I seem to be cooking less and less since the kids moved out. Now I only cook 1 or 2 real meals a week. My husband does not like much food at all, he likes sandwiches, packaged foods, junk food, hates anything with fruits, veggies, anything seasoned. Hard to cook for him so I just throw something quick for me and let him fend. I do like to bake, but I like lots 9f baked foods that involve fruit, pumpkin, etc, DH will not touch those. More for me, but I have limits.

My cooking has only changed to meet the needs/desires of those eating. My Mother will only consume about 6 foods, my husband has gone "low carb", my daughter is celiac, so planning meals can be interesting, LOL.

We seldom ate out before the pandemic, so that was no change for us. I like to cook and bake, so I still do that. We have always eaten breakfast and supper, maybe a snack at lunch, so that hasn't changed. Just like always we get up in the morning, have breakfast. I've had an over easy egg and a slice of toast nearly every morning for....oh.....five years, LOL.

We do the farm chores and I talk to the cows, thank the chickens for giving me eggs, check the fence. That gets me outside for a nice walk, about a mile. I'm Township Clerk so right now the election has been keeping me busy, 40 or 50 hours a week, it's kind of nuts. Then I make supper. Sometimes it's planned and sometimes I just make hamburgers.

I get my baking fix by baking for everyone else. Today it's gluten free lemon bars for my daughter's birthday, some cookies and homemade rolls for my election workers tomorrow and next week I'm baking a couple dozen loaves of bread for a charity bake sale.

Nope, haven't hit the burnout, but I am glad canning season is pretty much over!

Annie

I hit a wall as well a while back. Being and eating at home most of the time has really tapped me out of ideas. How many times can we make carnitas!!!

I am trying to puch my self to try new recipes. This week it will be Mongolian Beef. Yesterday it was parsnip soup.

Just gotta do what you gotta do.

I have cooking fatigue, too. I’ve gotten to where I dread going to the grocery store, and am just tired of trying to think up dinners. I used to love the whole process: making a list for new recipes, shopping, preparation, eating. I really don’t know why I’m feeling so out of it now — maybe empty nest syndrome, world events, etc. Hopefully it’s just a stage in life I’ll move beyond, as I really miss enjoying cooking.

ETA: This is actually the reason I wandered over to this forum when I did, I needed inspiration. And it has helped — new recipes, what people are cooking, what people from all over like and dislike. It also helps knowing I’m not the only one feeling funky.

We are on the austerity plan so eat in all the time, even before the pandemic. And in my small rural town the restaurants are mostly awful. Same food in all of them, burgers, fried stuff and chicken mostly. That's what the market will bear. So if we want something nice we have to eat in. Now we won't go out anyway, don't trust my community to follow safety guidelines properly. There was a nice steakhouse but I don't like beef and hubs can cook it just as well on the grill at home, if not better. So we eat at Chez Nous all the time now.

I think my cooking mojo is permanently gone, for the reasons you outline FawnR, and some others too. But I do gather the willpower to make a good pot of soup, sometimes using the crockpot. Also a big stir fry or noodle/pasta dish will usually last us a week, so if i can muster the will to make something, I try to make a large batch of whatever it is and freeze it. Soup is excellent for that. Plus soup is fairly good at lifting spirits. There's a pot of chicken vegetable with rice on my stove right now. It's my easiest soup--two thawed frozen chicken breasts cut up and sauteed with a small onion is the only work it requires. The rest is boxed chicken broth, and frozen mixed vegetables. I happen to have some leftover rice, but if not I could have added some store bought egg noodles. I use Mrs. Dash garlic-herb seasoning, so I don't even have to measure a mix of seasonings. I did add some celery seed because I'm making this soup for Dad and he doesn't like celery.

Jinx, I feel for you. I'm in the same boat.

I used to love cooking and baking. Now, its just the two of us and my husband has difficulty eating certain food. It has become depressing. Not enough people to cook for and the kind of foods I like to make.

Old age sucks,

Jane

Jane - my sentiments exactly.

It's winter. So dark outside you need to change your clock. There is that pandemic which doesn't seem to ever will disappear. What is there to be cheery about?

But if you are depressed in an abnormal way, do look into if you are a victim of S.A.D.

Do I have S.A.D. ? I can never find out. I have 1000 watts of LED lights shining everyday growing vegetable indoors.

dcarch

Definitely some cooking covid walls hit a few times. We are two. I cook for six with plans for a transformation dish a day or two later. Steak dinner Saturday with roasted veg....an extra steak in the cast iron became a beef stew last night. (with the abundance of roasted veg). planned. Not left-overs.

Like dcarch, indoor garden in the winter months is a good obsession. I started some dwarf and micro tomatoes in early august. Now under a light bank. Lots of salad greens happy. So abundant I need to harvest and bag them. Though prefer cut fresh. Tending plants is a bit OCD but we all need a healthy obsession during these covid/nut-ball political times.

Dead days with no inspiration, I have quick veg/noodle bowls. Miso and stocks I have in the freezer made during better days past.

I too am in a funk. I do try to cook from scratch, and make enough for at least one extra meal. I would like to bake more sweets, but usually only want one piece. Starbucks is just up the street and so an occasional brownie or piece of Lemon Loaf fills-in the void.

We have/had lots of really good restaurants with a good variety of foods on their menues. I do miss going out with friends and enjoying foods I normally don't cook.... like Chinese. Perhaps it's more the friends I miss than the restuarants.

I feel I'm just not being creative anymore. Same old same old.

I with all of you, I have hit the wall re: cooking. BC (before Covid) everyone fended for themseleves for breakfast and lunch. We dined out twice a week and I cooked 4 nights and DD cooked one night. It worked for the 6 of us. Now I'm prepping breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I am ehausted just coming up with new ideas. I used to love cooking, now I'm bored. Due to her schedule, DD has taken on all dishes and ktchen cleaning and no longer cooks. If I had to cook and clean, I would be very unhappy.

In a normal year, BC(before covid), we would get so excited planning for gatherings of friends and planning the menu. Testing dressings, making bbq sauces. Setting big outdoor table for 20-30, storm/rain back-up table in the barn. Watching storms roll through the landscape.

😒

I have to ask just why are you baking so many cookies? That is a lot of cookies!!!!!!

Hubs and I rarely ever had a meal out in the best of times. Now, of course, it is all about eating at home.

As much as I enjoy cooking and putting a nice meal on the table, I have reached a level of fatigue that is in line with all the other fatigue of our situation. It has an accumulative effect on every aspect of life, including cooking.

LIke everything else in my life right now, I want it really simple, yet wonderfully delicious, elegant, and nutritious. Groceries go a lot farther than they used to because we eat much less quantity than we used to, and the kids have grown up and gone out on their own.

Some days I go into the kitchen and I can hardly concentrate on cooking.

Still, I enjoy cooking and enjoy dining and it is a dance of love between us for these past 50 years that I prepare nice meals for him, for us.

Getting take out is not something that we do often. It is so full of fat and salt and such things that I would never consider to be of desired quality to end up on my table. Wholesomeness is important and you don't get that from most restaurant food. Once in a while I do get a desire for something fried. It is hard to find any quality fried items. So many are just Sysco, or worse.

I think I'm a bit burnt out too, but I'm down two minions and have a couple extra helpings of work, so I think it might just being tired. I hope the yen comes back and I stop just doing easy...

So, you guilted me into cooking something. No, not the stuffed cabbage soup, or anything real. I made sloppy joes on pretzel sesame buns with slightly wilted spinach on them. I use dehydrated veg in them, so don't think I prepped something. The spinach was earlier. But since I didn't put cheese on the joes (I mostly don't), i stared craving mac and cheese. Mind you, that isn't anything my mother made or I encountered much of as a child. It's not emotion food for me. I was just craving gooey cheese. But just as I was heating my pan I remembered I had a committee meeting on Zoom. Ugh.

At least I wasn't late. The meeting was long and tiring, but it seemed making up the mac and cheese, seeing I'd only put away the milk, was no more work than cleaning it up. I lost my way. It was supposed to be a goo fest, and it turned into my old favorite marsala cheese sauce, but sherry instead (which was supposed to be milder for the goo, but got a bit out of hand and would have been better as marsala at that point), and tiny high protein elbows rather than brass die radiatore. Not that it wasn't good! Lots of pepper, onion, garlic, oregano, and a bunch of cheese ends. But it's more thick creamy than gooey, not orange (the cheddar was yellow), and while I contemplated calcium stearate, it didn't actually need it, and I'd put some American in for that purpose. But calcium stearate might have fixed the goo... This wasn't Lazy, at least. ;)

I haven't lost my desire to cook, but my desire to cook creatively. I just want to settle in with comforting easy tried and true. I do miss good pizza and Chinese. That was a Friday night tradition where I used to live, we either got takeout pizza or Chinese, both available near us good quality. We have both pizza and Chinese here, but they are terrible, so I make both kinds of food. Mine aren't as good as those east coast takeout versions but we make do. My pizza is getting pretty good, almost there, but my Chinese isn't good and isn't likely to get better. I just am not motivated to develop my abilities in that style. Don't know why . . . I love Chinese but seemingly only when someone else makes it. I think due to the dishes I like having a lot of ingredients, it requires too much thought and brain power for where I am with meals lately . . . most of the time.

Soups and big melanges that I can reheat for a couple of days are my go to's. I have to think and concentrate to make them, but then can coast through a lot of meals by just reheating after . . . .

Ricky ... that's only three dozen daily ...

bragu - we bake between 11 and 12 dozen at a clip and usually only three days a week.