Thread: how to get motivated/prepared

So I am recently single, and my ex-fiancee was a great cook. Only places that could keep up would be $50/plate restaurant. Now my cooking . . . well it's pathetic (burgers, pasta, pre-packaged, etc). It is now time for me to get back into making good/decent food for myself.
I have watched her prepare to cook for over an hour, multi-task with many different dish preparations. She also envisions what the final product will be and uses that to find the necessary ingredients from the store. This seems like a good method, but when I think of a final product, it doesn't include a lot of the required steps/etc.

I am not afraid to cook, it's just that I don't really know where to start or a good plan of action while cooking. I also sit back, think about cooking for 30 min, loose interest, and make a 5 min meal.

Does anyone have suggestions for plans of action to produce a good meal?

Nick

Also, this is to prevent myself from eating out every night.

Nick

I'd like to hear these responses as well. It seems we currently have very similar cooking abilities, and I too wouldn't mind broadening my horizons in the kitchen.

Get the cooking network... Seriously. Its a sister channel of Food Network.

Check out Alton Brown's Good Eats. He always seems to put me in the mood to get into the kitchen!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/good-eats/index.html

cooking a complete meal is mostly about timing and making sure you know when to start prepping and when to start cooking the various components. start simple til you start getting an idea of timing and you get comfortable in the kitchen. note: dont cook in the order you eat and keep things simple!

for recipes and such, the cooking channel or sites like The Pioneer Woman Cooks - Ree Drummond that show step by step photos of the recipe help a lot. eventually you figure out how certain flavors work together and *ta-da!* not just edible but pretty friggin good food

ex: one of my fav meals is seared chilean sea bass in garlic miso butter with enoki and sticky rice. sunomono goes well as an appetizer with this and a japanese style cheesecake. (1) you would actually start with the cheesecake so that it bakes while you cook everything else. (2) prep everything at once: mandolin to the cucumbers for sunomono, peel & dice garlic, chives (3) wash and start the rice (4) prep the sunomono and stick it in the fridge (5) cook the enoki (6) in the same pan sear the sea bass (7) remove both and in the same pan make the sauce. by the time you're done messing with the main course, the cheesecake should be ready to take out and cool, rice should be cooked and the sunomono just pickled enough. plate & eat

watch cooking channels. thats what i did to help my cooking. it also helps that im italian everything i cook is amazing
on other note sorry to hear bout you and mel. hope all is well thou man! keep in touch... let us know how the food thing comes....

start small, you need practice to work up to multiple dishes and prep...if you try doing that off the bat you will get more frustrated and be more likely to give up

do a simple dish or two then move to one complex dish and work out the kinks in your prep and execution and build on it from there.....just b/c you watch the food network doesn't mean you can prep like they do.....they never show the 37,000 people behind the scenes cutting, prepping, cleaning, for that one cook or one dish

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Nick

Like everyone else said, Food Network is pretty good to get ideas.

I also head to the store and see what they've got that day that looks good. I'll admit tho, it took a few ruined meals to get the hang of it