I‘m going to get a little bit deep with you for a minute. I hope you don‘t mind. Recently, I read somewhere that nowadays, very few people inhabit their kitchen; most of them just tend to rush straight through it on their way to somewhere else.
The more I thought about that comment afterwards, the more it made sense to me. If you think about it, every other room in the house, you inhabit. In the dining room, you‘ll sit down at the table and enjoy your meal. In the sitting room, you‘ll sit and watch TV or read a book or the paper, or just lay there, whatever you enjoy doing in the sitting room. The bedroom, you sleep in it. The office, you work in it.
The kitchen, unfortunately, nowadays, has become the one room that doesn‘t get inhabited anymore, and it‘s very sad, because cooking can be a really relaxing, enjoyable hobby.
So, what I recommend is that you take the time, for one meal a week. One meal! I mean, that‘s not very many. Out of 21 meals, in 7 days, I‘m sure you can manage one meal. Or, I hope you can anyway.
For just one meal a week, take the time to really enjoy cooking it. Go slowly. Enjoy putting the ingredients in. Enjoy the smell and flavor of each one. I promise you, after a while, you will find it very relaxing, and it will really help you get rid of some pent-up stress. And don‘t we all need to do that?
You may well find that the food will taste much better in the end as a result. It seems to be an accepted fact that when you put more time and effort into something, you‘ll appreciate far more what you get out of it at the end, and the same is true for cooking a meal.
So, I hope you can set aside the time for just one meal a week, to really take the time to savor making it. Enjoy the effort that you put into making it. Because after all, food is much more than just a function; it‘s something that can really be enjoyed.