Fixing the Dinner Dilemma
Katerina Pavlakis 
A Simple Trick to Spark Dinner Ideas
When you know what you want, you know what to do.
I usually know what I feel like eating, so I don’t get stuck for dinner ideas: my kitchen inspiration simply moves in the general direction of my cravings.
But sometimes we can get cut off from knowing our cravings, that is, cut off from feeling connected to ourselves.
For me, this happens when I am stressed and overwhelmed: there is so much noise in my head that I can't hear the voice of my body, telling me what it needs.
It doesn't happen often, but it happened the other day:
I was feeling super stressed (to the point of nauseated) and I just could not figure out what I fancied eating (and therefore cooking).
I was just drawing a total blank.
.
One way to get me started is to look at what I've got - in this case, I had boiled potatoes, salad things, various bits and pieces. But I could still not figure out what to do with them.
Truly stuck and uninspired. Ugh.
.
As I stood there frustrated and impatient, a recent conversation from my podcast came to mind. We'd been discussing simple ways of reconnecting with ourselves when overwhelmed.
Could those ideas help me now, in my kitchen conundrum?
And then it hit me: I realised that I needed to reconnect to my senses to get out of my head and bring me back into my body and my cooking inspiration.
And what better way to awaken the senses than cooking?
So I decided to get started backwards, just with a simple dressing for those potatoes.
Making a dressing is about getting the balance of flavours right - so I knew it would force me to keep tasting as I go.
And with every lick of the mixing spoon I could feel my taste buds drawing me back into my senses, into my body. So I just kept going - tasting and tweaking, just making the dressing.
.
It turned out to be a yoghurt, capers and herbs kind of number.
Yoghurt because the boiled potatoes made me think of the potato salad my mum used to make. I really wanted to use mustard with the yoghurt but realised we had run out... so the next best thing that came up in my mind to give me that sharp mustardy sensation was capers. I squished them a bit with a fork so their flavour would mix better. It tasted just as I imagined! I added olive oil and herbs just because I always do.
All that tasting and pondering and tasting again did the trick: it reconnected me to my tastebuds, therefore my cravings, which in turn ignited my cooking inspiration.
By the time the dressing tasted good to me, I was ready to go back to my other ingredients with a sense of what I wanted to eat with that dressing.
Inspiration deadlock solved.
.
How about you? How do you get dinner inspiration?
I'd love to know.
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For the record: what emerged was a potato salad with lettuce, tomato, tinned beans and mint, doused in said yoghurt caper dressing. We ate it with tinned sardines.
