Home-Made

When I moved, I decided that I was going to be doing a lot more of my meals from scratch, and I’m happy to say that so far it’s been a pretty successful change.

At the old place I fully acknowledge that I’d got lazy – not crap food as such, but more of the prepared ranges (still with fresh ingredients etc., but packaged and just shoved in the oven for 20-30 mins) alongside steamed veg and so on.  So not particularly unhealthy, but also… not exceptionally healthy.

I have an odd relationship with food at the best of times, to be honest.  While I can be a foodie when going out (Michelin restaurants etc., although obviously that’s not every time I go out either) when it comes to my own meals I.. really can’t be arsed a lot of the time.  I don’t go for fancy stuff that requires recipes and effort, because by about halfway through I’m just bored with it, and by the time it’s done I don’t even want to look at it.

Alongside that, food really isn’t a major driver for me – I’ve had to build a kind of routine around times to eat otherwise I can easily go through an entire day and only think at the end “oh yeah, I haven’t eaten yet”.  It’s not a fixed framework, not like “eat breakfast at 7am, lunch at 12, dinner at 6 and throw a strop if that schedule is disrupted at all“, but it’s more about general “Have something in the morning, somewhere roughly lunchtimeish, and something in the evening” reminders.

As a result of those, the easy stuff became the norm, stuff I don’t really need to think about or make an effort with.

But when I moved I wanted to change that a bit, make use of the kitchen gear I’ve got (and the space I’ve now got where I can use it!) and cook more from fresh, see how I do.  It’s all more along the “make several portions at once” plans like soups, slow-cooker stuff and so on, but so far it’s been successful and I’ve been enjoying it.

I can’t claim perfection – there are still days where “beans on toast” or “a sandwich” is perfectly acceptable, for example – but it also helps to have made enough [whatever] for three or four portions, so it’s easy to just grab and eat when I want to. (Another side of that weird food relationship – I don’t really care about what I’m having, so I can have the same thing for three or four days on the trot and that’s fine)

I might slip back to “easy” over time, but I’m hoping I won’t – because at least with the current stuff I know what’s gone into it all, and that can’t be a bad thing.

As with all things, we’ll see how it goes. But it’s been three months already, so it seems to be fixing itself in my head quite nicely.