Introduction to this site and me.

 I didn't really start cooking until I went away to University (in 1984) but I lived with great cooks, my mother's cooking is incredible, her mother owned a catering company, and I lived with a cousin for a year before Uni who cooked a new meal every night from different cookbooks.  My mother read cookbooks like books and it was common to discuss meal prep and leftovers. Growing up I didn't cook much myself but I got right into it when I had to do it living on my own.

I put myself through school so I didn't have a lot of money for food and I had to be creative. I joined the vegetarian club because it was a $3 membership and they met once a week, demonstrated how to cook a dish, and then fed us a full meal. I hadn't really planned on becoming a vegetarian but for $3 I was going to get 13 meals and by the end of the quarter I realized I had stopped eating meat.  I was enjoying the challenge of learning about all the different beans and lentils and even rice that there were.  My mother cooked a lot of foods from her ethnicity, and I was learning about different types of cooking and taught her. I showed her about ramen. And lentils.

I realized early on that it's good to have cooking and food processing as a hobby that one enjoys.  When I was in grad school I would take Sunday's off to do all my life stuff, laundry, cleaning, and cooking and meal prep for the week. I lived with lots of people and made lots of casseroles that I would cook later on in the week. Now I live alone and mostly work from home so I cook when I feel like it, and make enough for several meals and freeze them in individual servings.  When I don't feel like/don't have time to cook I pull something out of the freezer and microwave it.  

I'll mention more as I blog on.