Cooking and Tasting

Hello all! 

I was thinking about this last night while making dinner. 

After the surgery, when I'm feeling up to it of course, how am I going to handle tasting or not tasting the foods that I cook for my family? 

Do your best not to. Tastes add up, and can trigger eating and cravings.

The months after surgery are the time to make new habits. Some are harder than others. It can be hard.

Well, I guess it depends on what you are tasting. I understand you need to taste in order to season but try to keep it at a taste and not a bite. If you can, have someone else taste for you if it's something off plan.

I cook often, I love to cook.  I did pre-op, I still do.  I do taste while I'm cooking but, I cook foods that I eat.  My family eats the things I cook and, aside from basic sides like rice and pasta, I don't cook things that I don't eat.  

Tastes add up, so it's important to be aware of how much tasting you're actually doing and take that into account with your eating at the meal.  

As a hobby cook, one of my biggest inspirations for this has been Graham Elliott.  I figure if he can do it, I can too :)  

I taste when I cook. I am certain that I have to because I rarely use a recipe full on...

But what I do now is this... if it's something like spaghetti sauce, then I only dip the spoon into the sauce... I don't need to taste the big chunks of Italian sausage/ ground meat/ peppers/mushrooms, etc... just the sauce. If I'm making pasta and I need to taste to see if it's done (because, again, I just don't follow rules, and just because the package says 9 minutes, it's not always so), I will grab a kid in the house to do it for me, or I will cut one piece of pasta into pieces, and just sample the tiniest piece.

At first though, before I could even eat... if I cooked - and I did - I would holler for someone to come taste for me.

Same as some of the others, I only cook food I can eat. Sometimes I'll add rice or a starch veg, but I can eyeball that. When I sample the food I do eat, I factor it into my final serving and adjust accordingly. Like tonight I planned on 3 tablespoons of cooked lentils. I ended up going with 2.5. It's not exact, but it keeps me honest !

i did do Christmas baking, and got my mom to taste it before I gave it away hahah. 

I know I am no where near the point where I can nibble on something that's off my list, without having cravings etc. In fact, I still can't have a lot of those things in the house at all. 

Youll have to find a system that best works for you, I think just being aware now is a great start.

I use a combination of what the others said. When I was on liquids I would sometimes taste the sauce for seasoning, but no solids. I also made lots of meals that weren't triggers for me but might be favorites for my son and husband and had them taste for me. Then I would sit at the table and enjoy a protein shake with them. We often cook together, so my husband can easily taste for me. I just started on more solid food, so now we prepare meals that everyone can eat. I will just have protein and maybe a taste of a veggie, and since that fills me up quickly it doesn't bother me for them to enjoy some rice or potatoes with theirs. I am still new to this so I am trying to build good habits. I don't want to be excluded at meal time. Food is always going to be there tempting me, but now is my chance to learn to deal with it. I want to be strong. I want to confidently go in the kitchen and cook and enjoy a meal with my family, stick to my plan but not deprive them of the things they enjoy just because I couldn't control myself in the past.

In my humble opinion it totally depends on how you are defining tasting and what it is you are tasting. Assuming whatever it was not of the phases early out, I didn't beat myself up over tasting something to adjust seasoning. This does not include "tasting" a cookie to see how it turned out. Quantity wise we are talking not even bite size as well, literally just enough to know what needed adjusting. Tasting can lead to grazing and rationalizing, so this is a very individual thing. For me, it never led to issues but YMMV.

I am fairly fortunate that it is just me and Mrs. LittleBillJr here at home now.  We both like to cook.  We both have restrictive diets of different sorts, but have worked very hard to cook things that are both tasty and friendly to both of us.  Tasting is confined to a touch of sauce or a bit of broth for me.  In most cases, I have her taste things to make sure I did not put too much pepper in it, black or hot, or both.  It is tasting by proxy.