I Taught Myself How to Cook

This week's question from Family Search for #52Stories is: What is something you taught yourself to do without help from anyone else?

I taught myself how to cook!

My mom is an amazing cook, and so she never really needed help making dinner each night. I was also extremely busy during my teenage years. Most nights I was either at work or at dance practice, so I never had time to learn. Yeah, I could follow box instructions for things like Hamburger Helper, but I couldn't make anything like Lasagna.

When Gerson and I got married, I suddenly realized that I needed to know how to cook! Due to my lack of cooking knowledge mixed with going to school full time and working part time, I spent the first couple years of our marriage making Hamburger and Chicken Helper, frozen dinners, and easy stuff like tacos, plain chicken with boxed potatoes, spaghetti, etc.

When I got pregnant with Benjamin I stopped working, so I was free in the evenings. I decided that I would start working on my cooking skills. My mom had given me a cookbook full of her recipes when I got married. I started trying my favorite recipes. Through cooking foods I already knew how they should look and taste, I was able to learn how to follow cooking instructions and learn cooking terminology.

My mom gifts me a subscription to Kraft's quarterly magazine every year, and she signed me up for emails from them. So I slowly started trying their recipes that sounded good to me. In between my mom's recipes and Kraft's, I continued to do Hamburger and Chicken Helper to give myself a break. By the time Benjamin was about a year old, I stopped making Hamburger and Chicken Helper; and now for the most part, the dinners I serve my family are homemade. :)

As I got more comfortable with cooking, I started changing recipes that we didn't love in order to make them better for our taste buds. Some of those changes worked, some didn't. I have a three strikes policy to those kind of recipes. If I make a new recipe and we don't love it, but it has potential I'll change something the next time I make it. If by the third time I make it, we still don't like it I'll scratch it. We also have a only-one-new-recipe-every-two-weeks rule. I also have created a recipe blog: Mrs. Weasley's Kitchen, where I post the recipes I have successfully changed.

I love to cook now. It's really therapeutic to be in my kitchen cutting food, stirring food, etc. It's a good time to think - or not think. Gerson's favorite dish I make is Roast with carrots and potatoes topped with gravy. My favorite dish I make jumbo pasta shells stuffed with chicken, broccoli, and homemade Alfredo sauce.

I also recently sewed myself an apron too!