This topic is like when you get served a massively high-stacked sandwich, and you just stare at it trying to figure out how to tackle it even though you’re really hungry.

So let’s start with asking a question and see where that takes us.

How long do you think it should take to prepare a main meal? And, what is the maximum amount of time you’re willing to spend? Please take a moment to consider your answers, and keep them in your mind before continuing on.

Now this is absolutely, positively not a segway into “you’re doing it wrong, you’re outlook on food and time is completely whacked, and you should feel overwhelmed with GUILT GUILT GUILT at your answer!!!”

I’m tired of all this preachy bullshit about eating healthy/right/real by these sites and articles that not only send you packing on a massive self-depreciating guilt trip because you’re not already doing what they’re suggesting, but then tout how easy this or that change may be when in reality it doesn’t fit into your life pattern at all.

I used to be like that (Merry Christmas for those of your sniggering at my last paragraph right now), and you know what? It just turns people off.

So here, over several posts, I want to examine the why behind the answers to those first questions and encourage you to make your own decisions after that information is presented.

Even if that decision is to just stop feeling guilty about the time you do, or don’t, spend in the kitchen.

I realize those two initial questions seem identical but they’re not, I promise. One is our perception, which may have developed from many intersecting stimuli since childhood. The other is our reality; it’s the internal decision we’ve made based on that knowledge.

The first step to decoding this multi-faceted topic is sorting out all the signals we feel daily, in the here and now, before zooming out- did your perception match your reality?   Do you think it should take an hour to prepare a good meal, but in reality are you only willing to spend 30 minutes? These are just examples, you could insert any times here.

I ask because this is often a subconscious point of kitchen frustration for people.

Maybe you cook because you want to feel better, or because you love to, or because society says you should and you feel pressured, or because no one else will and the alternative is the golden arches. Whatever the reason, set any frustration that may stem from that aside for a minute.

When you’re in the kitchen, if you pay attention, you will start to consistently identify the point at which it becomes not worth it to you and frustration sets in (discounting the other factors mentioned above).

This is your time baseline. The time that you, personally, want to spend in the kitchen, not what you think you should be doing based on all other outside stimuli, including loved ones and family.

This is critical information you need in order to correctly apply all of the other information, ideas, and opinions being thrown at you.

If 45 minutes is your baseline, chose recipes that take less time than that or that can be split into several days (chopping veggies one day for soup the next, etc).

When you read/hear suggestions on all these websites and cooking shows, apply that to your baseline.

When your Great Aunt Flo says you should be doing x, y, and z, apply those “suggestions” to your baseline and take the pieces you’ll actually use.

This is step one in our exposé on time; identifying your here and now. And more importantly, relieving some of the kitchen frustrations that incongruities in time realities and perception can cause.

In a happy kitchen, time reality=time perception.

FYI!  A part of this is ditching the expectations recipes put on your time as well.  If the recipe says it’ll take 30 minutes, but you read through it and know there is something in there that is going to take you way longer, trust your gut- not the generalized time wag of some random recipe- and adjust accordingly.

You are in control of your time, not the recipe.