Cooking at home can save money, improve your health and your life.  Today we talk about cooking on a budget.

If you don’t cook and you use Mint.com or another money tracking system, take a look at one week’s worth of meals out is costing you.  Do you buy lunch at work every day, order in dinner because you don’t have anything in the house to cook or are just too tired?  Now multiply that by 50.  Is it enough for a vacation?  Enough money to start the investment account you’ve been putting off?  Yeah, you need to cut that down.

We don’t all have to eat three meals a day at prescribed times.  Eat when you’re hungry. A lot of people aren’t hungry for a few hours after waking.  Just because you’ve been told “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”  doesn’t make it true.

Don’t think this is going to be tips about extreme couponing.  Most coupons are for crummy processed foods.  Just because Chef Boyardee  is on sale doesn’t mean you have to buy it or that it’s good for you. Don’t buy food just because it’s on sale or you have a coupon for it.

This is also not about buying the cheapest food you can.  That is a false economy.  Not everything has to be organic, fair trade, and locally sourced but eating mass produced food that comes in packages is not good for your body or your wallet.  For every dollar spent on quality food, you are saving many times that in health care costs in the future.

You’ve been inspired to start cooking, great!  Don’t go out and buy a kitchen full of specialty cooking gadgets.  Get a good set of knives, a few pots and pans and you’ll be set.  I cook every day and I manage to get by without a melon baller.

We’ll give you a few cook books and sites in the show notes to get you started.

Show Notes

Konig von Flandern:  Andrew’s direct from Germany beer!

Nerd Fitness Is Cholesterol Killing Us:  A great article debunking the decades old cholesterol myth.

The 4-Hour Chef:  Tim Ferriss’ great cook book for beginners.

Gordon Ramsey’s Ultimate Cookery Course:  Gordon will teach you the basics step by step.  Available in Youtube.

Good Eats:  A great show for science nerds.  Alton is the Bill Nye of cooking!