Since moving away from home I’ve realised two things when it comes to the kitchen.
One, I actually enjoy cooking, which is a great realisation to come to now that it will be a thing I need to do for the rest of my life, and secondly, and maybe slightly less great; I don’t have that much experience.
So in the last year and a half since I moved away from my parents and my mom’s excellent kitchen, I’ve found some things that work in the kitchen and some that just do not.
First of all, my kitchen is small, but I think this counts no matter the size of your kitchen; It’s important to keep it neat and tidy, and of course clean.
I struggled with this since my kitchen is so tiny and since I wasn’t in the habit, but by and by I’ve come to both appreciate how it looks when I walk into a kitchen that doesn’t have a dirty pot hanging out on the stove and also all the time it saves me when I go to cook and don’t first have to move everything out of the way and do the dishes.
Secondly, I’ve started collecting recipes. Without recipes, how am I supposed to recreate the dishes I love? I’ve found that the internet can be an alright source for recipes, but also a place to tread carefully; Many recipes are either overly complicated and I either don’t have the skill, the ingredients or the time to recreate them, or they are overly simplified, often to the point where they no longer work – viral videos on facebook and youtube are particularly prevalent in this category. Far more likely to give me good results is the cookbook my mom gave me with lots of good and very basic recipes. It even tells me how long to cook an egg or a potato, so it’s perfect.
Best of all though, is asking my mom. Not only can I ask again if I don’t understand what she explains to me – I’ve tried this too with the cookbook, but I’ve yet to get a good answer out of it – and my mom also has the recipes (often in her head) for my favourite dishes. Perhaps not surprising, since I grew up eating these things.
Using recipes brings me to the third thing I’ve learned: Make a meal plan. At the beginning I didn’t do this and it meant that my fridge was overflowing with half packages of a million different things that I struggled to use before it expired. Now I try to plan so that I get those leftover ingredients used within a few days – which then of course itself will likely create some leftovers which are then planned into the next meal. It’s a bit of an act and probably the thing I struggle the most with still, but it’s so worth it since it means I waste less food which is good for both my wallet and for the environment.
The final advice I am going to include here is to not be afraid to try things. Cooking is not rocket science. So if you don’t have that one ingredient the recipe calls for but you have something else you could imagine would go well with the dish you’re making… try it. As long as you make sure what you’re cooking is: Meant for eating, not spoiled, handled in a hygienic manner and heated through well, and sounds good to you, then you’ll likely not mess it up too badly.
And if you do… well, that’s what frozen pizzas were invented for.