And Away We Go!

So the rules here are pretty simple - cook three meals a day for an entire month straight, the goal being to turn yourself into a faster, smarter and healthier cook.  No eating out.  No opening cans of soup or frozen dinners.  Cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for 30-straight days.  That's all.

My goal is to become a more well-rounded home cook.  I'm tired of the same meals over-and-over.  I want to experiment.  I want to practice.  I want to improve.

So before we get started, here are the rules straight from the Epicurious.com website:

1. Cook every meal you eat the entire month

If you've transformed raw ingredients with heat, you've cooked. Likewise, if you've taken two or more raw ingredients and combined them to make something greater than the sum of their parts (a salad, a sandwich, etc), you've also cooked. On the flip side, heating a frozen pizza in the oven, or warming a can of soup on the stovetop—these things are not cooking.

2. Never cook the same thing more than twice...

That's right, you can't make cacio e pepe night after night (though that does sound sort of nice). Forcing yourself to cook new recipes is exactly the thing that will earn you new skills, new favorites to put in your repertoire—and maybe even some new accolades from your family.

3. ...except when it comes to breakfast

Breakfast is its own beast—you can eat the same thing for breakfast for the entire month. As long as you're preparing your own breakfast and not buying it—no BECs from the corner deli, no McMuffins—you're good.

4. Rely on leftovers, but not too much

#Cook90 is all about fitting home-cooked food into a hectic, busy life. Leftovers—and nextovers (more on that here)—are key to the strategy (half the point of making a killer chicken parm is so you can eat it again for lunch the next day). But also key to #cook90 is branching out and really flexing those cooking muscles. So eat leftovers once. Eat them twice if you need to. But after that, it's time to move on.

5. Take 3 breaks

You get three passes on #cook90—three meals that you can eat at a restaurant, order in, or just have somebody else cook for you. You don't have to use these, of course, but #cook90 will probably go easier if you do.

6. Cook with other people!

Making dinner with friends and family totally counts, and it can prevent you from feeling isolated in the kitchen. So plan a few dinner parties , or just invite a friend or two over on a Tuesday night. As long as you cook a reasonable amount of the food (we're working on the honor system here), it counts.

7. Share

Share your food, sure, but what we really mean here is to share your #cook90 progress on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There are thousands of people doing #cook90 with you, and by sharing your meals you'll be joining that community. Being public about the challenge is also a great motivator to, you know, not drop out. Because your aunt will definitely call you out on that. She notices everything.

So there you have it.  I'm starting my journey.  Let's see how it goes.