5 ms·

This! I have had the same realization last year. I started cooking my own meals for the last year and my energy level is way up. Another thing that had a good

This! I have had the same realization last year. I started cooking my own meals for the last year and my energy level is way up. Another thing that had a good effect is reducing a lot sugar and carbo hydrates (bread). I have grown up in France too and we are used to eating way too much bread. Still, I havent figured out how to keep eating as healthy as home when I travel for a long time. I had thought of targeting vegetarian restaurants as a proxy for healthy food.

bane 7y ago
We also started moving to a more home-cooked approach in the last couple of years. I'm trying to use boredom with the few dishes I know to drive me to learn more about cooking. One "rule" is that we try to eliminate most things that requires freezing, canning or shelf-stable packaging. I've grown a much better understanding of what fruits and vegetables need to be used quickly vs those that can sit for a week or more and it's helped with meal planning and shopping. We shop more frequently, but stock up much less. I've actually ended up enjoying the "multi-threaded" nature of cooking a nice meal. Learning how long each dish will take and planning my prep around that is actually an enjoyable challenge. Bonus if the outcome is tasty. The goal wasn't necessarily to eat more healthily, just to eat more fresh. The side-effect is that you end-up eliminating tons of garbage from your diet anyways. Another interesting side-effect is that since we're starting with raw ingredients, we're finding that we're being much choosier about the quality we're selecting. Ever since then we went with a pantry full of stuff and freezers packed with "heat-and-eat" premade food to a few cans, some dried seaweed and noodles and virtually empty freezers and a fridge that's packed full of vegetables.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  > I'm trying to use boredom with the few dishes I know to drive me to learn more about cooking. Start with a handful of recipes. Then add a new one to the mix each week. If it is a keeper, add it to the list of recipes. After you have about a months worth of recipes, organize them into menus (and save the shopping lists). Then you can start rotating menus. You will eat the same recipe once per month and it will not get boring as fast and you've save the shopping lists so the planning/shopping is much faster as well. Finally, once you have that in place, swap in a new recipe every now and then. If you like it, keep it in the rotation for a month, then swap the old recipe back in for a month. It make the burden of finding new recipes lighter and keeps things fun and fresh. Obviously, adjust the scheduling above to suit you, this is just an example.

bane 7y ago

We also started moving to a more home-cooked approach in the last couple of years. I'm trying to use boredom with the few dishes I know to drive me to learn more about cooking. One "rule" is that we try to eliminate most things that requires freezing, canning or shelf-stable packaging. I've grown a much better understanding of what fruits and vegetables need to be used quickly vs those that can sit for a week or more and it's helped with meal planning and shopping. We shop more frequently, but stock up much less. I've actually ended up enjoying the "multi-threaded" nature of cooking a nice meal. Learning how long each dish will take and planning my prep around that is actually an enjoyable challenge. Bonus if the outcome is tasty. The goal wasn't necessarily to eat more healthily, just to eat more fresh. The side-effect is that you end-up eliminating tons of garbage from your diet anyways. Another interesting side-effect is that since we're starting with raw ingredients, we're finding that we're being much choosier about the quality we're selecting. Ever since then we went with a pantry full of stuff and freezers packed with "heat-and-eat" premade food to a few cans, some dried seaweed and noodles and virtually empty freezers and a fridge that's packed full of vegetables.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago
> I'm trying to use boredom with the few dishes I know to drive me to learn more about cooking. Start with a handful of recipes. Then add a new one to the mix each week. If it is a keeper, add it to the list of recipes. After you have about a months worth of recipes, organize them into menus (and save the shopping lists). Then you can start rotating menus. You will eat the same recipe once per month and it will not get boring as fast and you've save the shopping lists so the planning/shopping is much faster as well. Finally, once you have that in place, swap in a new recipe every now and then. If you like it, keep it in the rotation for a month, then swap the old recipe back in for a month. It make the burden of finding new recipes lighter and keeps things fun and fresh. Obviously, adjust the scheduling above to suit you, this is just an example.