Overwhelm in the kitchen is a common experience.  I revisit the theme of kitchen overwhelm and how to manage it effectively. I feel it is important to recognise pressure points in meal prep so this episode offers practical solutions to ease the cooking process. By reframing success in the kitchen and utilising available tools, we can reduce stress and create a more enjoyable cooking experience.

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Chapters

00:00 Understanding Kitchen Overwhelm

03:48 Identifying Pressure Points

05:33 Easing Decision Fatigue

06:41 Navigating Meal Prep Pressure

08:59 Easing Mealtime Overwhelm

11:06 The Reset Routine: Closing the Kitchen

Let's talk overwhelm in the kitchen because it happens to the best of us. What if I said it isn't something that you can eliminate completely, rather it's something that maybe ebbs and flows. The real trick is learning to ease the overwhelmed pressure points so it never builds to the point where food feels like a burden.

Hey, it's Sam and thanks for joining me again on Not Pasta Again. Today, I actually want to revisit something that we've talked about before in one of our earlier episodes, and that's that feeling and experiencing of overwhelm in the kitchen. But first, a quick reminder that if you do like this podcast, please, please tell your friends, maybe share a link to one of your favourite episodes, or even maybe write me a review.

It all really helps to keep the podcast going. And I would be greatly appreciative if you could do that. Now, I know the overwhelm can get used a lot. And when I first spoke about it earlier in the series, I very much focused on the cause of overwhelm. Things like the mental load, the lack of time that we experience, that sort of decision fatigue of what shall I make, and the guilt that can build up around food generally.

I really felt though that it was worth revisiting this because what I've realised over time since that last episode is that an overwhelm never really disappears. It's kind of like background noise. Sometimes it's quiet and other times it can be deafening. But I think it's always nearly there in some form or another.

So rather than trying to get rid of it completely, I think it could be better to learn how to ease those pressure points that create that feeling of overwhelm. So what do I mean by that? I mean, we need to identify the moments in the week or the cooking process that make us feel that it is a harder process than it needs to be. Because if we can soften it and make that noise quieter, then food will probably start to feel a lot simpler, a lot lighter.

easier and I guess far less demanding of our time and headspace. Before we can do it though, we have to spot them, right? We need to be able to say, okay, it's this bit here. It's this point where it all starts to feel too much for me. So it's about noticing something, acknowledging it, and then trying to reframe how we see that point in time.

Because I would say that often it's not necessarily the cooking itself that's the issue. It's what we've told ourselves about those moments. And once we shift our thinking, it will suddenly feel a lot easier to handle.

Everybody's pressure points are going to be different. That's for sure. For you, it might be the moment when you get in from work, open the fridge door and go, ⁓ my God, I have no clue what to make. Or it could be the rush of getting dinner ready whilst you know you've got other things that you should be doing. The kids homework, afterschool club pickup, work emails that you didn't get through when you were actually at work. Or maybe you feel it when you sit down at the dinner table and there's one person.

maybe more whinging about what's on their plate. A feeling of overwhelm might also creep in when the kitchen looks like a bomb has gone off after dinner time. I'm hoping that not all of those little trigger points appear at once for you. And maybe by me naming them, it will actually help you identify where your stress tends to build. And you can perhaps look to take steps to ease that one first.

And once that noise quietens, then maybe everything else will start to flow a little bit better after that.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to work through each of those potential pressure pressure points or overwhelm triggers that I've referenced a little bit. And I'm going to start with the sort of what I'm going to call the decision point. That's the moment where you're going to decide what to make the moment when you open the fridge or the cupboard, when you get in from work and you kind of go, I've got no clue what to do. I'd say the easiest and simplest way to take that away or to ease that pressure point is to remove the decision altogether in that moment.

So you could call it by having a fixed plan of what you're going to cook, or you could simply write down a few recipes, maybe six or seven reliable dinners that you actually know work for you and your family. Things that everyone eats, things that you've got ingredients for, things that you don't need a lot of thought to be able to put on the table easily. Where you keep that list, I'd say needs to be visible. So it could be on the fridge, it might be on your phone, inside the cupboard that you open when you get in.

wherever it is, you just need to be able to see it and know that it's there for you. If you're somebody who likes apps, then I would say digital tools like Cookidoo, which is the Thermomix recipe application, or even something like a Pinterest board would also come in handy because you're able to build your own collections of recipes that you like and trust. So when that moment of brain fog kicks in or you're tired or you're rushed,

you're not actually starting from zero. You've got something that you can refer to. I'd also say that mealboxes are going to help you in this situation as well. If that is something of interest, if it's pre-planned, the ingredients have been sent to you when you walk in, when you're feeling tired, that overwhelm won't hit because everything is going to be almost prepped for you.

All right, so moving on, I'd say next is that preparation point, that time pressure that might come when you've got to chop stuff, when you've got to stir stuff, you're tied to the hob and you're multitasking and you don't really have that head space for doing all of those things at the same time. I would say here, and I've said this before in other episodes, that my best advice is you've got to use what you've got.

at your fingertips, the tools that you've got in your kitchen. That could just be a mini chopper that chops your onions really quickly instead of you having to do it with a knife. It could be a slow cooker. And you might even have put food in that at the beginning of the day so that when you walk in, your dinner's ready. And for me, it's the Thermomix. These things, these tools, they exist for a reason. It's going to help lighten the load. It's not about showing off when you're cooking your family dinner. It's not about necessarily having to do everything from scratch every night.

I'd say it's about protecting your energy in your kitchen. And if your pressure point is time, then automation really is going to help, right? Anything that stirs, anything that blends or anything that cooks for you whilst you're doing something else is a win.

I also know some people who I've met through my Thermomix journey who actually choose to buy already chopped onions that are frozen or frozen garlic and other vegetables that have been pre-chopped as well. And for them, it just helps ease their head space and that feeling of time pressure when they get in at the end of a busy day. And I'm all about if something works, then why wouldn't you do it?

I think another aside to that is that when you've got something like frozen chopped veggies, you're not going to waste as much either, because you're just going to use what you've got and you're not going to necessarily waste some of that fresh produce that you might buy as an alternative. Okay. So moving through to what I would consider to be another overwhelm or pressure point. And that's sort of the meal time in itself. That's when the food's on the table, you've spent some time getting it ready.

And it just doesn't feel like you can win. know, someone doesn't like it. Someone's poking at the peas and you're just sitting there going, why on earth do I bother? I think this is one of those moments where to ease that pressure, we've actually got to let go of the idea that every meal has to one be perfect, but also that every meal needs to please everyone equally because quite frankly, it doesn't. Sometimes the simplest tweak

will make all of the difference. So if you can think about serving one base meal and let people customise it. And if you've got a particularly fussy eater, just have a small set of ingredients that you know they will eat that they can add to any base meal. So that means you're not gonna have to cook entirely separate meals. Remember, it's not about perfection. It's about sanity and protecting your energy.

I think the final sort of pressure point I can think of is what I'm going to call the reset point. And that's when you've done the cooking, you've got in, you've served it, that's gone, however it's gone. And then you look around the kitchen and the dining room and it just looks like a bomb has hit it. It's just chaos everywhere. And ideally in your own head, you just want to walk away like everyone else maybe does as well.

And I think this is where we just need to work really hard at just reframing that it doesn't have to be a completely clinically clean kitchen at the end of every meal time. Maybe

give yourself a five or 10 minute reset routine. You know, just clear the counter, load the dishwasher or even get everyone else to load their dishes into the dishwasher.

You could even soften that process by lighting a candle, playing some music, pouring a glass of wine, making yourself a cup of tea, and then you can sit down. So remember, it's not about having a spotless kitchen. This is just about closing the kitchen for the day. And I have to say, if you've got a Thermomix, this is definitely where the self-clean function earns its keep. It's one less thing that you have to think about before you switch off for the evening. It just cleans itself.

So we've got several time points that we can define as creating a feeling of overwhelm, creating a sense of pressure. But I honestly think that at the heart of it, in order to be able to ease any of those pressure points, it comes down to us being able to reframe what success actually is in our kitchen. It doesn't mean a perfectly balanced meal every night or everyone sitting around a table in harmony.

It means everyone is actually fed. You've used the ingredients that you've got. You've avoided feeling a sense of panic. That to me is what success is in a family kitchen. It's the quiet, steady winds that make family life more manageable and less overwhelming. And when you start seeing those as enough, you'll notice that overwhelm loses a little bit of its power. It might still whisper in your background sometimes, but it doesn't dominate the whole evening anymore.

So that's today's reflection, not about a raising overwhelmed totally, but about recognizing it, understanding where it sits for you and softening the noise around it. For me, I think it was the preparation pressure point that used to flare up most of all for me. And I would say also the meal time because I do have a fussy eater. My Thermomix has helped me hugely in both of those areas, but it's not the only answer.

the real progress comes when you notice what actually helps you and implement change. So maybe that's a written plan of what you might cook on any given day. Maybe it's a favourite shortcut, like a Pinterest board or getting a recipe box delivered, or maybe it's just allowing yourself a simple dinner that doesn't require too much thought. And again, you can also think of, you know, I'm going to cook something that just uses one pot, not lots of pots that I then need to wash up.

I would love to know your biggest pressure points at the moment. What part of the cooking process feels most stressful for you and what have you done to help take the noise away and take the edge off of that feeling? You can email me at notpastaagain@hotmail.com or you can join the conversation over in my Facebook group. It really is a great space for sharing ideas and life solutions. It's not just about recipes.

So thank you for listening and remember, we don't have to eliminate the overwhelm totally. We just have to ease the pressure points one at a time. Until next time, take care and keep finding ways to flourish rather than flounder when it comes to food.