Strategies for One Spoon Cooking

  • Do a “rolling” food prep: prepare extras of one or two ingredients each time you cook for use in future meals. If you’re chopping a stalk of celery for tonight’s soup, cut a couple more into sticks for snacks tomorrow. If you’re making rice, double the quantity and put the extra in the freezer. Always ask, “What can I easily do today that will save me a big task tomorrow?” For me, small amounts of work every day are easier to manage than a big effort all at once. And if I do rolling food-prep, then on nights when I’m not well enough to cook, the freezer and pantry will be stocked with pre-prepared ingredients that can easily be assembled into a meal.
  • The three finite resources in our personal “economies” are time, money, and energy. Use the resource(s) you have most of to help compensate for the one(s) you lack. Money can “buy” you precious energy via pre-cut vegetables, grocery delivery services, or well-designed tools and appliances. Time—in the form of slower, hands-off cooking methods like roasting or braising—can help just as much. Polenta on the stovetop cooks in 15 minutes, but it needs almost constant attention. Polenta in the oven only needs stirred once in 50 minutes; in the slow cooker it can be safely ignored for hours while you rest. As a further energy-saving bonus, foods cooked slowly often have richer flavors than their quick-cooked counterparts—think caramelized vs. sautéed onions.
  • Go off-recipe as much as your cooking skills allow, especially where timing is concerned. I used to hunt for cookbooks with 30- (or 20- or 15-) minute meals, thinking they would be the most manageable with limited energy, but eventually realized that they were exactly the opposite. Most time-saving recipes get that way by using quick-cooking methods that demand you move non-stop. (I.e., energy compensates for a lack of time.) Going off-recipe lets you pace to your body’s needs, not the recipe’s. Use recipes for inspiration and to get a general sense of ingredients and proportions and then ad lib.
  • Learn some good, synergistic flavor combinations that bring out the best in each other no matter how they’re prepared. Chickpeas, tomatoes, lemon juice, and Parmesan cheese work happily together whether in a winter stew or a summer salad. Spinach, mushrooms, onions, eggs, and nutmeg can become quiche, frittata, salad, a savory bread pudding, or a topping for polenta. You can choose the preparation based on your energy level and be (reasonably) assured the meal will be enjoyable. I find I throw out a lot less produce this way, too—it is less likely to go bad before I have energy to get to it, because I can match the ingredients to my energy.
  • Rely on flavor boosters: sauces, dressings, herbed oils, pickles, spice mixes, etc. A balsamic reduction, e.g., is almost effortless to make; it keeps forever; and a 1/2 teaspoon drizzle can dress up otherwise plain fare: steamed vegetables, a poached chicken breast, cooked grains. Other strongly flavored, ready-to-go ingredients that perk up dishes are sun-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives, feta cheese, arugula, dried fruits, and toasted nuts or seeds.
  • Give foundational ingredients like rice, beans, and meat a good, neutral flavor to start with, especially if you’re making extras to be frozen. E.g., cook rice in broth instead of water, or if you don’t have broth, add a bay leaf, a tea-ball full of peppercorns, and some onion peel to plain water. For very little effort, this gives you a well-flavored starting point for future dishes. And, if you have a no-spoon day and can only manage to microwave some frozen rice and a can of soup, the rice will still taste like a real part of your meal, not just utilitarian filler.
  • Play to your energy strengths when you have them. By dinner time, I have no decision-making skills left, so I plan menus in the morning when I think clearly. For some reason I find the food processor daunting when I’m tired, so I also do food-processing tasks earlier in the day. But rhythmic, repetitive tasks like chopping and slicing vegetables relax me, so I enjoy doing them at dinner time.
  • Do small, fussy tasks in advance—toasting nuts, washing fresh herbs, making a vinaigrette. Cooking is a mental juggling act, and keeping all the tasks in mind at once can be unnecessarily tiring. Getting some of the smaller steps out of the way ahead of time keeps mental noise at bay.
  • Maintain good infrastructure: sharp knives, accessible utensils, a curated set of spices and tools, and a tidy fridge, freezer, and pantry. I never used to be big on organization, but now I regard it as a defensive strategy against exhaustion. This sounds like a super-basic, obvious tip, but it really is important.
  • Plan extra time so that you can rest as necessary. I plan about an hour and a half start to finish for a meal with 30 minutes of active effort. More accurately, I plan to read a book for an hour and a half, interrupted here and there by bouts of cooking. Not everyone has the luxury of this kind of time, but to the extent possible, blend rest and cooking. This is where hands-off cooking methods shine.