CT FM 008: 18 & Can’t Cook

CT FM 008:

18 & Can’t Cook!

Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com

Introduction Welcome to our eighth Podcast from CT FM. For our 8th Podcast I wanted to talk about being 18 and not being able to cook.

You are probably laughing at the title but back in 2000 when I was 18 this was me. I could cook a handful of dishes but had never cooked a single vegetable and had absolutely no idea how to make a simple omelette.

On a plus side I could make a lasagne, a cheese sauce, a quiche and if I was having a good day, then I cook do a bit of baking.

Basically everything I knew about cooking either came from aunts and grandmas or from the limited cooking that you did once a week at school.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it. But I had just never actually bothered to learn or even wanted to learn.

I was part of a teenage society that came home from school to dinner being out on the table. It would usually be some food out of a can with some chopped tomato or cucumber on the side and that was me happy.

I would then eat it and carry on with my homework and that was my cooking experience.

In the old days (especially as a girl) you would spend hours and hours learning to cook in the kitchen at school and again at home. It was expected that your vocation would be as a housewife and everything was geared into getting you ready for that.

But when I had my teenage years in the 90’s things were different.

Women were going to university and the urge to teach cooking had well

and truly died. Add to the fact that you could put a can of baked beans in the microwave what was the point?

It was sad really and now in 2016 I always make sure my kids are in the kitchen so that they can learn from a young age and discover that cooking is a great skill to have.

Back to 2000 So it was early 2000 and I had moved in with my boyfriend. I was 18 years old and enjoying the freedom of no longer having to answer to parents. Just like most kids when they first get their freedom and I had no plans to learn how to cook.

I had moved in with a chef so why did I need to?

He was doing the job for a living and was very good at it. From a talent point of view I would put him in the league of Jamie Oliver (or similar) and at 23 he loved cooking.

But it’s that thing about chefs, if they cook and work they don’t want to come home and do it. Plus they get fed at work so they don’t need to come home and make meals.

So Dominic would get fed at work and I would live off ready meals, canned foods and my disastrous cooking that I did when I tried to venture away from the cooking I knew.

There was always this urge to cook for him, like a woman has to cook for her man, but at the same time I was nervous about cooking in front of him as he was better at it than me!

Well a LOT better at it than me!

So what did I do?

Well Jamie Oliver was just taking off at the time. The Naked Chef was the latest cookery show on television. I used to go around to my aunts on a Tuesday evening and have a girly night in. There would be me, my mum, and a couple of my aunts and a few of their friends. In between us drinking lots of wine or cider, we would be watching the Naked Chef programme. And for the first time in my life I got a taste for learning to cook.

I wanted to learn. For me, for my man but most of all because I was sick to death of eating cans of Heinz foods. I mean there is only so many years that you can sit there and eat baked beans, macaroni cheese or spaghetti bolognese.

Oh and those cans of stewing steak and potatoes were disgusting and kind of reminded me of dig food.

So I needed change.

I watched all the cookery shows I could find which in the early 00s there were quite a few. I loved watching Jamie Oliver (well I still watch him now!) and plenty of Ready Steady Cook. Ready Steady Cook (if you’ve not heard of it) was on British TV and the celebrity chefs had to cook a meal with a set amount of ingredients in 20 minutes and it was at its best back then.

Along with cookery books this was the way to learn.

If you were at school and you wanted to learn something new, you would do so by books and practical experiments. Well the very same thing applies here.

You can read cookery books, follow recipes to the letter and watch cookery shows. Enjoy simple shows were cooking is not that complicated and you’ll be amazed by how quickly you will pick it up.

Avoid gourmet chefs as if you can’t cook you should be learning how to make shepherds pie not beef wellington as you will find that you will really struggle and then you will end up giving up.

Don’t get me wrong I love watching Gordon Ramsay and regularly watch his shows, love his Instagram page, but if at 18 I had tried to follow one of his recipes I would have ended up sat on the kitchen floor crying with a lot of burnt pans. Thankfully now (16 years on) I can make some of his recipes.

But like anything else, remember that it won’t happen over night and have some patience. The first time I felt like I could cook was around the time I got married.

This was in January 2003 and by this time Dominic & I had our own house and we had a little toddler to think about. Though Kyle is 14 now and it feels weird to refer to him as the toddler!!!!

By this point I could cook a whole range of everyday family dishes. This would usually resemble some meat, potatoes and vegetables and we ate really well.

There was no fantastic kitchen gadgets like there is today (well unless you consider a microwave to be one of them) and I was a working mum so time was limited in the kitchen but I had learnt enough.

But what I am saying is that if you want to learn, then you can, you just have wanted to learn first.

The University Life This brings me onto university life. I went at 22 as a mature student when Kyle was 3 years old. It allowed us to get out and about and move

away from the town were we had grown up and start our own adventure.

But at university I found I piled the weight on and I was not the only one. With the lure of the cheese on toast at the cafeteria, the all day breakfast at reduced rates and the long days with no exercise it was easy to see how it happened.

You add to this that you now lived in the university district so everything was super cheap and you were having pizza coupons sent in the mail, you could soon see why a fat stomach was suddenly appearing.

They say that one of the top 3 reasons for weight gain is university life.

This of course along side pregnancy and quitting smoking.

Another problem is that your mum did the cooking and now with a lazy attitude you are soon turning to the takeaway to keep you satisfied.

But if we all left for university being able to cook then maybe things could be different?

Learning To Cook Thanks To Technology!

The best thing about learning to cook in 2016, compared to in 2000 is that we have technology on our side. Back then you had a cookery book, a TV show or a college course to help us learn. Now in 2016 the kitchen gadgets rule. And they make it so easy so if you can’t cook you will soon be able to with a few cheats on the way.

My Grandma died in 2000 and if I told her that in 16 years into the future not only would I be a food blogger but we could make chips in an airfryer, steam our fish in a

steamer, puree our food in a soup maker and even have our own food mixer for making dough, she would have thought I was crazy.

And this is without even mentioning to her about Pinterest, Tumblr & Yummly for recipe inspiration.

But these things are our savour and for me I must admit I would have taken to cooking a lot quicker if I had all these modern gadgets at the ready.

The fact that you have a set timing on your soup maker to steam vegetables and to be able to make soup. Or that I could make the chips to go with the meal in the airfryer and then roast a bit of meat in the oven.

We like to be healthy and to not put too much pressure on the environment so we don’t have a microwave. Plus when you don’t eat processed foods it becomes pretty pointless.

My favourite part of technology is Pinterest though, the fact the food addicts on there that are pinning everyday tends to be made up of regular working mums. It is people like you and me that are not perfect cooks but are sharing what they do know and what is easy to learn.

You could then make it your challenge to learn one new dish every week and before you know it you’ll be able to cook more than me.

This brings us to this Podcasts Sponsor: For Podcast 8 of CT FM we wanted to bring to your attention Jamie Oliver and his Naked Chef collection that you can buy on Amazon.co.uk. This is the exact books that I read to help me learn how to cook and they are all easy to follow and teach you simple home cooking using fresh ingredients. You

could do these recipes with your kids or just for you.

You can find out more at recipethis.com/jamieoliver

Thinking Frugal I always like to have a frugal slant on everything that I do and it only felt right to do it on this.

Well think of it like this. When we first moved in together, money was incredibly tight. It was that new in love feeling when you felt like you didn’t care about money and you just wanted to be together. You know the fairytale style thing.

Well as a result we had to spend just £20 a week on groceries (at the very most) and all that we learnt back then was based upon cooking from scratch and saving money.

Compared to buying ready meals and processed foods if you buy lots of flour, eggs, rice, milk, butter and cheap meat you can live on the tighest of budgets. So don’t think that because you are learning to cook means it has to be expensive.

Another really good tip is to get in with the local restaurants. Offer your services for a day for free in exchange for learning some cooking skills and a free meal. You will be hard pushed to find a restaurant that would turn you down!

Round Up! Thanks for joining us in our Podcast and we look forward to sharing more of our cooking tips with you in the future.

Links & Resources Mentioned In This Podcast

       

Jamie Oliver Naked Chef Books Gordon Ramsay (On Instagram) Recipe This On Pinterest Recipe This On Tumblr Recipe This On Yummly Our Airfryer Our Soup Maker Food Mixers On Amazon

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Thanks again for listening and best of luck with your cooking.

Samantha & Dominic Milner http://recipethis.com And don’t forget to connect with us on social media:  http://facebook.com/recipethis

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