I find cooking and sharing food together, as a family or in friend groups, one of the most energising things out there. I love the conversations we have at the table. To be fair, my kids are teenagers now, so it's a whole other thing to babies and toddlers, though we have always made it a huge part of our routines to ensure that we eat our evening meal together as a family - to the point of eating ridiculously early when they were little!
My illustration work is predominantly lifestyle illustration and food plays a big part of that, so cooking and eating and thinking about food is part of the inspiration.
I would, though, try to get rid of the problems of worrying about food. Meal planning, even at a fairly basic level (e.g. we'll fit these meals in during this upcoming week so we need to order these ingredients, rather than down to which day each meal will be on), is really helpful for this and I do also have a spreadsheet with the different meals each of the kids like and how we can adapt or substitute things so we can all eat together. (One meat eater, three vegetarians and the two teens like almost entirely different things to each other!)
Eating together is one of the few times we can guarantee getting to chat to them these days, though thankfully they do talk a bit at other times.
It's interesting reading about people trying to fit more and more work into their days, when I'm on the opposite side of that and am trying to fit less and less work and more and more self-care and outside interests. Mind you, I do count quite a bit of drawing and colouring as self-care and fun time, which probably helps! But, ideally I would spend no more than five hours a day working, with two full days off a week. (I wouldn't include sketchbook playtime as work, though, and not sure if I would include classes and other improving and learning tasks. I think they fall into inspiration and personal growth, that just happens to also feed into illustration work.)
Being an Indian, I find food is very much important part of our lives. I cook for family of 4, daily 3 meals and snacksā¦including one 8months old baby who sometimes eat 6 meals š
ā¦recently I have been planing my meals for 15 days for hassle free living and definitely trying to keep up with it. This helps reduce on waste, limit time in cooking & limit time in groceriesā¦which can be my productive time! And no fuss during any meal times as we all know what is coming up tomorrow or day after.
Iām more of a visual person so I like to choose it with colours, meaning I try to include 7 colours of food in 7 daysā¦1 color each day! + include one green each day for sure, could be little like any herb! Weāre mainly vegetarians but ok with eggs as including it for easy breakfast sometimes, helps us + on our protein intake.
I strongly believe, not to buy any readymade sauces, canned foods, ready to eats or frozen foods at all as they all have some or other type of preservatives which is going to impact your gut bacteria + eating all seasonal foods is very much important as it carries all nutrients from Mother Earth! So yeah, my freezer is almost empty with only few frozen greens for exceptional use only and Yes, itās hard to cook from scratch every day, but worth for long life.
The simple rule I follow is asking this question whenever doing groceriesā¦Did my grandmother or grandfather ate this? Yes! then buy and eat, No!! then donāt buyā¦ this idea i learnt from a very famous indian food nutrition person named Rujuta Divekarā¦sheās really very inspiring with a lot of tips and findings from our great grand parents and ancestors.
Now being in UK I donāt find many traditional raw food that we get in india. So I try to get couriered or perhaps look what local grandma/grandpa used to eatā¦like broccoli, asparagus, zucchini, squash + asking locals!! Sometimes itās quite interesting findings.
Plus, use instapot or slow cookerā¦saves tons of cooking time and all nutrients stay within food. I do stack steel pots in instapot and cook everything in one go, boom! So by the time the Dal, Sabji, Rice/boiled veggies are done in instapot, I cook chapaties for whole day and Iām done with cooking for the day.
Iām reading a lot of Adamās posts until now I wasnāt intrigued to comment but This post made me comment first time as I think itās very important part of our lives and what goes in makes everything for your bodyā¦so letās not only eat which pleases your tongue! Have you ever tried Bitterground or Tindora or Parval or Galka? These are greens we generally get in indian stores, which all has a variety tastes and I bet you wonāt get these in super storesā¦
Anyways here are my some inputs, I must say I reading Adamās posts a lot..and Iāll try to comment more often now onwards!! Keep it up!
I find cooking and sharing food together, as a family or in friend groups, one of the most energising things out there. I love the conversations we have at the table. To be fair, my kids are teenagers now, so it's a whole other thing to babies and toddlers, though we have always made it a huge part of our routines to ensure that we eat our evening meal together as a family - to the point of eating ridiculously early when they were little!
My illustration work is predominantly lifestyle illustration and food plays a big part of that, so cooking and eating and thinking about food is part of the inspiration.
I would, though, try to get rid of the problems of worrying about food. Meal planning, even at a fairly basic level (e.g. we'll fit these meals in during this upcoming week so we need to order these ingredients, rather than down to which day each meal will be on), is really helpful for this and I do also have a spreadsheet with the different meals each of the kids like and how we can adapt or substitute things so we can all eat together. (One meat eater, three vegetarians and the two teens like almost entirely different things to each other!)
Eating together is one of the few times we can guarantee getting to chat to them these days, though thankfully they do talk a bit at other times.
It's interesting reading about people trying to fit more and more work into their days, when I'm on the opposite side of that and am trying to fit less and less work and more and more self-care and outside interests. Mind you, I do count quite a bit of drawing and colouring as self-care and fun time, which probably helps! But, ideally I would spend no more than five hours a day working, with two full days off a week. (I wouldn't include sketchbook playtime as work, though, and not sure if I would include classes and other improving and learning tasks. I think they fall into inspiration and personal growth, that just happens to also feed into illustration work.)
Being an Indian, I find food is very much important part of our lives. I cook for family of 4, daily 3 meals and snacksā¦including one 8months old baby who sometimes eat 6 meals š
ā¦recently I have been planing my meals for 15 days for hassle free living and definitely trying to keep up with it. This helps reduce on waste, limit time in cooking & limit time in groceriesā¦which can be my productive time! And no fuss during any meal times as we all know what is coming up tomorrow or day after.
Iām more of a visual person so I like to choose it with colours, meaning I try to include 7 colours of food in 7 daysā¦1 color each day! + include one green each day for sure, could be little like any herb! Weāre mainly vegetarians but ok with eggs as including it for easy breakfast sometimes, helps us + on our protein intake.
I strongly believe, not to buy any readymade sauces, canned foods, ready to eats or frozen foods at all as they all have some or other type of preservatives which is going to impact your gut bacteria + eating all seasonal foods is very much important as it carries all nutrients from Mother Earth! So yeah, my freezer is almost empty with only few frozen greens for exceptional use only and Yes, itās hard to cook from scratch every day, but worth for long life.
The simple rule I follow is asking this question whenever doing groceriesā¦Did my grandmother or grandfather ate this? Yes! then buy and eat, No!! then donāt buyā¦ this idea i learnt from a very famous indian food nutrition person named Rujuta Divekarā¦sheās really very inspiring with a lot of tips and findings from our great grand parents and ancestors.
Now being in UK I donāt find many traditional raw food that we get in india. So I try to get couriered or perhaps look what local grandma/grandpa used to eatā¦like broccoli, asparagus, zucchini, squash + asking locals!! Sometimes itās quite interesting findings.
Plus, use instapot or slow cookerā¦saves tons of cooking time and all nutrients stay within food. I do stack steel pots in instapot and cook everything in one go, boom! So by the time the Dal, Sabji, Rice/boiled veggies are done in instapot, I cook chapaties for whole day and Iām done with cooking for the day.
Iām reading a lot of Adamās posts until now I wasnāt intrigued to comment but This post made me comment first time as I think itās very important part of our lives and what goes in makes everything for your bodyā¦so letās not only eat which pleases your tongue! Have you ever tried Bitterground or Tindora or Parval or Galka? These are greens we generally get in indian stores, which all has a variety tastes and I bet you wonāt get these in super storesā¦
Anyways here are my some inputs, I must say I reading Adamās posts a lot..and Iāll try to comment more often now onwards!! Keep it up!
Thank you.