Feeding yourself is hard, especially if you struggle with food sensitivities, dietary restrictions, food trauma, or ARFID. Many people grow up having a complicated and often traumatic relationship with food. I’m going to put together a list of resources where I log things that I am finding helpful in my journey to feed myself.
At its core, food is energy which we use to get around throughout the day. Calories are a measure of how much energy is in food. We need this energy to move, think, and do all of the things we do in a day. Before you can even think about how to feed yourself, it’s important to be fed. 100 No-Cook Meal Items For When You Refuse to Adult by René Brooks is a great place to start.
Food safety
When I started cooking, I had absolutely no clue about what food safety was. As a young adult, I would just ask who was around me, who often didn’t know. Luckily, Jonathan Katz has put together a website, Safe and Neurospicy, which reviews the basic food safety instructions often left out of food writing.
Neurodivergent folks often get left out of food safety because writers assume you know things – which is not always the case! “Common sense” can be both wrong and also not shared. So this site is your guide for various things so that you do not get sick, hurt, or injured from your own kitchen. It is organized into sections that cover various parts of cooking, your kitchen, and food.
-Jonathan Katz, Safe and Neurospicy
This and the article Jonathan shares on the first page, The Beginner’s Guide to Meal Planning: What to Know, How to Succeed, and What to Skip, are a great place to start.
Stocking your kitchen
I recently stocked my kitchen and had to go through what I needed. Here are some basics, assuming that you have full energy and also full mobility. Sometimes it is helpful to look at a list of kitchen equipment to decide what is right for your kitchen and techniques. If you need adaptive cooking equipment, the Kentucky Inclusive Health Collaborative has put together the following list of Adaptive Kitchen Equipment which may be helpful.
- Knives – I would recommend a chef’s knife and a paring knife to start. A chef’s knife is a large knife used for general purposes, usually about 8-10 inches or 20-25 centimeters long.
- Chopping board – This is important because it protects your counter while you are cooking. Also it makes it easier to clean up after cutting. The bigger it is, the more work space you will have while cutting. However it is important to remember that you want something which you can easily clean and put away. Large cutting boards can be difficult to maintain. A cutting board you will use is always better than the one you won’t.
- A wooden spoon – Wood is sturdy, won’t scratch your pans, and it is really helpful for mixing things together. When you buy a spoon, look for one that is a solid piece of material. Wood that has been glued together is more likely to split along those seams.
- Spatula –
- Tongs – For picking things up.
- Air-tight containers – It may seem like people
- Mixing bowls –
- Colander – This is for draining things of liquid.
- Food thermometer – key for food safety. It’s important to know what temperature food is kept at and cooked to.
Pots and pans
- Sheet pan – Good for cooking things that are flat in the oven.
- Cooling rack – if you need anything to rest and cool, like cookies
Appliances are key. These are the sorts of things you use to keep food cold and feat it up to prepare it.
- Microwave – good for heating things quickly, although it can be tricky for people to use.
- Hot plate/burner – A hotplate and burner create heat to either heat up or cook food. You can use an individual one or the kind which are on the stove.
- Oven – an enclosed space used for baking, heating, or drying. You may also be able to use a toaster oven.
- Fridge – an appliance which is artificially kept cool and used to store food and drink.
Personally, I don’t have the executive functioning to meal plan using recipes. Deciding what to eat is hard for me, and so I have been developing my system off of reducing barriers. I have begun with some key things:
- Identifying low effort recipes to cook with
Dietary Restrictions
I was gluten free and dairy free for a very long time. While I may not eat that way anymore, I found that eating gluten free and dairy free was relatively simple. What I did was get rid of pastas and breads and crackers from my diet, and instead eat rice as my main grain. I adapted my cooking to primarily consist of rice + thing you eat with rice. Asian cooking traditions are key—to the point that I feel more comfortable with Indian food than that of my Italian heritage.
Writ Works 