Now, years later, part of my 'why' here at Ka Pai Cooking is to help young and inexperienced cooks navigate the rough waters of the kitchen. It was quite frustrating to want to be a better cook but never feel like a better cook. More often than I'm willing to admit, there would be words and phrases that I simply didn't understand, so I always had to keep Google close by. If you must know, I survived that first semester just fine in fact, I LOST 5 pounds! I also lost a lot of fresh produce and the non-stick part of my non-stick pans from all the failed recipes and poorly planned grocery shopping trips.Īnyway, I remember trying to teach myself to cook by finding simple recipes on Pinterest.

I stocked up on frozen fruit, frozen veggies, and frozen chicken from Walmart, bought a few sauces, a loaf of bread, and got to work. I just picked one breakfast and one lunch that I would eat every single day, then try and make a few different dinners each week. Little 18-year-old me was quite overwhelmed for the first few weeks. I also had to pick and choose my food carefully because I shared one fridge with five other roommates! I had to set aside time every week to go grocery shopping (with a car I didn't have), as well as time each day in between classes, exercise, my social life, and sleeping to prepare all that food. I quickly discovered that cooking took more time and preparation than I thought.

Once upon a time, before I was a full-time food blogger, I was a young freshman in college who desperately wanted to avoid the 'freshman 15.'Īs such, I was living on campus in the dorms, but chose not to have a meal plan with 'dining dollars' for all the restaurants on campus I was going to cook all my own food!

Dredge in cooking terms