Kaido
Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
- Feb 14, 2004
- 52,018
- 7,435
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It's the only way I can function with my ADHD
1. I'm 100% forgetful
2. I get incredibly frustrated with small annoyances...like having to change a battery in the middle of the night...getting woken up, being cranky, then having to find a stool, then having to find a battery, etc. My tolerance for self-inflicted stupid situations is like zilch most days lol.
My solution is:
1. Use reliable reminders (mainly calendar reminders & named alarms)
2. Create resource pools for doing tasks (bags of batteries, stepstools, etc.)
It's sort of like building a virtual machine & then using RDP or VNC to remote desktop into it...you have to build the machine & then create an interface for it. Like with cooking, I was always very reactive my whole life. Didn't plan ahead, was always rummaging in the cupboards for food, spending too much on fast food & delivery, always hitting bingo mode with low energy because I waited too long to eat lol. My current automated meal-prep setup is just 3 steps:
1. Once a week, plan 7 meals to make & make a shopping list of what I'm missing
2. Once a week, go shopping based on the list I made
3. Once a day, after work, cook one meal after work (using automated equipment like the Instant Pot or APO whenever possible to make the job easier & get repeatable success)
Math-wise, we're on the hook for more effort than we think we are: if you eat 3 meals a day, that's 21 meals a week you're on the hook for, or 80+ meals a month, or 1,000+ meals per year. These days, I mostly cook a batch a day, divvy it up to freeze, then reheat it (usually in either the APO, microwave, or Hot Logic Mini heated lunchbox). I got a deep freezer back in 2016, so I can store a massive amount of ready-to-go food options:
Freezer storage discussion thread
I have a thread over in H&F on meal prep. This got me going on the idea of freezer storage, OAMC (once-a-month-cooking), and other frozen ingredient & meal ideas: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/fyi-hefty-makes-tv-dinner-trays-convenient-bodybuilding-meal-containers.2336038/ I recently...
forums.anandtech.com
The math for justifying meal-prepping over time is pretty good: each batch typically makes 6 servings (at minimum), so 6 servings times 30 days = 180 servings in my deep freezer every month. As far as implementation goes, when I get home, I do my cooking chore for the day: already picked out when to do it (as part of my after-work chores), already picked out what to cook, already purchased the ingredients, and since I'm a very mood-based eater, if I don't feel like eating whatever it is I'm making that day, I've got a zillion options in the deep freezer to heat up!
This approach removes all of the resistive psychological pressure my ADHD inflicts upon me from chronically low dopamine because I don't have to make decisions about what to do, rummage to find stuff, end up hangry in a low-energy state, or even eat what I'm cooking today. I can just show up, do my job, and then live off the frozen options I've created! Plus I can utilize "master systems" to create a variety of options, such as different breakfast bagel sandwiches:
Breakfast bagel sandwich system
With the APO's steam-reheating function, I can keep stuff like bread for toasting, English muffins, bagels, danishes, etc. for up to a year in the freezer & reheat them AND toast them at the same time in under 10 minutes directly from frozen:
Reheating bready items from frozen in the APO
I also make a lot of frozen "food bricks" using my Souper Cube molds. The APO also reheats those really well, so I can reheat a pasta cube (or two) & also reheat half a baguette and have a really great meal with virtually zero effort:
Reheating pasta blocks in the APO
I also do this with desserts. I can make a batch of brownies, cut them into squares, then freeze them to retherm later. Warm brownies are amazing:
Reheating brownies in the APO
I'll also separate out making doughs & batters vs. actually cooking them. So I'll make like one batch of cookies a day for a week (PB, chocolate-chip, oatmeal-raisin, etc.), or make pucks to fit in my mini cast-iron skillets:
Baking skillet cookies in the APO
My actual hands-on time for meal-prep each day is typically about 10 minutes, thanks to the automation features of modern appliances, and because I split up the effort of planning & shopping separately, typically all I have to do is show up & push some buttons! Then I just don't have to worry about food ever again lol. My ADHD brain just gets kind of all jumbled up when I try to do everything in the heat of the moment, especially when I'm tired AND hungry, which is EXTREMELY frustrating, so then I go into task paralysis mode & end up spending waaaaaay too much money on food delivery otherwise, haha!
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