Dahlia Breeze

I am a brown bagger, cook-at-home girl. At work, my coworkers look at my lunch, usually dinner leftovers, and say “that looks good, but I don’t cook.” And I am always tempted to say, “but how do you eat?”

I know these days you really can “not cook” and be fine, but as a person who cooks most of the meals for my family, it’s hard for me to fathom. My reasons for cooking at home have always been budget and health. I hate to spend so much money in restaurants and a lot of restaurant food is just a gut bomb that causes you to crash out after an hour.

Everyone can cook

The truth is, if you can read a recipe, you can cook. So where do you find recipes? You don’t have to buy cookbooks. Watch the Food Network, and if a recipe interests you go print it at their site Food Network. Other sites that offer great healthy recipes: Cooking Light and Epicurious. Or just Google “recipes” and you will find more than you could possibly need. Or ask someone who already cooks at home. People love to share their recipes.

There are a few things you should do if you want to cook at home:

1. Make a plan.
   A weekly menu isn’t necessary unless a well planned out menu is something that will help you. But you do need to know what you’re going to cook every day. Before you go to work, you need to know what you’re cooking for dinner or else you might choose a different route and pick something up on your way home.
2. You have to grocery shop. With a list.
   I know, grocery shopping can be a chore sometimes, so we just run in and grab a few items. But this gets expensive. You end up with impulse buys, and you waste a lot of time wondering around thinking of what to get.

So, this is what you do: Pick 5 or 6 recipes, make a list, and spend an hour at the store once a week. Then, don’t step foot in the store until the next weekend.

3. Make sure to cook extra servings.
   If you want to be able to bring your leftovers to work, you need to cook a little extra so you have something to take for lunch. A rule of thumb I use is to double the recipe. If it’s just you cook 2 chicken breasts instead of one and take the other to lunch. As the recipes get larger like spaghetti for example, or your cooking for a family use your best judgment. Remember 1 serving is about the size of your fist or ruffly 1 cup.
4. Prep on your day off.
   If you get in a prep mode on your weekends, it won’t take long during the week to put a healthy meal together. Take a hint from chefs, who spend just as much time prepping as they do cooking. When the doors open for the dinner rush, their veggies are chopped, pasta cooked, meat is ready to go.

With a little bit of planning you will end up saving a lot money and calories, and more importantly, you can stop worrying about what to eat and think about more important things, like how to force yourself to get to the gym in morning (let me know when you figure that one out, I’m still trying).

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