Quarantine Helped Me Learn How To Cook

Growing up in a household with a mom who LOVED to cook, I never felt the need to learn for myself.

Although it pleased my mom immensely on the days when I would offer to assist her in the kitchen, I didn’t pick up any skills beyond the basics – how to boil water, fry an egg, or build a sandwich.

This was enough to get me through college, but now as a mid-to-late 20’s adult, having dried noodles for every meal just doesn’t cut it anymore. I realized it was time to take one of the final big steps into adulthood – so I put on some pants (I work from home, what can I say?) and got to cooking.

One of my greatest motivators for learning a new skill like this is turning it into a project – in this case, a fourteen minute highlight video of my journey to become a competent cook. I decided this would be the first of a self-improvement series outlining challenges in my life, especially habits I struggled to solidify as an adult. The hope was that by documenting my process, it would force me to follow through on creating better habits.

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My original gameplan for this video is outlined below:

1. order three different meal kits

2. cook!!!

3. pick three dishes & try to replicate from scratch WITHOUT the recipe (go to the grocery store & purchase ingredients)

4. ???

5. profit

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What ended up happening instead with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, was that I started relying on these meal kits as a way to get groceries without leaving the house. And in doing so, I began to learn to like cooking more and more — and perhaps most importantly, I learned how to get pretty good at it.

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So no, this video did not come out the way that I planned. I didn’t go out to the store to buy ingredients for a one-time video, because doing so would mean endangering myself and others. Instead, I decided to just get better at what I was already doing. What I found was that by consistently preparing these meal kits for the next few months, I ended up creating a solid foundation of skills and recipes that I truly believe will last me for years to come.

You can catch the full process of me struggling to learn to cook here on my new YouTube channel called “Emily, Evolved.” Like I said, this will be the first in a series, so stay tuned for more!

Fun fact: since recording this video I have successfully managed to drop an entire pan of meatloaves fresh from the oven straight onto the floor.

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