Welcome to the Real Life. Real Kitchen Podcast with Zoë F. Willis, English mother-of-many, Mum Mentor, and your host at this weekly gathering of real talk, real food, and real family life.

If you’ve ever reheated your tea three times before drinking it, you’re in the right place.

Whether you’re folding laundry, wrangling dinner, or just carving out five minutes of calm then this one’s for you.

This is one of my short Mum Chats — a personal musing in this episode on "I'm So Bored of Cooking The Same Thing" — the kind of thing that’s often simmering in a mum's mental background while the chaos unfolds.

🧰 Links & Resources Mentioned

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https://realliferealkitchen.com/product/the-pantry-reset-mini-course/

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Takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the importance of maintaining a consistent meal rhythm for family stability.
• Mothers often experience cooking fatigue due to the demands of busy family life.
• Utilizing leftovers creatively can alleviate the monotony of meal preparation and enhance culinary variety.
• The 'From Fridge to Feast' checklist is a valuable tool for quick meal inspiration during hectic times.
• Accepting repetitive meals during busy seasons can contribute to overall family happiness and contentment.
• Engaging in batch cooking when feeling energized can facilitate more creative meal preparation later.

Foreign.

Welcome to the Real Life Real Kitchen podcast.

Real talk for curious mums reclaiming food, family and community.

I'm Zoe F. Willis, English, mother of many, mentor to mums.

And if you're reheating your tea again, this is your place.

So pop the kettle on.

As each week I chat with folks who feed, heal and hold our communities together.

You don't need perfection to pull up a chair, just curiosity and the courage to ask, what if there's another way?

This is one of my weekly Mum Chats, a short, honest musing or whatever's bubbling in the kitchen or on my mind.

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The tea's hot.

Let's talk.

Right.

Okay.

Hello, Mum Chat after a couple of weeks away.

So the main topic today is I am just so bored of cooking the same things over and over again.

And this feeds a lot, a couple of elements to this.

One of the reasons that we often cook the same things is because obviously life is very busy.

As a mother, we have children who some will eat something, some who won't.

And so we often just want to create dishes that are quick, that are easy, that we know that everybody will eat.

So that often can happen that we get and stuck into a little bit of a rut, which, depending on your season of life, I'm thinking kind of newborn babies or maybe when we are starting school in September, or maybe just life is really busy, there's a lot going on, I don't know, an illness in the family, this kind of thing that is actually a bit of a godsend, just knowing this is the thing that is there.

I can cook it, it's really simple.

I can make lots of it to shove in the freezer.

There are seasons of life where actually we have to go, do you know what?

I'm just going to lean in and embrace the fact that it's just the same old things again and again and again.

Because oddly, children do like it.

Quite boring, actually.

They really don't want things to be too exciting.

They don't want, you can see it in the food.

They often don't want anything too exotic.

Yes, you get the occasional child who will be very adventurous and happy to have different things, but children like to know, okay, sort of this time it's reading, or this time is playing, or this time is A quiet time.

They like to know that Tuesday is a particular event happens or a particular activity.

Saturdays is family time.

They actually, they like it quite boring.

They like to know that bath time, as stressful as it can be for mums, is at a particular time and bedtime happens similar time every evening.

And it's the same with the food.

So there is that kind of positive element to it, that actually having these rhythms.

There are seasons when, yeah, it is boring, but it means that the rest of the household can run happily.

The children are happy, you are happy, and the food is still feeding the people and everybody's relatively content.

So in those instances, you've got to park your boredom.

You gotta park your boredom.

So that is like the first element of I'm so bored of cooking the same things.

Second element, you can pull that phrase apart, is actually when you get back, it's after the busy day and you come back and you're starting cooking from scratch and you just go, I don't know, you know, you're overwhelmed, you're tired, you can't think straight, and you just go into a bit of a rut and a routine.

I think I hear a small child trying to come in.

Excuse me one moment.

Come on in.

No, no, you're either in or out.

What are you doing?

Okay, right, he's out, he's out.

So.

And that's often, I'm not sure it's necessarily boredom, but we go into a default because we are so tired.

And in some ways it.

We get quite frustrated with that.

We go, oh, here I am again.

Oh, it's the same thing.

Oh, it's chicken nuggets again.

Oh, it'.

It's whatever the basic is again.

Is it guilt?

I'm not sure.

I think it's more of just a frustration with ourselves and kind of demanding more.

More higher expectations.

Now, obviously, a lot of what I talk about in these mum chats and I have various products, like the seven day pantry challenge.

So the pantry challenge reset, which gives you kind of backup, a good pantry, so you've got some backup recipes to fall back on a good variety there.

But one of the other things, one of the other skills, which many people have lost and does take a little bit of practice and trial.

Try trial and tribulation.

No, that's not what I mean to say.

But testing is actually just playing around with leftovers.

And by that I don't necessarily mean you make a big, massive shepherd's pie.

And at shepherd's pie, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that can get Boring.

But again, there are seasons when that happens, there are seasons of life.

You're just like, it's.

It's shepherd's pie for four nights in a row, Bolognese for four nights in a row, because that's all you can cope with.

And that great seasons that this happens.

But the other way of doing things with leftovers is actually starting to get a little bit creative with them.

So a lot of people will look at something like leftover roast chicken, or maybe they've made too many sausages, or there's too many lamb chops from the cooking the other day, or you've got sort of tins of beans that you're looking at and going, well, I've got this, but I don't know what to do with it.

There's not quite enough to make a meal for a family, let's say.

And one of the freebies I've just created called From Fridge to Feast, which is essentially, you're putting together, it will have your, let's say, your protein chicken, but then it says, these are the herbs and spices that will go quite well with it.

Same with pork, same with things like seafood, white fish or salmon, which herbs and spices go quite well with it, and then what you can do with it.

So it's not specific recipes, but it's just enough when you are in those kind of tired moments.

Let's say Sunday lunch, you had.

You had some roast chicken left over and you're now Monday.

It's been a crazy day.

You haven't, you know, busy weekend, you've had your roast chicken, but you've got some chicken left over.

You haven't had a chance to cook or prepare.

4:00 clock arrives and what do you do?

You open the fridge and you go, ooh, I've only got a tiny bit of chicken left.

What do I do?

So, options.

You could give the children cold chicken just as is, with whatever you've got lying around in terms of potatoes, rice or something like that.

Or.

Or you can take that chicken, add a tin of tomatoes, you could add some paprika, maybe some cumin, some oregano, some peppers, throw in a tin of kidney beans and then all of a sudden have that with rice and with some sour cream or yogurt, and all of a sudden you've got kind of Mexican chickeny beans.

Or you could, if you can't be bothered to cook the rice, put it in a wrap, you know, or just have it on its own.

Sometimes we don't even need the.

The.

The beige don't even need the beige.

And then you've got a salad in the fridge.

Just throw a salad on the side.

Very, very easy.

So this particular matrix, I think it's called a technical thing where you have kind of chicken and then you know what you can herb you can have with it and then what you can do with it.

I think these things are called matrix but I'm calling it the from fridge to feast checklist.

So this can sometimes help inspire you so you can have that basic protein and sometimes not even a basic protein.

I mean, what was it that I made the other day?

I had some leftover beef stew and I added some kidney beans to it.

I had some sausages that were left over from another meal.

So again, on their own, not enough to put together, threw that together, put that, mixed it up with the le.

Obviously the beef stew had like a gravy with it.

Mix burning, the washing's multiplying and someone's crying.

It could even be you.

If your evenings feel like survival mode, the command, the chaos mum Life management planner is your first gentle step back to calm.

It's a printable 80 page guide and planner to help you reset your routines and breathe again without needing to become someone else entirely.

Start your reset today.

The links in the show notes up.

Got some small potatoes which I put on top.

Put it in the oven and then you've got a whole new meal.

And then you've got the flavors from the beef stew goes into the sausages and vice versa.

Got the potatoes, you could add a splash of wine to it or a splash of vinegar to make it a richer flavor.

You could add a tin of tomatoes again, mix that flavor up a bit.

There are various options that you can do.

So from a meal that's already kind of prepared, I'm thinking, you know, again, something like, well, a mince.

If you've got some meatballs or something like that that you can mix up again, you could have that in a wrap.

It doesn't have to necessarily be with a pasta.

It could be in a wrap with salad, you know, melt some cheese on top.

You just have an awful lot of options with things.

But a lot of this depends on your headspace.

Now having something like this, this from feast to fridge freebie, this checklist, it just means that have it on your fridge, print it off or you can have it on your phone.

But when you are reaching that point of I'm not, I don't even know if it's really boredom, to be honest, but you're Reaching that point of, oh, here I am again, that moment of frustration.

Just have a look at that and then get a few ideas.

It's just enough to kind of go, ah, yes, take you out of the rut and then you can start quickly putting something together again.

I'm going to mention the pantry reset challenge, because as part of that, there's also a pantry, kind of the ideal contents of your pantry, so that you always have the herbs and spices, you've always got the basics, that you can really quickly put something together and that can enhance your leftovers as well.

And you're just creating new meals every time.

But to summarize, there are seasons in life when you are just going to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, because it's easier for children, it's easier for your headspace and everybody just knows where they stand.

And then amongst the chaos of life, the food is a stable thing.

I remember years ago, story of sad story, happy ending of there was a lady I knew, she was maybe the oldest of five and the father left the mother for the best friend when this girl was maybe 12.

And so the mum was left and she'd not, she'd been a stay at home mom all of a sudden, had to get a job, had the five children to look after as well.

But essentially what she did was like, Monday is shepherd's pie, Tuesday, Bolognese, Wednesday, sausages, Thursday.

Whatever it was, it was just like every week, this is what happens.

And that was the case for the next four or five years, until the youngest one was at a point that they could be more helpful.

Now, on the plus side of that story, the father, five, six years later, regretted greatly his decision and returned to the mother.

And there was reconciliation.

And they have been together for now 25 years after that.

So that is positive.

But my point is, in this time of absolute a crisis, we, you know, so many of us couldn't imagine.

You just had these hooks, right?

Today is this food today, tomorrow is that tomorrow, the day after is that.

Just have a rhythm, okay?

And there are seasons of life.

Lean into that, accept it.

Brilliant.

Everyone is just much happier.

There are more important things.

The second thing is if you are reaching that 4 o', clock, 5 o' clock and just going, oh, here I am again, what am I going to cook?

I'm so bored of whatever you got a couple of things.

Either you've got to get more organized, have to get more organized and do the batch cooking and when you are feeling fresher, you can get a bit more creative or something like whipping up, looking at the leftovers you've got and getting creative in that.

This is what this From Fridge to Feast checklist should be helping with.

And we'll, yeah, just hopefully give you that inspiration to tip you over so that you are making more delicious food.

You're not wasting any.

It's still cooked from scratch and really, really simple and easy to put together.

The one tragedy is though, and I often have this, I made something the other day I can't even remember and the whole family were like, delicious.

What is it?

I said, I don't know.

I will probably never be able to make this again because I had found a couple of Tupperwares of mystery gravy in the fridge and I had made a sauce and it had gone in and I don't know what that particular magical combination of umami flavors and the depth and they've been sitting there in the fridge and the meat had been building up.

I don't know.

But it was delicious and I'll never be able to make it again.

So until next time.

So I really hope that that helps.

So any comments below and obviously with mumchat, please send in any questions you may have.

And obviously it is a joy and delight when people do manage to make it.

All right, thank you.

Until mumchat next week.

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