Health Week Wrap-Up: Cooking – Yes, I’m Talking To You

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I’ve heard them all: “It’s too difficult.” “I’m really bad at it.” “It’s annoying.” “I don’t have time for it.”

Ah, cooking. It’s one of the most universal activities in human nature. We all need to eat, so we all need to prepare food. Anywhere you go in the world, there are people cooking stuff. When I was in Taiwan, everywhere we went, there were people cooking. When we went to somebody’s house, they cooked. When we went out, we went to places where they cooked right in front of us. It was all cooking, all the time.

So why don’t we do this more? Why have we removed ourselves from the cooking equation? We’ve turned cooking into an expensive, elitist activity. Think about that the next time you are in a restaurant: why are the kitchens hidden from view? Why don’t you get to see the burgers being made at McDonald’s? Is it because you may just be paying through the nose to have fake food made up to look like real food?

Cooking for yourself has three big advantages: it’s cheaper, it’s more flexible, and it connects you to your food.

Let’s start with the first one: it’s cheaper. My fiance and I went to Taco Bell yesterday and spent over $7 for a quesadilla, two soft tacos, and a soda. That’s $7 can buy you an entire fresh chicken that could feed you for two weeks. Yes, you’d have to cook it, but look at how much money you are saving right there.

Cooking offers you flexibility. Sure, you can ask McDonald’s to hold the ketchup, but if you are making your own burger on the grill or in a pan, you can sear it just the way you like it, add a little extra seasoning, and make it absolutely mouth-wateringly delicious. Plus, you can go to the store, buy a pack of beef, and come home to cook it with whatever you have laying around. A pound of beef can be made into burgers, certain soups and stews, meat loaf, spaghetti sauce, meatballs, etc. At McDonald’s, you get the little burger. But at least you didn’t have to get the ketchup, right?

Lastly, cooking connects you with your food. This sounds a little out there, but there are some practical applications to this. When you cook, you see everything that goes into making the meal. You see every ingredient and every step. When you sit down to eat that meal, you appreciate it – it tastes better. It also gives you the opportunity to eat healthier – it’s easy to wolf down junk food that somebody else made or that you poured out of a can or box. You sit in front of the TV and you just don’t think about it. When you cook, you are paying a little more attention to what you are fueling your body with. That’s a good thing.

The Basics of Cooking

Cooking is basically the practice of applying heat to food until it’s ready to eat. Sounds a lot less intimidating that way, doesn’t it? And the good news is, you have most of the basic cooking equipment already at home:

• Oven, microwave, or Pizzazz pizza oven
• Stove top or hot plate
• A big bowl for mixing
• Cutting board
• Chef’s knife
• Plate to eat off of
• Knife and fork to get the food from the plate to your mouth
• Pan to heat over the stove top
• Dish to bake in the oven with
• Salt and Pepper for seasonings
• Slow cooker (optional but highly recommended)
• With this equipment, you can make just about anything you really need to.

Great, easy recipes to get your feet wet

A breakfast egg: Crack an egg into a pan over medium heat on your stove top. Wait until the bottom starts to get golden like a marshmallow at a campfire. Flip it over. Having trouble flipping it over? Practice some more. You’ll get it. Let the other side cook the same way. Put it on a plate. Have a piece of toast and a glass of orange juice.

A scrambled egg: Crack your egg into a bowl. Add a splash of milk. Take a fork and break the yolk, then mix it all together. Pour into a pan over medium heat. Cook until it looks delicious. Serve the same way as the other egg.

Stir fry: Easily the most flexible of all meals – cut up some meat into small strips or little chunks. Do the same for any vegetables you like. Put about a tablespoon of oil into a pan over medium-high heat and let it heat up for a few minutes. Dump the meat in and cook it until it doesn’t look raw anymore. Then dump in your vegetables. Heat the whole thing in the pan and stir it a few times as you’re doing it. Serve on a plate or in a bowl with some rice or noodles.

Easy chicken: Wow – I just discovered this recipe about two weeks ago and I couldn’t be happier with how easy and quick it is. Turn the oven dial to 350 degrees and let it start heating up. Take a chicken breast and spread mayonnaise all over it. Don’t do it too thick or it’ll taste too strong. Roll the breast in bread crumbs until it’s covered. Spray a pan with a light coating of Pam or other nonstick spray. Put the chicken in the pan and stick it in the oven for about 25-30 minutes. Throw it on a plate with some veggies. Moist and delicious.

Beef stew: My favorite slow cooker recipe: cut up some beef into small chunks. Do the same for some potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions. Put the beef in the bottom of the slow cooker and top with the veggies. Pour a can of cream of mushroom soup over the top, then a can of water. Cover the slow cooker and turn it on “Low”. Then go to work. When you get home, take a spoon and stir the stew around. Then put it into a bowl and eat it.

Meat & Noodles: You can boil down a lot of meals to this recipe – cut meat into small chunks and cook on medium heat on the stove top until they’re not raw in the middle. Cook some noodles and then melt a little butter in them. Combine the two and serve with veggies. In a pinch, this is a quick meal that tastes delicious when you need it.

French Toast: Another great breakfast treat. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan. Prepare a scrambled egg in a wide bowl, but add a tiny splash of vanilla extract. Then, dip a piece of bread in the mixture and put it in the pan. Cook on one side till it looks delicious, then do the same to the other side. Put it on a plate and top with either maple syrup or cinnamon and sugar. Ten times more delicious than any French Toast you’ll get at Denny’s or in the frozen foods aisle.

Doesn’t look too hard, does it? Just like that, you’ve got seven meals that you can build off of to get some confidence in your cooking. Keep practicing, it will be worth it.

Save Money on Salad

I used to buy those packages of salad at the supermarket. You know, the ones you pay about $3 for and then they go bad by the end of the week (or you run out)? No more. Get yourself a big hunk of Romaine lettuce. It will cost you around $1. Take it home and break it into little pieces, rinsing it in cold water as you go. Dry the lettuce as you are doing this too – either on a paper towel or in a salad spinner. Throw the dry lettuce into a big plastic bag. Then fold up a dry paper towel and stick it in the bag with the lettuce. Push all the air out of the bag (but don’t vacuum seal it or anything) and seal it. Stick it in the fridge. You now have twice as much lettuce for 1/3 of the price, and all it took was about 5-10 minutes of work. Bonus: the lettuce can last you up to two weeks.

Save Money on Chicken

A pack of chicken breasts at the supermarket can get up to $4-$5 a pound. A whole, fresh chicken will be under $2 a pound. Take it into the kitchen and cut it up. For a few bucks, you’ll get two fresh, delicious chicken breasts (boneless is a very easy extra step), two drum sticks, two thighs, a couple tenderloins, and two big wings (four if you cut them appropriately). Throw each piece into a separate sandwich bag and seal them up. Put them in the freezer. Now, when you are going to have chicken, pull it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge the night before. They’ll be thawed and ready to go by dinnertime, and they will be twice as flavorful than if you just bought a big bag of chicken breasts.

My favorite cookbooks

These are the cookbooks that I’ve used to cut my teeth on flexible cooking:

• The $7 A Meal Cookbook: 301 Delicious, Nutricious Recipes The Whole Family Will Love! by Linda Larsen
• A Man, A Can, A Plan: 50 Great Guy Meals Even You Can Make! by David Joachim
• A Man, A Can, A Microwave: 50 Tasty Meals You Can Nuke In No Time by David Joachim
• Going Solo In The Kitchen: A practical and persuasive cookbook for anyone living alone by Jane Doerfer
• Fix-It and Forget-It: 5-Ingredient Favorites (Slow Cooker Cookbook with more than 700 recipes, all under 5 ingredients apiece) by Phyllis Pellman Good

In Conclusion

Let’s take the stigma off of cooking and start taking care of our meals. Then, we’ll take care of ourselves better, too. It’s worth the small learning curve, and it makes you just a little more independent, which is a good thing.