You should learn to cook so that you can be independent and have a lot of fun too. Everybody should be able to eat what they like. How many times have we been to my mother-in-law's for supper to go and eat chicken. Every single time, cooked in exactly the same way.

I am sure that every body has a story like that. Vegetarians get confronted with meat. Weight Watchers have to endure a cream cake. Even people that are allergic to certain foods can get a nasty surprise. If you know how to cook, you can be the hostess. Then everybody else has to eat what you like!

Other times you are hungry and want to grab something to eat but you do not know what you feel like. Italian, Mexican or Chinese? They all start to get boring after a while. Break the fast food chain and cook what you feel like. It could be that you only have the ingredients for pancakes in your house. So make pancakes!

You watch Jamie Oliver and Nigella cooking food and your mouth starts watering. If feels as if you can even smell the food. Then you wish that you could cook and eat like them. Well, you can.

It is as easy as getting into the kitchen and starting to cook. Well nearly as easy. First you have to go to the supermarket and buy some ingredients.

There are only two secrets to cooking really nice food. It is really simple, anybody can do it. To cook like Jamie and Nigella you have to use fresh ingredients. Just go to the fresh produce section in the supermarket and see what looks nice. You get, take it home and cook it.

The second secret is to eat cooked food as soon as possible. I know there are sometimes leftovers that would be a pity to throw away. Some working mothers cook food ahead and freeze it until used. This is life and there is nothing wrong with it. But, really delicious food tastes the best the sooner you eat it.

Start like any self help book would suggest, with baby steps. Make something easy like pasta and a salad. You throw the pasta in a big pot, add salt and boiling water and wait for the pasta to get soft. Then you throw out the water and add a bottle of store bought sauce to the pasta. A salad is just a bunch of vegetables chopped into bite size. Then you serve the food and eat it.

After you have gained some confidence you can try and make your own sauce. It is also very simple. You will instantly taste the difference between home made food and bought food. There will be no additives and flavourants. You also control the amount of salt and sugar in your food. Not to mention oil, margarine, eggs and milk.

When you learn to cook, you enter a whole new creative world. Unlike other arts, is cooking a creativity that you can share with you friends and family. Your children will love to bake cookies with you. Your husband will lick his plate clean and ask for more. Men really are ruled by their stomachs.

Above all you will receive a lot of self satisfaction from your own cooking. Soon you will start cruising the Internet for new ideas. People will taste your food and nod appreciatively. Others will ask you for your recipe.

You should learn how to cook. It will open a whole new world to you. Now if I only can get my mother-in-law to open a cook book.

Learn more about this author, Marina Shemesh.
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