Dread of cooking and how I overcame it.

Hahahahaa..I'm sorry marguicha, I really thought you were still very young like 12 years old same as the malaysian kid I read from yahoo news.Anyway, you are right about playing. Now that I'm alone at home without a kid, I forgot how fun it is playing. Being alone at home is not healthy at all, I am more focused on problems. Now that I've been reading good and bad comments I have a wider point of views.

I wish we are neighbors so we could 'play' together at the kitchen. I really love cooking and experimenting with food and its tastes.

Get a piggyBank, get money for a ticket to my country and come for a visit

Congratulations, friend! I think that many of us have our story of "the first time" that has to do with a sort of accident. I would not have made my first dish if the cook had showed up at home. But my husband came for lunch and he needed a lot of food. He was then a pro soccer player and he was always hungry. His mom was a wonderful cook, but he never told me that his mommy cooked better

Glad for that kind of accident. So now we know how to ccok for our family. Do you believe that guys cook better? Well I don't see the disctinction between my parents. But now, knowing how my fiance cooks makes me disagree to that. He doesn't cook well actually. Okay, he's a member here and he might read this one.

My husband had a couple of dishes he did better than anyone. But he had to be in the mood and the kitchen ended up in a mess. So the everyday food was made by me. Still, my friends remember more the couple of delicious food that my husband made for them that all I do now

I had the Joy of Cooking way back years ago. I lost it in a fire. I now have one of the later ones and reference it often. I use allrecipes.com a lot now as well. I cook from scratch too. I don't think I've bought a preboxed mix of anything for a long long time. The only exception may be a cake mix which I add stuff to like a jello pudding mix, coconut or something other to make the cake exceptional but I do that rarely. I like homemade cakes and pies. I do not buy frosting as I make that myself.

I also use allrecipes.com now. They send me a recipe to check every day. I also make my own frosting. I will make a 7 minute frosting with different colours this Christmas to frost cupcakes with my 9 year old grandson. I will not think ahead on the mess. THat recipe is from the "Joy".

TV shows and internet have helped me with dish decoration although I`m far from perfection. Still there are some dishes thst I love so much that I take a picture before I let anyone serve. My Bible, as far as cooking books go, is still The Joy of Cooking, in spite of the videos and colours online. I have an old edition and I bet it is better than the new ones. I don`t like the kind of cook books that put together 3 different cans. When I say "from scratch", I mean it.

I cannot buy Ox tongue. It`s quite expensive here and I`m addicted to it. I cook it and before I decide what to do with it and how to prepare it, I begin to slice just a tiny bit. I have decided not to buy any expensive food addictions unless there is a party. I`m sure that you are an awesome cook. You can invite me to your stew

When I started mylotting I knew little of your country. Now I know more but I also know that we are too far away to visit.

I'd love to have you taste it....if only we live just close to each other.

It`s much easier now that what it was in my young age. Now there`s the web and you can get recipes with pictures, videos and step by step recipes. But still, it`s a good idea to start with the easy ones so that you can congratulate yourself at your success

I have grown adventurous with the passing of time. And now that I live alone, I have to use my imagination a lot because I eat all leftovers, but don`t like to eat the same stuff 2 days in a row.

I wished many times that my mother had taught me to cook. I had to learn many things when I didn`t want to learn that anymore. So I taught my daughters to coook, sew, knit and other things like that when they showed interest. Later on in life, they have decided what they will do themselves and what they will pay others to do.

Whenever we are interested to learn something new, we should always start out from the easy step first. Learning to cook easy daily recipes is a good start to learn cooking.

Sometimes it`s a very good idea to give a cookbook of sorts with only easy everyday recipes. I have lots of cookbooks now and browse them sometimes. But when I was starting, I wanted maybe 10 easy recipes to begin with.

Well growing up, I was taught to cook some basic recipes. Those were the ones that I used primarily. I recall using the Betty Crocker cookbook to bake at the holidays and we would pull it out to consult to make something like a turkey. My mother who taught me to cook believed in overcooking everything, so it took me some time to adjust to learning to not overcook things. Like it is amazing how much better a turkey tastes when it is not cooked for 2 - 3 times longer than it really requires cooking. Even once I started cooking, it was like trying to kick my mother out of the kitchen because we would get into fights over how to cook things. It was partly because I would cook so that it came out tasting good rather than overcooked. When I moved out, I rarely used recipes I just would make meals from memory. Either that or I would ask a friend if it was a new dish that I was making like when I baked a ham for Christmas. On the rare occassion if I needed a recipe, I would just consult the internet. It is interesting how things have changed so much over the years. It used to be that every kitchen needed a cookbook, but now we have the internet that we can consult. Actually, I do not even own a cookbook. I recall once after moving out considering buying one but they were so expensive.

Sometimes, our parents prefer to say nice words to encourage us to put more effort into our new found skill. Only over the time that we can know how does our first dish tastes like compared to the current dish. Of course, there are so much differences in taste, right.

I did my first attemt in cooking in those circumstances too, mybf. But I even forgot what I made. I only remember the pride because my father said it was delicious. Now I understand that he was a loving father and probably my dish was barely eadible

I had a helper last year because I did not know how I would do with my chemo. She came 5 days a week and left me food in the fridge. She cooked as I liked because I had taught her 15 years ago. When I felt better I discovered that if I had her for so many days, I`d end up crippled by lazyless. So now I have her 2 days a week and we do some gardening together and she goes with me to the super walking instead of going in the car. I cook and she washes the pots (I hate to do that!).

I know that some people prefer to avoid talking about a big illness. But I think it`s better to talk about it without giving too much importance to it. I can assure you that in this moment there are two important things in my life. The bad one: I have a pimple in my face. The good one: one of the tomato plants has a small tomato.. I think I made a good decision when I cut back the amount of help. I miss her some days, specially when I start doing something that means a lot of dirty pans.

I did not want to talk about your chemo as I have seen you going about with a fantastic positive attitude. In those 2 years I got into a routine and even now, I have decided not to give up doing certain chores as, if the situation of not having any help around surfaces then I am not at a total loss!

I agree with you about sometimes the cookeing is not the best, even if you are a good cook. I must confess that sometimes I burn food when I forget everything else because I`m at the computer.

I totally agree that sometimes if you are trying to do to many things at once that you end up with burnt dinner that does not come out as good as you would have liked for the outcome. If it is sot that you mething I need to keep an eye on to stir and so forth, I generally try to wash dishes and clean up the kitchen. That way I stay near the kitchen. I would suggestk to the ki that if you are going to use the laptop while cooking you may want to consider sitting a timer. I generally will set the timer on the microwave. That way when it goes off I have to actually walk back to the kitchen to turn off the timer that way I am not tempted to just turn off the timer without checking on dinner.

I use the timer at the kitchen, but sometimes I don`t hear it as my big computer is in the second floor. But now that I have my laptop I`m hoping I`ll do better

Stir fried veggies are a wonderful addition to any meal, even if we are not vegetarial. I do that a lot, specially in Summer, when veggies are cheaper and there are all sorts of fresh ones to be bought. I am quite sure that if we learn how to cook, we can eat much better and healthier with homemade food and it`s not expensive at all.

THere are several activities that go together, I think. I`m a writer. That means that I love to imagine things. That also means that I love to play. I play with words and I play with ingredients in the kitchen. Both in writing and cooking, I do not attempt to start with something difficult. I remember that once a woman came to my literary workshop and told me that she wanted to write a novel "this thick". She wanted me to teach her to do that. I told her then that we started by making paragraphs and learning to "see" and put it in words. I do that too when I open the door of my pantry or fridge. I think that in cooking, a must is to learn to dice onions (very small dices) and then fry them. That helps almost any dish.

Thanks marguicha for your tips! I think I lack common sense in the kitchen LOL. I didn't know which ingredients cook faster. I have to always look for recipes in the net and follow them strictly, or else something would go wrong. I learned to cook eggs, which is quite easy to cook, but no one likes them except my sister. In my family, we can't cook dishes that no one would like, or else no one would touch them even if they're edible. My dad is a picky eater, and so am I and my sister. So maybe my first few attempts were failures because they're too complex to cook. But now, I always look for dishes that are both delicious and simple to cook.

Belle, you are really lucky that you don't have to learn cooking at a very young age. As for me, it is due to unsuspected circumstances that arise, so my parents don't have other choice but to teach me on how to cook from the basic stage.

I felt bad when I was little, as I wanted to play at the kitchen. But I don`t mind now that I mostly learned how to cook by my own means. Now I ask my mom how she makes this or that, but I will not follow her advise all the time.

I had to learn some things by necessity at the beginning, but quickly discovered that cooking was very creative. That`s the part I like best. That`s why I prefer to make dishes instead of baking as in baking you pretty much have to stick to your recipe.