🍳 I watch cooking shows to unwind and I barely cook

For about 2 months now I've put a cooking competition on every evening after work. I don't cook much, so it's not for recipes. I can burn water if I'm distracted. It's the pace I like. Calm people, a clock on the wall, everyone chopping onions quietly. Nobody's screaming at anybody, and that's more than I can say for most of my day. I tried a reality show before this one. Within 10 minutes there were two people crying over a seating plan. Too much. My shoulders went up to my ears and stayed there. The cooking shows don't do that. Even when someone's dish falls apart, the judges are kind about it. You see someone fixing a sauce for 8 minutes and you just breathe out. A colleague at work said she does the same with baking shows before bed. She calls it her wind down. She had a name for it before I did. We swapped titles at lunch on Thursday. She laughed that I'd picked the quiet one with the soft music. I told her I'd picked it because the host doesn't shout. She said, same. Last Sunday I made an omelette while watching one episode. It came out okay. I felt oddly proud. My mother saw it and asked who had been cooking. I took the credit anyway. I won't be entering any competition. Still, I'm keeping the evening routine. It works a lot better than scrolling on my phone, and it costs me nothing at all.

I began one to learn a few knife skills. By episode 2 I'd given that up completely. Now it's just a calm hum while I scroll my phone and eat. I never needed to cook anything. I only wanted somebody to do it nicely near me. Your omelette made me smile, because mine from last week was a complete disaster.

Baking ones work best for me. Watching someone wait for dough to rise is calming. Nothing happens and that's the point. I eat dinner and my shoulders drop a little. My wife watches the same ones on her phone in the other room. So 2 screens, 1 show, no talking at all. Not the worst way to end a long day.