SHILA'S STORIES AND TIPS!

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Some people absolutely love cooking. For others, cooking is little more than an unavoidable chore. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to cut back on how much time you spend cooking while enjoying delicious meals. Here are a few tips.
 

Although pasta is a staple of budget meals, rice offers a potentially cheaper and even easier alternative. For those who don’t enjoy spending hours in the kitchen, a rice cooker offers a cheap and easy way to create a tasty base for your meals. Simply add the right ratio of rice and water and press “start.” There’s no need to splurge—even the cheapest rice cookers on the market create restaurant-quality rice. Rice-based meals can be exceptionally easy to cook. Just add some beans and soy sauce, or try out some spices to experiment.
 

Instead of spreading your cooking time across the week, consider dedicating part of your weekend to meal prep. Purchase whole or diced tomatoes and create a mega-batch of pasta sauce. Feel free to make as much as you want: Tomato-based pasta sauce can be frozen in plastic bags, letting you enjoy tasty meals for weeks or even months at a time. If you’re a fan of lasagna, make a couple of pans at once so you can quickly heat up a meal when your time is short.
 

Although there are plenty of complicated salad recipes online, there are also countless options for salads that take only a few minutes to prepare. By combining spinach, canned chickpeas, and olive oil, for example, you can prep a tasty and healthful meal in under a minute. Again, a bit of weekly prep work can go a long way. Instead of pulling out a cutting board and knife any time you want to make a meal, dedicate some time over the weekend to chop up and store onions, carrots, and other ingredients when you’re not in the mood for cooking.
 

 Although some people look down on microwaves, they’re an invaluable way to prep meals much faster than in the oven. Baked potatoes, for example, are easy to cook in a microwave and taste just as good as ones cooked in an oven. Macaroni and cheese is a microwave-friendly option, and you can cook up to four ears of corn at once. Store-bought microwaveable meals are great in a pinch, but a bit of preparation on your part can help you save money and eat healthier.
 

We all have to eat, but there’s no need to toil away in the kitchen for an extended period of time every night if you don’t enjoy it. Make sure to track your progress and write down meals that you found quick and easy to cook and tasty. Over time, you’ll develop a versatile repertoire.