What’s the recipe for rekindling my love of cooking?

SOMEWHERE along the way I lost that loving feeling for cooking. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, only that one minute I was making Catherine wheel sausages studded with thyme and a red onion gravy from scratch, and the next I was microwaving frozen jacket potatoes and dumping a can of beans on top.

I used to do a lot of cooking before we got married and had Ada. I adored wandering around the shops, hunting down random ingredients for another new recipe and heading to the wine section in anticipation of a great dinner party ahead. I’d arrive home, pop my granny’s old apron on, and spend the rest of the morning preparing for my guests, happily singing along to the radio. I genuinely enjoyed it.

Yet these days I tend to only don my granny’s apron when I’m pulling out the big guns and doing some baking with Ada as the ultimate distraction. The weekly dinner menu has become predictable and unappetising to say the least. Salmon on Tuesdays as Peter has football so he just wants something light. Pie and mash, chicken kiev and sweet potato, pasta, chilli or a frozen pizza, basically in rotation.

I got so unmotivated one week I just couldn’t be bothered and didn’t do any dinners for a whole five days. Peter opened and closed his mouth like a fish on arrival home from work but had the good sense not to say anything, instead heading for the toaster with sliced bread. Ada is better fed than any of us as she gets three meals at preschool every day so usually just wants a snack when she comes home. I think part of it is now I’m working from home officially, getting the dinner for 6pm while also helping put a daily paper to bed for the same time, is not especially conducive to a stress-free environment. Something’s got to give and clearly it’s the dinner.

Last week, in an attempt to inject some healthy energy into the menu, I lined up a rosemary chicken recipe which was supposed to be a “super simple, quick midweek option for the family”. But it was a busy day at work and so it wasn’t until 6.15pm I started banging around pots and pans and very begrudgingly mushing garlic and thyme into a paste, sighing heavily, during which Ada and Peter arrived home. It was 7pm when I finally plopped the plates on the table, fed up and having completely lost my appetite.

“This is lovely,” said Peter. I glowered at him. He quickly ate the rest and then disappeared to do the mountain of washing up that this “super quick” recipe had produced.

I was in a bad humour of my own making. When had cooking become such a chore? It used to be fun. I had all the gadgets, you name it, I had it. Egg poachers, garlic mincer, pasta measurer, avocado slicer, even a spiraliser that I paid £50 for that came with a recipe book. I remember buying 10 courgettes and spending a ridiculously fun hour spiralising them into courgette spaghetti which was all the rage at the time. Of course, I haven’t seen that machine since, somewhere on top of the cupboards never to be used again.

I need to rediscover the joy of cooking again. Actress Sarah Lancashire has stepped into the enormous shoes of the TV chef, Julia Child, for the new drama, Julia. Julia is set a year after Child released her 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julia’s joy for food is infectious and it reminds me of how fun cooking can be if you remove the hum-drum necessity of it.

I may not be deboning a duck any time soon, but it is inspiring me to go back to the chopping board.