I have ADHD. For some, if not many, this condition makes cooking problematic. For me? A Social Anxiety Disorder can have an impact on shopping, especially managing my anxiety attacks in the store. ADHD affects my ability to be motivated enough to cook from days to day, some days from hour to hour. Having easy to fix meals, meals like pasta salad that I can just dish up and leftovers I can just heat up for a meal when I can barely get up to plate them and heat them in the microwave is a must for me.

If you are one of these, take a deep breath and relax. I don’t plan meals, or use recipes. While I can follow them, I would rather have the creativity and freedom of just cooking. How? By learning techniques and methods such as ratios rather than following recipes to the letter.

I take food safety seriously. I keep food that can be safety eaten raw separate from food that need to be cooked before it can be safety enjoyed. I get perishables in the fridge or freezer as soon as possible after a grocery run. I am planning to make homemade mayo in the near future, using a tutorial on how to pasteurize the raw egg yolks. Both pasteurizing the eggs and adding the oil to the liquid to make the mayo are fussier projects than I want to tackle today.

I would suggest investing in Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking and The Flavor Bible. The first gives ratios for making things like vinaigrette dressing, mayo, bread, and more. The second provides ideas for new things to try and to try together. I like having them in ebook format, but they come in paper back, hardback and multiple ebook reader formats including Kindle.

When shopping, unless you are trying to add something to your diet or are buying for someone else in the house, if you don’t like it, can’t eat it ow won’t use it, don’t get it. Ask if the impulse purchase is good for you? If it is, get it. If it isn’t, reconsider. Even stuff that is bad for you is fine in moderation, as long as it doesn’t literally make you sick due to food sensitivity or food allergy.

Start with a simple technique or two. Learn it, then go on to another. Make it easy. There is nothing wrong with buying pre prepped veggies, fruits, or anything else, if it will make cooking easier. The same goes for kitchen utensils, gadgets and small appliances. If it will make it easier, get it. If you find something is just taking up space, sell it, give it away or throw it out. Make more than you need. Whether this is every night to feed the family, or when you feel most like working, make extra to have easy to fix meals. This applies to shopping and repacking as well. I buy value packs of meat at the store, bring them home and repacking them into sandwich size Ziploc bags. These go on a cookie sheet in the freezer, at which point I usually forget to take them out to pack the bags into a gallon Ziploc freezer bag. Oh well, I will get better at that.

In my next post, I will make an adaptable pasta salad. Can’t eat gluten? Just substitute a grain, seed used as grain or a “riced” vegetable as the base of the salad. It would work as a rice salad, a quinoa salad or a riced cauliflower salad just as easily. I think I’m ready to advance the laundry and make some pasta salad to munch on for a few days. I’ll be back soon.