I’m 25 years old. At 19 I left home and went to college. In my first year I received almost weekly a package from home with food( If you’re not from Romania you won’t understand this tradition). In my second year I told my mom to send those every 2 or 3 weeks. In my 3rd year the “package from home” almost disappeared because I wanted to learn how to cook by myself. I wanted to eat meals that were done by my own hand and by own taste.
Nowadays home meals and home cooking it’s a lost art. People buy mostly from fast-foods, eat take-outs, but rarely cook their own meal. And this is sad, because cooking it’s awesome. And cooking is an essential skill in life that every human being should know.
I wondered myself why people don’t learn how to cook, and I found two big reasons that are hilarious ( to me):
- Lack of time: there are 24h in a day for everyone, and unless spend all of that time working you would have 30-60 min to cook your meal.
- Lack of knowledge/ talent: we live in the era on internet, where countless cooking sites exists. Finding a recipe you like it’s just a few words away. And talent in cooking doesn’t exit. Only practice. Trial and error.
You don’t have to start with crazy recipes that take hours of preparations. Start with something simple. Start with on omlette. Just crack some eggs, stir them in a bowl, put the mix in a frying pan, add some bacon, vegetables and a little cheese and you have a nice breakfast that didn’t take longer than 20 minutes to cook.
I discovered that I can make some delicious foods, and the more I cook, the more I want to try new recipes. Meals that I want to eat, i want them to cook myself. For me cooking it’s an amazing method of relaxation. Because I forget my problems and I concentrate only on the activity that I do, the meal that i’m cooking and how I will eat it. And the whole process gives me a joy that I don’t find in any other activities that I do.
Also, cooking your own meals can save you a lot of money. Buying meals it’s expensive. If you calculate how much you for the meal and how much you would pay to cook it yourself, the cheaper option it’s the second one. Plus you can always be sure that the ingredients are the best quality. You wouldn’t buy anything but the best for you, right?
This week I made a challenge to myself. To cook every meal that I will eat this week. That means no more fast-foods, no more take-out, no more eating at the corporate cafeteria. I will cook for myself every day. Let’s see where that goes. Probably it will go well, and I will do this from now on. That doesn’t mean that I won’t order myself a pizza, from time to time. ’cause I enjoy pizza, but can’t quite make a good one.
How often do you cook for yourself? Or better let me ask you, do you know how to cook? Enough that you wouldn’t starve?