This past week I took the kiddo on a road trip to see the great state of Illinois! There were so many amazing sights to see and the food was amazzzzzzzing! I say this because we stayed with my parents in their beautiful home in O’Fallon and my Mom prepared every meal. Every. Single. Meal. It’s because of her stellar culinary skills that I too wanted to become just like her – a progressive home cook!

Growing up, I never really cared about what went on in the kitchen. I always relied on breakfast, lunch, after school snacks and dinner without ever thinking for a second how much work it all entailed. It wasn’t until I was grown and on my own that I began to get sick of fast food, sandwiches and frozen meals and began craving my Mom’s home cooking. 

Not knowing what on earth I was doing, one day I ventured to the store and bought groceries in hopes to try making a homemade chicken pot pie. My mom could do it.. so it couldn’t be that hard, right? WRONG!! I had to boil the chicken, mix cream of chicken soup with a bunch of spices I’d never really used, add veggies and pour bisquick over the top and put it in the oven. Sounds relatively simple but having never cooked anything other than scrambled eggs it was the most DIFFICULT thing I’d ever done!!! 

Once I took it out of the oven, let it cool and dug out a serving for myself I took a bite…

IT WAS AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!

So soo SOOO awful! I was incredibly disappointed and felt like a failure after I had spent so much time & effort trying to make a basic pot pie. I failed. I failed BAD. I was very discouraged. But that failure pushed me to try again and again and again until I finally got it right! After all of those failures I finally made a pot pie that didn’t induce immediate gag reflex and actually tasted good! 

After my success I decided to expand my horizons and make other meals. I Google searched recipe after recipe and heavily relied on All Recipes to help guide me through this whole cooking thing. I began to learn what spices went best with certain meats & pastas. I learned that veggies could be cooked in other ways aside from opening the can and boiling them on the stove. I learned that tofu is absolutely delicious! I learned how to incorporate fruit with meats & was pleasantly surprised by how great they complimented each other. I learned that you can cook with wine. YOU CAN COOK WITH WINE!! Up until then I thought it was just something to sip on while reading a good book or while taking a relaxing bubble bath. I learned sooo many things that I never even thought about before. 

I ended up liking foods that I’ve hated or been hesitant to eat my entire life. Point being – try everything once. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. I mean it! Even if you seriously know you don’t like it, try it! That is the only way you’ll ever know if you truly like it or not. (This is something I’ve also pushed on my son.) Try cooking it in different ways. Like broccoli for instance – I’ve never been a fan of broccoli. It’s great when it’s raw and drenched in ranch but aside from that, no thank you!! I looked for alternative ways to cook it. Turns out that I love to steam broccoli for 15 minutes with chipotle & sea salt. I love it when it’s lightly tossed in avocado oil, sprinkled with salt & pepper and broiled for a few minutes to give it a light char and bring out a natural sweetness. On a not so healthy note, I like charing it and throwing it in a big ol’ bowl of mac and cheese!!

My point is, after so much failure I challenged myself to try new and seemingly difficult/scary things in order to figure out how to do this on my own. Now that I’m a single Mom of a VERY hungry little boy, I give 20 year old me a pat on the back for teaching myself how to provide meals for not only myself but others as well.

You will fail. You will fail A LOT. Just don’t give up! You CAN do it! I know you’re tired some days and you just don’t want to pull out all the stops and make an amazing meal – I get it. But the more you keep at it, you’ll begin to have to ability to whip up a healthy nutritious meal in no time flat! 

Just remember, practice makes perfect. 

As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”