Aspergers and Cooking

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That would be the logical place to start--try cooking your favorite foods. I find I can eat my favorite foods every day which makes cooking my own food quite economical.

I generally love to cook... I think mainly as a kid i went to private school, and to walk into a room of 300 people under fluorescent lights gave me a panic attack every time to the point of sweating, luckily our dorm areas had cookers and from there started to learn to cook myself... I still do today and rarely get takeaways, but i do prefer to cook for other people, as i find once i have finished cooking i have spent sooo much time taking the aromas in that i dont feel hungry by the time i finish!... also i get the accidental burning! haha, i will often have something in the oven and ""quickly"" pop online to then get so engrossed in something i totally forget i was cooking! Over time i have tried to train my mind to keep thinking that i am cooking so as not to forget and burn something but from time to time i still do... But i do love to cook, i think the secret if learning is to get to taste as many of the herbs/spices etc, as they all have different strengths and in time you get to naturally know how much to add... Rarely do i ever follow a recipe, i will add things to the dish as in my mind i feel i can actually taste the additions, even if subtle and feel it would add to the dish... I love to cook all types of foods and cultural cuisines as long as it doesnt involve a brussel sprout im fine! haha

So I can cook no problem. It's just finding the blasted recipes. I've got a cook book here. I look through every page. Seems complicated. Too much effort. No good. Someone gives me a recipe, I cook it fine no problem.

That doesn't seem to be asperger type behaviour from what I understand from the replies.

Do you like ,mushrooms? have a good easy recipe for stuffed mushrooms with pesto, i can do a short video for you if you like? or/and write down recipe here.... Also, to whom were you referring to about it not sounding like aspergian behavior?

Maybe you are becoming overwhelmed by too many choices. That happens to me when I try planning out meals too far in advance.

Mushrooms aren't my favourite. But Im OK with them. Definitely like pesto. Instructions would be good.

Not sure about your second question.

I think I have Aspergers, and so do a lot of people now. But I keep hearing what other people are saying and keep thinking that this doesn't sound like me. Every other reply on here seems to be about being side tracked by special interests and stuff.

Like everything else in my life, with cooking, Im fine once I get going. It's actually starting cooking. Another example, there are people I want to give hugs to, I quite like hugs. But do I know how to give someone a hug? I just linger thinking "I want to give you a hug, but Im not sure if you'll be receptive" and then just waiting for the person to make some move to show me it'll be alright.

Thanks for your reply nerdygirl. What does being overwhelmed actually feel like? Certainly I get lots of ideas on the go, buy too much food and find I throw half of it away. Even after making several dishes, I wouldn't eat it because I thought I didn't have enough. It was actually such a chore to start cooking, so I wanted to make sure I had a lot of meals in the freezer.

Ahhh, sorry, i thought you were making a statement about someone, i understand where you are coming from now ... Will be happy to do a quick vid for you, will do it the next few days, i also wasnt keen on mushrooms but the way these come out have more of a meat texture, i think you will like them


I also hear you to some extent on looking through a cook book... Soo many choices and what do i want? That recipe looks nice, but dont have ingredients, that recipe has too many ingredients, i like the look of that but 2 ingredients they dont even sell in this country, that recipe will take too long, that recipe looks like the one from the other page, wander which ones better? wander what that recipe tastes like...ahhh... Forget it, ill just do toast!...... Wander if that seems similar to what you view?


As for the Hug comment, yes understand that very well! Unfortunately i dont have the answer for that one yet either! hehe, However some that have got to know me a little better initiate that pleasantry now, some even ask if its ok, as i tend not to like being touched too much or really only through romantic partners, also if i am a bit overwhelmed, i prefer not being touched/hugged at all. So yes, i can imagine the brain clogs going ten to the dozen when there is someone you wish to hug, but not sure how its going to be repricated.. Best thing i could suggest, is when you meet rather than a random time, when you meet face to face, initiate the hug, say hello, and nice to see you, as you are hugging them. try to keep the hug to a couple of seconds rather than a 5 minute embrace They might think that being a bit odd! haha

Sounds great. Thanks. Don't worry about a video, written instructions would be fine.



Hmm. Almost word for word. I get my good days where I force myself to do something. Like forcing myself to be charismatic, or not respond to my anxiety.



But then I think, I haven't hugged for such a long time, Im not renowned for being a touchy feely type (even though deep down I am, but don't touch my lightly in a flirty type manner, which really isn't flirting), that if I start initiating hugs now, people will think Im up to something more! All I can imagine is my big arms going over someone and them feeling overwhelmed.

Grrr.

Reboot895, this is a bit of what overwhelmed feels like to me. I have had these exact same thoughts.

Even when I am cooking or baking something that I have made many times before, I still wonder if I have picked the *right* recipe. Am I using the BEST one? That best could be for any reason - taste, cost, nutritional value, etc. If I allow myself to go down this trail of thinking, I get stuck pretty quickly. I will start examining recipes down to the minutia and never get started on the actual cooking or baking.

I used to get too heavily involved in meal planning. I would spend hours deciding what to make for my family, based on what was on sale in the grocery stores. I was trying to be wise with my money. Then I would match up coupons to the sales and try to get myself all organized. By the time I was done and was actually able to get out of the house, the week had passed and all the sale items were different! This was obviously not working. I was getting bogged down in the planning, partly because I was getting too obsessed over *exactly what recipes* I was going to use. The details about sale items and coupons also overwhelmed me, plus the difficulty I have with organizing made the whole process take longer than it might take someone else. Plus the anxiety of getting out to the store. It was a nightmare.

Now, I do things very differently. There are a few basic recipes I make over and over, which I make from a basic master pantry list. These are items I pretty much keep on hand at all times. I shop for what I need in my pantry, plus basic fresh meats and produce. The meals I make are relatively simple and use basic pantry ingredients. I can cook on a whim from what is in the pantry because I no longer cook anything that needs extravagant ingredients. I will occasionally cook a fancier meal, but only one or two ingredients are things I will have to make a special trip to the store for.

I also now pretty much only shop at Aldi. It is an Aspie-friendly store. It is small. It is quiet. There's only one kind of each type of food. I don't have to chose between brands, only between flavors. I don't have to look at an entire grocery aisle of tomato products - I only have to decide between crushed or diced tomatoes, for example. It is simple, simple, simple. I am not going to find many exotic ingredients there, but for what I need in my pantry I only have to go to Aldi. Plus, the prices are very low, which means I do not have to get bogged down in watching sales and clipping coupons. This has made my life SO MUCH EASIER.

If you are interested in trying out cooking based on keeping a "master pantry", there are cookbooks out there on that, too. I have learned that simple and basic is better. It is much better to make a decent, tasty, simple meal really well than to stress over something complicated. To me, comfort food is something that is easy to put together.

It makes sense to me that you would make recipes that other people share with you. That eliminates the step of having to look for and choose recipes.

How about we start a thread for sharing recipes?

I don't find I get that problem I must admit. Once I have my recipe, I find out all I need - times before I might have made a tick list, actually no, I still do. I put a list on my phone! Forgot about that.

But I find my recipe, list everything I need. Tick off everything I've got, go off and buy just what I need.

Quite often though I'll have two recipes in mind, get ingredients for both recipes, but then find that actually I can't be bothered cooking the second, so throw the rest of everything away. I'm very methodical about that. I can't be bothered with coupons or anything else like that.

How does being overwhelmed actually feel though? When faced with a recipe book, I just think, I can't be bothered. It's insurmountable. I can't tell whether this is just a lazyness issue or something. It's the same issue I get with studying for work, or cleaning my bedroom. Insurmountable. Where do I begin? Do something else.

But I don't want someone else to do something for me. I don't want someone else to show me, or lecture me. But I like someone's advice about how I can make things work for me. It means Im still the one doing it, but Im making things easier to organise. It's like my bedroom, I have those awful Ikea cabinets. Take one thing out, everything falls out. I would much rather have draws. But because it's not organised how I want it, I don't have any ownership of it if you like. But if I can figure out how to organise it into draws, and stack things up, I'd be much happier.

That sounds really desperate.

Yes, a recipe thread would be good.

I hate cooking. Frozen or canned, that's the menu for me.
(Yes, I have tried and Mom was a great cook.)

I don't know, I have a similar problem. Cooking is so easy thanks to youtube, there's easy how to videos, some even only take 5 seconds to watch. I just don't do it. It could be confidence, lack of motivation, I'm not really sure. So, you're right, it is asperger's, but if you have a self awareness towards that issue you can work on it.