Learning to Cook

Learning to cook is one of the best things that you can do for yourself. Certainly, it takes time and a certain level of dedication to whip up a great meal, but there's a huge level of satisfaction to be had from creating a delicious dinner from scratch. *How I learned to cook* Like so many people, I've always been a fan of eating and in all honesty it was some time before this turned into any sort of culinary aspirations. As a young teen I was quite happy to throw a Greggs down my neck, or to tuck into a microwaveable meal. I'd always had a great respect for successful cooks and there were some dishes I made that were tasty (if somewhat run of the ...  Read the complete review

Learning to cook. I guess I really learnt to cook the first time I went on a diet at the age of 17. Obviously I had cooked things before this, but they usually consisted of throwing a pizza in the oven or boiling some pasta and slathering in a jar of sauce, which isn't really cooking at all! And I'd taken 'food technology' AKA cooking at school, so I had some very very basic skills to build on. I started off slowly by following simple recipes and as my confidence grew, as they were successful, I became more adventurous. In recent times I've learnt how to cook cheaper cuts of meat, how to use a slow cooker and batch cook. These days I ...  Read the complete review

My personal experience of cooking, came largely because of my Italian background. We always ate home cooked food when we were kids, and so naturally we learned to love food, and admire it. This natural adoration of real food, meant that we shunned 'ready made' or artificial foods. To my taste all ready made boxed meals, or take-aways were always far too sweet or salty, and made me feel sick after eating them. Another downside was that the sugar rush, would drop off after an hour or two, and I would feel hungry again, when in reality I should have felt satiated! ( In addition these spikes of high and low blood sugar can cause problems with diabetes! An salty ...  Read the complete review

I began cooking for myself when I went to university at 18. My parents had never really taught me to cook for myself when I lived at home. When I suddenly found myself 300 miles away from home and with no-one to cook for me, I decided I'd better learn pretty quickly! As is the case for most students, I mostly lived on pasta so I wasn't very adventurous with my cooking for a long while. When I moved in with my boyfriend whilst I was doing my MA I had a part time job and so I had a little more money to spend on food. I still made things which were quite cheap but a bit more interesting than pasta and noodles. I quickly found that casseroles and soups where ...  Read the complete review

As a young girl in the 70s, one of my early memories was spending Saturday mornings with my friend Lynn and her mum, making fairy cakes - standing on a stool to reach the worktops. At the same time, I was encouraged by my own mum to help out in the kitchen, and was a dab hand at peeling veggies at an early age. Over the next few years and into my teens, I was taught to cook a very wide range of things by my Mum - it wasn't "lessons in cookery" as such, but more that I was expected to help out in the kitchen, so soon picked up what I needed to know - whether it was baking potatoes, making cauliflower cheese, or cooking a roast dinner on a Sunday. ...  Read the complete review