I cook almost every day (for one). In a typical week I make two big batches of food in a pressure cooker or dutch oven and that covers about half my meals and all of the lunches I pack for work. This could be a bean stew, Thai red curry, Jamaican stew peas, or Chinese pork rib and daikon soup (to name some recent examples) and I will plan those out at the start of the week. The other meals I make are improvised from the ingredients I have available in my fridge/pantry. For instance, I might see that I have ground beef, bell peppers, tomatoes, and canned beans and decide to make chili, or that I have bok choy, eggs, and frozen shrimp and decide to add those to ramen. When I go grocery shopping, I get a mixture of items I know I need for dishes I've planned or to replenish things I always want to have on hand (onions, potatoes, spices if they run out, etc.) as well as whatever looks like a good deal that day. I consult recipes, but never follow them exactly, and I don't measure things except in very specific circumstances where precision is needed e.g. baking.
That paints a picture of how things might look when you are an experienced cook, but when starting out I would pick a category, let's say pasta, gather recipes that interest you, learn to make them by the book, and then try to remix them. Limiting yourself to one cuisine reduces the cost of entry as far as spices/shelf-stable ingredients goes and lets you slowly build up your pantry and improv skills. You'll make some dubious food along the way, but I'd say that getting to the point where a shelf of produce that's about to go bad looks like possibilities and not a source of anxiety is worth it. As for variety, continuing with our pasta example, initially that could look like preparing one or two sauces in bulk, alternating them over the course of a week, and serving them with different kinds of pasta every day.
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I cook almost every day (for one). In a typical week I make two big batches of food in a pressure cooker or dutch oven and that covers about half my meals and all of the lunches I pack for work. This could be a bean stew, Thai red curry, Jamaican stew peas, or Chinese pork rib and daikon soup (to name some recent examples) and I will plan those out at the start of the week. The other meals I make are improvised from the ingredients I have available in my fridge/pantry. For instance, I might see that I have ground beef, bell peppers, tomatoes, and canned beans and decide to make chili, or that I have bok choy, eggs, and frozen shrimp and decide to add those to ramen. When I go grocery shopping, I get a mixture of items I know I need for dishes I've planned or to replenish things I always want to have on hand (onions, potatoes, spices if they run out, etc.) as well as whatever looks like a good deal that day. I consult recipes, but never follow them exactly, and I don't measure things except in very specific circumstances where precision is needed e.g. baking.
That paints a picture of how things might look when you are an experienced cook, but when starting out I would pick a category, let's say pasta, gather recipes that interest you, learn to make them by the book, and then try to remix them. Limiting yourself to one cuisine reduces the cost of entry as far as spices/shelf-stable ingredients goes and lets you slowly build up your pantry and improv skills. You'll make some dubious food along the way, but I'd say that getting to the point where a shelf of produce that's about to go bad looks like possibilities and not a source of anxiety is worth it. As for variety, continuing with our pasta example, initially that could look like preparing one or two sauces in bulk, alternating them over the course of a week, and serving them with different kinds of pasta every day.
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