Home Cooking When You Hate to Cook

Posted on May 28, 2025

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I’ll be heading to grad school in a few months. The school I chose is in Pittsburgh, all the way on the other side of Pennsylvania, so that means moving out of my parents’ house. I’m no stranger to moving out and living on my own. I’ve done it an ocean away across vastly different time zones (more than once). I’m a long way away from my freshman year of undergrad, when being left alone in my dorm room for the first time almost brought me to tears.

Still, moving to a city, hours away, is a whole new ball game compared to a campus where I was only ever a short train ride from home. And my stints overseas have never been longer than half a year. This represents something new: being far from home for an extended amount of time. Two and a half years, if not more.

There are a lot of things in this new chapter in my life I could talk about, and a lot of challenges I’ll be tackling. Yet, what I find myself thinking about the most lately is something so simple but so important: food.

Feeding me was never an easy task for my parents. I was a severely picky eater as a child, something I wouldn’t properly connect to my autism until many years after my diagnosis. Back then, when I was simply given the Asperger’s label, all the focus was on my social skills deficiencies. A lot of other symptoms went unnoticed. After all, I didn’t have “real” autism, did I? Texture sensitivities were just another thing. None of us put two and two together about this until much later. It didn’t help that my worst texture sensitivities have always been related to vegetables, the stereotypical food most kids hate anyway.

I’ve left far behind my days of only eating “cheese pizza” (in reality: some kind of flat bread with shredded cheese melted on top) until I got sick of it, driving my parents up the walls in the process. I would say veggies, especially of the leafy and/or green variety, are my true final frontier. Everything else is a lot more manageable now. I try new foods all the time and discover new favorites every day. Though I still tend to play it safe, I find myself pleasantly surprised by how often I am rewarded for embarking on the occasional culinary adventure.

Well… when it comes to eating out, anyway.

Home-cooking is a different, more complicated scenario. Don’t get me wrong, my parents are both excellent cooks. But the older they get, the more they need to be concerned about balancing crafting delicious meals with making sure that their menu is appropriately health-conscious. And, despite their best efforts, a lot of the time that does mean food that’s just… fine. It’s not about to be any of my new favorites, but it certainly isn’t bad either.

But that brings me to my other biggest struggle with food: the maddening difficulty of trying to eat food I only find merely “ok.”

I’ve come to suspect it’s an issue related to my ADHD. I crave stimulation, and when food is boring, it’s the opposite of stimulating. Like white noise on my taste buds. It’s not that I can’t eat it, but being able to eat something and actually eating it are two different things. It’s a difference that’s often blindingly obvious to me when I’m picking at an “ok” meal late into the night. I know it’s a waste of food, but after a few hours, I throw in the towel and throw away what’s left. I already know I won’t be eating the leftovers.

This inability to eat food I am simply unenthusiastic about can feel crippling at times. That I need to “love” a meal, that it’s hard for me to simply be ok with it, can make my picky palate feel even more limiting than it actually is.

It’s also why I don’t feel very motivated to cook for myself. If the result is merely acceptable, there’s a good chance I won’t enjoy eating (or even finish) it. Since I’m no genius chef, it’s a given that many meals I make for the first time are going to come out mediocre. To put the effort into cooking and not know if it will be worth it… it’s hard to push myself to do it.

By contrast, part of what I enjoy about baking is that the risk of this is minimal. I have a real sweet tooth and love most desserts. Plus, I rarely run into any texture sensitivities when it comes to dessert ingredients. The one exception I can think of is hard meringues. That brittle, chalky texture… yuck!

The point is, it’s hard for me to push myself to put effort into something when I don’t know if that effort will be rewarded.

It also makes wanting to eat healthier a more difficult task. The unhealthy stuff is often what makes food so delicious. As I mentioned earlier, when my parents are cooking, they try to eat healthy and nutritious meals. I may not love everything on my parents’ menu, but at least I didn’t have to put in any time and effort myself. It’s thanks to my parents that I regularly have things like fish in my diet, for example. Especially salmon, which is quite nutritious but not something I would ever prepare for myself. I just don’t like it enough.

So, as I’m poised to once again live on my own, I worry about the prospect of having to feed myself.

I can’t just eat out every day. It’s not practical, and I have to think of my budget while I’m attending grad school full time. Even the price of fast food is on an alarming rise these days. I can’t solely rely on frozen meals either, even the cheap stuff. The ones that taste decent usually aren’t exactly good for you, and the ones that are good for you… usually don’t exactly taste decent. So, home cooking has to be on the menu for me.

When I cook at home for myself, it’s often the recipes that take the least effort that win the day. But if I’m not planning to survive on ramen noodles alone, I’m going to have to figure out the least amount of work required to still make tasty yet nutritious meals.

And, as if I didn’t need any more struggles to add to the mix, there’s also the issue of produce for me. My ADHD often causes me to forget to eat or use fresh produce before it goes bad, one of the many phenomena responsible for the infamous “ADHD tax” that speaks to the unfortunate financial costs of living with such a disability.

I’ve been scouring the internet for ideas; dump dinners, one pot recipes, cooking with canned food, the occasional meal replacing smoothie, and anything else that can make cooking feel like less of an insurmountable task.

Many common meal prep tricks are sadly out for me, such as making a big batch of a dish to portion out for the rest of the week. This is indeed a super simple and easy concept, but (as always) my ADHD’s novel stimulation seeking causes me to quickly get sick of any food I have too often.

Still, I’ve slowly been able to create a stockpile of recipes I’m hoping are simple enough to ensure I can make them even in the death grip of executive dysfunction. Currently, I am embarking on a “test kitchen” project where I take this time before I move to test out all the recipes I’ve gathered and prove they’re actual keepers. I’ve only tested one recipe so far, and it was my dad who made it in the end (though he assures me it’s very easy), so you can see how dire the situation is in terms of my own cooking motivation. Things must change, and it’s better I start making those changes now before it’s truly sink or swim. Knowing that never makes things easier, though.

I’m also hoping I’ll find ways to make sure I get all the nutrients I need, even with my issues around veggies and fresh produce in general. I’ve even contemplated trying to replace some of the meat in my diet with vegetarian equivalents, just to try sneaking some plants onto my plate. Of course, that’s another experiment I’m better off conducting here at home first.

I hope you can wish me luck as I move into this new stage of my life, tackling the many new challenges it will throw at me. I’m sure I’ll have plenty more updates to share with you over the coming months.