50ThingsInAYear Bucket List: Addicted to Cooking- #48 Make 10+ Things out of a Cookbook 10/10

THIS is probably the thing that I will most likely have changed in my lifestyle as a result of this bucket list. I mean, fingers crossed, I hope ALL of my goals will be achieved. I was able to get rid of caffeine, yes, and hopefully I will be able to incorporate healthier and more productive habits into my life, like exercising, reading, playing music. But this is different. I made a realization when I started to cook: I can make a lot of the things that I would normally go to restaurants to eat. Which means 2 things: #1 I can save a lot of money, #2 I have more control over what I'm eating, which hopefully means I'll be healthier. I don't think I can ever go back to my pre-bucket list "eating out" habits. Well, as long as I continue to have TIME to cook, anyway.

Anyway, what started as me slowly making one new thing at a time turned into a cooking frenzy. I thought I would finish this over the course of the year, and I've cooked 5 new things in the last couple of weeks.

There were a few things that pushed me in this direction. First, I'm working very hard right now to pay off my credit card/car. I thought that I didn't have much money before, but now I literally am living off of the bare minimum. In the end, it will be worth it. But for the last couple of months, I ate out once a paycheck if at all. Which was a huge shock to my lifestyle. I wouldn't say that I ate fast food all the time-- I always thought that was kind of gross. But what I used to do was buy something at Panera or Noodles and Company or Applebees-- something that cost about $4-7-- and ate half of it. Then I would eat the other half for another meal. Chipotle I could split into 3 meals. So that resulted in meals that cost about $2-3 and were better portions anyway. When I reduced my income further, I couldn't even afford to do that. So for a couple weeks, I lived off of sandwiches and macaroni and garlic bread and campbell soup. Things that were as cheap as possible. But I ended up eating the same things almost every day. I told my mom about it, and she felt so bad that she made me a casserole. It was really sweet. But I knew I had to figure something else out.

The second major factor in this change was pinterest. I had no idea what it was when I first started using it, to be honest. I just saw other people talking about it and wanted to see what it was about. But it immediately became SO addicting. If you haven't heard of it, pinterest is a site where people will upload a picture which is either something they find beautiful, or is linked to a site with a creative, innovative idea, craft, or recipe. What really made a difference for me, as far as cooking, was that it was easier to look up recipes, and it gave them more credibility. For instance, instead of googling a recipe, you could find one with a friend or a friend of a friend's recommendation. Like a magazine, it would give you recipes you hadn't thought of, but these were more practical than most things I found in cookbooks or magazines, which always seem to give things interesting twists by adding weird ingredients. I just wanted to learn how to make basic things that people actually made on a regular basis, and there were a million of them posted on pinterest.

The third factor was that I started to plan meals. Instead of saying "I'm going to make this new thing" and buy all the ingredients, I thought through different things I would like to make over the course of the week with ingredient that overlapped. For instance, if one recipe called for sour cream, I would find another recipe that called for sour cream. And if that recipe called for green onions, I bought eggs so I could make egg salad, etc.

And what happened was astounding to me. I literally spent about $35 a paycheck for two weeks worth of meals-- and actually made amazing food.

I won't describe all 5 of them in detail, otherwise this post will end up being a novel, but I'll give you pictures. Also, the pictures kind of remind me of the pictures you see on some low-income restaurant menus that never look appetizing. That mostly has to do with the lighting in the kitchen paired with my camera phone. I wasn't about to bring them outside or anything for better lighting. But all of them were actually delicious and looked delicious in real life, believe me. :)

Stuffed Shells (Pinterest)