Just a random musing I had.

I probably speak for a lot of people when I say that a huge part of my weight problem was my addiction to eating out. The food I would get out would be so much easier, faster, and taste 10x better than anything I could whip up at home. I hate how much I love McDonalds - but it was a friend of mine for a long time.

I never was taught how to cook while growing up, mom never asked me to help in the kitchen or told me anything. So I was starting with a clean slate a few years ago when I got my first apartment. I have to say now that I've learned how to prepare some vegetables in a way I like a huge hurdle is out of the way. I've now learned a few good chicken recipes and how to cook a steak, but whenever I attempt something new and it turns out awful I get really discouraged and just want to go out to eat. Especially every time I try to cook up a white fish - it tastes sooo bad. I like a large variety of foods, but I'm a picky eater and a huge critic of anything I make. A lot of it ends in the garbage.

So if anyone has any delicious recipes to share, I'd love to try some.

Well, learning to cook is something most of us learn as an adult. Some people like it, others don't. I love to cook, so that isn't a big deal.

And besides fast food, going out to eat actually takes WAY more time than cooking at home. I can have a meal started and finished within 30 minutes. Most meals can be. For going out to eat, it's driving there, waiting for a table, waiting to order, waiting for the food to be made, waiting for the check, the drive home. No way can you go out to eat at a sit down place in under an hour.

Sure, for cooking some meals take longe, but many are actually less labor intensive. And homemade food taste 100 times better than a lot of the crap that is "out there". Only some high end stuff, to me, tastes better.

But it takes practice. Really, good solid cookbooks are your friend. Stick to them (no alternations) while you learn to cook and learn what works and what doesn't. Even know, with 20 years of cooking behind me, I still make the recipe "as is" the first time I make something and only then change it up if I feel it could be better. And with time, you won't need cookbooks except for special occasions. You'll have an arsenal in your head.


But cooking makes controlling calories sooooo much easier - for sure.

My favorite recipe site is called All Recipes (they also have an app). I've used a lot from that site and I can't recall that I've ever had anything bad. It's really helped with my cooking over the years.

You can also search by ingredients, which I've done before when I didn't know what to make.

An easy way to cook white fish is to get some parchment paper and fold it into like a little mini bag. Inside the bag, put your fish, some lemon slices, fresh herbs and a bit of pepper and maybe some asparagus. Bake at 415 for 20 minutes. Open up your bag and you have lemon seasoned fish and veggies

I agree, I think learning to cook is a huge part of weight loss! And to go with learning how to cook, comes having the right tools for the job. Recently I have been stocking my kitchen with all sorts of new "toys" Cast Iron skillet (extra iron in everything you cook in it) And (2!) enameled dutch ovens (the best for quick one dish meals!) A mandolin to make slicing and dicing a breeze. An immersion blender for pureeing soups. I have a hard time buying these things for myself, so I find adding these types of things to my Christmas is the best way to go. This year, I was lucky to get almost all kitchen gear. My MIL loves to buy kitchen things, and she always is getting something newer and better, so I get the old one! Works for me

A few places I really like for recipes.

www.Skinnytaste.com
www.Food.com (extensive, excellent search features)
http://www.canadianliving.com/food/
http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus

and who doesn't love Pinterest for stuff like this amirite?!

and I also use www.pepperplate.com to keep all of my recipes in order.

I like to try new things too. My boyfriend isn't nearly as excited about it though He asked me the other day when we were going to have "real" food again.... He didn't like the spaghetti squash one bit!!

So true. And the recipes don't need to be complex at all. For example, I lost weight easily when I lived in Spain and certainly never starved. I did walk/dance/exercise a lot! But I had half a baguette for breakfast with a delicious tomato spread every morning in the cafe in front of my place. I asked the owner for the recipe, and it was only tomatoes put in the blender with garlic, maybe a little olive oil. Thus, only healthy fats. And I drank gazpacho a lot...cold soup made from tomatoes, cucumber, onions, peppers, olive oil and some stale bread, all in the blender and then strained. So delicious and ridiculously healthy. I intend to learn how to make it to integrate it into my regular diet.

For me, cooking is the element of control. I don't think home cooked meals usually taste better, but I need to be able to control what I am eating more than I can with restaurant foods.

I'm not a bad cook but I'm a lazy one, so I tend to eat the same things all the time. But this time around I am trying to branch out a little bit and come up with some additional things for variety and also, that I can cook ahead and freeze portions.

I think one of the best things you can do when learning how to cook is to focus on learning good basic kitchen and knife skills, so you feel comfortable in the kitchen and on learning the various cooking techniques such as roasting, braising, sautéing, poaching and such... this way once you're mastered those you just no longer feel intimidated no matter what the recipe you may encounter... and it gives you the confidence to be flexible with whatever ingredients that you may have on hand...

As far as cookbooks that might be useful maybe something like Mark Bittman's "How To Cook Everything" since it has so much information in it that it would make a good reference to have on hand... And say what you will about Martha Stewart, but her relatively new PBS series "Martha Stewart's Cooking School" is pretty worthwhile and might be something to check out if you have the chance...

Bon Appetit!

I'll second this! I think eating out was a HUGE part of my problem!! The portions and the added sugars and fats - even in "nice" restaurants make keeping your calories in check almost impossible.

I think instead of wasting money on prepared "diet foods or gimmicks," kitchen equipment is the better place to spend your money. Non-stick pans, decent knives, cutting boards, measuring equipment, etc.

I have learned to cook over the past two years and love it. I always joke that my xyz dish is the best - it is, to me - because I can make it the way I like it. I love spicy foods and when I make it, I can load it up. Also, I can make it 75% veggies and 25% grains when I cook myself whereas in a restaurant, the veggies always look suspect and they never give you enough unless you order a salad.

I had the best dinner last night and as I was eating it, it occurred to me that I liked it better than anything I could have gotten in a restaurant.

My favorite non-spicy sandwich (right now, anyway ):

Two slices whole grain bread
1/3 avocado, sliced
1T hummus (I make a container of it at a time and just keep to use all week - ground garbanzo beans, garlic, lemon juice and italian seasoning)
several fresh spinach leaves - use a lot
fresh cilantro leaves - use a lot
sliced mushrooms - I like shittake

Prepare sandwich. It's really tall, so press a little to get shape. Then, in an UNGREASED pan (or panini press), grill with another pan and a heavy weight if you have it on top. The spinach and cilantro get soft and gooey and the avocado "melts" and it all just gels together in a bunch of yumminess.

Calories - bread, 200, avocado, 60, hummus, 40, spinach, 10, mushrooms, 5, cilantro, 5 - total of 320. This fills me up if it's really dense, low sugar whole grain bread but you could add a side of sliced cucumbers with more hummus or make a guac with the rest of the avocado. Sometimes, I'm really lazy with the avocado and will take half of it and grab a spoon and just eat it tossed with some unused cilantro and garlic and stir it up right there in the avocado shell.

As far as how to cook - I am an experimenter! I figure if I put things in it that I like, I will like the output. It usually works. Not with baking of course, but with cooking dinner. That's a lot of the fun for me. I'll see really nice tomatoes or nice peppers at the grocery store and get them and then try to find something to do with them once I'm at home. It's probably not the most efficient way but I have lots of fruits and veggies that I like on hand, so I can put them together in different ways.

I would disagree somewhat using myself as evidence. I know how to cook and bake and have been doing so from a young age (I'd say 9 or 10 I made my first meal for the family). I still gained weight. For me, personally, educating myself on food is what helped. I had no clue how many calories were in 1 tbsp of peanut butter so I just heaped that stuff up on sandwhiches like there was no tomorrow.

Now I know and boy am I ever having to retrain my brain on proper portion sizes!

I made a birthday cake a few days ago and as I was beating the butter and sugar together I realized how truly amazing it was that I never batted an eye at using that much fat and sugar in baking before. Only on educating myself on the nutritional (or lack thereof) content of these ingredients did it dawn on me how out of whack my eating was!

Do you have a vocational school in your area that offers adult ed classes? A culinary class that teaches the fundamentals would be invaluable. Once you understand basic techniques, food chemistry, ingredients, flavor combinations, etc. just about anything is possible in the kitchen!

I'm passionate about cooking and try a new recipe several times a week. I get a lot of recipes and ideas from pinterest, and I have few favorite foodie blogs:
Kalyn's Kitchen
Skinny Taste
Pinch of Yum
I Breathe...I'm Hungry
Bev Cooks

Bon Appétit!

I learned to cook as an adult - beyond basic breakfast and snack foods, most folks do! I won't give out specific recipes, as it is less helpful than learning cooking science and techniques and then applying them. Then you end up with a lot more understanding of WHY and HOW certain things work, and can better judge ingredients and tailor recipes to your tastes and needs. Nothing is worse than being a slave to a recipe formula!

So for that, I recommend going to your local library and getting the Alton Brown "Good Eats" DVDs on interlibrary loan, or renting them another way. They are excellent for this and not overly pedantic.

I'm a lazy cook who would like to be a better cook, but I freely admit to being completely frustrated by recipes which call for too many, or far too obscure, ingredients. I'm only cooking for two, so when the recipe calls for a third of a cup of something like coconut milk, a third of a avocado, or a tablespoon of fresh ginger, it means that I'm either buying way too much of an ingredient so that I can throw half of it away, or it means that we're eating the same thing three nights in a row so that I can get through all of it.

I would eat out three meals a day if I could afford it and didn't mind going back to 300 pounds.

A lot of ingredients can be frozen. This website is a good place to check for info on saving/storing food. (The ingredients you mentioned - coconut milk, avocado, fresh ginger - are all freezable.)

Also, instead of eating the same dish for multiple days, freeze part of it. Another thing to do is plan meals that incorporate some of the same ingredients but in ways that are different enough so that it's not at all like eating the same thing.