Like most of you I have a huuuuuge board on Pinterest with all sorts of yummy recipes. And like most of you I’ve only made about 0.001% of them. That’s why I came up with the idea of organizing Pinterest dinners. Allow me to explain …
On my board I currently have over 200 recipe pins. Everything on there looks absolutely delicious and it’s all things that I would love to eat. And yet I’ve never actually gotten around to making them …
Why is that?
There’s two reasons I think. One is that I’ve never really been a ‘kitchen princess’ as we say in Dutch: I’ve never loved cooking and so all I can make are the basics (I make a mean sunny side up ;-).
The second reason is that I’m not much of a ‘host’. You know how everyone has that one friend that’s always inviting everyone over, serving them drinks and making sure no glass is ever empty? Well … that’s not me. Whenever I have friends over, the first thing I tell them is that they can have anything they want, but they better ask for it since I’m terrible at keeping everyone’s glasses full. I’m more the ‘grab anything you want from the fridge’ kind of host.
My internal conflict
So there I found myself with this internal struggle: “I really want to eat and make all of these recipes, but I can’t seem to motivate myself to actually do it.”
The solution
Like with most ‘conflicts in my life’ I needed to find external motivation ;-) So I decided that I would individually invite my closest friends over for a ‘Pinterest dinner’: they could choose any of the dishes on my board and I would make it for them.
This way, I would have no other option but to prepare a recipe from my board and I would be having a good time doing it. Way better than just slaving away in the kitchen and cook food for just me.
Hacks to make this work for me
I understood that ‘cooking’ is a vulnerable thing for me: it was quite know in my circle of friends that I didn’t have a knack for it and so it was important for me not to ‘fail’. That’s why I decided to implement a few rules to make it easier for me to start and maintain this new habit:
- I started with my closest friends: so I wouldn’t be too stressed if the food ended up horrible.
- Only one friend per dinner: cooking for a crowd is always a bigger challenge than for 2 people.
- They pick the dish: I didn’t want to worry about wether they would like the food or not.
- Only one per week: so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed.
The result
I had a whole lot of guests over for dinner :-) It started out slowly because I didn’t want to tell too many friends, but after a while I even started inviting over people that I hadn’t spoken to in a while and it always ended up being a great evening.
I did this challenge for about a year and besides reconnecting with friends, I’ve found a new appreciation for cooking (even when it’s just for me) and actually found a few easy recipes that I still make to this day.
ps: This is a great way to invite a crush over for dinner! Just tell them you’re doing a ‘Pinterest dinner challenge’ and that they can pick any dish on your board. Works like a charm ;-)
