Are You A Voluntold Cook Too?

Recently updated on May 23rd, 2023 at 11:44 am

It’s the end of 2021, I’ve decided to stop working 48 hours a week, holidays, weekends, whatever the boss needed and become the parent who gets the kids off the bus. It was time to put my family first!

What I didn’t realize when taking on this role was now I’d be the parent to cook dinner every night. These “dinners” needed to be healthy, well balanced, and hardest part the kids needed to eat them. How in the world am I going to do this? I don’t really cook much. Yes, I’d pour sauce in noodles and call it spaghetti or make tacos but it was barely a step above hamburger helper. I can’t serve that 5 or more nights a week! I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to eat leftovers or the same thing over and over again. I need variety! This hate for cooking wasn’t going to work! I had to try something new not only for me but for my family!

Hate is an awful thing! Most of the time we don’t even realize we are hating on something till our faces turn red. I don’t even know where my hate for cooking came from or how it started. I was just trying to be the hands on parent. If I had to guess, the hate manifested because I was unorganized, didn’t plan, and just threw meals together. This job was forced on me. I was voluntold! There was no warning, no training, no help! I just had to figure out how to do it.

Here I was being given a task that I didn’t necessarily volunteer for and I can attest that no one likes to be given a task and feel like there is no reward. That’s how cooking felt to me. Are you a voluntold cook too?

How was I going to stop hating to cook?

It was time to put on my big girl panties and figure out where to start because I needed to stop hating to cook. I have to do it for not only me but also my family. Just like most I looked for new recipes on Pinterest, googled a couple recipe ideas and ended up buying a ton of seasonings, sauces, and things I don’t use. Ugh! Good news though because I had so many spices I purchased this acrylic spice drawer organizer! I love to organize, keep things clean and simple. Most people place all their spices in a cabinet but the drawer is easier to see all the bottles verses the layers upon layers in the cabinet. My clumsy self would always end up knocking one out of the cabinet and it of course would open sending seasoning flying. Just another reason I would hate to cook, but after I purchased this seasoning drawer organizer my hate turned into love.

Now that I had all these seasonings I figured I should try to use them. I kept saving recipes that I would find then days later I would go back to make it… BUT then I couldn’t find the recipe pages! “Was it Pinterest? No. Cookbook from Marshall’s? No. Facebook? No. Forget it! I don’t have time for this! I don’t care that I bought all the ingredients. I have to make dinner.” Obviously, I could feel the hate for cooking growing again. I didn’t even want to think about cooking dinner for my family. This part of adulting sucks!

After not being able to find the recipe I wanted to make 10 times combined with needing to find a hobby I decided to buy a sketchbook. I wish I could say it was for drawing but I am not talented in that way. I wanted to try calligraphy. I wanted to create something special for me and for my sanity. There was no better place to start than my favorite recipe. Check out my next post and you’ll see how calligraphy evolved into a discbound customizable recipe book!

I love this paper! I wish I could use it for everything!

Finally, I realized there was still one thing that I wasn’t getting right. I wasn’t planning! When it turned 5 o’clock I would go into the kitchen and try to figure out what to cook. Do you do this? Well if you are no wonder you hate cooking. You have to have a plan! No, don’t worry you can make a plan once a week in 5 minutes. Yes, it will be that easy!

Tip 1: Create your very own favorite recipe book!

We will do this together in a later post, but for now see Tip #2!

Tip 2: Subscribe to Butcher Box!

Butcher Box is a box of high-quality meat which comes monthly right to your door. You might be saying “So what?” but let me tell you Butcher Box is definitely the first step in “recovery.” Here are a few things I like about Butcher Box.

• The company states “It is high quality meat” and it definitely is. As long, as I have been with Butcher Box I never get meat that I felt like I needed to cut anything off and throw it away. The local grocery stores always seemed like they were pumped with hormones, water, and had extra stuff hanging that needed to be cut off because it was just gross. It was waste of money!
• Butcher Box products include not only beef, chicken, pork, and seafood, but they also have some fully cooked options too for quicker dinners. Depending on the box you choose you will have 9-14lbs of meat or 18-26lbs of meat. If you want to add on more you can. Keep your eye out for FREE meat for LIFE deals! We have 2 for life deals on our account.
• It is a monthly subscription which I was a little worried about at first, but if I needed to push the delivery window a couple days I would just log in online and change the date. Easy! Once, I took a long vacation and I needed to call customer service which again was EASY!
• Email reminders (I need these to keep myself straight sometimes) are sent to remind you that Butcher Box will be packing your order soon so they give you a chance to edit your meat selections coming for the month.
• Shipping & Delivery: The meat is packed well with dry ice in a recycled box and the delivery date is communicated so not to worry you will know when it is a your door step.

THANK YOU Butcher Box for creating your business!

Now, you might be thinking “how did you start using Butcher Box?” Honestly, Butcher Box fell right into my lap because my husband did not particularly like the meat at our grocery store. I, on the other hand, did not like picking out the meat. He kept seeing commercials and asked me if we should try it and I signed us up the same day!

To sum it all up, why wouldn’t you want to have meat come right to the door, throw it in the freezer, and make your meal planning that much easier. Check out my weekly meal planning post for the full secret!

Finally, the feeling of being voluntold to cook is being diminished!