What’s Your Cooking Personality? – Take Back the Kitchen

What's Your Cooking Personality?

In my years of working with clients, I have identified some recurring themes in what keeps many people from cooking. See if you can find yourself in any of the cooking personalities listed below. You may find that you have a few features of a few personalities and that’s O.K! It is simply a way to get a sense of what your needs are in the kitchen so that you can be on your way to cooking healthier, more efficient, delicious meals. In my upcoming cookbook, you will learn strategies to deal with all the cooking features mentioned below that just may be getting in your way. Which one are you?

The PERFECTIONIST Cooking Personality

Do you find yourself telling people you “don’t have the cooking gene” or that you hate to cook?
Do you worry that you will be judged for your lack of cooking skills?
Do you blame yourself when your dish doesn’t come out as planned?
When a particular step in a recipe does not work in the way you anticipated, do you get frustrated and annoyed, and feel that you are wasting your time?
Do you feel like giving up when you believe you’ve failed at a recipe, thinking, “I’m good at other things, I don’t need to cook. Where’s the Chinese delivery menu?”
Do you feel like a dish/meal needs to be flawlessly presented and incredibly delicious for it to be acceptable to serve to yourself and/or others?

The CAREFREE Cooking Personality

Are you very casual when preparing a meal?
Are you confused when a recipe comes out poorly?
Do you blame others or the recipe when your recipe goes wrong?
When you are told to measure ingredients in a recipe, do you ignore it or eyeball amounts instead of being precise?
Do you intentionally add or leave out ingredients the first time you make a recipe, thinking you may know better?
Do you get frustrated when a meal fails, but also remain unmotivated to follow instructions the next time?
Do you fail to learn from your mistakes?

The CONFLICTED Cooking Personality

Do you have a picture in your mind that cooking is old fashioned, a scene where you feel tied to an oven with no room for cerebral endeavors?
Does cooking seem all-consuming and something you have to devote your life to in order to do well?
Do you secretly look down upon, feel sorry for, or resent women who are always baking from scratch for the bake sale or who have a planned menu for the week?
Do you paradoxically want to be them, too?
Would you be more inclined to cook if you could easily replicate more sophisticated recipes from restaurants or the latest cooking trends?

The DISTRACTED Cooking Personality

Do you feel that you cannot even think about shopping, prepping or cooking unless you have every single detail spelled out — details so minute they are never in cookbooks?
Are you sometimes embarrassed, confused or frustrated by the fact that everyone else seems to be able to whip up a successful meal and you seriously have trouble boiling water or scrambling an egg?
Does it make you feel incompetent when someone says, “Don’t worry, this is a super easy recipe,” yet it sounds so overwhelming and complicated to you that your eyes glaze over as it’s being described?
Have you been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or feel like you have ADD-like symptoms?