Learn to cook

“When I was in high school, my parents tasked me with something simple: for once in my life, I would have to cook for myself. [...] Cut to about an hour later, when a massive blaze ignited in the kitchen. While I was taking the pie out, it inexplicably slipped out of my grasp and flipped face-down onto the hottest part of the oven, creating a momentary—though terrifyingly large—fire. Screaming ensued. Water was thrown. Luckily our house did not burn down, but my culinary hopes went up in flames along with the pepperoni and cheese.”

“By my last week cooking with Plated, my confidence in the kitchen has grown tremendously, but I’m also a little burned out. While I’ve enjoyed learning how to cook, making four meals a week has been exhausting. I’ve had to plan around my eating and some weeknights I was still cooking at 11 p.m.”

“Unless you are strictly vegetarian or vegan, many recipes you find will call for meat of some sort. I avoided meat dishes for a while, as I didn’t want to get food poisoning from mishandling raw meat. Instead, I opted to learning how to sauté vegetables first, as there was less of a risk of food-borne illness. After a month or so of fresh-meat-free dishes, I finally made a meal consisting of none other than fried rice with freshly cooked ground beef.”