients on the first trip to the store (anyone else have to go back to the grocery store because you forgot an ingredient? Me too!)
You can make plans as far in advance as you want, like a few days, to a week or a month. Make use of cheaper seasonal ingredients and helpful kitchen tools like the crockpot or instant pot. You can also do a meal swap with some friends i.e get a group of friends to agree to cook a meal for each other once a week. This can be a fun way to cook for someone else and receive a new and exciting meal from a friend!
Check out my #1 New Release Cookbook, Nourish Your Body: A 30 Day Healthy and Delicious Meal Plan for easy and delish meals for a month!
Tip #4: Time To Chat
One of my favorite things to do while cooking, is to chat. Cooking is a great time to chat with friends or family and catch up on what has been going on in their lives. There is something about the gentle rhythm of cooking that helps create a warm and welcoming environment for a great conversation.
Not only can cooking with your family and friends be a way to spend time together, but mealtimes can also be a great bonding time. A dinner table is a great place for your loved ones to sit down and talk. It may be the only time of the day when everyone is together. While you're making the food, you might want to think about what you want to talk about or what questions you want to ask. Allow yourself to leave your phone in another room and let yourself be fully in the moments at the dinner table. All of this helps you and your loved ones strengthen your connection while enjoying some delicious food.
What tip are you going to try today? Let me know in the comments below!
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Hey! I’m Renata!
Your intuitive nutrition coach and fellow food lover. I’m here to help you find the foods that work best for your body, without feeling deprived or starving.
