Having a child has been life changing and the best thing ever. It comes with a lot of challenges, many you don’t really understand until you’re in the midst of it. Everything will change once you hold this little bundle in your arms and even if you’re open to just going with the flow, it can still surprise you how different you are as a mother.
I love to cook and bake. I love to entertain and have guests over for dinner. I also love to be organised and prepared. All this went out the window when I had a baby, largely due to the fact that I just couldn’t concentrate enough to get my head around mealtimes. My cookbooks and cooking magazines collection were not helpful, they made it even more difficult to choose! I’d look up ten different recipes, sometimes buy all the ingredients but then be too tired to actually cook anything at all. Fish and chips seemed like a very good option a lot of the time…
The thing about capsule wardrobes.
Capsule wardrobes have been around for a while and I’ve embraced the idea for the first time throughout pregnancy: owning only a select few items of clothing that are easily mixed and matched. Your capsule wardrobe should make you feel like you always have something nice to wear which you can throw on with little effort. It should make you feel confident and secure in your own style. I loved it and continued with it after my baby was born. I’ve had other things to worry about than what to wear but wanted to feel good about myself nonetheless.
How can this work in the kitchen?
Then I discovered that my challenge in the kitchen felt very similar. I have other things to worry about but want to feel good about what I eat and what I prepare for my family – How do I quickly prepare a meal, that we love, with little effort?
There are plenty of cookbooks and meal plans out there, catering to a variety of needs. Plenty that you can follow if that’s what suits you. But my experience is that often it doesn’t. Both my husband and son have food allergies (not the same ones, just to make it that little bit more challenging), I can’t eat certain nuts, my husband loves meat, I prefer to eat less meat, I’m sure my little boy starts having preferences in addition to his allergies soon enough. When I buy a cookbook I have to disregard a lot of the recipes (or amend them) because someone in my family can’t have some of the ingredients.
So I began to think about how nice it would be to have a capsule kitchen. This goes for recipes as well as ingredients that you keep on stand by.
Make it your own.
We are bombarded with so many messages of how we should eat if we want to be healthy: paleo, raw, clean, glutenfree, sugarfree, grainfree, dairyfree, vegan, vegetarian… It’s confusing and they often contradict each other in promoting different things.
How nice would it be if you could leave all this clutter and noise behind. Go back to zero and start building a kitchen that is uniquely yours. That fits your lifestyle and preferences, takes into account the amount of time you have and doesn’t judge if sometimes you simply don’t WANT to cook.
The answer is to create your very own capsule kitchen. To focus on the ingredients your family likes, the recipes you love, the things that are good for you. Be interested in food and all the amazing recipes and inspiring cooks and chefs that are out there, but make it your own:
Make it simpler, so you can cook without fuss and little effort.
Make it fun, so you will want to be in the kitchen and inspire your children to enjoy their food.
Make it stylish, so you feel good about what you are cooking and how you feed your family.
Make it healthy, because your wellbeing is key to your happiness.
Make it delicious, because everything you eat should be.
Join the movement!
Katrine xx
