If you’re bored with the same old cooking routine, here are some suggestions on how to make cooking more exciting. I don’t recommend any of them.
I’m not a fan of cooking. In fact, I believe eating should be optional.
Sadly, the Great Cat hasn’t implemented that idea yet, so I’m stuck with bumbling my way through the kitchen and failing to improve my diet.
I was talking with the delightful @Bky_The_Geek on Twitter recently, and she had some excellent suggestions for how I might have more fun cooking.
Rebecca makes such great points I felt inspired to expand them into a blog post, here today for your viewing pleasure (and probably the trepidation of your partner or roommates).
(Also, you should follow her if you don’t already.)
Make your cooking more exciting by shunning all timing devices
That means no oven timer, egg timer, clock, cellphone, watch, laptop, sundial, water clock, sun, or moon.
Using your internal clock is okay, because no one wants to go to hospital for surgery to remove it during a pandemic.
How do you know when the food is done? You guess, and you only get to guess once.
As Rebecca says, raw or burned, who knows?
Blindfolded cooking!
The name says it all. You can use anything in your kitchen, but you have to do it all blindfolded.
You can distinguish ingredients by touch, smell, or taste if you dare.
Good luck selecting from among the frozen meats. And try not to cut your fingers off or be too generous with the salt.
Everything tastes better with cream or bacon
There’s an excellent saying that you can improve any food by adding either cream or bacon.
I’m inclined to think it’s true… except in the case of orange juice.
Test out the saying by committing to add either cream or bacon to everything you cook. And no skimping.
The only downside? Possible indigestion or heart attack.
Three ingredients
Far too many recipes require you to use a million different ingredients, half of which are super obscure and go by different names in your country.
No more!
Tonight you’re allowed three ingredients and three only to create your gourmet cuisine. Which three? Your choice.
And salt, because salt is a universal good.
What, your food is boring now? How do you think I feel every day?
One handed cooking
Now you can have the added excitement of chasing carrots across the floor as they escape your knife.
I hope you don’t have too many ingredients in screw top jars or ziploc bags. (I recognise there exist among us people who can actually get things out of a ziploc bag with one hand. These people are experts. Don’t try this at home.)
I also don’t recommend putting anything too heavy in the oven tray.
On the upside, you used half as many hands cooking, which means you get to eat twice as much.
All the colours of the rainbow
This time you get seven ingredients, but one has to be each colour of the rainbow.
Yes, you can use three different colours of bell pepper, but they don’t come in blue, so haha.
Prison cooking
You’re allowed to use any ingredients you like and you’re even allowed to watch what you’re doing.
This time the limitation is that you’re not allowed an oven, stove top, microwave, toaster, or any other regular cooking device.
What are you allowed? A trouser press.
(If you don’t get why this is prison cooking, I’m sorry, I’m not going to explain the reference.)
Can you actually cook using a trouser press? I have no idea, never having seen one. I imagine they’re like two sided irons with less versatility.
Cheese probably sticks to them terribly.
I hope I’ve given you all the ideas you need on how to spice up your cooking. Please don’t follow any of them, or if you do don’t blame me for what goes wrong. I already warned you I can’t cook.
How do you make cooking more fun?
Get more terrible advice from me, once a month or every post.
You should know I cringe-laughed the entire way through this. The colors thing though … you’re onto something there. That’s supposed to be quite healthy, actually. Still kind of got me with the whole ‘blue’ thing, though. I suppose there are blue potatoes, on blueberries, but that’s probably about it unless you want to get into artificial dyes, which, yuck!
Happy cooking!
You’re right, blue is quite a challenge. Blue Powerade? Glad I could make you cringe-laugh. 🙂
I am now following Rebecca White, thanks to you, so I look forward to more wisdom. My husband does pretty much all the cooking in our house, except for now when he’s only got one hand available (and even then he can still grill — I’m not here to coddle him, after all). But I do enjoy cooking spaghetti, because my favorite way to test it for doneness is to fling a few strands at the wall. If any stick, it’s done. Or maybe overdone. Not the point 🙂
I always enjoy connecting awesome people up with other awesome people. She’s having trouble with what may be a very small dragon in her garden today.
The spaghetti test is a real thing?! I would say you’ve ruined my kitchen walls, but I expect that ship has sunk.
I hate cooking.
But I must eat to survive. I do enjoy eating good food, but that is so hard to find. And it’s not something I am very good at making.
Except steaks, but those are destroying the planet, so we try not to have them more than once every month or two.
I used to wish they could make nutritious kibble. You ate it, were never hungry, and you could go about your life. Sadly, that has yet to materialize.
You sound so much like me about this. Except the steak thing. I have them more than once a month. If they made nutritious kibble and it wasn’t so disgusting it made me gag (or super expensive) I swear I would live on it. I would get back so much of my life!