Creativity
During the lockdown, I want to learn something new so I decided to learn how to cook, I’ve always thought cooking was really time-consuming and tedious work, but after giving it a try, I found out that cooking by myself makes me feel very accomplished.
I realized that I began to cook more frequently the last two weeks, I used to hate cooking because it’s always the beginning that’s hard, cooking itself is not really hard, but what’s hard is telling myself to get up from my seat and go cook. I always worry about how cooking is time-consuming, but after some shower thoughts and before-bed thoughts, I realized that I spent 3-4 hours on my phone a day during this lockdown, meaning I definitely have the time to cook, I’m just lacking time management skill and motivation during this period, which is why I think cooking is wasting my time. So the next day, I began to time myself cooking because I’m trying to convince myself that cooking doesn’t take long. I started with easier meals at the beginning, such as fruit yogurt and a grilled cheese sandwich, which only takes less than 5 minutes. Then I made some other meals for lunch and dinner (vegetables soup, chicken breast, eggs) After a week, I began to try harder meals, I tried the grilled pork ribs, which actually took me 1 hour, but by this time, I’m already enjoying the process of cooking.
(lol i forgot to take a pic before i eat)
Throughout this process, there is only one challenge, which is time management, I’ve been constantly trying to convince myself that cooking doesn’t take long, to do this, I make time blocks to schedule my time, I gave myself 1.5 hours now for cooking per day, and that covers 4 meals per day. This reduces my screen time and motivates me to become more productive too, my screen time has significantly decreased this week compared to last week (first week of lockdown 5-6 hours sometimes 7) last week (3-4 hours) this week (1.5 hours per day) I’ve realized that eating good food actually motivates me to do productive things. It is amazing to see so many benefits of cooking by myself, I’m no longer spending tons of money eating ubereats, less screen time, better time management, one most important thing is that cooking helps me “recollect” myself during this lockdown, the sudden change made me down during this period because I’m lacking motivation every day even though there’s tons of work chasing behind me. I personally think that cooking is one major factor that helps me regain some discipline.
I never knew cooking could have an impact on other aspects of my life which I thought is really cool, this experience makes me want to try more things that I previously didn’t want to do because I can discover many more benefits.
I’ve learned many meals so far, here are 4 meals I’m most proud of:
- Tomatoes Vegetables Chicken Noodle
- Sesame Oiled Pork Liver
- Grilled Pork Ribs
- Golden Tofu
