You might have seen this meme before. Jokes aside, I'm a programmer that's really found a love for cooking. I started cooking for myself in late 2021 when I realized I was gaining some weight from all the chips, ramen, and other junk food I was eating on a nearly daily basis. At first, it was a bit boring and felt like a chore I had to do. But recently, it's started to feel like something I choose to do. I wanted to write a bit about my journey learning how to cook and how it's really helped me on a daily basis.

Getting Started

One of my favorite memories from my childhood is finding a stir fry cheat sheet on Reddit, telling my grandparents about it, them taking me with them to the store to buy everything we needed, and us cooking and eating it together. I hadn't tried cooking before then, but it inspired me to get really involved in the hobby. The idea of taking different pieces, putting them together in unique ways, and ending up with something new and useful was really interesting to me.

After that, I tried to get involved in cooking whenever I could. I would ask my mom if I could help in the kitchen every now and then, but I was typically focused on school and gaming until and briefly in college. When COVID-19 hit the United States, I ended up being forced out of my freshman dorm for health and safety reasons. However, I managed to get a sweet deal on a one bedroom apartment on-campus with a small kitchen. During the pandemic, I didn't have much motivation to break the mold by trying new hobbies or anything. However, that started to shift a little bit.

For a few reasons, I ended up gaining more free time and getting out of the pandemic depression towards the end of 2021. At that time, I realized that I wasn't being very healthy. I'd started cooking the occasional spaghetti and appetizer, but I was eating a lot of canned soup, freezer meals, ramen, fast food, and other cheap and easy options. There had to be a better way to go about preparing food for myself.

Learning Meal Prep

The main question I had was: How do I cook for just one person? I ended up finding The Meal Prep Manual and r/MealPrepSunday shortly after deciding to try cooking more. I hadn't thought about it, but preparing multiple servings of a meal and eating them throughout the week was a great idea to use everything I get from the grocery store rather than let things spoil because I took too long to use them.

I was pretty scared to mess up a recipe or make something that wouldn't stay good in the fridge for a long period of time, so I stuck to The Meal Prep Manual for a while. I also didn't really understand macros and why they were important to understand to stay healthy. I did use some tools to make grocery shopping, recipe planning, and recipe storage easier, like AnyList and the previously mentioned websites, but I wanted to start being more creative. I wanted to improve my workflow to make it better for me. Cooking still felt like a chore, but I wanted to make it my own.

Using New Tools

I ended up going through a phase where I was trying all sorts of things to improve my workflow.

First, I looked at the tools I was using. I bought a wok from Walmart which helped me cook large food portions without being overwhelmed. I also bought a rice cooker and slow cooker combo from Amazon so I can cook rice without having to keep an eye on it. I even asked for a knife sharpening kit for my birthday so I could more cut vegetables more easily.

I'm really passionate about hosting things locally with my server, so I ended up researching different recipe storage options and stumbled upon Mealie. To be clear, it isn't perfect. Compared to AnyList, which I was already used to, it lacks a lot of helpful quality of life features. Things like knowing which aisle of the store will probably have the ingredient I need, grouping them into that area. They have a label option, but you need to configure it a bit.

The next thing I did was fairly obvious, trying to have entertainment available while cooking. I love getting absorbed in the smells and sounds of cooking. However, I get a bit bored sometimes and it starts to make cooking feel more like a chore. I ended up trying all sorts of things to entertain me, like cooking TV, audiobooks, podcasts, news, and music. I found that all of them are fairly helpful for keeping interest in cooking while having something else to focus on if my interest is waning.

The weirdest thing I tried by far was cooking with a mixed-reality headset on. If you haven't heard of the Meta Quest 3, it's an MR headset which has various apps that you can see while looking at the real world, including a web browser. I figured I could have Mealie open to see the recipe I'm cooking while watching a YouTube video on the side. It worked alright for a while. I could still see in three dimensions and it helped a lot with watching things while cooking, but it also got in the way a bit. It was hard to read text on boxes and the headset constantly thought my hands were trying to interact with the websites.

Other things I've tried include adapting recipes into meal prep-ready alternatives, using the freezer to store meal prep long-term, using the slow cooker to make cooking even easier, and even trying to create recipes using generative AI like ChatGPT.

Final Thoughts

Cooking has turned from a chore for losing weight to a hobby for experimenting with new ideas. Finding a new recipe and following it feels like completing a miniature project for me. If you're looking for a new and productive hobby that allows you to learn and stay entertained while doing it, I highly recommend taking up cooking. It's become a weekly habit for me and can be beneficial in many ways.