First time cooking therapy, session 1

Once I left the comforts of dorm-food, of my parents and their cooking, I was totally lost.

You don't know what to eat. You want to eat, but you're not sure as to what because there are choices. many of them.
You're sure you could cook, you'd like to have that ability. But how to cook, what to cook, and how to manage it all in accordance with your budget?

My thoughts when grocery shopping with my brother:

"Balls."

"Awww Bob Saget!!"

"Ummm.... "


and of course "i dunno, whatever"

When we're on our own, i've found that people usually do the following:
-Eat out
-Make sandwiches
-Eat breakfast foods. (cereal, toast, bacon, etc.) for multiple meals in a day

For the most part, this is a guy thing. adolesccents and young adults don't have much kitchen/cooking experience in comparison to girls, due to the sentiment that they won't have to worry about it until it's absolutely imperative to. therefore, looking up silly videos on youtube or watching adult content on the internet takes priority over those kinds of concerns, especially in high school. Girls on the other hand (the ones not looking at porn) feel some social pressure to cook, either from the fact that the great majority of parents that cook are female, or because they've got less of an incentive to do athletics or other activities that guys have greater leeway in aprticipating in. Times are changing though, and girls are doing plenty of things not involved with cooking.

Sexist statement? hell yeah. but it's a valid one when you talk about the great body of adults living on their own for the first time.

So... here are a couple of things i did to figure out and organize this perdicament.

1. make a list of what kinds of thing you like to eat:
chicken, beef, pork, potatoes, beans, hot dogs, burgers, spinach, noodles, etc.

they can be dishes, categories of food, but if you ahvea general idea, that's fine.

2. look up dishes or recipes

thanks to the internet, recipes can be found for virtually any kind of dish you want to cook, from the basic to the elaborate stuff they serve at 5star restaurants.
If you see something you like on top chef or iron chef, the cooking channel, any source, just add it to your list.

3. once you figure out what you like, figure out what you're going to eat on a weeky or biweekly basis. Time constraints, context for cooking, etc. should be figured out. you can come up with a shopping list based on those recipes once you balance out what meals you're going to cook for and how many of them there are.

4. go shop. once you know what to get, it makes shopping easier.

after a few times, you have a better understanding of what to buy and how to budget.

this is my experience, but i'm sure it could be useful for anyone starting out on their own.

better than living off of the dollar menu at fast food restaurants.