Oh, you’re hungry? All right, let’s see what we’ve got… salmon that goes off tomorrow, eggs, leftover pumpkin and half a cucumber. So, what are we making for dinner? Who the hell knows! Let’s start cooking and see where we end up.

Welcome to my chaotic kitchen. There are no rules, no limits and no ‘meals’ as such, just an assortment of things on a plate. Oh, you’re leaving already? Yeah, I haven’t sold it too well yet, but let me try and explain.

I am not a meal planner; I am on the complete opposite end of the scale. I am intrigued by people who plan out everything they’re going to eat on a weekly basis, colour-code it and link it to a shopping list of ingredients. These people seem like mythical beings to me. How does this whole process happen? Do they sit down on Sunday arvos and map out specific meals to each day and then somehow also combine that with a weekly stocktake of their pantry and fridge and then somehow get all the ingredients down on a list and then somehow go to the shops and not get distracted by a new type of taco kit? I do not have the brain for that.

Aside from my cognitive inability to do it, the main struggle I have with meal planning is: what if Wednesday rolls around and I don’t feel like eating a Vietnamese chicken salad? For me, the food I eat is linked to my mood and what’s happening around me. If work has been really full-on and it has been raining, I absolutely do not want a Vietnamese chicken salad – I want a Japanese curry with a side of mashed potato.

Most of the time, when I cook dinner, I literally haven’t thought about what I’ll make until I swing from my swivel chair to the fridge at five o’clock on the dot. Then it’s a mad rush to get dinner on the table before my kid gets home and demands Pizza Shapes because I haven’t finished cooking yet and he’s hungry. I like to think I channel Aristos from Surprise Chef (for those who missed it, the TV show revolved around Aristos convincing a supermarket shopper to invite him back to their house, where he’d use the random ingredients from their trolley – like a jar of peanut butter, a pineapple and pack of teabags – to cook dinner).

It sounds like a clusterfuck every evening, but I actually really enjoy it; the exercise forces creativity. There’s something that makes me happy about being under pressure to create something from nothing. Granted, it’s not always ‘something’ but more ‘lots of things’ on a plate – for example some salt-and-pepper calamari with Kewpie mayo, fried haloumi, a cob of corn, broccoli and French toast. Not exactly sensical, but healthy enough and yum.

The reason I don’t put more effort into planning my meals isn’t because I dislike cooking, either. I actually have a food podcast (Ingredipedia, look it up) and am obsessed with food; I just don’t have the drive, energy or will to plan what I’ll eat in advance. I just add a heap of stuff I love to my online shopping cart and when it turns up (with some inevitable substitutions) I just roll with it. Sometimes it means I have 17 tins of diced tomatoes due to never consulting my pantry pre-shop, but they never go off, so they don’t count.

So, are you still hungry? Come in and sit down. I cannot promise you coherence but I can promise you a tasting platter of culinary chaos.

This rant comes straight from the pages of issue 109. To get your mitts on a copy, swing past the frankie shop, subscribe or visit one of our lovely stockists.