I'm ADHD and Here's How I Took Care of My Cooking Dilemma

I'm ADHD. My husband is suspected ASD and my son is twice-exceptional. I basically run everything around our home. Sometimes I feel like Atlas, carrying the whole world on my shoulders but after years and years of experience, lessons, and mistakes, I feel like I'm getting the hang of it...or maybe I got stronger muscles from all that carrying. 😆

If you're ADHD, you'd know that it's hard for us to get things done and get things organized. It's funny when one of my mom friends tells me that she admires how organized I am. I try to suppress a chuckle whenever I hear her say that. I'm not very organized in all areas of my life (as evidenced by the warehouse that is my house), but in some areas, I do try to be. One of those areas is preparing meals. 

I've started teaching online again in my homeschool community. The one thing I was very concerned about was cooking. Cooking takes up so much of my time and energy. Well, I know what you're going to say. Just try doing freezer meals or have you tried using a crockpot or meal prep once a week. You see, I've tried all of those things but I'm a foodie. I cannot eat the same thing every day and I always change my mind a few hours before meal times. For example, I might meal plan for the whole week. Monday: Lunch - Bulgogi and mung bean sprouts. Dinner - Roasted chicken and herbed rice. 8 out of 10 times, I will change my mind about what I want to eat for lunch on Monday. So, what happens is the thawed-out beef doesn't get used and we order food because defrosting another protein would take a lot of time and we were hungry. I also find that seeing what I "should" eat for the day or the week stifling and makes meal times less exciting.  Wait a minute, I just realized right now while I'm writing this that it's the ADHD talking, right? And not 100% the foodie in me. That's why I keep changing my mind about what to eat! 😂

Anyway, I was trying to put some sanity into my week by making a cooking plan last Sunday afternoon and suddenly realized that we needed to go do the groceries on that day because my period is coming at the end of the week and I don't go out during red days and I was planning to go the next weekend. I also told my son that we were going to do a No Food Delivery Challenge for the whole month of November but how can we do that if we didn't have food in the fridge?

So, I wrote down a list of meals that I may want to eat during the next few weeks plus ingredients then off we went to Landers. Of course, I bought a lot of things that were not on the list and forgot to get things that were on the list. 

We also went to Landmark BGC to pick up those things that I forgot to get at Landers and things that were not available there. When we got home, I cooked a quick dinner then got to work. 

I must say that on Friday night, I had the hankering to arrange the fridge. 

Fast forward to Sunday night after dinner, I prepared some freezer meals that I will just dump in my slow cooker should the need arise. This way, I can cover days when I'm too tired or too lazy to cook and still adhere to our challenge. 

I was so tired that day that I was only able to make around 7 or 8 freezer meals. After that, I just portioned out the ingredients into little baggies because I was tired of eating leftovers. My hubby has a habit of leaving a piece of protein or a few spoons of viand. I hate throwing away perfectly good food so I end up eating the leftovers the following day. I wanted this to stop so I counted protein. Yes, I do that now. For chicken fingers, for example, I allot 5 pieces to each person so I put 15 pieces in a small ziplock bag and freeze that. When it's time to cook, I defrost that bag and not the whole tray. At the end of the meal, nothing gets left. 

Here, I just froze some bread and cake 

Here's what I prepared for breakfast last Monday. I cooked 5 packs of sweet ham on Sunday night so that preparing breakfasts, pizzas, sandwiches, etc. would be a breeze. 

Ciabatta with ham, eggs, mayo, pizza cheese then pressed

I did not take pretty photos because the whole point of this blog post is to save time and energy. I want to show how things are in my life so no pretty photos, no staging, no props. I'm exhausted as it is with what I do daily. I'm writing this post so that other moms like me can get some ideas and catch a break. 

In short, to save time, I did the following:

1. Cleaned out my fridge and arranged stuff

2. Made a list of meals I'd like to eat but was open to the idea that things will change during the week

3. Made a list of ingredients

4. Bulk-buy ingredients (saves time, money, energy)

5. Made some freezer meals

6. Prepped and portioned out ingredients so that cooking time will be a breeze

I cooked from Monday to Wednesday and today we had 2 slow cooker meals. I'm not as exhausted as usual and I've had time to write lesson plans and work on my projects this week. I also feel like a heavy burden has been lifted off my shoulders because I don't have to worry about meals anymore for a few weeks and I don't have to order food and worry about our health. 

I hope you got some ideas from this post to take back your sanity during the week. Next time, I'll try to take a video of our grocery shopping trip so that you'll see how much I need to make this plan happen.