Losing Weight With Real Food – Part Three, Make Your Food From Scratch At Home

Welcome back to my food series about losing weight using real food!

(The introduction to this series is here, part one is here and part two is here.)

I used to be an absolutely terrible cook. Terrible! I’ve told you this story before, but when Marquis and I were thinking about getting hitched, I decided I better prove my domestic skills by cooking him a meal. I made BBQ chicken drumsticks, rolls made from frozen roll dough and some frozen veggies. How hard could that be? I dumped a bottle of BBQ sauce on the drumsticks and put them in the oven. I made the rolls according to the package instructions and I popped the veggies in the microwave. I made the rolls first and they finished way too soon, they were cold by the time it was time to eat. I also forgot to buy butter, and they just don’t taste as good without butter! Somehow I was able to burn the outside of the chicken while still having it raw in the middle, and when I took my first bite of veggies I discovered that they were still rather frozen. Thank goodness Marquis wasn’t marrying me for my cooking skills! He was the cook for the first several years of our marriage, and over time I learned tons just from helping him in the kitchen, from all the cooking shows that we love to watch, and mostly from just getting in there and practicing! I now consider myself a pretty good cook, good enough to create my own recipes and feel confident publishing them online for other people to try.

I tell you this story because if I can go from being that terrible of a cook to where I am today, anyone can do it! It may take some time and some practice, but you can do it!

Today, though, I really want to talk about the whys of cooking from scratch at home. (Just for clarification, I’m not talking about making a meal from a box or microwaving a store bought frozen lasagna, I mean really getting your hands into whole foods and changing them into an amazing meal to share with your family.)  Here are the reasons I cook almost 100% of our meals at home:

1. I like knowing what is in my food. When I’m cooking at home, I’m not going to reach into my cupboard and pull out some potassium bromate to put in my bread. Instead I’m going to use flour, salt, water, yeast and maybe a little honey or other ingredients. I make sure I get each of these ingredients from sources I trust and that they are as pure and whole as possible.

2. Prepackaged meals and restaurant food add things to make up for lack of freshness. (Ok, this isn’t true of all restaurant food, just the majority. If you find a great restaurant that cooks fresh food in season without all the added junk, let me know! We’d love to try it out and spread the world about people doing it right.) If you think about it, all of the additives and preservatives that are added to food are there to make it taste better, even after it has been sitting on the shelf a long time. Doesn’t that seem like trading in the ideal, which is fresh food at the peak of nutrition and deliciousness, for an inferior product? Why would I go for second rate food when I can make something that tastes better and is fresher and healthier, right in my own kitchen?

3. It costs a lot less. A LOT less. I’ve written before about one of my pet peeves, people using the excuse that they can’t afford to eat healthy. Cooking all our food from scratch has saved us so much money! We typically feed our family of four/sometimes five for about $450 a month. That’s less than you would get if you were relying on food stamps to feed your family! And yet we are eating better than ever. Yes, it does take more time, but it is so worth it!

4. It makes the meal more satisfying, therefore you need less food. My brother in law recently was telling me about a study someone did regarding rituals and food. They took regular people and gave them all chocolate. They asked half the people to just eat the chocolate, and the other  half they asked to open the wrapper a certain way and break off pieces a certain way. Interestingly, the people who went through that brief ritual before eating reported enjoying their chocolate more than the others. By preparing the food  yourself, you are going through a type of ritual that gets you enjoying and being satisfied by your food before you even take a bite. This means you’ll actually need less food to be satisfied and feel full.

5. It strengthens your whole family. What would this world be like if each family stopped their crazy lives for a half hour every night to sit together at the dinner table and enjoy a meal together? What if all screens were turned off and we looked each other in the eyes and we spoke of our days and our plans and our dreams? What if we were not only fed nourishing food, but our family relationships were nourished as well? How would this world change? Family dinner is a BIG thing in our house and I hope to keep it that way as my girls get bigger and busier because I believe there is more power in eating dinner together than we can ever imagine.

Does cooking all your meals at home intimidate you? What do you love about cooking from scratch?

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