Cooking only Sometimes is Hard

While I can't imagine a world where cooking would not be a part of daily life, let me explain. In a typical week, I either cook every day or at least prepare some meals for the days that get hectic or long. Everything starts with making a plan of what to cook for the week, and then doing most of the grocery shopping on one day. Partly due to necessity, as the local farmers market, shops, butchers and farms are not open every day or at times where one would be normally at work. Partly, it makes cooking during the week simpler, as you know all the ingredients are there. An unintended side effect from this is that earlier in the week, all the dishes are made that with ingredients that go bad quick, and later are the ones that either can be frozen or are more shelf stable. Fish on a Wednesday is therefore a rarity.

It's the background-melody that influences the rhythm of the week. A warm meal, produce that are in season bring joy, new recipes to try, or the comfort of classics made a thousand times. Pantry staples are at a steady churn: onions and potatoes get used before they start sprouting, a carton of eggs never gets old, and spices do not go stale. Trying new things seems not be that hard, as the foundation is already there, and half the ingredients start to overlap cuisines and dishes. Due to the spice trade routes, they pop up in many places. Leftovers and pure curiosity lead to experimentation, such as putting Pixian Doubanjiang into dishes until it works, or noticing that flat parsley still works in Chicken Hainanese chicken rice when there is no cilantro in sight.

But sometimes, the melody changes or fades, becoming almost overshadowed by other priorities. The change happens most often when travelling, likely at least partly for food, and the rhythm moves between food experiences and just grabbing a meal at the nearest supermarket, for which I highly recommend including a spork in your travelling kit. When hiking, it is more what we can carry in calories while still tasting fine. As one does not expect to cook anything large or at all, it works. Now, other times, life becomes unpredictable, be it deadlines, short travels when you are only home to do laundry, evening events filling the calendar, or just staying in a different place for longer without the usual kitchen. Then, when you still try to cook, it starts to live in this purgatory state of sometimes cooking, which is actually hard. You can't buy ingredients for a week, as you do not know if you will use them. Even when trying to mitigate food waste, things get stale or bad, as there is no churn. Sometimes you miss the tools to make the dishes you love. For a new dish, where you would otherwise just grab the from things from the pantry, it's now a trip to the supermarket, to spend 20€ for ingredients you may never use again. While the cooking is still enjoyable, it somehow feels harder than during normal weeks.

As I have been cooking my entire adult life, I wonder if this is the same for people starting to cook. And if so, I can just say, once the flow is there, it will get easier, and even when it stops temporarily, the joy of cooking will never leave.