I moved out a couple of months ago and am now living in a dorm-ish situation (we're 12 people to a kitchen) and because a) anxiety and b) food is hard I am maybe not doing as well as I could be with the whole eating properly thing. (Don't get me wrong, it could be a lot worse - I do eat, and I've taken to keeping a safety buffer of fruit in my room bc then I can eat something and maybe that'll pick me up enough to brave the kitchen, but I chicken out of cooking properly more often than not, and I have to throw away food sometimes bc it'd gone bad, and that's.... not ideal :I ) I'm asking for advice on how to... stop doing that? I only have one fridge shelf, it's absolutely ridiculous I leave anything there for long enough for it to go bad, and yet! So far my thought is that if i plan for things properly, that could work - like actually decide that 'okay tomorrow I'm following this recipe. The day after that we'll try this one' because maybe anxiety will lessen if I know exactly what I'm going to do before I do it, and if I buy things with the express purpose of 'I'm gonna use it for this' then maybe that'll be better... I've no idea how to actually accomplish this though, my planning skills are atrocious. :I (Not to mention that looking for recipes is Hell bc there's so much. I can't make that many rapid decisions. (I've had a look through the Low Spoons Food thread, but that's not really what I'm looking for, since my main issue is that I want to put effort into this, I just can't seem to bring myself to. I want to make more complicated meals than 'boil pasta, fry an egg, done', I'm just super unconfident in my abilities as a cook.) I have a couple of things that I really like both eating and making and if it wasn't for my dormmates I swear I'd just alternate between those every day for like a month.) My fridge shelf is just about empty now (there's literally just eggs cheese and butter in there) so this is like, the perfect time to start actually organising myself. Which is why I've spent all my waking hours procrastinating and not eating bc if I eat I have to go to the store and buy food but if I'm buying food I must have planned out meals first :I Sorry for how messy this is. I'm not sure what type of advice I'm looking for. How to organize myself, I guess? How to find recipes actually within my skill level without information overload? Whether "plan out exactly what to make for dinner maybe ~5 days in advance" is actually a good strategy?
I'm also trying to figure out How To Food, but if you have freezer space that can help. If you want to, for example, cook some rice-and-chicken thing, you can totally use frozen chicken breasts instead of fresh, if you find fresh stuff goes bad by the time you have the spoons to try cooking it. Also, speaking of rice, if you cook rice you can put it in freezer bags, like a single flat layer of rice, freeze it, and tadah you can then spend cooking spoons on other things to add to the rice. Idk if I phrased that coherently, feel free to ask me what the heck I'm trying to say with this crazy rice process How to organize: idek, i'm flailing in that respect too. Honestly I have stuff that I can reliably make/eat, and I just go through periods of eating the same few things even if theyre not super balanced nutritionally or whatever. If you find yourself getting caught up on "what do, must plan, aaaaaaaa how plan?? help???", it would probably be a good idea to get stuff that you've already been making just so you can continue eating while figuring stuff out Like, idk if you want to try buying sauce or something to add to the pasta? Or a frozen veg to eat with pasta-and-egg? Add-ons for stuff you already reliably make and eat. Edit to clarify the rice thing: freezing single servings of rice all at once means it won't go moldy in the fridge if you can't eat it all. Old rice is Dangerous(tm) if my food sfety course is to be believed, altho ive heard people who dont have issues with eating 4 day old rice
D: I had this problem for most of college, and I only had two roommates (I still kinda have this problem tbh) I find it helpful to frame shopping kinda like this: http://theeverygirl.com/the-only-grocery-shopping-list-youll-ever-need http://greatist.com/eat/healthy-grocery-list-for-one So you buy some basic stuff that can be used in a lot of things and then find some recipes that use the things (googling [pasta/rice/chicken/whatever]+ingredient+"recipe"] works for a lot of stuff and a lot of recipes can be adapted a lot) or honestly just cook a couple ingredients in your preferred manner and then put them on a dish. Also seconding starting with what you're already familiar with and trying out new or more elaborate stuff when you feel up to it Ime planning things exactly is way too much effort plus I always end up wasting the leftovers of whatever I bought for the recipe and also by the second day I'm like oh shit, the planned meal is too much spoons/unappetizing but it's probably possible to make it work xd Also. As my mom says to me all the time: eating enough is more important than eating healthy or not wasting food and it's hard to find the spoons to figure out how to do the latter if you don't do the first
