get food ready
Getting food ready is less about chopping and more about holding several things in mind at once. The visual support below splits planning, ingredients and cooking into visible steps so it is easier to begin somewhere.
♀Making food
A person wearing a chef's hat is chopping vegetables and cooking food in a pot.
About this visual support
The executive load of getting a meal ready is often heavier than the cooking itself. You have to decide what to make, check what is in the fridge, read the recipe, find the right pots, and then keep three heat sources running at once without the vegetables burning while the pasta boils over. For many children, and adults, that is the part that locks up, not the actual chopping.
Visual support lets you lift the planning out of your head and place it visibly on the table. Ingredients get their own cards, steps get their own row, and it becomes clear which moves have to happen before the stove is even switched on. When each pot has its own card, the one at the back is less likely to be forgotten.
One concrete tip: lay the cards in the same order as your kitchen worktop, left to right. Then the eyes follow the body naturally. In the Routined app you can save the same sequence as a recurring meal routine and link a timer to every pot.