Welcome to Help Me Cook, the world of (mostly) convenient and easy cooking.
I started this blog because my dietician advised that I need to start cooking, as it would encourage me to have a healthy diet and be more mindful of what I put into my body. I used to eat out a lot and barely ever cooked. The principle behind that was that you just never know what’s in someone else’s cooking. For a restaurant to make delicious food fast, they’ll put in all sorts of things, such as fats and oils. I’m not against fat and oils if I have visibility and control of how much goes into my food, so cooking seems like a good match for me. Plus, it’s better for my pocket. I’ve managed to lower my living expenses substantially since I’ve started to cook most of my meals at home.
Why?
It wasn’t easy for me to begin with. This whole change posed a challenge because I work a lot. I realised that there has to be a resource full of quick, easy and convenient recipes that I am actually capable of cooking after work. I also live with my partner, who I love to cook for.
For this reason, you’ll find some indulgent recipes here as he loves to eat. There are many very healthy recipes here too. Since I’ve been cooking more, eating out hasn’t impressed me as much as it used to. In fact, it takes a lot to impress me now. I guess it goes with the territory of practice being perfect (not that I am perfect by any means, but I’ve gotten much better). Overall, my dietician has said that even if I cook some of my indulgent recipes from time to time, it is still healthier than eating out all the time like I used to. I think that’s true for most people, unless you’re one of those who eats perfectly every time, in which case – power to you and great work.
Healthy Alternatives
More recently, I’ve started trying to make healthy alternatives for typically unhealthy snacks. As I am writing this, my most recent creation for example, is Open Pizza Pockets which I made yesterday evening. I loved pizza pockets, but let’s face it; it isn’t the world’s healthiest snack. So I’m aiming to create more healthy snacks, or at least healthier versions of our traditional favourite snacks. I also try to make them very quickly and efficiently, as one of my initial problems with cooking was the fear of it being highly time-consuming.
The bottom line is that I mostly personally never remember recipes in full, or even foods that I love because of my shocking memory, hence creating this collection of recipes.
Simple Recipes for Health & Balance
If you see silly and simple things, that’s because I need to remember them, damn it! Judge away, but it’s handy for me. Plus, I know what it’s like being a little bit intimidated by the more complex recipes and it’s nice to start from simpler recipes, so these are here too (in addition to more advanced ones).
If you eat takeaway all the time and are interested in starting a little bit of cooking and are sick of all of the plainer healthy food recipes out there, check out this blog, it may just help you. It encourages a balanced diet, a principle which not all people don’t connect with healthy eating. I’m not about extremism or cutting out whole food groups. In fact, my dietician advised me against this.
Types of Recipes
Healthy meals aren’t necessarily made from the amount of lettuce content in a dish. What we eat in other meals and in our overall diet are also highly important. It is important to watch our portions and this site helps me be mindful and make delicious food. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be terrible, it just requires some discipline. You can of course still enjoy yourself. Aside from many lunch and dinner ideas, we also are a proud home of many vegan recipes. However, we aren’t exclusively vegan (my partner loves to eat meat). You’ll find easy lamb recipes, chicken recipes, soup recipes, breakfast recipes and I even plan to start posting more of my cake recipes here and more. I’ve recently started working on lactose-free and sugar-free dessert recipes and will post some up here.
Reader Contributions
At Help Me Cook, reader recipes and contributions are welcome. We also welcome reader requests for recipes and will try to keep up wherever possible. That is, if you ask me to try and make something, I will be willing to try it in most cases. There are already such recipes like that on this site.
Thanks for the visit, hopefully this blog helps you get some delicious and/or healthy meal ideas, for you and your kids.