Why All The Cooking?

I hate cooking, so it seems a bit counterintuitive to create a blog about it and to spend so much time and effort into improving my culinary skills, right?

Not really.

I recently moved back to my hometown after living basically on my own for six months, where I learned a thing or two about cooking (and by that, I mean how to use the buttons on the microwave). While the independence was great, I came to realize how much I missed sharing meals with people. Not only did I miss the company while eating dinner, but I also figured out pretty quickly how difficult it is to cook for one person without visiting the freezer aisle for some quick and easy one-serving dishes.

So reason #1 for this blog: I was sick of frozen foods for one person.

But when I returned home, I was surprised to find that my family really had no idea what they were having for dinner at night. Most of the time, my mother would come home late from work, my father would be working out late, and we would all be wondering what was for dinner by the time 7:00 rolled around. Nothing would have been started for dinner, and so we would always end up picking things up (read: fast, greasy, food) for dinner. 

While I would not consider myself a "health nut" by any means, I have tried to "improve" my eating habits over the course of the past few months. Don't get me wrong, I do love my fried foods every now and then, but I found myself eating out more in my first few weeks at home than I did in my entire six months living away, and that was a bit too much.

Reason #2: Freshly prepared food > Fast/fried food

Growing up as an extremely picky eater, anything not pasta, pizza, or chicken related was out of the question. That being said, while I still lean toward those types of foods, I would now like to do what we in music call a "variation on a theme," or taking the basic idea of something, but putting a different spin on them. 

Reason #3: I'm learning to branch out in my food tastes.

While kids are generally picky, I would like to have my future kids try as many different (and healthy-ish) foods as they can while they are growing up. Then maybe they won't get stuck in such a box as I did growing up (at no fault of my parents). Although I am nowhere close to starting my own family anytime soon, I would like to think that I will have one someday, and well, if I am going to have a family to feed, I figure I should probably start learning to cook now.

Beyond my future family, I have also undertaken the task of preparing meals for my mother, who often times comes home after a long day at the office. She has recently started Weight Watchers, and so in an attempt to help her plan her points and to eat less take-out, I have undertaken the task of cooking for her (and my dad) every Sunday-Thursday night.

Reason #4: To cook for others.

That being said, at the moment, I am a true amateur chef, and I will need guidance and assistance from those wiser chefs with much more wisdom and experience. For me, that will just happen to come from my Nana who lives about 5 minutes away.

Reason #5: To cook with others.

And finally, because cooking is an art skill like any other. While I would typically identify myself as more of a musician at heart (that will hopefully be my day job, after all), both tasks require a substantial amount of creativity and passion.

Reason #6: To enhance my creativity.

So here goes, not only my endeavor to cook for (and with) my family, but also my journey into becoming a musician-turned-chef...