Chapter 3
About ten years ago, I decided to have Passover dinner at my home to prove that I was, indeed, “adult” enough to entertain a houseful of guests. Passover involves about ten different dishes. Armed with all kinds of ADHD-friendly strategies, I knew exactly what I would do to make this successful with the least amount of stress. I promptly called the local catering company that specializes in holiday meals. Hah! This was going to be a slam dunk.
The big day arrived, and I picked up and put in my trunk what was close to a mortgage payment’s worth of boxed food. Once home, I did another once-over to make sure the house was presentable. At 5:30 p.m., I remembered to turn on the stove. I opened up the refrigerator to pull out all the food I’d bought and stopped dead in my tracks. There was no food in the fridge. My mind raced. Who took all the food? Why would someone do that? Then it dawned on me. I’d left hundreds of dollars’ worth of freshly cooked, scrumptious food in the trunk of my car in a hot garage for seven hours. Rather than change our names from Terry and Jerry to “Sam ‘n’ Ella,” I tossed out all the food and called all my guests in a panic to cobble together the first ever Passover potluck smorgasbord.
This story is a microcosm of the types of challenges women with ADHD face. It’s especially common for those who are married with children, but even single women share the expectation that they “should” be able to whip up a tasty meal for their friends now and then. Many wives and mothers, even those with partners who are supportive and willing to help, are expected to pull off dinners every night, not to mention breakfasts, lunches (including school lunches for the kids), and holiday or special occasion meals. When we falter, our self-esteem takes a real hit, and we ask ourselves, What is wrong with me? Everyone else can get a dinner on the table effortlessly, so why can’t I even decide what to make?
Girls generally observe their mothers in the kitchen and integrate those skills into their own lives. But what if that little girl had ADHD and didn’t pay attention to her mother’s kitchen activities? Or what if her mother also had ADHD and struggled herself? Believe it or not, just about every aspect of food preparation requires strong executive functioning. There is the planning and shopping, which requires selecting, organizing, and choosing from literally thousands of options at the grocery store. In the kitchen, there is the multitasking and timing required to prepare a number of different foods and having them all ready at the same time. Following a recipe requires having to break tasks down into smaller steps, something most people can do without a second thought; but then up the ante by a thousand and put on full wattage pressure with the task of entertaining others, especially on a holiday, and the stress becomes completely overwhelming. This is when a woman with ADHD might end up serving up havoc instead of haddock.
The first part of this chapter outlines the most typical challenges involved in meal preparation for women with ADHD. The second part offers a myriad of solutions to help take the edge off of this daily chore.
The everyday task of meal planning is second nature to many, but for the woman with ADHD, it can take on monumental proportions. She may as well be trying to win the Tour de France in a freak snowstorm with her shoelaces tied together—every day. Most people don’t recognize all the basic tasks that go into meal preparation, many of which require healthy executive functioning:
Let’s “unpack” each one of these steps to see what’s inside.
Meal Planning Is for Sissies
Most women with ADHD will tell you that meal planning is great in theory. Most will also tell you that they have no clue what they’re serving until 5:00 p.m., and then they are scrambling to throw something together—like scrambled eggs! Or the old standby, cereal and milk, if they’re lucky enough to have a carton of milk that isn’t curdled. Meal planning seems like such a no-brainer, right? Not to the brain with ADHD.
Why is meal planning like juggling twelve balls while roller skating? Because people with ADHD have difficulties with the executive functioning and working memory areas of the brain. In the online factsheet “The Important Role of Executive Functioning and Self-Regulation in ADHD,” Dr. Russell Barkley (2011, used with permission), leading ADHD researcher and expert, explains executive functioning as “those neuropsychological processes needed to sustain problem solving toward a goal.” Working memory, the ability to hold information in your mind for a few minutes to a few hours, is the foundation of executive functioning; it allows you to plan ahead, organize, pay attention, and problem-solve. Meal planning involves going from step 1 to step 2 and then from step 2 to step 3 without getting distracted and ultimately getting thrown off course.
Sensory Overload in the Grocery Aisle
Many women with ADHD are hypersensitive to stimuli. This can make a trip to the local supermarket feel like being in the middle of Times Square on New Year’s Eve. For example, have you ever walked into a supermarket and felt like you were going to have a seizure? Perhaps your head started spinning when you saw ten thousand colorful package labels row after row on shelves, screaming, “Pick me! Pick me!” You found yourself singing along with the Muzak, losing track of what to do next. The horrific fluorescent lighting made you feel a tad seasick. The sound of screaming babies and whiny young children bored through your brain with the intensity of a lightning bolt. The smell of household cleaners flowed into the deli, and you felt sickened by the competing scents. The whole experience of grocery shopping may be so overwhelming that you avoid it as much as possible—until you’re down to your last roll of toilet paper. So buying the food is hard enough, but that’s just the beginning. Once you get home, you have to put away the groceries. No problem, right? Wrong!
Seven Bottles of Ketchup and No Milk
How many times have you searched for a crucial ingredient in your kitchen only to shut down because your cabinets, cupboards, and pantry are so disorganized that you can’t find what you need? It’s the old seven-bottles-of-ketchup-but-no-milk syndrome.
Though desperate to have a system, you usually don’t have one, and if you do, it’s generally short-lived. Coming home from the grocery store, food is often haphazardly put away because it simply takes too much mental and physical effort, especially after hours of sensory assault at the market, to keep up an organized system. You may as well be blind when putting away the groceries. Even under the best of circumstances, it’s almost impossible to set up a system because of your difficulty seeing the big picture. Further, spatial relationships create quite the challenge: how do you fit all those frozen foods into that small freezer? It’s like playing a game of Tetris, manipulating packages so that everything fits in neatly. Not an easy task for a woman with ADHD.
There’s a neurologically based “out of sight, out of mind” mind-set for women with ADHD. This results in a lot of duplications and waste because you’ve forgotten about those seven bottles of ketchup sitting way in the back of the cupboard or that now-rotting second big bag of prewashed salad mix shoved into the back of the fridge.
How Cooking Can Leave You Boiling with Rage, Half-Baked, or Just Plain Raw
It seems that most women have a flair for multitasking, and though some women with ADHD often do multitask well in certain situations, cooking is often not one of them. Think about it. Cooking requires all of these brain functions:
Let’s take a closer look at each of these functions. Below are some examples of real-life challenges that can be roadblocks to seamless, successful food prep.
Transitioning
For many (but not all) women with ADHD, it’s more enjoyable to do just about anything but cook. We know that the ADHD brain craves stimulation. For the woman with ADHD, spending time online, watching TV, gardening, or engaging in other stimulating activities are much more satisfying than something as banal as meal planning. These types of pleasurable activities can capture one’s attention for hours on end. So, though many think of ADHD as an inability to pay attention, it’s actually the inability to consistently sustain attention, especially with boring tasks.
Transitioning out of a pleasurable activity and into a boring or frustrating one borders on the impossible, so naturally procrastination and avoidance kick in. In fact, transitioning from one activity to another is often difficult in general for women with ADHD. Nancy Ratey, EdM (2010), internationally recognized authority on ADHD coaching, writes as a guest blogger for Children and Adults with ADHD (CHADD)’s ADHD Coach blog, “Transitions require the brain to shift its focus and attention. The ADHD brain often overreacts to this discontinuity by going into a ‘startle’ state, making the person anxious and stressed.” Is this how you feel in the kitchen?
Multitasking
You’re stirring the pot of pasta while keeping an eye on the chicken in the oven. The oven timer goes off, but you forgot to start slicing tomatoes for the salad. You end up leaving the chicken in too long because you’re back tending the pasta. You pull the chicken out of the oven and drain the pasta so that the chicken doesn’t get cold. You forget to cut up the lettuce that’s been sitting in the fridge and end up throwing the tomatoes on a plate. Again, dinner is overcooked chicken, undercooked pasta, and no green vegetable.
The example above demonstrates executive functioning gone wrong. Think of executive functioning as the orchestra conductor of the brain, who coordinates planning, organizing, paying attention, and following steps. When there is executive dysfunction, confusion and disorganization occur, much like what would happen in an orchestra if the conductor was blindfolded and wearing earplugs.
Staying Focused
You’re already looking for any excuse to get out of the boring job of meal prep, so when you remember that there was a story you wanted to catch on the 6:00 p.m. news, you promise yourself you’ll only leave the kitchen for five minutes. But, oh, my god, the story is fascinating! While in the family room, you notice the pile of newspapers and toss them into the recycle bin in the garage. While in the garage, you decide to take the garbage to the curb. While outside, you notice some flowers wilting and decide to pick, oh, just a few dying petals off. Twenty-five minutes later when you’re back in the kitchen, the rice is scorched, ruining your pot and your dinner and leaving the “lovely” scent of charred rice in the air. You sit down on the kitchen floor and want to cry.
People with ADHD find it very difficult to stick to a single task when there are other competing stimuli, whether it’s hearing the sound of a radio, seeing something interesting out of the corner of their eye, or thinking of an upcoming vacation. Simply put, people with ADHD have difficulties blocking out distractions. Scientists believe this is due to differences in neurobiological chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine.
Timing
Anyone who cooks a lot can tell you that putting on a great meal has everything to do with timing. People with ADHD are notoriously challenged when it comes to time management and a sense of time in general. An hour can feel like a minute to them, and a minute can feel like an hour. Though it may seem that the food has been cooking for ten minutes, in reality, that ten minutes can easily slip into forty-five. There goes another meal burned to a crisp.
Trying to get everything ready and placed on the table at the same time can feel like being the ringmaster of a three-ring circus: chicken takes an hour in the oven, rice boils for twenty minutes, peas for five. And if you’re brave enough to add sauce for a bit of pizzazz, that’s another step to figure out. It’s much easier to pick up the phone and call 1-800-SEND-DINNER.
Paying Attention to Detail: Tedium Is the Enemy
Since meal planning is such a chore for the woman with ADHD, she is often reduced to repetition to help simplify things. But then she has to contend with boredom of preparing the same meals week in and week out. Yawn!
As previously mentioned, people with ADHD thrive on stimuli. Brain scans show that when people with ADHD are forced to do boring tasks, the prefrontal cortex slows down, causing sluggishness. In order to be productive, focused, and alert, the ADHD brain needs a higher level of stimulation than the non-ADHD brain.
Add repetitive chopping and measuring to that, and, oh, my! For women with ADHD, paying attention to details and doing math are often areas of challenge—and recipes call for both. What sort of pan is used for omelets? Which rack is the middle rack? How high is a high temperature? How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? How does one cut a recipe in half? (That said, note that though these examples are targeted toward women who would rather do anything but be in the kitchen, some women with ADHD are, in fact, exceptional cooks and find cooking to be a stimulating, creative experience—everything but the cleanup, that is. More on cleanup in a moment.)
Juggling the Family’s Needs
There are plenty of challenges in the kitchen when the house is empty, but if you have a family and are trying to cook when the family is home, all hell breaks loose. The kids and hubby are eager to share their day with you, and there’s lots of bustle, with people ducking in and out of the kitchen, throwing you off course faster than a ship without a compass. It’s also the time of day when irritability strikes. Everyone is tired and hungry. If you’re the primary chef of the house, or it’s your night to cook and your meal is running late, or someone is unhappy with the choice you made for dinner, or if you are feeling stressed, any one of you might just get hangry (hungry + angry = hangry). And that’s when things can get ugly.
If you have a partner and your partner handles the cleanup (or better yet, cooking and cleanup), lucky for you; but if that’s not the case, then you’re on to the grand finale of the meal. After a full day’s work, you’ve struggled through planning, shopping, prepping, and cooking, and then the end of the day arrives: cleanup. Why is that such an ordeal? By the time you’ve prepared the meal, you are so wiped out, the thought of clearing the table, let alone washing dishes, is about as appealing as climbing Mount Everest. And if you work outside the home, your more important job is waiting for you: being a partner/spouse and/or mom. So typically the dirty dishes either sit where they were last touched by human hands or are dumped in the sink for later attention. This, of course, means waking up to a huge mess the next morning—not a great way to start the day. Again, the issue of boredom gets in the way. Who wants to stand there washing and drying, or even loading the dishwasher, when there are much more interesting or relaxing things to do before retiring for the night?
Entertaining. Ugh. Now you’re doing all the things you normally struggle with, but you’re also doing it “on stage.” It’s like the fear of cooking on steroids. Women with ADHD typically already feel inadequate in so many areas and try to hide their perceived shortcomings. Putting on a bash can accentuate these feelings of shame and not being able to measure up. After all, it’s one thing to serve your family mac ‘n’ cheese because you forgot to pick up the buns that were to go with the hamburgers. It’s another thing to forget to buy ten steaks for the four couples who will arrive at your home in an hour. There is the additional stress of planning for any guests who have food sensitivities, food allergies, dietary restrictions, or particular preferences because they are vegetarians, nondrinkers, and so on. Then there’s the added pressure of making sure the house is presentable. That alone could give any woman with ADHD a reason not to open her home to guests!
Now that we know how meal planning, shopping, cooking, and entertaining are often areas of deficit and difficulty for women with ADHD, let’s explore the many tips and suggestions that will make life in the kitchen more manageable. The solutions below include food prep shortcuts, tips for avoiding sensory overload when shopping, visual cues, and other strategies that can go a long way to take the stress out of meal preparation and restore the pleasure of spending quality time with your family or friends around the table.
Meal Planning for Single or Group Servings
Utilizing organizing techniques for the kitchen is imperative for helping you to survive while cooking in it. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
If you are single:
If you have a family:
In order to address these questions, it’s helpful to have strategies to keep you on task. You can jot down meal ideas in your planner so you’re not rushing at the last minute to put something on the table. This includes choosing your shopping days. Your smartphone is also a fantastic tool for keeping track of what ingredients and supplies are needed. There are tons of apps that can also suggest meals according to what ingredients you happen to already have at hand. Use online recipe websites or quick and easy cookbooks to come up with additional ideas, especially for those days when you’re rushing and need some shortcut meals.
Plan or Starve (POS) Method
Using visual cues and tangible reminders comes in handy when striving to remember chores and routines. My POS method is a unique way to make meal planning and grocery shopping less stressful. Here’s how it works:
Having this system in place automatically removes the worry about deciding what to make. Use your QE cards for those nights you’re working late or rushing kids to late afternoon sports practices, music classes, or other activities. Keep the cards in the kitchen for quick reference. To see a short video of what my POS meal plan looks like and how the system works, visit http://youtu.be/-Y-ik3Z5CDY.
Some women have a system of making the same thing every week—for example, chicken on Monday, spaghetti on Tuesday—and rotating. Others need a list visible at all times, reminding them what to make for dinner that night. They take that list to the store each day and buy the needed ingredients.
Grocery Shopping Anti-Stressors
You can never have too many tricks in your back pocket when it comes to making shopping an easier task. Below are a few tips to help reduce the stress of grocery shopping:
Now that you have some strategies up your sleeve, you can delete the local pizzeria’s phone number from your speed dial. Below are some kitchen tips to help with meal prep.
Shortcuts in the Kitchen
If you hate cooking as much as I do, you’ll want to gather as many ideas as possible to make this task easier on you. Here are some tips to lighten your load:
People who enjoy cooking often have lots of shortcuts. If you have friends who like to cook, ask them about some of their favorite shortcuts.
Bonus Tips
Planning meals for a family is always a challenge. If you need a little help on that front, here are a few more tips:
There is nothing wrong with bringing in dinner two, three, even five times a week if it’s within your budget. Says Sheila, a woman I worked with years back:
My husband was always on a diet, and my two kids had not a single meal they liked in common other than take-out pizza. One ate chicken; the other hated it. One loved pasta; the other gagged on it. Cooking was difficult for me, but the idea of making two to three different meals every night put me over the edge. Though the pediatrician told me not to give in, I just couldn’t see one or the other child eat cereal every night, so I threw in the towel and picked up meals everyone would enjoy. I fit it into my budget by removing luxuries like cable TV. To me, carryout was not a luxury. It was a necessity.
Eating out frequently is also an option if your budget can handle it. This solves the problem of choosing meals that please everyone in the family. Children especially seem to enjoy buffet- or cafeteria-style restaurants.
Others have found success in bartering. If your spouse or teenager enjoys cooking, swap out cooking for cleaning up or something else that he or she hates to do. Some people even barter with friends. Consider babysitting or gardening for a friend or relative in exchange for a week’s worth of prepared meals.
In many towns, there are “chop shops” where you can put together an entire week’s worth of meals in just a couple hours by using their prepped food, tools, recipes, and containers. Then you can just pop them in the freezer when you get home. Go with a friend or your kids for a fun outing.
Since meal prep can be hazardous to some women’s self-esteem, I consider these shortcuts and strategies to be accommodations, much like the special support a child who is struggling in school needs in order to be successful. There is no shame in getting the help you need.
You can never have too many tips to help you with organizing your kitchen. Below are a few more ideas for organizing and storing your food items:
It may take some time to make these changes in your kitchen, but it will be time well spent. Being able to see where your food is or where it should be stored will in the long run save you not only time but also a lot of frustration.
Bonus Tips
Below are some extra tips to keep your momentum going. Use these as starters; I’m sure you’ll come up with more once you get rolling.
You’ve asked friends and relatives for cooking shortcuts. The Internet has hundreds of websites with food storage tips, too, so take advantage of those resources.
Whether you’re a whiz in the kitchen (and I don’t mean Cheez Whiz), or you bump and bang your way through meal prep, you can benefit from these snappy shortcuts. Sticky notes, index card reminders, timers, even mini posters with step-by-step instructions are all helpful aids for getting through meal preparation.
It’s okay to use shortcuts, such as premixed, prepared meals, but do your best to avoid buying foods with lots of preservatives and added chemicals. Shopping at discount wholesale stores that don’t allow additives or preservatives in their foods will not only save you money but also guarantee that all the food you purchase is free of chemical additives. Go to my website, http://ADDconsults.com, for specific product names and stores. It can also be useful to keep lots of healthy snacks around the house—such as foods with protein, like yogurt and cheese—as these seem to help ADHD brains with attention and calming. Using recipes with fewer than five steps and fewer than five ingredients is ideal. In fact, feel free to toss out or donate all those cookbooks sitting around gathering dust. If you haven’t used them in two years, ditch them.
Know your own biological temperament. If you’re a morning person, prep dinner when you are finished with breakfast. If you’re a night owl, experiment with using a crockpot and throwing all the ingredients in the night before. Then stick the pot in the fridge until morning when you can turn it on and come home to a ready-made hot dinner.
It’s never too early to engage the kids. Even a five-year-old can set a table or help with prep and cleanup.
If you’re lucky and have the budget, hire someone to prepare your meals. There’s no need to feel guilty! You are making an accommodation for your ADHD brain.
You’re not the only one who hates kitchen cleanup! Below are a few more tips to help get done what you really don’t want to do:
If you find it helpful, offer yourself a reward for completing the cleanup. It could be a relaxing bath, some computer time, or a fun game with your kids. Just make it something you’ll enjoy.
You might just surprise yourself and find that, with these tools, you want to entertain more often. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next Martha Stewart. Okay, maybe not…but do use these tips to help reduce the stress of entertaining:
As my parents began aging and found it difficult to cook and host holiday dinners, I offered to bring them fully cooked, prepared carryout meals. Even so, it was hard for me to gauge how to reheat things or which containers to use, how to time the heat-up, and which things to put in the oven first. Even carryout can be a challenge when it’s for a large gang, especially if you’re not that familiar with the kitchen!
Meal planning, cooking, cleaning up, and entertaining are not typically areas of strength for most women with ADHD, though there are the shining exceptions. But girls are often raised with the societal expectation of becoming the nurturing parent, so offering daily, nutritious meals gulped down by an appreciative family is something many women strive for. It’s a symbol of love and connection with our families. But when a seemingly easy task feels unreachable, self-esteem plummets. Hopefully, you will come to a point of self-acceptance where you don’t feel valued by how many bites of healthy, delicious home-cooked food your family consumes; instead, you’ll come to celebrate time with your family, partner, or yourself as the priority, even if it means dinner comes in a plastic container. It’s time for you to make the rules in the kitchen. Hopefully, all the tips in this chapter will help you get back on track.