Learn to cook

I’m not a great cook, but I think I can now cover the basics – at least enough to mark this goal as complete.

Cooked a chicken lasagne, in front of my friend, and then it was eaten by us and two other friends. And it tasted good. I’m clearly improving.

I think my problem is that I don’t like getting things wrong, and as so much of cooking is trial and error it freaks me out a little bit. But I’ve now managed to cook proper meals for myself a few times (though only when nobody is in the house to comment on the mess I’m making etc!) and they’ve been edible. In fact last night I made brie and spinach quesadillas which are my favourite thing on the menu at the Beefeater restaurant, and I reckon mine were better. :)

So I think the next step for me (which will be a tough one) will be cooking something for other people, and then I can mark this off as done.

So this week I have managed to cook two different pasta dishes, neither of which have given me food poisoning. I won’t say they tasted that great but they were at least edible. Although I’m quite glad nobody saw me cooking because I was flinching away from the frying onions and cooking at arm’s length. I suppose like with anything it’s just about gaining the confidence to give it a go, and practice makes perfect.

Okay… this was a bit of a joint effort with a friend… and it did involve a cheat’s packet mix for Easy Lasagne. But it tasted good, wasn’t burnt and didn’t give us food poisoning. A good start I think!

For some reason my boss today was bemoaning the fact that people don’t cook proper meals anymore and unfortunately picked on me as the perfect example. The two guys I work with looked at me in utter dismay when I said I couldn’t even boil an egg. Must do better!