Cooking While Depressed: The Least Helpful, Least Tasty Recipe

Two things I'll always be terrible at - gardening and cooking. As far as anything related to plants is concerned, I like to joke that I have a black thumb. Except it's not a joke. 

I can get by just fine without ever having to look a plant in the eye (while it's still alive, anyway) but cooking is a whole other story. Not being able to cook means going hungry even though there are groceries in the kitchen. It means spending that last 200 bucks on pizza even though there's no plan for tomorrow. Because my blood sugar is plummeting right now, and planning for tomorrow is moot if I don't make it tomorrow. 

Yep, that's dark. Back to cooking. 

It isn't that I don't know how to cook. Technically I do. Technically, I can make rice, potatoes, pulses, an omlette, and fry pappadom. It's a paradoxical list, because I've never boiled an egg or cooked chicken. 

But thanks to the auspicious influence of ADHD, I am a certifiably bad cook. I burn everything. Rice? I forgot the pressure cooker was on the stove. Potatoes? Undercooked, and now I have a stomach ache. The dal? It managed to escape through the hatch when I left the kitchen for a hot second. It's currently wallpapering the area behind the stove. 

It's a mess, both literally and figuratively. Add to that the crippling executive dysfunction I often play host to, and you get about a decade of terrible cooking experiences. A culinary PTSD so bad I'd rather chew my arm off than have to make something and then force myself to eat it. 

But over the years, I did get better at something else - shortcuts. Cooking while depressed is all about the straightest line between Point A and Point B. The less effort I have to put into the process, the more likely I am to successfully feed myself. So here's a list of my best shortcuts.

The One Size Fits All 

The Least Delicious "Recipe" You'll Ever Come Across 

Ingredients:

• Cooking oil 
• Mustard seeds (കടുക്) 
• Salt 
• Turmeric (മഞ്ഞൾ)
• Red chilli powder 
• Garam masala powder 
• Coriander powder (മല്ലിപൊടി)
• Onions 
• Green Chillies 
• Tomatoes 
• Whatever you're planning to cook - potatoes, dal, red peas (aka kaaraamani, although where I'm from we just call it പയർ), green gram, chickpeas (കടല), whatever. We'll call it The Main Thing™️.

Now, if that seems like a big list, don't worry. The secret isn't in the what, it's in the how. This is just the list of ingredients I memorized while I was still in school. I always keep these stocked in my kitchen, awaiting the dreaded day when I must throw on the metaphorical apron. 

For you, this list will look like whatever you want in your food. 

Maybe you prefer jeera instead of mustard. 

Maybe you don't want coriander powder in everything. 

Maybe you like adding curry leaves, like 100% of South Indian households. 

Maybe you're smarter than me, and remember that ginger garlic paste is kind of a must-have when cooking most pulses. 

If you don't know what your One Size Fits All list looks like, fall back to basics. Look at what your mother would use in her cooking, and just plagiarize her best recipe. 

PS: If you noticed I didn't add any measurements, that's because I don't measure anything. I throw in a pinch. Or I shake the jar over the pan and hope I don't accidentally dump half of it out. Some people call it laziness. I call it the "Sorry, this is the best I can do". But because I'm in a helpful mood, I'll throw in some measuring instructions below.

Preparation

• Dump The Main Thing™️ in a pressure cooker with enough water to cover it. 
• If, unlike me, you have a working pressure cooker, it would be best to follow some sort of whistle system. 
• If, like mine, the pressure cooker either whistles all the time or not at all, just... wait till most of the water has evaporated. (But preferably not so long that the cooker itself starts to burn.)
• Chuck the cooker (with lid still closed) under running water. Once it stops hissing, open it and start poking whatever's inside to figure out if it's been properly cooked.  

Instructions:

• Heat the pan
• When your patience runs out, pour in some oil. 
  Measuring Instructions (MI): Not so much oil that it makes you feel sick, not so little that everything sticks to the pan. 
• Dodge exploding droplets of oil - you didn't wait until the water from the freshly rinsed pan had fully evaporated. 
• Sprinkle a few mustard seeds into the oil. Nothing happens, because despite the oil-water fireworks, the oil isn't hot enough to explode the mustard seeds. 
  MI: 2-3 mustard seeds
• Sprinkle a few more mustard seeds to check if the oil is hot enough yet. 
  MI: 5-6 mustard seeds
• Dump the rest of the mustard seeds in and prepare to dodge again as they explode all at once. 
  MI: A handful. How big is your hand, by the way? 
• Forget to turn down the flame. The mustard seeds will now begin to burn as you scramble to slice/ dice the onions. Because you forgot to do that too. 
• Enjoy the acrid aroma of burning things. Crack a window, a door, or an exhaust fan. Finish slicing / dicing the onions, the green chillies, and the tomatoes. 
• Throw the onions into the oil, which by now will have turned into Extremely Angry Oil. Turn down the flame so they don't turn into instant crisp. It's too late for the mustard seeds. 
• Add salt to speed up the "onioning." They're supposed to be golden brown by the time we're done with them, but I never remember to actually check what colour they are. That's presumably the salt's job now.
• Add the green chilies and tomatoes. 
• Add the rest of the spices. 
• Do not forget to keep stirring on low flame.
• Add the (appropriately cooked) Main Thing™️.
• Toss everything together and leave it on the stove for as long as you have the patience for it. 

Serving Instructions

•  Serve with an omlette. 

Or maybe you can just put together an instant dish with a ready-to-cook something-something. One packet got me 4 days' worth of meals. I didn't even bother mixing it with chicken or paneer - just straight up tossed it with rice. Spicy. Filling. Hard to fuck up. And the least work ever.