In 2005, when I was a young wife with no home training.. (still really don’t have much of that…) I struggled to cook. I didn’t enjoy it. People always hated and had crap to say about the things I made. I had no confidence whatsoever in the kitchen.
Most girls’ mothers teach them to cook whilst they are teenagers – mine tried, but I just didn’t want to! Mama would say, “Come on in here and help me make… whatever..” To which I would directly reply, “Naw, I gotta practice piano!” (and that happened to serve me well…)
It worked every time. By the time I was 18, I had successfully graduated high school and had no clue how to boil an egg or make tea… or use the stove.. anything. I could microwave stuff, but that’s it. BUT I was playing the daylights out of a piano….., just saying…
Fast forward to 2011 after my oldest child was a year old and I was too close to 300 pounds to really have a choice, and so it was then that I decided to really give Weight Watchers a go. Over the next year I lost 80 pounds AND I learned how to cook!
Here’s my secret: learn to read.
THAT’S IT! If you can read, you can cook… didn’t Rachel Ray or something say that once upon a time?
I had a couple of Weight Watchers cookbooks and I worked my way through them. Simple. That’s how I learned to cook.
Now, I think I really had an advantage because at the time I wasn’t working full time, just getting to be a stay at home, which was wonderful…. But I had the time to plan meals, go to stores to get any weird ingredient, and have the energy to actually cook them. There were days that I cooked 3 meals from Weight Watchers recipes. The only real downside is that sometimes it gets expensive because WW seems to think everyone loves exotic food, and really, I’m one of them… but who wants to buy Halibut and Veal on the regular? Naaahhhhhh not me.
Get yourself hooked up with Weight Watchers!!!
So, I did that for quite some time. Fast forward four or five years to my single mom period, and I got hooked up with Hello Fresh! – the meal delivery service.
I acquired some AWESOME skills from this meal delivery service because number one, I can READ, and their instructions are so explicit AND it comes with pictures of each step of the recipe! AND you can build quite a library of their recipe cards and cook them up whenever you want to! Each recipe comes in brown paper bags labelled and already sorted. The delivery systems where the food and ingredients are all thrown into a box with no organization… nahh, bruhhhh… I’m a full time teacher AND have 3 boys under the age of 12… I do not have the time to stand in the kitchen for 20 extra minutes sorting through all that. NO. MA’AM.
My favorite things I’ve learned from Hello Fresh?
- How to make sauces and dressings.
- How to pan sear a steak.
- How to season anything with all sorts of different things. (lemon, garlic, fresh herbs…etc.)
- How to make the Juicy Lucy burger. (My husband’s favorite of all the Hello Fresh recipes.)
- How to perfectly make and season QUINOA!!! (NOT my husband’s favorite.)
Cheers! And BONE APPETITE. (yeah I said bone.)
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