How do you get excited about cooking?

[TheKayla]

I admit it, I'm a restaurant junkie. Even when I'm trying to save money by not eating out, I'll stock up on either processed foods, which I know could be healthier/cheaper, or foods so simple that take 5 minutes or less to prepare. I choose fairly healthy options within that realm, but I've always known it was my financial weakness.

I've lately been trying to learn how to prepare more foods, and choosing quality ingredients still. I'll try to buy in season and all that to save money on some more expensive produce and buy on sale too, but I still want to learn how to enjoy making food so that I can take my food prep a step further in savings.

Has anyone else ever had a similar problem where they just hated cooking/baking/food prep? How did you grow to enjoy it?

[disneysteve]

I've always enjoyed cooking so it's a little hard to answer this but I think part of the answer is to learn to prepare foods that you really enjoy eating. For example, my family loves pizza. We have tried many different pizza shops in town but we all agree that the best pizza around is the pizza that I make at home. We like the sauce. We like the fresh vegetable toppings. We like the crust. As a result, we hardly ever go out for pizza. We'd rather make it at home.

There are several other things that are similar. We'll eat them when we go out but we much prefer our homemade version. For example, I actually will not order carrot cake anywhere. My wife makes a killer carrot cake and I have never found a commercial one that even begins to come close.

So think about foods that you really like and work on learning to make those items really well so that when you are in the mood for one of those things, you opt to make it yourself rather than going out for it.

[snafu]

I like the challenge of taking a group of raw items and turning them into something delicious. I'm not very creative in other areas, can't sing beautifully like late mom, or in art or photography as are good friends but I can combine spices and plain jane ingredients to make meals. We have a lot of people to dinner likely because I enjoy compliments. I know we could take visitors to a good restaurant but they seem so delighted to have an opportunity to see how 'westerners' live. In SE Asia business is conducted based on relationships. DH believes we won contracts in Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Thailand etc. based on gossip about our home and DKs.

If you have a savings goal - like an important vacation or newer car, you can set that avoided expense of a restaurant meal in your savings jar. A restaurant meal is about double the cost of home made! Wine/corkage is more than triple. As newly weds, DH and I had fun using a giant, restaurant sized pickle jar for sums saved by cost avoidance. We dropped cash or a note representing cash saved, buying needed items on sale, at yard sales or scrounged from relatives.

[moneybags]

Has anyone else ever had a similar problem where they just hated cooking/baking/food prep? How did you grow to enjoy it?

Yes, I have a similar problem. I have not grown to enjoy it (after 20+ years of doing it).

[disneysteve]

I think another thing is to involve other people. Preparing a nice meal for one or two people seems like a lot of work sometimes but doing just as much work to feed 4 or 6 people just feels more worth the effort.

We have another couple who we go out with periodically. Partly to have more time to chat and partly to save money, we invited them to our place for dinner Saturday night. We made a pretty nice Mexican spread - fresh guacamole (far better than anything you can buy at the supermarket), build your own burritos, Mexican rice, refried beans. For dessert, homemade mini cheesecakes with fresh dulce de leche caramel sauce. We also had fresh frozen margaritas. It was delicious and cost less for us to feed 4 people than we would have spent in a restaurant just for the 2 of us. Plus it was a much nicer environment. We weren't rushed. It wasn't noisy. We were able to sit and chat for 3 hours without feeling like we were being pushed out.

[asdf]

I try to cook a reasonably large amount of food so I can use leftovers as a hedge against those days when I just don't feel like cooking. It's treated me fairly well over the years.

[kork13]

For me, cooking grew as a love by cooking for other people. Between friends, family, and myself all acting as guinea pigs, I've learned to love cooking by learning from experience, cooking for other people, and most importantly, learning to love the reactions from people when you prepare a fantastic dish.

Good food is about love and passion, and it can be the mortar for building relationships with the people you love. If you look at food with the utilitarian view of simply feeding yourself to keep from starving, you'll never learn to appreciate and enjoy cooking. Make food a participative experience that you share with others, one in which you're constantly learning and evolving, and your entire outlook can change. As already stated, start with what you love, and make cooking about happiness and reward, then expand as you continue to learn.

As a child, my foray into cooking started with baking dozens and dozens of cookies at my grandmother's house. Over time I learned more, branched out, and now I'm to the point that when I don't cook for more than a few days, I start to miss it. Cooking grew from a delicious treat to a hobby to a passion. Give it time, keep learning & growing, and you will experience the same change in perspective.

[marvholly]

I do not knit,sew, crochet, paint..........so for me cooking is my creatie outlet.

Also, I prefer (and need to) eat healthier than resturaut or convience (packed/frozen) food. I LIKE to control amount & type of fat, protein, veggies, salt......in my daily diet. i have adjusted MANY recipes over the years for this control.

Being a single, I usually batch cook and freeze several extra portions. After a few weeks I have a BIG variety to choose from if I am tired, lazy.....Yesterday I made 6 meatloaf muffins (portion control+ingredinet control), a 2 serving crustless veggie topped pizza. a batch of roasted veggies (for a pasta dish for today) and 2 servings of apple crumble. Did EVERYTHING in 2 hours.

[gogirlanime]

1. I am extending my life time by eating healthier
2. I have more money for the other things I want, figure out what you'll save in a year by cooking at home and let that number really sink in, think about what you could do with the extra money.
3. I can spend more intimate time with my family or partner cooking at home
4. Remember that it doesn't take more time. Think about when you get fast food, after you put on your clothes, warm up your car (winter), drive over, order, wait in the drive through, drive home. You could have made a tastier, healthier, and less expensive meal (Google the statistics)
5. You get to become your own artist discovering and making your own or others dishes.

[hamchan]

I don't love cooking, or cleaning up either, but I have also found that making something you really enjoy eating, and learning to do it well, are the keys. I give myself a break and don't cook every single night. We do a lot of leftovers and sandwiches. I keep plenty of good quality bread and sandwich stuff around, so if I don't feel like cooking there is an easy fallback. I also make my own granola and hot cereal (basically just granola mixed into boiling water, let it set until it's cooked, and add a splash of milk if I have it) and have been known to sometimes have that for dinner.

I started learning to cook by watching the Food Network. I like the cooking competition shows because you pick up little tips here and there on what you should and shouldn't do, how to combine flavor profiles, use seasonings, etc. I used to dislike eating at home because the food I made at home was very blah. Not anymore.

[Redraidernurse]

For me, whether I like cooking or not is overshadowed by the health benefits. Wanting my children to grow up eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and not say their favorite food is "chicken nuggets" is a big player in my decision to cook at home. After spending some time poking around on websites like "100 days of real food" and other health-conscious websites, I can't conceivably go eat artifical crap all the time. (That's not to say I don't cheat and have me a yummy high fructose syrup filled candy bar sometimes) I cook every night (or we have leftovers) and convenience foods & eating out is a rarity.

I grew up with parents that rarely cooked and both my sister and I suffered weight problems in high school because of all the convenience foods. It's a big learning curve to learn how to cook, but like DisneySteve said, my pizza is now the best pizza in town so we rarely eat it anywhere else. Once you can master cooking it is so wonderful!

[Permanent Temp]

I admit it, I'm a restaurant junkie. Even when I'm trying to save money by not eating out, I'll stock up on either processed foods, which I know could be healthier/cheaper, or foods so simple that take 5 minutes or less to prepare. I choose fairly healthy options within that realm, but I've always known it was my financial weakness.

I've lately been trying to learn how to prepare more foods, and choosing quality ingredients still. I'll try to buy in season and all that to save money on some more expensive produce and buy on sale too, but I still want to learn how to enjoy making food so that I can take my food prep a step further in savings.

Has anyone else ever had a similar problem where they just hated cooking/baking/food prep? How did you grow to enjoy it?

I like cooking but hate dishes. I would say get the family involved. Ask for their help and what they would want to eat so you don't feel like your doing it all on your own. It's more exciting to cook at home if you are eating something you really like to eat.

We have really bad take out where we live so I learned to make Chinese take out at home (sesame tofu, stir fry, fried rice etc) and other things like pizza and garlic knots. Food from home takes so much better because you can tailor it to your specific tastes and in my case its necessary since I don't eat meat.

I'd start off slow with a crockpot and then ease in it to it. If you do the crockpot you can have leftovers which will save you from having to cook for a few nights. Either way best of luck. Food at home can be rewarding financially but more importantly delicious and nutritious.

Also you could start small by getting one of those college cookbooks or by getting a guide to everything I learned to cook from Mark Bittman's learn to cook everything and now a days I have the veggie version of that book.

[TheKayla]

I like cooking but hate dishes. I would say get the family involved. Ask for their help and what they would want to eat so you don't feel like your doing it all on your own. It's more exciting to cook at home if you are eating something you really like to eat.

I'm hours away from my family and I'm also a vegetarian. My entire family are the type who are heavy Iowan meat-and-potato-eaters who consistently imply I basically have an 'eating disorder' because I prefer healthy options over 'what normal people eat' -- beef and gravy! So a no-go there unfortunately, it's like I basically have to re-learn for myself everything about food prep because I was raise to learn how to create those types of foods that I now refuse to eat. I discuss meals/cooking with a few other veg-heads I know, but would never have the opportunity to learn in practice anything from them because they are more acquaintances or associates. I mostly get the few actual meals I do prepare from online sources or try to mimic something I had in a restaurant.

[disneysteve]

I'm also a vegetarian.

Vegetarian cooking is even easier. The ingredients are already so flavorful and the process can be so simple. Grilling or roasting veggies and serving them over whole grain rice or quinoa is delicious, nutritious, and filling. All you need is some good pans, some olive oil, and not much else.

For recipe ideas, consider a subscription to Vegetarian Times.

If you need help with basic cooking techniques, check into classes in your area. Your local community college may offer them. Kitchen supply places often do classes. See if there is a vegetarian support group around. Also, you can learn pretty much anything with Youtube videos. I just learned to make dulce de leche a couple of weeks ago via Youtube and it was a big hit at our dinner party. Honestly, I don't know why anybody buys a cookbook anymore.

[bzbee]

I hear a lot that people complain, they don't have time to cook. Yet everyone has time to watch tv, take a shower, use the bathroom. Cooking is the same necessity. Some dishes take long time to prepare, but there are plenty of the fast kind too, like pasta, potatoes, eggs and bacon and lots of others.

We never eat out. Maybe sometimes occasional fast food when we are out for a longer than expected and didn't bring any snacks with us. If we would eat out every meal, for a family of 5, it might have cost like $ 20 a meal, $60 a day, $1800 per month, and you still would need to buy some snacks and drinks and stuff. That is more than some people make full time. Our food budget is $350 per month, and we eat healthy. It is usually less in the summer time because we grow a garden, have some fruit trees and have chickens for eggs and meat. It might be a little higher for the holidays, but we are planning to kill some of our older chickens, so, maybe even spend less than budgeted, who knows.

We spend lots of time at home. I pack my husbands lunch every morning. I usually try to cook a larger batch, so we could use it for more than one meal, but not too much because then everyone will get tired of the same thing and want something new. Some things like pasta or hot cereal are very fast to cook, and I only cook enough to eat in one sitting, they just don't taste as good the next day. Now, that it got cold outside, I finally started using my oven again (I avoid using it in the hot months). I baked lots of cookies, pumpkin pies and other things.