Learning to cook is not just healthier, it also saves you tons of money, it's a creative outlet, an important life skill, and it helps build confidence. You might mess up a few meals in the beginning, but trust us, it's worth the investment to learn.
In today's fast paced society, it's overwhelming to have to come up with three meals to eat every day. Often leading us to pay more for convenience or make due with some processed food that lacks proper nutrition. Although eating out can be fun and tasty, it's often not the healthiest or most affordable. Our lives are busy, it sucks to add another responsibility and it's unfortunate that we don't live in a society that has prioritized our health.
We love to cook, but even we have nights where we just don't want to think about having to decide on what to eat and then make it. On those days we do treat ourselves to some take-out or something we can heat up in our air-fryer or oven. The point is not to be perfect, but to be more conscious of what we put into our bodies and slowly make changes to better our health, our wallets, our creativity, develop an important life skill, and build up our confidence.
Health Benefits
There are huge benefits to your health when cooking your meals at home. The simple ability to control the amount of sugar, fat, and salt is crucial to our health. We know going out to eat is super fun and tasty, but the majority of the time the reason why eating out is so tasty is because of the amount of salt, sugar and fat that is used. Like, have you seen Gordon Ramsey's scrambled egg recipe? That man put like half a stick of butter into the eggs! Yeah, we bet that tastes delicious too. As tasty as going out to eat is, it usually isn't the healthiest.
When I started learning to cook I was 15 years old. I had just decided to commit to being vegetarian in a Hispanic household that usually ate some kind of meat in every meal. Fortunately my mom and I loved watching the food network together. Rachel Ray and Giada De Laurentiiswas were some of our favorites to watch. It inspired me to experiment in the kitchen. Now as an adult I see how fortunate I was to have such support.
Learning to cook is an empowering skill, it feeds you and gives you full control of how to nourish your body.
Saves You Money
Although it's not cheap to stock up on pantry staples and kitchen supplies, the initial investment will pay off shortly after you begin preparing meals at home. We keep our kitchen supplies to a minimum and we get most of it second hand through thrift stores, facebook marketplace, or estate sales. Remember you don't need all the fancy stuff to get started, having one large knife, a pot, a pan, a spatula, is plenty to get cooking.
Think about it, how much do you spend on going out to eat? I know for us it can vary from $40 - $100 for just one night's dinner. While the average cost of our weekly groceries are typically between $100 - $150.
This is one of the more exciting aspects of cooking for us, not only do you get to save money but you also get to have any kind of dish you want. The fancy dinner you wanted to go out for, well you can try making that meal at a fraction of the price. The unique recipe you saw a restaurant from across the country advertising on social media, well you can try to make that too and avoid having to book a flight or deny yourself the treat.
In addition to saving money with cooking, it empowers you to save money when hosting dinner parties, comforting loved ones, making connections, and bringing people together. You don't need to order take-out, you can be there for people, you can have them over for dinner, all while saving money.
Creative Expression
Cooking is unique. There is a reason why your mom's cooking taste like home, and no matter how many times you try to make one of her recipes yourself it never tastes the same. There is no secret ingredient, it's just in the unique ways we cook. And similar to an artist that paints, the brushstrokes are always unique to them. The more you practice a craft, the more you will feel confident to use your own flavors and techniques, to take risks. Like in any life skill, there's a learning curve, but once you get past that, you will find the joy. The better you get at something, the more you enjoy it.
So go make some terrible and some delicious dishes, don't worry, as you build confidence you will probably have more delicious dishes than terrible ones. Learning to cook is empowering, you'll be able to express yourself in a completely new way, you can play with flavor and texture to create a unique experience every single time you make something. The sky is the limit here, and as you build more confidence you will also learn how to fail and still keep going!
To Conclude
Cooking is a wonderful investment in yourself. It not only is healthier and more cost efficient than eating out, but it is also a great creative expression, an important life skill, and a skill that helps build confidence. If you need some recipes to get you started check out our post on some of our favorite recipes from other bloggers.
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We hope you enjoyed this post. Remember, every step you take towards a plant-based lifestyle is something to be proud of.
Whether you're vegan, trying to eat more plant-based meals, or just curious -
thank you for being part of the journey with us!
