I enjoy cooking, but have very little time.  I get home from work at 7pm, so we rarely eat before 8.  I like to be in bed by 10pm at the latest…which breaks my “don’t eat 3 hours before bed” rule, which I used to live by.  My challenge is to make things that taste good, are healthy, budget friendly, will last for 2-3 days, & not overplaying the dish.  Lucky for me, my husband & I both like to eat the same things, & we don’t mind repeat meals. I usually follow a certain grocery list (it’s even typed so I don’t have to rewrite staples every trip…) but produce & meat are where I buy whatever looks good &/or is on sale.  I have less than 10 cookbooks, & I don’t use them often.  One of the best I’ve seen is about improvisational cooking.  It discusses which flavors pair well together rather than giving many recipes.   I have an old Reader’s Digest one called “The How-to Book of Healthy Cooking.  It’s great because it not only details how to cook vegetables, staples, meats, etc, but every recipe has a few variations so show you how tweaking a few things will give you a different dish, but uses the same technique.  I think it teaches technique & smart grocery shopping more than cooking.  

I shop & cook like an Italian grandma, I suppose.  I know what makes a good base for dishes, & start from there.  When I do choose a recipe, I use it as a starting place, but rarely stick with the original…& I don’t like recipes that involve buying spices & staples I probably won’t use again, so I will substitute.  

I recently read “Eat Right for Your Blood Type,” so my new challenge is cook without the foods I’m supposed to avoid, which constituted 95% of my former diet….I’m happy that I have a solid foundation in the kitchen to rely on!

much love, you’re amazing.
Rachel =0)

Of course then you need to learn the techniques of cooking and seasoning and tasting from books or culinary schools. It helps to go to restaurants and eat expertly prepared food too, if you live in an urban area with good restaurants that cook using fresh ingredients. This, along with experience gained following recipes, ends up giving you a mindset that you can use to create your own dishes. After several years of struggling with this issue I can finally sit down and say, “I’m going to make a pizza,” or “I’m going to make a pasta,” or “I’m going to make a sauteed fish dish with a side of greens and sauteed potatoes” and the ideas come out of the whole of my collective food eating, recipe following, and cooking experience.

But to make up your own dishes, night after night, without being a slave to recipes, requires experience and practice. You need to have a lot of experience with food in order to do this. If you have never cooked before you do need to follow recipes in order to understand what each ingredient does in the recipe and how to properly prepare it.

If our children grew up doing this activity with their parents instead of having McDonald’s Monday and Domino’s Pizza Tuesday, etc. (as one commenter posted above), then when they go off on their own they would already have these skills.