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[My Mother's Blog] Making Work Easier So, what do I do about cooking when I don't feel much like cooking and it seems like cooking from scratch is so hard, and I can't save any money because I keep buying convenience foods because cooking is so hard and I never feel like doing it? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is an indulgent, lazy attitude and like it or not, it has no place in a Christian's thought process.
Here is the same verse in the Contemporary English Version.
In life there are lots of things we don't "feel" like doing, but we have to do them anyway. This is the substance of self-discipline. When the baby is crying and needs to be nursed, I may not "feel" like giving my body to the baby for an hour so he can eat, but I have to do it anyway. When I don't "feel" like taking a shower, I have to overcome that and bathe anyway. If I don't then I will smell bad and be dirty. I may not "feel" like putting gasoline in the car, but if I don't then it will stop working and then I'll have to pay even more and be especially inconvenienced in order to rectify the matter. Some stuff we don't like to do, but we have to do them anyway. Cooking is one of those things. The best way to make cooking easier is to practice it a lot until we know what we're doing and it becomes less intimidating. I think when people say that they want easy recipes, or easy cooking methods, what they are really asking for is a recipe that they can read and envision from beginning to end. When I read a recipe I imagine myself doing the steps in it from beginning to end. If the recipe is unclear or I'm unfamiliar with a procedure, then I may lose my vision of the process somwhere in the middle. Recipes that make me feel muddled this way, are not good recipes. I think a recipe should give us a complete understanding of how to create a certain dish, and explain why we are required to do certain things certain ways. If a recipe doesn't do that, then it's time to move on to a new one. There are plenty of recipes that do explain things thoroughly, so there's no reason to be stuck when any certain recipe or cook book doesn't deliver. Also, reading several different recipes for the same dish helps us discern which steps and ingredients are necessary and which ones can be modified to suit our circumstances. For some people, planning menus makes it easier to cook when they don't want to. For others having a schedule of when supper must be served gives them a boost to cook when they don't feel like it. At my house breakfast takes 15 to 20 minutes to prepare. I begin breakfast as soon as I wake up and then it's on the table 20 minutes later. Lunch is at Noon every day. I start at 11 am if I'm making a casserole, so it has time to bake, or at 11:30 if I'm simply reheating leftovers or making a simple stove-top dish or sandwiches. Dinner at my house comes in 2 forms. The kind that takes about 1-hour to prepare, and the kind that has to be prepared earlier in the day, like when I'm making breakfast or lunch, and then cooks in the oven or crock pot or simmers on the back of the stove, or marinates in the refrigerator until dinner. Everday I spend about 2 hours cooking and another 1 hour in clean-up. That's 3 hours out of 24 given over to preparing food. I don't consider this a lot of time. If I worked outside the home and only had 2 or 3 hours a night of free time, it would be a lot of time. For me and for my schedule however, this works out just fine. Within these 3 hours I fit in time for mixing bread dough in a large Stand Mixer, or on the dough cycle of my bread machine. When I have lots of baking to do it may take another 2 hours, including clean up time and baking time for multiple batches of cookies or a couple of pies or a layer cake. This type of baking only happens once a week and pays off the rest of week in time savings and cheap snacks. I understand about avoiding cooking because it seems inconvenient or bothersome. I've felt that way myself and avoided cooking because of it. Sometimes though, we simply can't afford to indulge our carnal (sinful) desire to avoid work. We simply have to bite the bullet and do what must be done. Anyone who has ever been really hungry and had very little to eat understands that it can be a privilege to be able to prepare dinner. It may be as simple as Tuna in Cream Gravy over Biscuits, but to a hungry family this can be pure ambrosia at the end of the day. The time it takes to prepare this dish is a gift. People with no food don't have to take any time to prepare it. We are blessed that we have so much food. And we are honored by the privilege of taking time out of our day to prepare it for ourselves and our families. Preparing food takes time and thought. If we are determined to reduce our expenses, it's something we learn to do whether we want to or not. We must guard our minds against thoughts like "It's too hard." or "I don't feel like it." or "Fast Food would be so much easier." When thoughts like these pop into our minds we remind ourselves that these are not options we're willing to consider and we plow through, ignoring them, or better yet replacing them with more positive thoughts. Some new thoughts to consider might be "I'm so lucky I can cook on an electric stove instead of having to prepare and feed a fire in order to prepare dinner." or "We have so much food in the house, I'm glad God gave me a good brain so I can figure out how to use it all." or "Cooking food is a privilege. People in other countries are going hungry or eating gruel. God has given me so much variety. Lord help me learn to make the best of it." Turning a resentment into a gratitude is a sure fire way to get over it.
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