Are You Having Fun When Trying New Foods?
Creativity in the Kitchen
Trying new foods creatively can be a fun way to enhance family interactions. It can also be a fun way to provide sensitive eaters with opportunities to discover new food options and improve their nutrition.
To try new foods, you can follow recipes, or you can improvise, whatever feels right to you.
There are plenty of visual media options from which to draw inspiration. Ordinary people all the way up to experienced master chefs are providing great cooking demonstrations through many available channels. It is easy to access the information they provide for free.
There are many fun and enticing ways to try new foods at restaurants too. You can look for new food options in your favorite restaurants, or challenge yourself to try some you have not yet tried.
How Does Our Mindset Help Us Experiment with New Foods?
There is not a right or wrong way to add creativity to the process of trying or preparing new foods. What is helpful is to adopt a mindset that places success in the effort, not in the result. This mindset is more likely to cultivate eagerness to practice trying new things, even when faced with setbacks.
Carol Dweck is a psychologist and researcher known worldwide for her research on motivation and mindsets. In her work, she makes a distinction between people with a growth mindset and people with a fixed mindset.
Her research has shown that people with a growth mindset use setbacks as stepping stones to growth and progress. Where as people with a fixed mindset become easily discouraged and stunt their growth and progress.
The good thing is that people with a fixed mindset can evolve and become someone with a growth mindset. It only takes learning and experiencing that effort and practice are important keys to developing abilities and talents.
Your ability to try new foods and to experiment creatively in the kitchen can improve with practice.
Give yourself a lot of credit just for trying. Add the cherry on top if the the end result meets or exceeds your expectations. If the effort does not produce the expected results, simply try again.
Experimenting with new foods is a great way to draw children into the kitchen. It’s a great way to model for them what it looks like to express creativity with the process of preparing food, or trying new foods.
This also presents a great opportunity to stress the importance of a growth mindset.
Use the above link to access a few lessons. You can use them to teach or expand on the concept of growth mindset.
Kitchen Tools
I have used a particular strategy to motivate my family to experiment in the kitchen. I gift interesting kitchen gadgets. Usually at Christmas time everyone receives A small kitchen tool in their Christmas stocking. Sooner or later, they use the tool because it sparks curiosity.
This strategy catapulted family members into the category of people who try new foods.
It does take some effort to select the right tool. It has to be interesting and innovative, not just cute. Some times, the tool relates to a favorite cuisine or a cuisine in which they have expressed an interest.
Could being creative in the kitchen improve our creativity in other areas of our lives?
Many experts believe that the more we exercise creativity, the more creative we can be. Do you agree?
Creativity is synonymous with ingenuity, inventiveness, and originality. It allows people to create new ideas or see other possibilities. These important skills help people solve problems and communicate with others.