Cooking is easily one of my favorite hobbies. Perhaps because it's so important to me or perhaps because it feels like everyone talks about loving cooking, I've been reluctant to talk about it more. That's just silly. I have to remember to give myself permission to be myself, no matter what everyone else does.
A short history of me cooking:
Two of my earliest memories of cooking are from around ages 4-6.
In the first memory, my mom wasn't feeling great -- either sick or tired, probably pregnant with my younger sister -- and I was set the task of making ramen from a package. I'm sure you know what I mean when I talk about those $0.10 packages of ramen you can get. She used to have me help make ramen with her, so it wasn't totally strange that she asked me to make some. Sadly, when I read 2 cups of water, I grabbed a drinking cup (probably 12 oz or more) and used 2 of those instead of a measuring cup. The ramen was pretty horrible, and while I felt embarrassed at the time, I now just laugh.
In my second memory, my mom went outside to work in the front garden. I wanted to make cinnamon-sugar toast (something I was totally allowed to do). Being so small and enjoying the first piece so much, I decided to make more. And more. And more. Let's just say I probably made half a loaf of cinnamon-sugar toast, all the while not understanding that I'd be full long before I finished what was in front of me. I just thought it was so tasty. I remember realizing at some point that I had far too much toast in front of me and regularly glancing out the door to make sure my mom didn't come in and see how much I'd made. I can't remember if I actually ate it all before she came back in or if I threw some away or if maybe she came in and helped me eat the last couple pieces. Apparently I didn't think she'd notice half a loaf of bread gone in a couple hours.
Needless to say, as I grew, I helped my mom more and more in the kitchen.
As a teen, I made more dinners for my family. My mom loves baking. While she definitely can cook, she doesn't enjoy it as much as she enjoys baking. So I helped out and made dinners, especially on nights when I had youth group and we needed to eat by a specific time. In high school, I took two cooking classes. It was thanks to the cooking labs in those classes that I started to really enjoy reading recipes to decide if I wanted to try making the food.
I guess that all leads up to where I am now. I've been experimenting more as the years go on. I don't claim to be exceptionally great at cooking, but I think when you enjoy something and practice it regularly, you get better. So I'm not fantastic, but I'm fairly decent and adventurous.
My sisters are a bit experimental and good, but they're more like my mom: they love baking more than cooking, though they're capable of both. Overall, though, they're impressed with what I tell them I've made. To be fair, they only hear what I've made, not tasted it.
Something I really want to share is my cooking experimentation. I've had successes and failures. It's kind of stupid what I fail at when I succeed with other things. Before I share what I've done, I wanted to share some of my favorite cooking youtube channels.
SORTED Food: This is easily my favorite cooking channel. The guys are from England (which makes conversions for me really challenging), so they have a different outlook on food. I love it because they share things more common to them and less common to me (like Indian-inspired cooking). Some recipes are intimidating, but most are fairly approachable. Plus, they've inspired an entire community on their website sortedfood.com where people share recipes and just talk about food.
Raw. Vegan. Not Gross.: I'm an omnivore, but I don't know huge amounts about eating vegetarian or vegan. I know it's super healthy, so I try to incorporate more of that kind of cuisine. Laura Miller shares these amazing raw vegan recipes. She discusses the health benefits of whatever main ingredient she's talking about so you understand it's not just "fad" stuff. Even if I've never eaten sauerkraut, her discussion of it and its health benefits makes me want to make it. I've made fewer of her recipes solely because it uses more expensive ingredients (like the sheer amount of nuts she uses!), but I absolutely love watching and learning more. I plan on trying more of her recipes this year. As a note, this show is on Tastemade, a channel of a bunch of cooking shows. I haven't watched many of the other shows because I don't find them as easily approachable as Raw. Vegan. Not Gross.
My Drunk Kitchen: Hannah Hart is around my age, which makes this approachable from the outset. She drinks (usually wine) and cooks in the kitchen. By the end of the episode, she's fairly tipsy. This is fantastic particularly because it means half of her food doesn't come out well. Something goes wrong (usually a lack of measuring ingredients or improper ingredients), but she's totally positive anyway. Half her food comes out great, it needs to be pointed out. She has guests on all the time. Sometimes it's other famous youtubers, sometimes it's actual celebrities like Mary Louise Parker, Lance Bass, Jamie Oliver, or Sarah Silverman. Hannah also does a great job of talking about issues of the day using food as a metaphor.
You Deserve a Drink: Mamrie Hart (friend but not relation of Hannah Hart) makes drinks. She's been a bartender. She attends mixology classes. She creates drinks. And she's vegan, so all her recipes are vegan. It's actually really neat. I've made pretty much none of her drinks, but I love watching what she does. I find it fascinating. Plus she makes more puns than you'd think a person could per episode. She also has special guests on sometimes, but usually they're youtubers (though she did recently do a drink for Jamie Oliver). Even if you're like me and not much of a drinker, you'd probably enjoy one or two of these.
Cooking Fast and Fresh with West: This can barely count as a cooking show. Misha Collins (who plays Castiel on Supernatural) has posted 4 videos where he lets his son, West, pick all the ingredients for a recipe and tell him exactly how to make the food. Then Misha eats the dinner. West is three or four, so the recipes are weird. It's more an example of amazing fathering than cooking, but the episodes are hilarious. I'd recommend watching them if you're ever feeling blue.
I watch other things, but mostly it's one-off recipes, not channels. These are far more inspiration than actual sources of recipes for me.
I'd love suggestions of other channels to watch!
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