Hi, I’m Anna – the ADHD Foodie
I’m obsessed with cooking. Not in a temporary-hyperfixation-to-hobby-graveyard-pipeline kind of way. In a cooking-is-my-special-interest kind of way. My Pinterest food photography board will tell you everything you need to know.
But executive dysfunction is a real doozie. For years it got in the way of my dream of creating food content full time, not to mention actually feeding myself and my family all week. The decision fatigue, the task switching, the utter lack of ADHD friendly recipes that aren’t just burnout options or survival strategies or “brain boosting” bird food, but actual foodie passion projects that feel doable because they accommodate how my brain works.
I tried everything. Meal plans, recipe apps, more cookbooks than I care to admit. Every time I found myself burned out all over again I assumed the problem was me and that I was a bad cook. But then I’d find myself hosting Christmas dinner for 6 with raving feedback. I obviously had a knack for it. But why the heck could I feed my guests like royalty and myself like a paesant? I just couldn’t do cooking consistently the way it was presented to me.
“I love to cook but hate feeding myself!”
The answer came gradually. It started when I began my weightloss journey, started lifting weights and tracking macros. It caused me to start thinking in components rather than full meals. I began cooking individual proteins, carbs and vegetables in larger batches and building my plates by mixing and matching whatever I fancied that day. But it still required me to have to make sure I ate all my prepped components before spoiling. And there’s only so much I could fit in my fridge.
Enter Lego Lunches and Duplo Dinners! The concept of batch prepping meal components now had another element of freezing them into single portions and therefor extending the reach of a single cooking session for the same amount of effort which I much higher payoff. More time between refills, and each refil is simple enough I have memorised the routine and it happens on autopilot while I have my comfort show on in the background. It sounds almost too simple. But we have been led to believe that good cooking must always be complex otherwise it’s “lazy” or “less than” and that is just not true.
Having a reliable background process means I have energy left over to actually cook for the joy of it. To try something new just cause hyperfocus suddenly hits. Follow the dopamine and whip up a quick batch of sour cherry jam. Spend a Sunday afternoon trying out a new cake recipe just for fun. Create the kind of ADHD friendly food content I wish I had access to when I needed it most. Not just burnout options or survival strategies but actual foodie passion projects that feel doable because they work with my brain rather than against it.
Messy Little Foodie is the resource I could not find when I needed it.
I am not a nutritionist, I am not an ADHD coach and I am not here to hand you a 12 week plan. I’m an ADHD foodie. This blog is not about nutrition, nor about managing your eating patterns, though there’s certainly some overlap. But this is a cooking blog first and foremost, for those neurospicy peeps who actually love cooking but find doing it consistently genuinely hard. People who have been through the same cycle of inspiration and crash that I have. Who want practical recipes that work with their brain rather than against it, without nutrition infodumps, medical jargon or the kind of lingo that reinforces self-limiting beliefs around food and cooking.
I hope you find this blog a helpful and inspiring resource. Happy cooking!
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