“Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.” ~Julia Child

Most people know who Julia Child is–famous cookbook writer and cooking show host. If you don’t know her whole story, you can read about it here. She was 32 when she started cooking and wasn’t very good at it! She failed her exams at the french cooking school she enrolled in and didn’t graduate till another year later. Hard to believe that someone so famous for cooking could have started off so bad.

I am much the same way…just kidding. I never was a bad cook, and I don’t aspire to be a famous one. However, I started off a novice cook just like anybody else. Julia Child said,

“No one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.”

I started learning about cooking when my husband and I had cable tv and watched Food Network shows all the time. It encouraged us to try new foods and techniques and over time started developing some cooking skills.

Once we had gotten a lot of the basic elements of cooking figured out, we started to get creative. We enjoyed watching the show Chopped where they have a certain number of ingredients they HAVE to use in a dish. We felt like we were on the show when dinner was in 30 minutes, and we hadn’t been to the grocery store in two weeks.

Sometimes it was due to pressure of what was left in the pantry that we would end up using an ingredient in a new way, or it was planning to do something different that caused us to purchase an ingredient we had never tried before. Being creative in the kitchen can be helpful to get your family eating healthier as well as save you money. Listen to Julia!

“Learn how to cook! That’s the way to save money. You don’t save it buying hamburger helpers, and prepared foods; you save it by buying fresh foods in season or in large supply, when they are cheapest and usually best, and you prepare them from scratch at home. Why pay for someone else’s work, when if you know how to do it, you can save all that money for yourself?”

I challenge you to think outside the box of hamburger helper, and learn to cook some real foods in a delicious way! You can do it! If Julia Child can, you can too. Just remember these words from that amazing lady. Julia Child…

“It’s all theory until you see for yourself whether or not something works.”

“One of the secrets of cooking is to learn to correct something if you can, and bear with it if you cannot.”

“The only real stumbling block in the kitchen is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

In the next few weeks, I am going to introduce some ingredients to you that I hope you, if you have not already, will try out in your own cooking. Get ready for the {Create Your Own} series starting next friday.