In this episode, Sam discusses confidence in the kitchen by sharing personal experiences and insights on how various life stages, particularly parenthood, can impact one's confidence in the kitchen. Sam explores the challenges faced by many when it comes to meal preparation and the emotional toll it can take. Sam offers practical advice to build confidence, including meal planning and simplifying recipes, and highlights the transformative role of the Thermomix in enhancing Sam's cooking skills and confidence.

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Chapter markers

00:16 The Role of Confidence in Cooking

04:39 Personal Journeys: Confidence in the Kitchen

12:07 Impact of Parenthood on Cooking Confidence

14:50 Strategies to Build Kitchen Confidence

17:30 Embracing Change: The Thermomix Experience

00:16 Sam

Hey, it's Sam, good to be back on Not Pasta again. In this episode, I'm going to be chatting more about something I feel plays a huge part for lots of us when it comes to cooking and getting food on the table, and that's confidence, or should I say a lack of it. This one word conjures up so many things and so many feelings when we talk about food, and that can be from finding our confidence, why we might lose our confidence,

and the different things that can knock our confidence along the way. And there's even the notion that perhaps we never really had any confidence in the first place. As Ellie touched on in the last episode when I interviewed her, she said her confidence had dropped after cooking for children for five years and not having people around for dinner like she used to. That in itself says so much.

that cooking for children can shift someone into a different cooking zone, as if children aren't normal people. No comment. So in today's episode, I'll be expanding a lot more on that and also the reasons as to why you feel you might have lost your confidence. Personally, I get this one a lot. Feeling confident in the kitchen has not been my natural state of being. In fact, for the most part of my life, I felt far from confident, but more of that,

later. First off, I just want to say a huge thank you to so many of you who have reached out and said that you are actually enjoying the podcast so far. I'm really pleased that you're enjoying it and that it has actually resonated with you. I hope you've all seen my replies and please do keep sharing your thoughts. I also just want to say a huge thank you to those of you who have left a review for me as well. It really does mean a huge amount.

If you haven't left me a review yet, it would be amazing if you would consider doing so. Five stars, of course, please. And you can do that on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And this is a lovely review that I've received from Gary. I've just listened to the first two episodes of Not Pasta Again and loved it.

The host, Sam, is refreshingly honest and offers thoughtful advice without coming across as preachy. Instead of pushing for some perfect, often unrealistic way of doing things, Sam speaks with empathy and really connects with the struggles of busy parents. It's all about keeping things healthy and interesting in the kitchen. And it feels like it's speaking directly to me. I'm really looking forward to future episodes.

Thank you so much, Gary, for that review. Going back to whether you would like to leave me a review, it would be great if you could do so. It doesn't have to be long and it will just help for the show to be found by more people like us who are finding the kitchen to be a bit of a headache.

Because like I say, this is for you. I want this podcast to be a community where we can openly share and have an outlet to vent any frustrations that we have over the challenges we face in providing food every day for our families. I feel like lots of us are in the same boat. And if we can just collectively share ideas, champion each other, maybe just nod in agreement, we'll just be there to give each other a virtual pat on the back.

That's what I want to achieve with this. So thank you again to all of you who have already got in touch. Please do keep sharing your thoughts, your wins, your losses, because there may be some of those too, and any recipe ideas that you might have. You can send me an email to notpastureagain at hotmail.com, or you can contact me through my social channels and you'll find those in the show notes. The many ways that you can reach out will really help broaden the community. And yeah.

Just say hi, you don't have to say a lot. And if there's anything you'd like me to discuss that I haven't yet, then just let me know that as well. Okay, let's get on with today's chat about confidence in the kitchen. Where shall we begin? Probably the easiest place to start is with me sharing my confidence journey in the kitchen. I've lived and breathed it after all. Just like life, I think there are different stages that we can all experience in the kitchen with the way in which we eat,

our eating habits and how we actually get food on the table. And I think because we're all different, that journey to confidence or not will also be different. Ellie alluded to two life stages, that being pre and post-children, and I will look at those in a moment. Confidence in the kitchen for me has never been something I've naturally had. Maybe this has been determined by many factors.

But if I look at life stage, I think this does shed some light on it. I didn't have to cook when I was younger. My parents put good food on the table. And if I'm honest, food was never really a focal point for me as a child. Unlike Ellie, I don't have those nostalgic feelings that she shared of her time growing up on the farm, lots of activity in the kitchen, her mum getting the vegetables from the garden.

All I really remember from a food perspective are amazing Yorkshire puddings with onion gravy, overboiled veggies made by my Nana, and her amazing jam tarts. So when I left home, went to university, and had to fend for myself, food was not a top priority. I do remember frozen onion bhajis from Marks and Spencer's, and I ate curry out a lot. I was in Birmingham after all.

So I don't think I really learned how to cook or paid much attention to it for a really big part of my life.

Roll on a few years and I'm in Melbourne, Australia, and I am surrounded by the most amazing cultures. And with that came access to amazing, delicious and tasty food from everywhere that you could imagine in the world. So for me, I still had no responsibility for food. I ate out a lot. It was so easy to do that.

and it was also relatively cheap to do it as well. So food for me at that point in my life was very much a social experience. I could go to a cafe for breakfast and enjoy brunch with beautiful, beautiful fresh produce. I could then go out in the evening and enjoy something like a curry laksa, which was really, really authentic. So it was all about who I was with, where I was going, and just enjoying everything that surrounded food. I had no need

to be the one cooking and preparing the food. And I was heading towards my 30s.

And then as we started to get older, we'd get invites around to people's houses for dinner. And I can remember thinking, it's going to be my turn soon. And all of a sudden I felt my first bout of expectation when it came to putting some food on the table. I had no idea of what I could cook and my lack of confidence was heightened because Shelley, my very lovely friend, was a really, really good cook.

So I felt really useless in comparison to her. And that is not a great feeling to have when you're serving up dinner to three friends because you're pretty sure before you've even started making it that what you're going to make is going to be rubbish. And sure enough, the first time I cooked dinner, it was a failure. I remember it clearly in my flat. I had no confidence leading up to the event. I definitely didn't have a repertoire of meals to choose from.

and I didn't have any confidence after the event. I can't actually remember if we finished the meal. I remember it was a bit of an insipid chicken dish with Philadelphia sauce, something like that. I definitely, however, don't remember any subsequent dinner parties at my place. So I can kind of smile and laugh about it now, but the fact I can still remember it says something. So for me, a lack of experience of...

Being in the kitchen, being around food, being prepared for a big part of my life has generally resulted in me lacking in confidence in the kitchen. And this has stayed with me until I got myself a Thermomix. I can confidently say that the food I put on the table now is of a very high quality. It might not be liked by everyone, but I know it's not being rejected because it's not good, because it is good. But.

I also believe that until you have children, if you have them, you do have more of a sense of freedom around food. And maybe that's because there is no expectation associated with what you make or cook. You are purely responsible for yourself. So my experience pre-children was very different to Ellie's. Pre-children, Ellie spoke about enjoyment, time, creativity, and you could see it and hear it in her voice.

that when she cooked pre-children, she loved it. Thinking about it now, I'd love to know what it was about that situation that gave her greater confidence. So if you're listening, Ellie, what was it? Time to be creative, time to cook, no fussy eaters. Or I wonder, was it just a general sense of freedom to be able to do what you wanted to do when you wanted to do it?

I'd also be really intrigued to know your experience of this before children were a part of your world. Are you more Ellie and you had confidence before the kids arrived? Or are you more me and you've never really had much confidence in the kitchen?

So again, I'm intrigued. What things have led to you lacking in confidence in the kitchen? I believe it can be the smallest things that can end up having a big impact.

Or maybe those of you with kitchen confidence and skills in that area, maybe you could share some tips for how we can all grow in confidence with our cooking.

I think an interest in food and what you eat is probably a key part of growing in confidence around the kitchen and what you cook. Well, it was for me. I can't remember the exact turning point, but I do remember that as I got more interested in my fitness in Australia, that I became more inclined to put some time and effort into what I was eating. After all, it's not only what you do that makes you healthy. Apparently it's what you put into your body to fuel it as well. This was Pre-Children.

and I had time. I didn't have time on my hands, but I chose to use more of my time more mindfully in the area of cooking. So just by doing a little bit more cooking, I felt a little bit better about trying different recipes. Living their amazing fresh food markets in Perhan and South Melbourne also encouraged me to be much more engaged with eating well.

being surrounded by fresh food and ingredients naturally motivated me to try more. I don't think I can ever say my meal repertoire was huge, but it definitely got better when I started making weekly trips to these amazing fresh food markets. Interestingly, there was no plan back then about what I was gonna make. I just randomly chose stuff to then hopefully use it at home. I've digressed slightly away from the life stage discussion, but I think it's all relevant.

little things that have helped me shift my fears about cooking. But again, I did it on my terms, nobody else's. And by nobody else's, I mean children.

When children came onto the scene, initially for me, there was no real change in how I felt about cooking or the amount I was actually cooking because it didn't change much of what was already happening. We could easily and affordably eat out and we would drag the baby with us. I remember also eating amazing Greek food made by the in-laws. They really looked after us. And if I'm honest, I don't actually remember me dedicating much time to cooking.

It wasn't my role. But coming back to Ellie, she spoke about cooking post-children and how it really stripped away her confidence in the kitchen. Lots of factors seem to impact on her desire to cook at this point in her life. And this has ultimately eroded away her confidence. She has less time to shop, less time to be creative, and less time to think about interesting things to eat.

Her children also eat their main meal at school, which means she doesn't think they need a hot meal again in the evening. So this leads to more snack type meals. So instead of real cooking, easy stuff like eggs will do. She also spoke about her evenings in terms of food being split into two, food for the children and then later food for her and her husband.

and that that food for her and her husband has become something to just do and get done rather than spending time over and enjoying. So here, I'm guessing that the mundane routine of life where meal times are more like deadlines, i.e. people need and have to eat, has resulted in there being a sense of responsibility that meal prep now takes on for Ellie. It is something that has to be done, part of a routine, and there is less flexibility.

So that freedom I mentioned earlier, I suspect it has completely gone and is nowhere to be seen for Ellie. I'm wondering also how Ellie's journey will progress because I know my confidence took some more hits when the boys would decide, for example, to not eat something I had spent time making, or perhaps they would decide how they hated something that they had loved the previous week. It's really hard not to take their criticisms personally, but if you're like me, you do.

And when you do that, your confidence suffers again. It's why plain pasta with oil was a regular feature in our kitchen or the pizza from the co-op was bought a lot. I knew they would get eaten and I also knew it had no impact on my confidence. Maybe my pride, but not my confidence.

Okay. But where do we go from here? Yep. All these things are true. These situations, these pressures, this dwindling confidence is there, but we can shake it up and we can change the narrative. I think we have to choose to want to though, but let's think about where we can start. Maybe these ideas will help you. So I would say choose some recipes that have few ingredients. They tend to be less complicated.

Similarly, one-pot meals are great. They're often foolproof and less messy than multiple pot meals. Simple dishes like these are often also super tasty. Remember, less can be more. The more you try to do, the more complicated it can feel and the more something can go wrong. So think small wins over time will lead to small increases in confidence over time. Think about not worrying about what your food looks like. Focus on the flavours.

With time, you can work on presentation if you need to. And maybe consider having a couple of base ingredients to have in your fridge or in your cupboard to hand. One of mine is a homemade tandoori paste. I can either make a curry with it if I've got some time, or I can just simply marinate some chicken wings in the morning and then quickly air fry them in the evening. What could you do in a similar kind of way?

I've talked about it before and I'll probably always talk about it, but a bit of planning goes a really long way with helping you grow your confidence. Knowing what you're going to make and having components of it in will take away the overwhelm of meal times, particularly during the week when you tend to be busier and have more responsibilities. How about when you feel like you can,

You think about introducing or maybe experimenting with one new ingredient every week or maybe fortnight, whatever is manageable in your world. Instead of a completely new recipe, just alter an ingredient. Maybe it could be a new sauce to have with the air fried chicken I mentioned earlier. So these ideas might be good places to start to help change your mindset.

For me, it was the introduction of the Thermomix into my kitchen. It has completely changed the narrative in relation to my confidence in the kitchen. I can cook now. I know with certainty that what I cook will work because I follow simple instructions and the Thermomix will weigh things, it chops them, it then stirs them, and it even sets the temperature for what everything should be cooked at. It literally does everything for me.

I know nothing can go wrong. So like I said earlier, if the boys don't want to eat something I make, I know it's not because it doesn't taste good, it just doesn't suit their tastes. And there's a difference. So how about we set ourselves a challenge? I've put a link to a recipe in the show notes for chicken gyros. It follows really simple steps. There are not many ingredients and I promise it is a guaranteed tasty meal.

and you can easily adapt it for the stove top if you don't have a Thermomix. Let me know how you get on and I really hope it's a step to bringing a little bit of confidence back into your kitchen. If you have faced some of these challenges that we've talked about today and found a way to overcome them, please, please share it with us on the podcast. I can read your emails and notes out on coming episodes and help others grow in confidence too.

In the next episode, as we creep closer to Christmas, I thought it might be useful to chat about preparing Christmas in the kitchen. How do we deal with the overwhelm if it's our turn to host for the family? And maybe we can share a few gift ideas that are so simple to make, but will really impress. You know me, simple but effective every time. So until next time, don't feel that overwhelm in the kitchen because together we can flourish and not flounder when it comes to the food we eat.