Red State Green

This is a series about learning to feed yourself. The idea for this came from this post. You might want to read both of those first to see where I’m coming from before you comment.

1. Learn to garden
2. Stock up
3. Find out who your neighbors are
4. Find local food sources
5. Learn to cook <– we are here
6. Think about your meat sources (this is optional, of course, for you vegans out there, but think of it as a ‘bonus’ should your carnivore friends have a question)

Learn to cook

I’ll have to admit that I’m not the best cook in the world. But this is something anyone can learn to do.

If you’ve never even boiled water before, cooking a meal can seem intimidating. Some of you might be laughing right now, but there are a lot of people who go to fast food places and delicatessens for their meals simply for lack of cooking skills. It’s okay to start from where you are.

The best place to start is with one of those boxed meals. Hamburger Helper, Macaroni and Cheese, Rice-A-Roni, those kind of things. Yes, they’re terrible for you, but all cooking entails is following a set of directions, and the directions on those box meals are about as clear and easy as you can get.

In any case, find something on a store shelf that you’d like to try, and try it. You might have to buy a pan or two, and figure out how to turn on your stove. That’s okay. If you really can’t figure something out, contact me and we’ll tackle it together.

If it doesn’t come out exactly right, figure out what you did wrong and try another time. If it does come out well, congratulations! Enjoy.

Cookbooks are books dedicated to directions on how to make food. These directions are called recipes. Once you have the recipe and the ingredients, you can make anything you want.

There are lots of recipe sites online. There are whole blogs dedicated to cooking. One I like a lot is Help! I Have A Fire In My Kitchen!, which has a humorous approach and recipes rated by their difficulty (one is easy; five is gourmet).

This is a little like learning to garden. It’s going to take time for you to get basic skills and the confidence to develop new skills. But cooking for yourself opens up a new world for you as far as controlling your food supply. You can buy food in bulk, because you know how to use it. You can eat healthier and not be dependent on fast food to live.

Also, when you grow in your garden, you’ll know what to do with the food you get. There’s been a request for food preservation tips, which is a whole other post, but there’s not much easier than making a salad or slicing a fresh tomato for your burger (which you cooked yourself, since now you know how!)

Here are some other good sites to look at:

The Cook’s Thesaurus — an online encyclopedia of ingredients and kitchen tools. If you find a word that you don’t know the meaning of, you can probably find it here.

Recipezaar — recipes for just about anything. This has an ingredient search tool that’s really helpful for when you grow something yet run out of ideas as far as using it.

So try cooking something this week, if you haven’t been doing that. If you normally cook, try something new. Let us know how it goes!

Next, I’ll be talking about meat sources. Stay tuned.