The Sunshine Table

The Biggest Pitfall Of Home Cooking (And How To Beat It)


If you’re not having much fun cooking meals at home it may be that you’re making this mistake. No, it’s not bad singing! It’s something far worse. Most people who give up on home cooking do so because they take it all too seriously and feel that they have to create a perfect dish every mealtime.
Don’t Take It Too Seriously!

Cooking is all about having fun and experimenting. Things will go wrong – you will find yourself staring at a sinkful of dishes at midnight, you will buy something expensive and burn it, you will buy groceries and they will rot forgotten in the fridge.

That’s okay. I have done all of these things. It’s part of the process. Just don’t be disheartened by it. Try to figure out what went wrong, adjust, and move on.

Cooking is like parenthood, remember its an experiment, you’re still learning so give yourself permission to fail, let stuff go bad, let dishes pile up sometimes.

Don’t worry if you have a few disasters. That’s how you learn. It gets easier.

Just because you can’t cook now, it doesn’t mean you will never be able to. We all start out not knowing what to do, especially if we didn’t grow up with someone regularly cooking meals at home and involving us in the process.
Practise Makes Perfect

I don’t think I was confident about cooking until I was 30 or so, and even now, ten years later, there are things that baffle me.

My advice is just to keep at it, and try lots of different kinds of recipes whenever you feel like it, but don’t stress out about it too much.

Think of your children learning to walk. First they had to learn to stand up, their muscles grew stronger and then they were able to take a first tentative step whilst holding on. Perhaps they made it, most likely they fell.

The important thing is that they didn’t give up. They just tried again, over and over and over again. Usually with a great big grin on their face.

And what did you do as a parent? You cheered them on every step of the way. Celebrating each improvement no matter how small because you know it was progress.

This is what I’d how I’d like you to approach cooking. Celebrate. Every. Single. Step.

Laugh when things go wrong. Disasters make the best stories. Months from now you’ll look back on early attempts and be proud of how far you’ve come.

Give yourself permission to take baby steps. You don’t have to cook a fantastic three-course dinner for you and your family every single night. You just need to make something simple to eat. The important thing is not so much what you make, but that you start cooking at home and sharing meals together as a family.

Lastly, please don’t compare yourself to others! The only thing they have that you don’t is practice and you’re going to get plenty of that. Starting today.

What are you going to cook today? Post your commitment in the comments so that we can give you encouragement and accountability.