How to learn to love cooking

I might be going out on a limb here by offering my suggestions because I, for one, love cooking. I’ve never really known what it feels like not to love cooking.  I learnt to cook by my mother at a very young age, maybe 6 or 8 years old and back then, it was a chore. It took me away from playing and they weren’t jobs I really liked doing. Jobs like peeling potatoes, feeding the cat raw kidney or washing the dishes. But I did love weekends for baking and making sweets, which we were allowed to do. I hope I can help you learn to love cooking.

I might’ve been lucky, in a way, that food was very much a part of our lives from a young age. With a Latvian born father and German descent mother, food was very important to us and good food at that. We weren’t very rich growing up but that’s one thing that my parents and grandparents never skimped on.

It wasn’t that they spent a lot of money on it but they got it straight from the source, that is, from my mother’s relative’s farms, Dad caught the fish, fruit and vegetable from markets or grew their own.

My paternal grandmother made food they ate in Latvia and it was delicious! My maternal grandmother was an excellent cook and baker and grew all her own food. I don’t think she knew what a supermarket looked like except to buy basic ingredients like flour, coffee, tea, sugar etc. Everything was prepared from scratch and we were always helping in some way. The end result, I guess, was that it got us involved and wanting to be involved in cooking.

It wasn’t until my late teens when I first moved out of home that I started to research other cuisines and started going to restaurants that my desire to learn how to cook these foods grew. I loved entertaining, planning dinner parties (all the rage in the 80s) and catering for family events.

I must admit. Since having children, I don’t like cooking so much. The meals can be quite boring, that is, without much flare or adventurous but I know I’m cooking food that my family love and will eat. (I was blessed with the fussiest daughter in the world, bless her cotton socks!)

So, to help you enjoy cooking and preparing meals you and your family like to eat, I hope you give these suggestions a try.

Ask yourself “what do I like to eat?”

That’s a good a place as any to start. If you cook the food you like to eat you might be off to a good start.

Start thinking about food you see on cooking shows or in restaurants you visit. Or perhaps ready made from the supermarket or takeaway meals you buy often. If you learn how to cook them yourself you’ll know exactly what goes into them.

Also, research how to cook them the easiest way possible. For example, if you like Thai food, to cook it authentically, you’d have to try and source all the Thai herbs and vegetables to at first make the paste, then fry it off, etc etc. Buying a good quality Thai paste from the supermarket and keeping it in the fridge, you’ll have a classic Thai dish on the table in no time.

First put the rice onto boil, fry a little of the Thai paste of your choice in a little oil, add the meat, any vegetables and a can of coconut milk and dinner will be done in 20 minutes. The only effort required is a bit of chopping and stirring. Put it in a big pot in the centre of the table for everyone to help themselves.

You can apply the same principle to any food you like to eat. Search for recipes with the word “easy” or “simple” at the beginning like “easy indian butter chicken” or “simple Lebanese food” and you’ll be surprised at just how many people have gone before you to make things easy.

Teach yourself to cook

Once you learn the basic cooking techniques like fry, boil, saute, blanch (without sounding patronising), you can apply it to any recipe. If you find a recipe you’d like to cook and don’t know what some of the methods mean, Google it.

There is a Youtube clip for just about anything with hundreds if not thousands of people showing you how to do something from basic food prep to cooking the entire dish.

Find your favourite dishes you’d like to make and teach yourself.

Failing that, enrol in a cooking class. If you do like Thai, Indian, French or Turkish food, I’m sure you’ll find a cooking class in your area. You’ll get to learn about the different ingredients that go into particular dishes. Without going through all that prep when you get home, find the easy version of the recipe and make it yourself.

Keep it simple

Some of the best and tastiest cuisines in the world are the easiest to prepare. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with meat and potatoes (Cote de Boeuf in France) or a ham and cheese toasted sandwich (Croque Monsieur in France).

Not everything has to be ‘meat and 3 veg’. In fact, I find that sort of meal tedious. There are so many saucepans, different cooking times and the washing up! I’d rather try for one pot meals that can be cooked in the slow cooker or a casserole dish and thrown in the oven. A bit of peeling and chopping and it’s done. Just let the appliance do the work for you.

An easier alternative

If you like a particular dish, you can bet your bottom dollar it can be made in a slow cooker, for example, or all thrown into a baking dish and thrown into the oven in about 5 minutes flat. Not much preparation required.

With all the appliances on the market today, there’s one for just about every application. Personally, I find the slow cooker a great time saver in that the meal is cooked for me. I just have to serve it.

Same as a tray bake. Just throw everything onto a baking dish, put the dish in the oven and 20 to 30 minutes later, the meal is cooked. There are modernised pressure cookers on the market that will cook your meal for you really quickly.

Get family members to help you

This can be excruciating sometimes especially if you have young ‘helpers’ and they make more mess than help but you’ll be setting them up for life with some valuable life skills. Hang in there and persevere.

My children are teenagers now and are capable of cooking dinner themselves. It may not be anything gourmet but it’s food. It’s food they like, we can tolerate and we’re fed.

Buy ingredients that will make your job easier

Like I mentioned above, buying a pre-made flavour paste to make Indian or Thai food is going to make your job of getting dinner on the table easier.

It kind of defeats the purpose to buy ready made meals but I mean for things like burgers, for example. Instead of ducking out to the “Golden Arches” because you don’t feel like cooking, buy bread rolls, ground meat for the burgers and make the patties up and put both in the freezer.

The rolls will defrost while you’re cooking the patties, once they’ve been defrosted in the microwave (or you can plan to have them that night if you take them out that morning if you know you’re going to have a busy day). A few homemade potato wedges (or buy a bag of homebrand wedges or fries) and you’ve got a quick ‘fakeaway’ that you know will be a lot better value for money than the takeaway option.

Buy bottles of passata instead of tinned tomatoes. Buy pappadums to cook up and serve with your Indian meal for a bit of authenticity. Keep plain Greek yoghurt in the fridge to make Tzatziki to accompany Greek dishes or make a Raita for Indian meals. Make a salsa to top grilled chicken or fish or add to a fully loaded nachos. All the little accompaniments take ordinary meals to the next level.

Cook double or triple of everything

When you are cooking rice or pasta, for example, cook double or triple and freeze in family size portions. You only need to put it in a bowl and pour boiling water over it to have it ready for your meal.

Cook up 2kg worth of ground meat in the slow cooker which can be made into four meals. Make the four meals up there and then or freeze the meat into 4 equal sized portions ready to defrost and make up the meal in about 20 minutes flat.

 

So, I there’s a few tips I can offer that might help you learn to love cooking. Remember to cook what you and your family love to eat so you know there will be happy and full tummies at the end of the meal. At the end of the day, as a homemaker that’s all we’re trying to do. Looking after our families well being and providing them with food to fuel their bodies. If we can make that as appealing as possible, we’re providing food prepared with love and a home that is welcoming, inviting and a happy place to be.

Where do I start?

When you get so overwhelmed with the state of your home you just don’t know where or how to start and you ask yourself “where do I start?” I want you to know, help is at hand. It can be totally overwhelming for some but I have great news.

Domesblissity is Hitting the Streets

I’m taking Domesblissity out on the road in 2017 and I’m going to show you how to organise your home life so you are no longer overwhelmed.  The Let’s Get Started home organising service is a custom designed plan catered to your specific needs. 

Whether it’s showing you:

• how to cook easy, family friendly meals that your family will love
• how to grocery shop for the ingredients you need to avoid wastage
• how to organise your pantry, fridge or freezer to make the most of the ingredients you buy
• how to organise your home so you can find things easily and put them away again
• how to declutter or repurpose items in your home so you avoid buying things you already have
• how to organise your closet so you get the most use of the clothes, shoes and accessories you already have
• how to store seasonal items like winter blankets, winter clothes, seasonal decorations, eg Christmas, Easter etc
• how to organise your finances so you can save for the things that you really want for you and your family
• how to find ‘me’ time to enjoy life and not be a slave to your house
• and anything else you need, just ask.

I can organise a regular cleaner, handyman, pool cleaner or anything else you just can’t find the time to deal with. 

If you live within the Redlands, Queensland and surrounding suburbs, I’ll be happy to come visit for a FREE 30 minute consultation to evaluate just where you want to start to organise your home life.

 

For Your Chance to Win a Complimentary 2 Hour Consultation

If you’d like to try out the Let’s Get Started service for FREE, I am giving away a complimentary 2 hour consultation. All you have to do is complete this easy “yes/no” type survey.  The survey will close at 5:00pm on Monday, 2 January 2017.

To find out more about the services I provide and a little more about me, complete the details below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

If there’s absolutely anything you need a hand with to give you a better quality of life, to live the kind of life you’ve only ever dreamed of, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Cooking from scratch vs buying convenience foods

For a while now, every time I’m at the supermarket, I’m checking out what people are buying and saying to myself “tsk, tsk” or silently saying “there is another, cheaper, better way to make that meal than to buy that packet mix/bottled sauce etc”. Then I got to thinking. Who am I to dictate to people what is better? What’s that person’s story? Do they know how to cook? Are they super, super busy? Is there really any benefit to cooking from scratch vs buying convenience foods?

I know that’s what I prefer to do because I love cooking but I’m not perfect (not that buying convenience foods make you some kind of evil person). I’m super, super busy, just like other parents but by having a well stocked pantry, I don’t have to buy those ready made, convenience meals. I can make them just as quickly with what I have on hand but that’s because I know how and I know how to do it quickly. I also have some ready made items on hand for those busy nights which you might prefer to buy takeaway but you can save so much money if you prepare it yourself at home.

Living with a more than fussy eater, I know that if there’s a meal that they will eat, you’ll cook it over and over again. Growing up I think my Mum had about 10 or 15 different meals up her sleeves that she would serve us over and over again. She knew that we liked it and ate it so why wouldn’t she cook it again. Same goes with a particular brand of ready made pasta sauce or packet curry mix. If you know your family will eat it and there will be no waste, why wouldn’t you buy it? 

My only advice is that if you spent $2 to $3 on a packet mix every time you shop, you can create something similar at home with basic ingredients that might cost up to $10 in total but you’ll be able to make it 20 or 30 times and those ingredients can also be used for other dishes.

For example, a basic Beef and Potato Curry I make in the slow cooker has nothing but salt, pepper, curry powder, plain flour and stock powder in it. You can add more spices but if your family eats it like this, then make it like this, every time.  The curry powder will last for a long time and can be used in just about every other cooked curry dish I can think of, used to flavour a salad dressing or flavour devilled eggs. I use stock powder a lot in my every day cooking, even if it’s just to boost the flavour of my pasta sauce and plain flour. Well, that is used in my baking, used to make white sauce or to dredge meat when frying.

On the other hand, I buy 2 boxes of homebrand crumbed chicken tenderloins, every fortnight, for $4 a box and each box is 400 grams. I could quite easily buy the raw chicken and crumb them myself but this is one of my ‘go to’ meals when an alternative might be to buy takeaway. I can cook these up with my homemade potato wedges and salad or vegetables, serve inside a tortilla, baked and sliced with an easy honey sauce for Chinese Honey Chicken (just pour over chicken a mix of 1/2 cup honey and 2 tbs soy sauce). 

Same goes for ready made baked goods that have been marked down at the supermarket. I quite often pick up a marked down pack of 12 doughnuts, sometimes for 50 cents, that can be popped in the freezer and brought out if I’ve got nothing in the biscuit tin for the kids. They can be warmed up in the microwave and still be fresh. I couldn’t make anything like that for 50 cents. 

As far as buying pre-chopped vegetables (except for frozen), I draw the line. The costs are so much higher because you have to pay for someone to cut them. It really doesn’t take all that long to cut a few potatoes or pumpkin.

But I’m not here to tell you what’s right or wrong. Do what works for your family but remember, there are other ways to cook a nutritious meal for your family, that is time saving and cheap and that is by cooking it from scratch yourself. 

A place to call H.O.M.E.

Welcome to the new Domesblissity, a place to call H.O.M.E. – Homemaking, Organising, Making-do Education. I’ve been working behind the scenes to introduce a whole new look here at Domesblissity and I can’t wait to share this new and exciting program with you all.

So, what’s it all about?

When I started the Domesblissity blog, 5 years ago today, it was going to be nothing more than a place to store recipes I cooked for my family so they had something to refer to when (and if) they leave home. I soon started getting followers and I learnt all about ‘blogging’ and it just grew from there. Even the name Domesblissity is a take on what I’ve always strived to achieve wherever I’ve lived and that’s domestic bliss.

 

I could go on for another year 5 years sharing another 100 different ways to make my basic muffin recipe or share with you yet another recipe for a pretty ordinary meal which is just an attempt to get my very picky daughter to eat. But, Domesblissity, for me, is a whole lot more than that. Everything you’ve read on my blog is what goes on in my home. I only share the recipes mainly, a few DIY projects and, occasionally, something like how to wash thermal lined curtains, for example, but so much more goes on behind the scenes.

I’ve sewn my own clothes, been creative, redecorated with things I already have in my home and I’ve enjoyed a rich and rewarding life full of wonderful experiences, even more so since having my children.

I consider myself very, very lucky to have been raised by wonderful teachers in my mother and grandmothers and learnt how to keep house and a whole range of crafts, how to cook, clean, organise and, most importantly, make do. 

I feel I have a very rich life. I want for absolutely nothing. Having this attitude throughout my adolescent years and adult life has put me in good stead to have a very comfortable and happy home, something I believe is very important. Even when I did have a very successful career and lived on my own, I still op shopped for designer clothes, cooked from scratch and spent my money on experiences rather than ‘stuff’. I’m passing this knowledge onto my children and already the effects have been noticed with their knowledge of cooking the basics and reusing and recycling.

Over the years, I’ve picked up on things on the interwebs from time to time and read some really unusual things from people who ask, for example, how to put together a basic meal or the exorbitant amount they spend on their weekly groceries. I want to help these people, and anyone else who needs it, to show how easy it really is.

I also want you to know that my house isn’t perfect. It’s far from it sometimes but what’s most important to me is how I look after who is in my home and not what is in my home.

How can I help?

I want you all to know it doesn’t have to be like this. I am very much a lover of all things vintage and this includes a lot of my grandmother’s ways but we are so blessed in this day and age to have modern gadgets and appliances to help us. We also live in an age where the internet, smart phones and a wide choice of electronic entertainment is at our fingertips so we don’t want to be spending days on end cleaning and tidying our homes. I want to make it easier for you.

I want to introduce you to a few new habits, teach you how to cook from scratch, have a well stocked pantry so you will never go hungry, organise all aspects of your home life, use simple methods to keep on top of your housework and how to make do with what you have already and avoid the temptation to buy ‘stuff’. I hope this will change your life.

My home is your home and you’re always welcome here at Domesblissity, a place to call H.O.M.E.

Also, I’ll still be sharing family friendly, frugal recipes, reviews, the Thriving on Thursday linky party will continue and the usual things you’ve grown accustomed to seeing on the blog.

Thanks for sticking with me over the last 5 years.

 

Home cooking

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One of the best jobs about homemaking for me is home cooking. There’s very rarely a day I don’t look forward to the planning, preparation and cooking of my meals, whether they be breakfast, lunch or dinner, even with the fussiest eater in the whole entire world, my 11 year old daughter. I just ignore her. (No, just kidding. It’s a work in progress and we’ve made great progress in the last couple of years.)

 

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I love food (if you haven’t already guessed) and I love how simple ingredients can come together for a taste sensation. I sometimes go weak at the knees when I taste things. I love looking at food and recipes and coming up with new and exciting ways to cook these ingredients.

Cooking from Scratch

So how can you get inspired to cook everything from scratch? And to keep costs down? I guess I learnt at a young age from my Mother (when the only takeaway was maybe fish and chips or Chinese food was just becoming the rage), the food wasn’t going to get on our plates without cooking it and sourcing it from the cheapest possible places.

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My family was a one income family with Mum helping out with babysitting, ironing, dressmaking and a little cleaning from time to time. Dad was a keen recreational fisherman and we lived on fresh fish and seafood. Steak was saved for Dad while us kids had beef mince or sausages. No chicken breast or thigh fillets in those days either. It was a whole chicken or nothing and Mum made sure we had the pieces we wanted, ie is breast, leg or wing and Mum got whatever was left. The bones went into a soup for the next night’s dinner.  There was always a Sunday roast for lunch and leftovers were made up into a Shepherd’s pie, rissoles (hamburgers) or meatloaf and sandwiches for school lunches

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I guess I’m saying that we’re spoilt for choice these days with convenience foods in the form of takeaways and meal kits, etc from the supermarket. If we kept things simple like generations before us, I think we’d start to enjoy food more and enjoy the whole

http://www.mudboggerforum.com/profile/4837061

process. (Well, that’s what I’m hoping for.)

There’s a lot to be learnt from an outdoor market place

Sourcing Ingredients

Last month I wrote about buying versus growing your own vegetables and the importance of buying in season if you’re not going to grow your own.  To me, this dictates what I’m going to be eating. A local supplier delivers my fruit and vegetables. They only deliver what’s in season.  I use the supermarket for basic pantry staples like flour, sugar, milk, butter and other basic items. I buy my meat in bulk from a wholesale chain of butchers here in Brisbane. A little bit goes a long way. I try to keep the cost of my protein to $10 per kilo or less whether that’s beef, chicken, pork or fish etc. I  have a local egg and bread supply.

Finding Recipes

Besides the lovely cookbooks I have accumulated over the years, Google is my friend when it comes to searching for recipes. For example, if I have sweet potato and chicken, I type chicken sweet potato in the Google search field.  There are magazines, cooking shows, cooking DVDs, library for cookbooks etc, blogs, the newspaper, so many different sources for hunting out recipes and inspiration for something new. I also sometimes look at those bottles of ready made meal sauces in the supermarket for flavour combination inspiration. Home made Asian sauces taste so much better than those in a jar. You can make just about anything from scratch. Sure, I use Thai curry pastes from a jar but that’s about it.

 

Recipe Inspiration

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I am forever on the hunt for recipes from different cuisines. With a few basic spices, you could be eating a spicy chicken dish from Brazil or a quick salad from Vietnam. Changing the Google search criteria will present many more recipes from other countries as well.  I have my ‘family favourites’ I cook without ever thinking about but I love to try new dishes all the time.  I hope that I’ll be able to pass on a few thrifty tips on how I can throw together these quick meals for next to nothing without giving up taste.