Cooking and I have a complicated relationship.
Anyone who knew me before I started zero waste will probably be surprised by how much I cook now. I…am not a good cook. There are things that I can cook after many, many repetitions and past failures, but it’s not something I come by naturally. Until I decided to go zero waste, this fact didn’t really bother me. I was perfectly content to live out my life eating $1 frozen burritos. Maybe every once in awhile I’d treat my body to a pre-mixed Dole salad in a bag.
Then I had to go and screw it up by deciding I didn’t want to contribute to a consumerist culture and global warming. Dang conscience.
Unless you want to eat out at fancy restaurants that don’t use paper napkins, fast food wrappers, or pizza boxes, cooking is an absolute necessity for the zero waster. As a result, I have 5 half-written blogs about my cooking fails that I have yet to finish because I keep having more bad (or “learning”) experiences to write about. I realized it may be a good idea to write this Intro to Cooking with Helen to provide across-the-board context for those upcoming blogs.
What I like about cooking:
- Feeling self-reliant, confident, etc., especially when things go right
- Knowing exactly what I’m eating
- Eating the food when my cooking is actually good or makes my life better
- Developing a life skill
- Saving money (cooking is usually cheaper than eating out all the time)
- Discovering new recipes.
What I don’t like (“hate”) about cooking:
- I’m not naturally good at it (I actually have to [cringe] work)
- Having to eat the food or throw it out when things go wrong
- It’s time consuming
- Cooking for one person is hard
- If you make more than you can eat, it’s often waste
- Spoiled food
- The clean up
How I deal with these problems:
- Meal planning
- Inviting myself over for dinner with friends, family members, or my boyfriend
- Buying bulk grab-and-go snacks like nuts or bananas or something that sounds less phallic
- Cooking a lot of easy, storable snacks (i.e. hard boiled eggs) at the beginning of the week
Once I publish some of my cooking blogs, I’ll list them here:
- How meal planning changed my life (or didn’t)
- Cooking without meat and dairy
- #Adulting your way toward learning how to cook
They’ll contain advice along with the humorous stories, so you’re sure to get something out of it regardless of how adept you are at cooking.