Learn to cook

so the folks are going on holiday and im left ot my own devices. Managed to get one reciepe out of my mum for mac and cheese although the measurements were very vage so this could be interesting. Anyway i wonder how long i’ll last before the takeaways.

• Get my mum to show me how to use the whole cooker without taking off my eyebrows or causing a gas leak
• Buy a non-stick frying pan
• Learn how to make a pasta dish, lasagne, cottage pie, a stir fry, a sponge cake and cupcakes

I’ve been working on this goal very slowly. So far I have made (counting only the items I have made from scratch) spaghetti, pizza (turned out awesome), spinach casserole, macaroni and cheese, a blackberry cheesecake (i even whipped the cream and made the sauce myself from fresh blackberries), an apple pie, and two batches of cookies (Chocolate Chip and Chocolate Chip with walnuts). I hope to make more and learn more as I go along, especially healthy and tasty ways to cook veggies.

After my mom moved out about a year ago, we were kind of stranded in the cooking department. When I’m home from school, I mostly subsist on frozen foods. My dad ate frozen dinners on a daily basis, but now that’s causing health complications for him. I want to learn how to cook some basic meals so that we can both eat somewhat healthier. Right now I pretty much only know how to make grilled cheese, spaghetti, bacon, and baked goods, so we’ll see where it goes from here!

Eating healthfully is a huge priority for me right now. I am trying to break old, terrible habits and am focusing on buying fewer meals-in-a-box from the grocery store. To do this I need to cook more, which has never been a passion or enjoyable past time for me. I always have great excuses for why I don’t cook. Here are some of them:
1. It’s too messy
2. I don’t have enough space
3. I don’t have the proper equipment or tools
...yadda, yadda, yadda. I could go on and on. My excuses need to stop, though, if I want to be more healthy.

so i really wanted to cook today i just couldnt figure anything out.nothing looked good.but the boyfriend is still in bed.i think im gonna go make an omelet and surprise him with breakfast in bed…this oughta be fun.ive never made one before.

well as an add-on:i ended up making him scrambled eggs(my first ever!)and they were actually ok.and then some bacon.yay me!!

i am going to look up some recipes online right now and then go to the store. Perhaps food should be my only expense for a while??

when a guy can rustle up a cracking bolognese and I only fried my first egg a couple months ago. I need to think about this goal more seriously than I did the last time it was here. I want to be able to cook and bake delicious, colourful things from scratch before the year is out instead of buying ready-made meals. Growing my own vegetables/fruit/herbs would also come in handy at this point.

So this goal has become easier ever since I moved out on my own. I’m cooking basics but cooking none the less..chicken breast..pasta…haven’t cooked with my microwave yet :)

Last week I chose three recpies – one from a 3-34ingredient cookbook, one from Food Network magazine, and another from Yoga Journal – picked up the ingredients with my mom, then cooked em up. I forgot stuff on each one and my timing definitely needs some work, but my mom really enjoyed all three meals (she said that Im “batting a thousand”) and perhaps more importantly, nobody got sick from eating anything I cooked. I need to pick up more 3-4-5 ingredient cookbooks and master those recipes before I can move on to complex meals.

Cooking is kind of fun, it is nice seeing everything develop and come together, but I am not yet convinced that the time and effort involved are worth the end product. Food shopping, an hour spent prepping and cooking to enjoy something for 5 to 10 minutes, then the cleanup and washing dishes…yeah Im not so sure that cooking is something I’ll take up once I move out, but I would like to be able to do it, and to do more while I live here.