I love to cook, when I have the time, so with baby twins in tow for now it means weekend cooking is my main time to cook from scratch and we eat a combination of convenience food and leftovers in the week, but I really do look forward to getting back into it as the boys get older and teaching them to cook and become foodies too.
Food is one of those great parts of life that can remind us of just how happy we are to be alive in the first place. A good meal can bring a family together, it can be a way for lovers to start a romantic evening, or it can give long-lost friends the opportunity to catch up and share some laughs.
Food is also something that a lot of people increasingly have a fraught and difficult relationship with. On the one hand, eating is essential to survival, and good food tastes, well, good. On the other hand, obesity is a modern epidemic, and we all want to look trim, and preferably stay healthy, too.
Getting into home cooking as a serious way of life, is a great way of reconciling these issues. So get your cookbooks, your chopping board colour chart for kitchens, and your herbs and spices, and read on.
Here are some reasons you should get seriously into home cooking…
It’s much better for your health
There’s a lot of debate over what the perfect diet is, or isn’t, and about which mainstream foodstuffs are a hindrance to your health or a benefit.
In some areas, however, just about everyone agrees. Processed food is one of those areas, with scientists reporting, unequivocally, that the more processed a foodstuff is when you buy it, the more likely it is to be bad for your health. Trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, and the hundreds of additives whose names you’ve never heard of never a good idea. My basic rule of thumb is to read the labels of any pre-mixed sauces we buy and if it has a bunch of chemicals and things I haven’t heard of then I simply don’t buy it. There are a lot of brands out there who do make good quality sauces to make your life a bit easier, some of my favourites are Lloyd Grossman, Seeds of Change , Amy’s Kitchen & Pataks.
Keeping this in mind, cooking as many meals yourself, from scratch, as possible is one of the best ways of improving your health. Knowing exactly what you put in your meals, and how much of it, is already a major benefit and it can save you money too.
It’s an art-form and skill set that you can take pleasure in developing
Cooking isn’t just something that people do because they want to eat, it’s something that they often put their heart, souls, and creativity into.
Cooking is an art-form and skillset that you can take pleasure in developing. There’s always more to learn — new recipes, new ingredient combos — and there’s always a direct pay-off for developing your skills. Specifically, you get to eat more and more delicious food, and share it with your loved ones.
Being a good cook is a great way of brightening up your family’s day, impressing a date, and just making yourself happy.
It’s really therapeutic
Cooking is one of those activities that you can get really “Zen” with. It requires some attention, but not so much that you’re likely to become exhausted through sheer concentration.
Rather, cooking is one of those “flow” activities that can have a therapeutic effect on the mind. You’re doing something productive, but it’s also rhythmic and calming.
In other words, cooking can be a really therapeutic way of unwinding after a long day of work, or on the weekend. You could even throw on an audiobook or one of your favourite records to make the experience all the more entertaining.