From Stress to Rest: How These Tips Actually Make Cooking Relaxing

Self care is one of my main priorities in life. Now, by self care I don’t mean a face mask and a haircut, although those small luxuries are always welcome. In my life, I define self care as calming my mind, staying on top of the small things that help me feel better throughout the week, and reconnecting with myself through cooking. My health and the health of my children matters so much to me, and nourishing my body with quality food is an essential part of my life.

Of course, cooking can be a stressful activity, especially for someone on a busy schedule, but it doesn't have to be. With a few easy tricks to streamline cooking and make it more enjoyable, cooking for myself and my family is an activity that I look forward to every day!

Check out my tips for how to make cooking fun, stress relieving, and easier below!

Tips for Making Cooking More Enjoyable

1. Find Healthier Ways to Prepare Your Foods!

I’m all for a healthier alternative wherever I can get it, and this doesn’t stop at home! The key to keeping my at-home meals nutritious and tasty for my family is to find great stand-in ingredients and methods that don’t sacrifice taste or nutritional value. For example, instead of frying eggplant to make eggplant parm, I bake it instead! This way I keep one of my favorite dishes on rotation at home without feeling guilty.

Speaking of my at-home dish rotation, mac and cheese is an essential we simply couldn’t sacrifice. I always felt a bit of hesitation when it came to making traditional mac and cheese because of its large amount of fats and carbs, until I found my saving grace. Enter Camp Classic Cheddar! Camp’s Classic Cheddar has way more nutritional value than my old favorite boxed mac and cheese. Not only is this mac completely gluten-free and non-GMO, it’s made from organic brown rice, zucchini, carrots, corn and pea protein—12g per serving!

My favorite part? Loading my Camp Classic Cheddar with different veggies and ingredients gives me unlimited ways to make this tried and true classic healthy for myself and my kids.

2. Have a List of Go-To Recipes

Having to whip-up a brand new, healthy recipe for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day is a daunting task no one in their right mind will take up, especially when there are little ones involved. Luckily, there’s an easy fix for keeping meals organized and planned in advance! Keeping a list of mine and my kids’ favorite meals helps keep things dependable and easily accessible when it comes time to meal prep.

A list of healthy go-to’s can help you stay nourished and satisfied all week and make it easy to save you time and money, especially when the recipes use pantry staples or long-lasting ingredients that you likely have on hand—like Camp’s mac n’ cheese products!

Personally, I think it is usually good practice to have about three to five go-to breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks where I know the ingredients, outcome, and approximate budget so I have time and capacity to work on new, exciting recipes! My core recipes are meals and snacks that get rotated in each month at some point and allow me to change up one ingredient or more every so often. This keeps my go-to recipes from becoming mundane and predictable.

3. Save Recipes in One Spot

With three young kids, it's easy to misplace things. To avoid losing important things like my family’s favorite meals, I’ve found a loophole in the age-old search for lost recipes- screen recording! Like anyone else in this day and age, I can spend hours online combing through recipes on YouTube, TikTok, and blogs to find exciting dinner options.

Instead of writing the instructions down in a place where they can easily be misplaced, screen recording allows me to keep them in my photos app in an album labeled “Dinner Recipes”. This way I can keep my favorite, new recipes at my fingertips at a moment’s notice. There’s also no room for error when following directions straight from the source!

My advice for keeping your recipes organized? Save new recipes you find in one spot you know you can count on having handy. Be it in your notes app, a folder filled with magazine cutouts, or a physical notebook for new recipes. You’ll thank yourself when you need to reference something in a moment’s notice.

4. Invest in Low Prep-Work Foods

Feeling discouraged when cooking isn’t as fun for you at the beginning of the process? No need to worry! If you hate washing, drying, chopping, and slicing, you might actually just hate prep work, not cooking itself. Being keen on prep work isn’t for everyone, and there are plenty of alternatives to slaving away before getting to the fun part.

Start by spending a little more money on vegetables that are already chopped! They’re so easy to work with and you will feel so much more motivated to use them while cooking. In the end, you’ll be saving money because the veggies you’d have to prepare would go to waste.

By taking out your least favorite part of preparing a meal, you’ll be able to enjoy cooking so much more. This method goes beyond just veggies. For example, if you love to make pasta dishes but hate the prep work that goes into a sauce, you can buy a pre-made sauce and then jazz up your meal with other items (homemade garlic bread, anyone?). I love to put this method to use with my Camp Classic Cheddar Mac’ N’ Cheese by using the cheese sauce that comes with the pasta and adding my favorite veggies, meats, and spices.

5. Stock Up on Shelf-Stable Essentials

The best advice I can give anyone on making cooking relaxing and less stressful? Work with what you already have! Before working with what you already have in your pantry, make it a point to stock up on essentials.

Camp products are always on hand in my pantry, you’d think there was a zombie apocalypse on the horizon. Having my favorite brand of mac n’ cheese and other favorites of mine stocked at home means I’ll never have to panic when I run out and can relax when I’m making it for myself and my family. There’s nothing more satisfying than cooking without a missing ingredient you have to step out for—it's the best! By keeping all of your essentials at home, you could be cooking stress-free at all times!

Cooking as a Craft

Sticking to these tips has turned cooking from a stressful chore I had to do to take care of myself and my kids to an activity that helps nourish us all– both physically and mentally.

Cooking should be a fun creative outlet, and framing it in this light will help you take your craft to the next level! Although, when cooking with organic, easy to use products like Camp’s Mac N’ Cheese, there’s no way you wouldn’t.