How Hard Is This Going to Get?
COOK90 is about fitting cooking into your life seamlessly, and making daily cooking easier than you thought it could be. If you do everything this book tells you to do—the pantry building, the meal plan making, the systematic shopping—you’ll cook for a month and not break a sweat.
But let’s be realistic. This is high-intensity interval cooking. It may be a big change from what you’re used to, and there’s no warm-up—you just dive right in. So you’re going to sweat sometimes.
What will that look like? Feeling jealous of your coworkers when they go out for sushi and leave you at your desk with your leftovers. Becoming distraught when you accidentally burn dinner and need to scramble to make a pantry pasta. Getting cranky in the morning because you’re sick of making your own coffee (you miss your daily oat milk latte, and maybe the cute barista who makes it).
Usually these moods pass as quickly as they come on; often, the stress-relieving act of cooking will make them disappear. Still, you should pay attention to what’s bothering you. When you feel as if you can’t spend another minute in your kitchen, there’s usually a logical reason. Maybe your meal plan was wildly ambitious. Maybe you didn’t buy enough groceries. Maybe your family is eating way, way more than you thought they would, and they’re not leaving you any leftovers for lunch. Find the root of the problem, fix it, and move on to your next meal. You’ve just figured out one more key to cooking every day; you won’t be making that same mistake again.
COOK90 Fatigue
Sometimes cooking crankiness doesn’t pass quickly enough. For me, this happens around Day 18: I wake up annoyed and stir crazy, and I never want to see an onion ever again.
This is COOK90 fatigue. Perfectly normal, and easily combated by any one of the actions below.
1. TAKE A NIGHT OFF
This is exactly what the COOK90 passes are for. Screw making chicken tikka masala at home, and order it for delivery instead.
2. CALL A MEETING OF YOUR COOK90 CLUB
You’re all in this together, right? (See the sidebar on this page.) So send the signal that you’re about to break down and order pizza. Your compatriots should be over with groceries for homemade pizza in no time.
3. COOK IN A FRIEND’S KITCHEN
You might just need to get out of the house. Find somebody who doesn’t have plans and tell them you’re coming over to help them with dinner. No, they don’t have a choice. Yes, you’ll bring a salad. No, you won’t chop the onions, you need a break from onions, can this friend step up for once and please chop the damn onions?
4. EAT FROM THE PANTRY
You know there are shrimp somewhere in your freezer (see here). Or at least a bag of frozen spinach (see here). Find some pasta? Garlic? Anchovies? Good. Turn to here and you’re all set.
5. BAKE SOMETHING
Let somebody else handle dinner; tonight, you’re only doing dessert. And because baking is a different kind of cooking—a little slower, with a reward that lasts a few days—it’ll be a good change of pace. Nobody else is around to handle dinner? Then dessert is dinner. Own it!
What Happens When COOK90 Is Over?
You go back to your normal life, and you bring the skills you sharpened during COOK90 with you.
The habits you get into on COOK90 are sticky. Sometimes I end a round of COOK90 and think I’m going to spend the next three days eating in restaurants. But instead, I keep on cooking. I’m already deep in a cooking cycle, and there are usually nextovers in my fridge that need to be cooked, and a meal plan that I may as well finish out. And I feel so comfortable in my kitchen by this point that I don’t see any reason to leave.
Sometimes I continue to COOK90 for another two weeks, cooking just as vigorously and exhaustively (well, maybe there are a few more breaks thrown in—there’s a ramen shop down the street from me that’s hard to resist).
But the COOK90 lifestyle does eventually fade. And that’s when you start to see the real impact of your thirty-day cooking binge. You’ll continue to do the things that you found most useful (meal plans for me), and drop the things that just aren’t realistic for your life (back to the coffee shop!). And you’ll find that even when you’re not officially doing COOK90, that one intensive month of cooking improves the way you cook the rest of the year. And when that year is up? We sharpen our skills by doing COOK90 again.
COOK90 & Health
Cooking is a healthy behavior—physically, mentally, and financially. So while COOK90 is not a diet or cleanse, it will make you feel better than you felt before you started.
All the planning helps. When we’re intentional about our cooking, most of us will pencil a good mix of vegetables, proteins, and carbs into our meal plans. And because we use nextovers (here) and leftovers, almost none of our ingredients will go to waste—and neither will the money we spent on them. Add to this the well-documented fact that food cooked at home is healthier (and, breaking news: cheaper!) than food cooked at restaurants, and you start to see how cooking is a physically and financially healthy habit.
And while I have no research to back this up, I can tell you from personal experience that cooking can be stress relief, even an act of mindfulness. Peeling carrots, scrubbing mussels—these things take me out of my head. Suddenly I’m no longer stewing about the ridiculous thing my boss asked me to do; instead, I’m in the moment, cooking dinner, and finding that that’s a much better place, mentally, to be.
12 More Questions People Ask About COOK90
WHAT COUNTS AS COOKING?
If you’ve changed ingredients through heat—roasted vegetables, stir-fried chicken, boiled penne, grilled a Cubano sandwich—you’ve cooked. Likewise, if you’ve taken two or more ingredients and turned them into something greater than the sum of their parts (a noodle soup, a Cobb salad, a triple-decker sandwich), you’ve definitely cooked. If there’s any question, just listen to your gut. There’s an endorphin spike, however small, when you cook something—find it, and you’ve done well.
CAN MY HUSBAND/GIRLFRIEND/GRANDMOTHER/NEIGHBOR/BOOK GROUP COOK WITH ME?
Absolutely. When you cook with other people, you pick up their skills and recipes and corn-shucking tips. And, of course, cooking with other people is the only way to fight the feelings of isolation that can sometimes come with spending an entire month in your kitchen. That’s why some people formalize this and form COOK90 Clubs (see the sidebar here).
But beware those who would rather cook for you than with you. This includes your most, um, particular friends, who can’t stand to see you chop an onion differently than they would. Also, some parents and grandparents think they’re slick—watch out for those who steer you toward the couch with a cocktail, then run to the kitchen to make the meatloaf you loved as a child.
DO I HAVE TO DO COOK90 IN JANUARY?
Nope—you can do COOK90 anytime. Most people choose January because it’s a slower, more relaxed month than the ones that come before it. And in many places, it’s freezing—a good month to stay inside and cook. That said, spring and summer are great times to do COOK90, because there’s so much good produce coming out of the ground. You just have to make sure there aren’t vacations, road trips, and last-minute invitations to the beach that will get in the way of your cooking.
MY WIFE/BOYFRIEND/PARENT/SISTER LIVES WITH ME. CAN WE TAKE TURNS COOKING FOR EACH OTHER?
It’s a great idea to have your entire household on COOK90, but everyone still must do some sort of cooking at every meal. The more people there are to feed, the more everybody should chip in. Maybe you griddle the tortillas while your roommate refries the beans. Or you peel the carrots while your husband crushes the tomatoes. But don’t take turns (he makes dinner tonight, you make it tomorrow). Doing some cooking, any cooking, every day, is crucial. We’re trying to build habits here!
DO CHEESE AND CRACKERS COUNT AS DINNER?
No. But if you add soup, count it! (See here.)
WHAT ABOUT SALAD?
Yes—as long as you make your own vinaigrette (here).
SANDWICHES?
Stuffed with things you’ve cooked/prepped yourself? Sure.
DO LEFTOVERS COUNT?
They count, but you can’t lean on them too hard. See Rule #4.
WHAT ABOUT SNACKS?
What kind of monster would outlaw snacks? COOK90 applies only to the three major meals of the day, so as long as your snacks aren’t replacing one of those meals, that bag of almonds in your desk drawer—and even that 3 p.m. doughnut—is totally fine.
CAN I GO OUT FOR DRINKS?
I can’t lie to you: COOK90 makes it a little challenging to grab cocktails/see a movie/catch the newest production of La Bohème. But as with everything COOK90, a plan of action makes it possible. When there’s a happy hour you want to hit, work it into your meal plan. Plan for a fast pre-drinks meal from the freezer, or pack a dinner to eat at your desk before you head out. I’ve done the latter plenty of times, and it’s only slightly depressing, I promise.
WHAT IF I REALLY HAVE TO TAKE MORE THAN THREE PASSES?
Look, Congress hasn’t passed any laws about COOK90 (yet), so nobody’s going to take you to court. Also, there’s nothing wrong with doing a COOK80, or a COOK75. Everybody starts somewhere!
DO MEAL KITS COUNT?
Meal kits perpetuate the idea that shopping and cooking is a chore that we should all seek to get help with. That’s a false premise, and I can’t bring myself to love an industry that exists to sell us things we don’t really need. But! If meal kits are the drug that gets people hooked on cooking, I can’t be mad at that. So if you’re using the occasional meal kit, and if that meal kit is of the variety that comes with whole vegetables that you have to chop yourself, sure, it counts. But if you’re getting pre-measured containers of diced red onions delivered to your home, I’m calling that assembling, not cooking—and assembling is not COOK90.