I'm no gourmet, and grew up eating hot dogs, macaroni with cheese, microwave meals, etc. My learned cooking skills never extended much beyond that. I love delicious meals, but always thought that steak, salmon, soups, and even complicated salads were beyond my capabilities. In fact, I didn't even know that you could cook most meats on the stove top. I though it could only be done on a grill.

Now I fry meat in butter a few times a week in a pan on the normal kitchen stove, and it's wonderful. It takes less than 10 minutes to cook a beef or salmon steak. And just a little butter and salt makes the dish.

Right now I'm eating a spinach/salmon salad with feta cheese and a low-carb vinagrette. I can't believe that I actually made this. My dining is SO much more fancy and nutritious now that I'm low-carbing. I used to eat a lot of junk, fast food and microwave meals. Now I'm learning that cooking on the stove is just as quick and convenient.

I'm so appreciative of these board & this way of eating. It's MUCH HEALTHIER than my prior way of eating!!!! Most criticisms of this diet stem from ignorance, honestly.

Yup!! Me too!! I had to learn how to cook in order to make this a lifetsyle switch....I used to be the "order in" queen!!

I am in awe of some of the foods that I can now cook...my meals are always delish!!

Way to go! I am the same way, I have learned so much about cooking and am no longer intimidated by odd ingredients and cooking methods. I love this way of eating!

*grin* i love the process of learning to cook... it opens up a whole new world and you can get so creative with everything, once you learn the chemistry behind cooking and the basics of how to cook food so that you don't kill yourself.

the way i look at it, there's two kinds of cooks... learned cooks, and instinctual cooks. learned cooks built up their knowledge by reading recipes and following them to the letter (this is how my mom cooks). instinctual cooks can tell when something's done by the smell or the feel, and they never use a measuring instrument for herbs or spices... everything's by pinches or dabs or handfuls (it's how my father cooks). i inherited the instinctual and was taught by the learned, so i have a lot of fun experimenting and figuring out how certain things will work with others. and what really kicked me in the butt was lowcarbing... it forced me to learn how to make steak and chicken and do spice blends or sauces that don't rely on boxes or packets.

one other thing i'm learning is to keep track of measurements. i wrote a cookbook for a friend (now ex-friend) of mine with a lot of my secrets and favorite combinations. one of these days i'll print it out and actually keep it as hardcopy instead of trying to remember everything .

I think its FUN

I can now make:

homemade yogurt much better than store bought.
kefir (a fermented milk drink).
Dutch Oven carnitas (pork rump roast).
LC breads and soups.
baked fish with Parmesan.
all types of egg dishes and salads plus dressings.

Since going low-carb/paleo, my extended family has started to tap me for holiday meals (the whole thing, not just the dessert) and I often win my category in an annual cooking contest. I probably have more than my share of flops, because once I've perfected a dish, I get bored and have to move on to something new, and that realization often comes to me 24 hours before the event, while I'm shopping for ingredients. Fortunately my family and most friends tend to have an adventurous attitude toward eating.

It really doesn't take much to prepare tasty nutritious low carb meals. With a little effort these meals seem like they were made by gourmet cooks.

i really WOW myself with my main dishes and deserts than i ever did eating carbs. i think i go all out with flavors so i feel satisfied even though there is no mashed potatoes on the side. like tonight, i made the best chicken cacciatori (?), even better than a carby one, and i didn't even think twice about needing pasta with it.

God bless my parents, who were too busy working to cook from scratch, but I was raised on packaged food and inherited zero cooking skills. When I started LC, I didn't even know how to make boiled eggs. I had to look everything up on the 'net. Mercifully, cooking is not rocket science and it just takes some practice. Now I love it. It's a creative outlet for me, and the "artwork" serves an important purpose.

And let us not for get how much less expensive it is to cook at home. If I had to go out and buy a rotisserie chicken every time I wanted a little nosh I would starve to death. But I can through a chicken in the oven with a few herbs and it costs me half what the store charges. Another benefit is the leftovers! Now I don't like leftovers, but I can take them and create a whole new meal that doesn't taste the least bit like leftovers. So I save money and time.

MM I love leftovers, those usually end up on my plate the following day at lunch. *sometimes breakfast.

It must be nice to be that efficient in the kitchen. It would take me at least an hour to bake a whole chicken, what with washing the chicken, herbing the chicken, basting the chicken, basting the chicken, basting the chicken, washing the baked-off grease off the pan afterwards, cleaning the baster, etc. My local grocery store sells rotisserie chickens for $6.50 -- even if I got the raw chicken for free, my time is worth a lot more than that. Let's not even talk about heating up the kitchen during a Texas summer. I'll let the experts do the cooking for the everyday roast chicken, thanks.

However, cooking at home DOES allow me complete control over the ingredients, and that CAN be worth it to me. If I didn't trust H.E.B.'s Nutrition Label on their rotisserie chicken, or wanted a roasted free-range natural no-antibiotics chicken, I'd have to do it myself, unless Whole Foods or Central Market sells roast chickens for a reasonable price.

Last weekend for my wife's birthday, I picked up an aged Prime ribeye from H.E.B.'s full-service meat counter. It was $13/pound -- but dinner cost about what a Taco Bell run would have cost for the two of us when I still ate Taco Bell. That steak was so good, we were both almost crying afterwards. I almost drove back up to the store that night to pick up some of the aged Prime sirloin ($4.99 a pound, IIRC) -- it was like an addiction. "C'mon, man, I'm jonesing here -- hook a brother up..."

hmmm... ok i TOTALLY get the whole "roasting in the summer" thing because i run into the same situation. where i live, the 4 summers are "tolerable", "hot", "really hot", and "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME???" i'm just a little confused as to the time thing. when i do a roasted chicken, in the 10 minutes it takes the oven to pre-heat to 400 degrees, i can clean the innards out of the chicken, wipe it down, oil it, season it, and still have 4 or 5 minutes to spare. it cooks for about an hour and 15 minutes, i don't bother basting it, and it always comes out perfectly juicy and tender. the dishes afterward take about 15-20 minutes (though it's just me and my fiance).

i can understand if you're getting home late and want something that'll only take a few minutes to throw together... the way it works in my house, i get home about an hour or so before my fiance (pending how bad traffic is and what else needs doing). by the time he gets home, the chicken can be 3/4 done.

then again, i have this really goofy knack for time organization in the kitchen. doesn't matter what i'm preparing or for how many people, i can have everything done all at the same time. *shrug*

This is the way I roast chicken, too. I just clean and season it while the oven preheats, then plunk the chicken on a rack in a pan, and let it cook. I like my chicken "falling off the bone," so I roast it for about 2 hours at 350 degrees. It's always tender and juicy.

In the summer, I just do my roasts later at night, after the temperature has dropped a little, to use the next day. Roasts are one of the simplest meals to prepare.

I buy my share of pre-roasted chickens, but only when I want an "instant" meal.

I really can't afford to do a rotisserie chicken more than about once a month, not when I can do it myself for less than half the price, and forget prime rib or any other such treat. Some of us do not have unlimited incomes. And there is nothing simpler than sticking a chicken in the oven. Heck, by the time I run up the street to the mega mart I can have the chicken in the oven and the table set with candles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking pre-cooked foods. I just find it pretty easy to cook and eat a lc meal, and I am very thankful I found this woe. IMO doing away with the carb portion of meals makes it easier to get dinner on the table most days. I used to spend hours putting together elaborate lasagnas, carb thickened sauces and heavy desserts. now I just stick some squash and herbs in the nuker and it's done in no time. But then I do love to cook so sometimes I miss the involvement in preparing those foods, until I walk by the mirror!