ADHD & Cooking with Rachel Ambrose
In this episode, ADHD coach Rachel Ambrose explains how cooking can be challenging for people with ADHD and gives us some tips on how to get started!
Highlights
How Tony Bourdain got Rachel into food.
The challenges that people with ADHD can have in the kitchen.
Finding reliable resources for recipes that are good.
What’s not helpful when it comes to feeding yourself
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Summary
Rachel Ambrose, an inspiring ADHD coach with a passion for cooking, reveals her journey into the culinary world, fueled by a love for Anthony Bourdain and a personal commitment to learning after her mother's passing. We explore how her ADHD shapes her kitchen adventures and coaching style, emphasizing that cooking is a skill to be mastered, not an innate talent.
Rachel's story is a testament to the power of celebrating small victories and building confidence in the kitchen, encouraging listeners to find joy in the process and approach cooking with creativity and realistic goals instead of striving for perfection.
Our conversation sheds light on the unique hurdles faced by those with ADHD, particularly around executive function challenges in the kitchen. From demystifying complex tasks like roasting a chicken to sharing tips for reducing anxiety, we provide practical strategies for making cooking more accessible and enjoyable. Rachel highlights the value of well-written recipes, recommending Deb Perlman's Smitten Kitchen as a go-to resource.
Highlights
(00:00) ADHD and Food Connection With Rachel
(04:55) ADHD Cooking Challenges and Resources
(11:17) Cooking Strategies and Pressure Relief
Transcript
01:25 - Sarah (Host)
The Adulting with ADHD podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. Please see a medical professional if you think you have ADHD or have ADHD and need additional assistance. For podcast archives, please visit patreoncom slash. Adulting with ADHD. This is the adulting with ADHD podcast. Self empowerment for people with ADHD. Adhd podcast self-empowerment for people with ADHD. Today I'm very excited to have with me Rachel Ambrose. Rachel is an ADHD coach. How are you doing, rachel? I'm doing really well. How are you? I'm good. Just to set this up a little, we met at the ADHD conference recently in Dallas and you led a really great talk on food and eating, and so tell us a little bit about you before we get into the episode.
02:27 - Rachel (Guest)
Yeah, so I'm a certified ADHD and life coach. I run Porchlight Coaching and I see clients virtually and globally. I love food and eating. I'm an ex-restaurant worker. I've worked about every front of house job that you can possibly imagine and I love to help my clients get in touch with themselves and work better with their brains. And you know cause. We're human. That includes eating and cooking.
02:59 - Sarah (Host)
Awesome, and so how did you get the hone in on this? I think you just answered that question about the restaurant. Is there any other? How you came to connecting your ADHD with your food and how it all worked together?
03:12 - Rachel (Guest)
Yeah. So I first got into food when I was in my late teens and early 20s. I watched Tony Bourdain when he had his Parts Unknown and no Reservation shows, and that really got me into food as connection between people. I didn't know how to cook until I moved back home after college and found my dad living off of frozen meals and takeout after my mom passed away when I was 21, because she was the major cook in the household and I was like, oh, this is not a long-term solution, dad, I'm going to learn how to cook. And so I taught myself how to cook.
03:55
I'm entirely self-taught and I turned out to be pretty good at it, and then I went and got jobs in restaurants and I think that for certain ADHDers, cooking is something that we can be very good at because of how systematic we are, and for other people whose brains work a little bit differently, it can be very overwhelming and it can also bring up a lot of feelings of like I should just be able to know how to do this, and it's like I'm sorry we don't slide out of the womb learning how to perfectly roast a chicken. This is a learned skill and, just like anything else, you need to start small and celebrate whatever successes and wins you can get and continue to build on that.
04:53 - Sarah (Host)
Excellent, I love that. So you talked a little bit about challenges that people with ADHD can have in the kitchen. Let's talk a little bit more about that. I hear executive function come up a lot when we're talking about food and ADHD. So how does that fit in and how do you see that coming into play with your clients?
05:12 - Rachel (Guest)
Yeah, well, it's so difficult to handle executive function around cooking because it's so involved and there are so many different steps, Like, if you want to, let's go back to the roasting a chicken example, you have to make sure that you have the equipment that you need. You have to make sure that you have, like a roasting pan or a skillet or something for the chicken to live in while it lives in the oven. You have to make sure that you have the chicken, that it hasn't gone bad or you know that you can afford to get a whole chicken. You have to learn how to prep the chicken.
05:53
I didn't know until I, you know, started doing recipe research that there's actually like a bag of giblets in most commercially available chickens that you have to pull out. And if you don't know that kind of thing, like you're going to have a bad time with this roasting your chicken experience. You're going to pull this thing out of the oven and be like, why is there a strange paper bag that's on fire? Like, why is? Why is my kitchen ablaze? How did this happen? I truly don't know and there's nobody that teaches you. Like, hey, there's a bag of giblets inside of commercially available chickens that you need to manually remove.
06:34 - Sarah (Host)
Get the memo yeah.
06:38 - Rachel (Guest)
And so like, unless you follow a recipe and the recipe writer thinks to include that information, you're not going to know and you're going to have a bad time.
06:48
And I think it's really easy for us to get down on ourselves when we have negative experiences and just kind of like assume that there's something wrong with us, that you know, maybe the chicken didn't cook as well as we wanted it to or like it, you know, maybe it was bland or maybe, like we just weren't really sure like the steps involved or what to do to make this a really beautiful, tasty thing, our expectations, and that in and of itself, like something happening that is not aligned with how we expected things to go, can be really dysregulating for us.
07:33
So it brings in all of these skills like research and planning and making sure that we have everything that we need before we start and reading a recipe, and that's a really big crapshoot. There's a lot of recipes that are really badly written, that just like pop up to the top of a Google search because so many other people have clicked on them. That doesn't make it a good recipe, and so finding reliable resources for those recipes and for the people that we follow and learn how to cook from is also a really important part that nobody really talks about.
08:12 - Sarah (Host)
I was just thinking when you were, when you were talking. I have never heard that before. Because I do, I pull the first recipe I see when I'm Googling and I had no idea. I just assumed you know. Well, it's at the top. It's got to be good. That's incredible. Do you have any like places you like to go for recipes? Do you have any favorites?
08:33 - Rachel (Guest)
Yeah, so there's a lady named Deb Perlman who runs a blog called smitten kitchencom and I credit this woman with teaching me how to cook. She is incredibly precise in her recipe writing. She tests recipes for sometimes months before they go live on the blog, and she does a really good job of making sure that the recipes are written in a very clear way. And if she gets feedback from readers where they're like hey, like what did you mean by this particular sentence? She'll go back and edit the recipe to make it more clear and to have better clarity around what she's trying to tell us. She has the blog, and then she also has three cookbooks. She just came out with a brand new cookbook at the end of November.
09:25
I believe that I haven't gotten to yet, but it's on my Amazon wishlist, so she's where I tell most people to start.
09:32
Like, if they have no idea, like how to set up their kitchen, she has a really handy list of common equipment and things to buy that she finds to be really useful in her house.
09:47
And, again, like, that's not the kind of thing that every recipe writer thinks to include in a food blog and it can be very helpful to be like okay, like what is a nine by 13 pan? Like what is the difference between like a cookie sheet and a roasting sheet? Roasting sheets have the little lips around the sides so that juices don't run out. But if you don't know that and you just go out and you think that a cookie pan, that a cookie sheet, is the same thing as a roasting sheet, again you're going to have a bad time because your oven's going to be on fire because all of the juices that you're trying to roast on and all of the oil and whatever is going to drip down to the bottom of your oven. And again you're going to be like what am I doing wrong? And it's like, it's so complex and I think the complexity for a lot of ADHD years is what scares us off.
10:42 - Sarah (Host)
Absolutely Totally. I didn't know that about the roasting pan. I feel like I'm learning so much right now Fantastic. I don't know if you've ever been put on a waiting list, but therapy is hard to come by these days. If you need therapy and you need someone to talk, to consider BetterHelp. I've been using BetterHelp on and off since the pandemic and it's honestly been really helpful when I can't reach my normal therapist. To save 10% off your first month, visit betterhelpcom. Slash ADHD adulting. That's betterhelp H-E-L-P dot com slash ADHD adulting. Well, yeah, I mean I took a cooking class with my job. It was like a team building activity and the woman asked me to go fetch a mixing bowl and I'm just like okay, and so I bring back a bowl and it's like that's not the right one. Wait a second.
11:35 - Rachel (Guest)
What's the right one? What do you mean? Like, I need more specific instructions. There's a difference between this you know this bowl and a mixing bowl. Why is this the wrong one?
11:45 - Sarah (Host)
And can you not mix in this Like what is?
11:48 - Rachel (Guest)
this Right. Why is this bowl not fit for mixing? I don't understand.
11:52 - Sarah (Host)
Yeah, and I'm not going to lie, it was a little triggering because I didn't have an upbringing where I really learned all those food prep things and it wasn't necessarily modeled for me either. I didn't have a lot of that around and so super triggering just grabbing a mixing bowl and all of a sudden it's like a whole thing and I had to like walk myself back like hold on now, hold on you you never got the class. You never got the course and all the bowls you know.
12:19 - Rachel (Guest)
Right. Nobody ever sat you down and said like this is a mixing bowl, this is a salad bowl, and you're like, what's the difference? They're both bowls. It's fine, Right yeah totally so.
12:32 - Sarah (Host)
I want to talk a little bit about strategy, which I know could take an entire afternoon, and so I'm just going to. I'm going to try to narrow down my question and and ask what's an example of a type of strategy that really resonates with your clients?
12:47 - Rachel (Guest)
Yeah, I think, starting small and starting with things that they already know and have access to. Like, most people can put together a bag salad. So it's only a hop, skip and a jump from saying, okay, that bag salad that you have in your fridge, what else do you want to add to that salad? Because you can add all manner of things to salads that you also have in your fridge, like what tastes good to you, what intrigues you to add to this bag salad, and that could be things like you know, precooked chicken breast or a can of chickpeas or a fried egg or extra kinds of cheeses that are kicking around in your fridge. And again, as soon as you add in the creativity element and the world is your oyster element like there are no wrong answers, it's just what you like.
13:49
I think that takes the pressure off of a lot of people because, especially like on a lot of social media these days, we just see people like pulling out this beautiful end result and we don't see the process. We don't see like the five or six times that the person testing this recipe tried it and like it just wasn't quite right and so we just assume that, like, everybody is better at this than we are, and also that they just know things and have access to information that we don't have. And so it's like, okay, like if you can boil water and make pasta, cool, that's great. What else do you want to do? Like, are you making Kraft Mac and cheese for yourself? Cool, you can get some like fresh broccoli at the store and just like pop broccoli into your pasta water for the last 30 seconds just to steam it and get it to be really beautiful and green, and then you have an entirely new nutritional element to your mac and cheese. That's great.
15:00 - Sarah (Host)
Mind blown. I didn't know you could do that. Well, yeah, I learned the other day my kid does not like raw broccoli and she said you know, mama, I just I don't like this, I want it hot. Something I just learned on the fly I dampened a paper towel and wrapped the raw broccoli in a paper towel and zapped it, and I felt like a magician. So, yeah, necessity, I guess, can be the mother of invention. Sometimes too, it's like you. Just like you said you got to start from somewhere, but you know you don't have to have it all figured out. So, okay, I think I know the all the answers to this question. But what's an approach that has not been helpful when it comes to feeding yourself?
15:48 - Rachel (Guest)
My gosh, putting too much pressure on yourself.
15:52
Or like going from I'm making Kraft mac and cheese to I want to make like the best you know oven baked mac and cheese that anybody has ever made, and like putting the expectation and the bar way too high. I like to say with my clients okay, you have these goals and expectations, that's great, but how do we put the bar of success on the floor so that walking over it just feels very natural and doable to you? Because I think we run into issues where we see these amazing recipes and we're like I want to do that and it's like okay, this thing actually calls for like equipment that we don't have or you know, you can't go from like I know how to make fish sticks, which is great, to I want to roast a whole bone in fish, because those are two diametrically opposed cooking techniques and things like they may not you know they may as well not even be the same kind of dish Totally, and you never know when you might find a bag of something in what you're trying to cook, right?
17:08 - Sarah (Host)
It's like, is there something in the fish that we have to worry about? Well, actually, bones, right? I?
17:14 - Rachel (Guest)
mean actually actually bones. And also you have to descale your, your fish fillets. They can do that for you A lot of times. If you ask the fish department at your local grocery store to descale a fillet for you, they will be happy to do that or even just take the skin off.
17:30 - Sarah (Host)
Cool, see that right there is super helpful. I would totally do that and then just go straight to the grilling. It's not even mess with it. Rachel, this has been such a valuable talk. I feel like this is going to really give a lot of value to our listeners and if they want to keep up with you and know what you're up to, where can they find you online?
17:52 - Rachel (Guest)
Yeah, so my site is welcometotheporchlightcom. You can follow me on Instagram at porchlightcoaching, and you can find me on TikTok at iceboxplums.
18:07 - Sarah (Host)
Excellent, Rachel. Well, thank you so much for being on the show and hope to have you back sometime.
18:12 - Rachel (Guest)
All right, of course. Thank you so much, this was so fun.
18:15 - Sarah (Host)
Yeah no problem. Take care you too.
