Growing up in my house meant you learned how to cook. My mom always made me help her out in the kitchen; especially during the holidays. These were some of my most memorable times with my mother. Now that I have left home, this has become one of my favorite parts about visiting! Cooking is a great time to catch up and do something fun at the same time.
It was not until college that I really realized how lucky I was to have grown up in a household like this. I was shocked at how many of my friends didn’t know how to cook! Some people I met were proud of themselves for “cooking” up some boxed mac n cheese!
I loved cooking all through college. The unfortunate part of college, however, is you are poor, so cooking is very limited. Let’s be honest, boxed mac n cheese is both delicious and cheap!
Now that I am out of college, though, I actually have money to spend on food. Most people that never learned how to cook have two options for after graduation: sandwiches or eating out.
The latter sounds miserable and the former sounds expensive! I prefer cooking instead. I love cooking for so many reasons, but I have tried to narrow it down to 4 main ones in hopes to convince you to learn how to cook:
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Cooking is deliciously cheap
2. Cooking lets your inner creativeness out
3. Cooking is nutritionally superior to the other options
4. Cooking is rewarding
Deliciously Cheap
Cooking your own food is way more delicious than a simple ham and cheese sandwich, and way cheaper than eating out every day. I can cook up some food for an entire week that totals about $3 a meal. Sometimes even cheaper than that! Where else are you going to find good food for that cheap
If you have never cooked before then it may not be “delicious” at first, but practice and consistency will quickly build your cooking skills! Soon, everything you cook will be delicious and it won’t even feel difficult.
Let out your Creativity
As you get better at cooking, you can begin to experiment with flavors. The obvious starting point will be to follow different recipes. Try this out:
The next time you go to a new restaurant and eat something delicious, look up a recipe and try to cook it!
My most recent adventure was making homemade bratwursts! I packed the sausage and everything! And. They. Were. Delicious!
At some point, you will cook enough recipes that you begin to learn how different spices and ingredients taste together. Once you reach that point you can start throwing food together without even following a recipe! You will just know that if you want to cook up some pork chops with a North Carolinian style, then you will have to use some combination of salt, pepper, garlic, and a mixture of different vinegar. The right ratios of these flavors will come naturally the more you experiment with them.
Nutritionally Superior
This one should be relatively obvious. Another way to phrase this point is:
If you cook your own food you have total control over it
That means you can eat more of a balanced nutritional plan however that may look for you. Whether you are keto, paleo, a traditional dieter, or all carbs! You can cook food yourself to fit any of your needs. This luxury is really hard to do in a restaurant; especially if you desire quality food! When you like eating grass-fed meat and only cooking with healthy oils, you aren’t going to be able to eat out every day in America.
Rewarding
Cooking is truly rewarding! One of the best times in life is enjoying a mind-bogglingly delicious meal. You can probably imagine your last one right now.
Just trust me, it is at least 10 times better to know that you cooked that amazing meal yourself! There are two reasons for this:
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It feels good to know you accomplished something like that!
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You can have that meal whenever you freaking want!
There are so many more reasons to cook, but I figured I’d stop after 4. Now, I have told a lot of people about my passion for cooking and I get two main complaints about it.
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People disagree with me and say it is actually too expensive to cook
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They say they don’t have enough time to cook.
I have a simple strategy that resolves both of these concerns. It involves cooking just once or twice a week. And to be honest, if that is too much time then you probably don’t enjoy cooking. If cooking is a chore to you, then my advice is to either learn how to make healthy sandwiches or find a cheap place to eat. If you like cooking but have one of the concerns I mentioned, then try out this strategy:
My Strategy
Before I dive into my strategy, you should know a couple of things about my eating habits. First of all, I do intermittent fasting. This means I don’t eat my first meal until noon. Then I eat a big snack around 3:30 or 4 and finish it out with dinner no later than 8. Just keep that in mind if anything sounds weird below.
My strategy in the most basic of terms is just a simple routine schedule I follow throughout the workweek. I don’t plan too much for the weekend. My weekend food plans are usually leftovers, go out, or cook something. During the workweek, this is what my typical eating schedule looks like:
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Lunch (12pm): leftovers
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Snack (4pm): nuts, seeds, fruit, and bone broth
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Dinner (7pm): bacon/pepper omelet, vegetables, and a protein shake
That is what I eat Monday through Friday. If you notice that in Lunch I just say “leftovers”. That’s where the heavy cooking comes in (a 5-minute omelet does not count as heavy cooking). I typically try and cook a bunch of food on Sunday night. This should be enough to eat dinner Sunday and then the following five days’ worth of lunches. This might be a big pot of stew, a big salad, a pork roast, or maybe some slow-cooked chicken.
The other way I do my week is to cook something Sunday night that will cover me from Monday through Wednesday. This might look like a few salmon fillets, steak, chicken, or any kind of meat accompanied by some veggies. Then Wednesday night I will cook again for the rest of the week.
There are so many combos you can do so that you will never get bored! And if you are single like me then it is so easy to find recipes that don’t cost much and deliver a ton of delicious food!
That’s it. These are my reasons why you should start cooking. There are so many many more, but I won’t spoil those right now. You’ll just have to try it out and find those for yourself!
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Previously published on medium
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Talk to you soon.
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Photo credit: istockphoto
