What's the fucking point /ck/?Every single day I cook all my meals from scratch from breakfast to dinner, I spend more than 1 hour peeling and cutting vegetables, trimming meat, making sauces, cooking the actual food, assembling it and cleaning everything included the kitchen when I'm done, all of this to put something in a dish that will be gone in a few bites and less than 10 minutes.I like cooking but I feel like it's a waste of time and energy, I'm so depressed that despite all the technique and love I put into it everything tastes bland and I can't feel nothing at all.Sometimes I just feel like giving up and start eating pizza and fast food, I don't know, because having to think what to eat meal after meal, having to buy groceries and planning in advance give me anxiety. I wish I was a kid with my mom taking care of everything food related for me, I can't take it anymore bros.
Maybe you are being too careful to keep your meals super healthy - try making your own pizzas and burgersOr maybe you just need a break. Find some prepared foods that you like and put them in your rotation
>>21091877>keep your meals super healthyI do this, but I still cook with oil and fats, I just don't use any premade industrial sauce or anything, just spices, fresh seasonal veggies, fresh meat, etc...One of the simplest lunches I can make is a dish of chickpeas (overnight soaked in water and cooked 50 minutes in a pressure cooker in the morning, then salted and left in their water inside a jar), carrots+zucchini+onions sauteed in hot oil until browned and with the desired doneness + turkey bites.The chickpeas? Tasteless.The veggies? I can't taste anything but very mild zucchini flavor The turkey? Nothing even here.I have to add tons of salt too to the point that the saltness overpowers the empty taste, even a fucking salad leaves me with salty lips afterwards, I've been eating like this since months and I'm scared but who cares...
Make spaghetti and meatballs
do meal prep. set up a handful of menus that you can use a week at a time. write down everything you need for them and keep the lists around for grrocery shopping and it makes it super fast and easier to budget. then cook multiple meals at oncefor each week. it takes less time and effort to prep/cook/clean after a large quantity of food than cooking several smaller meals, so youll save time and effort throughout the week. also look into prepping things that you can slow cook like stews, where you cut up veggies and meat and put them in the freezer, then just drop them in a crock pot with some water for a few hours and have a good meal later.
>>21092054>drop them in a crock pot with some water for a few hours and have a good meal later. I do this and I can't still end up with a good meal, it's just a decent chow that doesn't taste particularly good unless I use specific ingredient.For instance, days ago I cut one onion and fried it in olive oil until translucent, added diced carrots and some leek and let them get the heat for some minutes, tossed 500 grams of beef chunks and seared them, added tomato paste and deglazed with half a glass of red wine, covered with cabbage leaves then added water and closed the lid of the pressure pot, let everything cook for 20 minutes under pressure and then removed the lid and finished cooking to thicken the sauce by adding some kuzu, adjusted salt and pepper to taste (a truckload of salt as always).I got this in pic related. Sorry for the ugliness but my phone camera has problems taking pictures of stews for some reason, the white balance is royally fucked, however...everything had the same flavour.I'm tired, as I said I spent a lot of time prepping this for me and my father and ended up hating it. I eat with rage every time, I'm under the impression that I can't feel any flavour because there's something psychosomatic going on in my head.
>>21092116These were 1st of the year lentils.I rendered the fat from 40 grams of ribeye fat I trimmed from the last of the year's dinner, moved the crunchy bits away (I put them over the finished dish for a crunchy bite texture), fried one onion in it with a branch of rosemary, added the lentils with tomato paste and let them take the heat for 3 minutes then added some ladles of vegetable stock I made days before (carrots, onion, fennel, leek and zucchini, tomatoes + pepper grains infused). I cooked everything until the sauce thickened and it looked comfy.IT TASTED LIKE FUCKING NOTHING AT ALL, BEEF AT MOST.I was so fucking bummed that I chugged everything down in 3 minutes and went to sleep after, waking up with fucked up stomach afterwards, of course.
>>21092135The only dish that I make which tastes good is *generally* meat. The simpler, the better. Searing a ribeye in a stainless pan without added fat and deglazing the fond with just boiling water makes up for the best steak dish I can ask for, but of course I can't eat like this every day...
>>21092139Those meals look homey and comfy and delicious, if a little oily, anon. Have you talked to a doctor?
>>21092116>>21092135>>21092139meals where you cook things together for a while will tend to have homogenous flavors, so reserving some elements to add later and just heat through can help, but its not like a soup is going to have completely different flavors in every spoonful. also having side dishes helps a lot with varied flavors.do you smoke?
>>21092151Yes I did and I suffer from dysthymia since I was a teenager 20 years ago.>>21092152Thanks. >do you smokeI don't smoke, nor I drink alcohol or take any medicine. If I taste food made by others or junk food I can feel the tastes and the richness, but if I eat what I cook then there's nothing. It's all in my head probably, I don't know anymore.
>>21091865Same. It proves that you're not a normie. The normies are content with every bit of novelty: a new flavor of product, a new president, a new job, a new relationship, a new hobby, a new podcast, a new haircut, a new year and so on.But you are different. You know that there's nothing new under the sun not by intellect but by heart. Like a monk you realize that variety, novelty and stimulation does not spark but dull your life force. You begin to enjoy the plain taste of not only meat, but eggs, dairy and even white rice. You never knew how silky, sweet, nutty, fragrant and satisfying just a spoonful of white rice could be especially after physical labor or a fast. And so the door has opened to a truly new experience.
>>21091865>What's the fucking pointLuk at dis nigga looking fa a point in life
>>21091865>I like cookingClearly you don't
>>21092187A dish is really dependent on the setting, some of the best things ive eaten were after shoveling sidewalks all day. And the cooking wasn’t all that greatAlso try drinking a bottle of wine and making pizza. its fun
>>21091865Try cooking for others
>>21091865It's not the cooking that is the problem. You're simply lonely. Get your aunties to find you a wife and marry the first one they recommend.
>>21091865>I spend more than 1 hour peeling and cutting vegetables, trimming meat, making sauces, cooking the actual food, assembling it and cleaning everythingyou're just bad at time management. also you're supposed to make food in large batches and freeze the leftovers. cook 3 things and you have meals for 2-3 weeks. buy one of these and a rice cooker. enjoy doing literally 5min of prep and 2min of washing up to make 8 meals worth of food.
Problem is that you are only cooking for yourself and you dont value that enough. Try inviting friends and family for dinner, consider getting a spouse and kids who to cook for. Ive been cooking for over 4 years everyday for my sons and it is much more rewarding than just making it for myself, even if they bitch about the food sometimes.
Well, after venting I made this today in bulk.I know that it looks like a sloppa, but these are the dishes I love the most for they are extremely comfy.I called it “anti inflammatory turkey stew”, this my own recipe for 2 portions:>500 gr turkey breast cut into regular cubes >1 golden onion (medium)>1 big carrot >1 big zucchini >a piece of leek to taste >1 red pepper (not in the picture) or less if it’s big>turmeric powder>black pepper >paprika>tomato paste I used a pressure pot, so I rendered beef tallow (or the fat of your choice) and fried the golden onion cut into small pieces, then I seared the turkey cubes and deglazed with half a glass of white wine scraping the fond with a spatula, at this point I added a generous amount of turmeric with black pepper to taste (black pepper activates the curcumin inside turmeric which is a potent anti inflammatory), add the paprika and tomato paste and stir well in the sauce then add the veggies and let them take the heat for some minutes, add salt and after that add the required amount of water and close the lid. Cook 15 minutes from when the pot goes into pressure.Release the pressure and stir everything while turning the flame on to thicken the sauce until the desired texture. You can add your starch of choice, flour or whatever you like to speed the process (I used a spoon of chickpeas flour) then serve.You can of course add potatoes to the stew, I didn’t since I cooked in bulk and I don’t want to eat potatoes every day, but if I had to I would’ve used sweet potatoes or pumpkin.
>>21091865You should try front loading the effort for certain ingredients that you eat often. Cooking 5 cups of grains takes the same time amount of time as cooking 1 cup. Browning a whole pack of minced beef takes the same amount of time as 1 portion of minced beef (if you do it in the oven). Boiling 10 eggs takes the same amount of time as boiling 1 egg. Roasting 8 portions of potatoes doesn't take very much longer than roasting 1 portion of potatoes. Uncooked vegetables last in the fridge all week too, dicing half a dozen carrots/onions/etc isn't that much quicker than than dicing a single serving when you factor in the chopping time and the washing up. All these things will happily live in the fridge all week, it's basically 'meal prep' but you're not eating the EXACT same thing every day you just have a few components ready to go and you just tweak them as you go - add aromatics, herbs, make a sauce, whatever it is you're doing you will save time over the course of the week by doing batches
>>21093666Fuck off, Satan
>>21093692I know anon, the problem is that I don’t have space in the fridge and freezer. We’re 3 people here and I can’t keep the fresh ingredients and the cooked meals at the same time, sadly.
>>21091865Look into ragouts. Make large batches and freeze them in portions.
>>21091865For me, it's OMAD, the most justifiable way to cook all your meals since it's only once a day. Also take cheat days to eat slop, it's okay to get takeout or some frozen shit from the store 1 or 2 nights a week.
This is why I eat one meal a day1/3 of the effort
>>21091865All that work is what a wife is supposed to do.
