53.

53 – Learn how to make 3 new meals, not including roast or cauliflower cheese.

I’ve been trying to get a bit better at cooking. The only real experience I have is from cooking at uni, and a lot of the time it was whatever was quick and easy. As a result there were only really two meals we could cook from scratch (although I can make amazing chilli con carne and cottage pie). So I bought myself a massive recipe book and have been trying to learn a few new meals.

The first one was macaroni cheese. I cooked this for Tom and didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I was convinced it was going to be a disaster, but it was actually a resounding success. It was really nice, so I will definitely be making it again (I may even make it with macaroni next time as what I made was technically fusilli cheese lol). The next thing I made was a pasta bake with ham and peppers (I was working through the pasta section in my book at this stage lol). Again, I cooked this for Tom and it was pretty good. It wasn’t as nice as the macaroni cheese, but I would make it again. The third meal was stuffed potatoes with cheese and bacon. I know this isn’t really very complex, but I’m counting it because I did follow a recipe for it and to be fair I’d never even cooked a jacket potato til a few months ago. Anyway, this was also pretty successful, although I must say I wasn’t very keen on the bacon lardons.

So that’s my three. But I am carrying on with it. Since then I’ve also cooked some amazing chocolate cupcakes, some stuffed filo tartlets, which were tasty despite not looking nearly as elegant as they do in the picture, and enchiladas, which I cooked for Tom last night and they were very tasty, but would have been better with chicken and slightly less cheese.

So there you have it. I’m not a very natural cook and I don’t think I’ll ever be amazing, but I’m certainly becoming a bit more accomplished.