My Relationship with Cooking + Meal Prepping

On the 1st of January 2025, I decided that I would start cooking all my meals on my own. For context, until late December, I had a cook who prepared three meals a day, and for the rest of my meals, I mostly ate self-made or store-bought snacks. (Yes, I have a very high metabolism that makes me hungry often, which means I usually eat around five meals a day.) Inspired by friends who spoke at length about how cooking was therapeutic and fun, I realized that my relationship with cooking had always been more like a chore I needed to do. I never enjoyed it and always thought of it as time-consuming and a drain on my energy. In 2025, I decided to change that.

I realized that if I wanted to stick to cooking my meals, I needed to rethink my attitude towards cooking. Going in with a negative mindset while doing it 3-4 times a day would have taken a toll on my mental and physical health. I wasn’t entirely sure if this was the best time to take on such an experiment, considering work had been particularly intensive and I was training for my first marathon (which I just finished last weekend). But I also knew this was the month my flatmate wouldn’t be home, so not having a cook made a lot of financial sense. If things didn’t go as planned, we could always hire a cook again next month when she returned.

As I near the end of, almost a month of cooking for myself, I think I can say this experiment has been overwhelmingly successful. Sure, I’m not the best cook in the world, but I’ve made cooking seem beautiful and easy for myself. One thing I realized today is that cooking now feels like a new love language I’ve unlocked. Regular catch-ups with friends also feel like wonderful opportunities to feed them, and just doing that brings me so much joy. A good friend is coming over to stay with me for the next couple of days, and my first thought was, “Oh! I get to cook for her!”

I think I’ve also embraced this new relationship with cooking because I’ve lowkey mastered the art of meal prepping. Of course, I don’t make full meals and store them like YouTubers suggest, but I’ve found a few tricks that have worked wonders for me.

My Meal Prep Hacks:

I usually cook core items in bulk and refrigerate them to use for various dishes. These include:

• Cooked rice
• Boiled pasta
• Cooked dal
• Cooked pulses (e.g., rajma, chole, chana)

Based on what I’m craving, I can transform these into quick 5-minute recipes. For example:

• Rice can become fried rice, dal rice, puliyogare, lemon rice, or simply be paired with a curry.
• Pasta can be combined with any pasta sauce I make. This can be an easy Arrabbiata with tomato puree, or some Protein pasta made with a paneer base.
• Dal can be turned into a simple dal tadka, dal makhani, or even used in sambar.
• Boiled Rajma and chole can be cooked into a rajma gravy for a Mexican rice bowl or a simple rajma chawal in minutes, or even used in a Salad.

Having a few core cooked items in the fridge makes whipping up a meal a matter of minutes.

I also have a masala vegetable box. This means that whenever I have time, I thinly slice vegetables and toss them into this box, which always has a bit of chilli powder, turmeric powder, and salt mixed in. When I’m cooking, I grab a handful and throw it into the air fryer. By the time I’m done cooking, I have crispy vegetable chips ready to pair with my meal. My current favorites for this are potatoes, cauliflower, and brinjal. Special shoutout to my dad, who got me the best gift ever: an air fryer 😭🥰—10/10 recommend an air fryer.

To avoid ordering food between meals, I’ve stocked up on a few ready-to-eat items:

• Salted makhana
• Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds (air-fried, of course)
• Ready-to-heat chapatis for days when I feel like eating rotis (though I’m still exploring better alternatives as most of these seem to contain a lot of preservatives).
• Boondi-onion Raita, which I prepare in batches to pair with meals for a daily dose of probiotics.
• I’ve also been brewing kombucha at home (yes, still a kombucha person!) for additional probiotics.
• I keep protein powders and protein shakes on hand for between meals, which help me meet my daily protein intake. My main protein sources are:
  • Paneer (every 2-3 days)
  • Eggs (on alternate days)

Overall, I'm just hear to report time isn't the biggest blocker that's preventing you from cooking - it's prolly just a mindset shift :)