The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Do you cook? I think there's a lot of people out there that would say they don't know how to cook and yet most people can't eat out every meal, so I wonder what are most people actually doing? I'm trying to learn to cook and I've realized something. There are so many cooking resources out there but they are all focused on recipes and techniques. It gives the impression that learning to cook is just about finding recipes and executing them well and doing this over and over. The problem with this is 1. it's a lot of work and 2. ingredients get wasted. This is even more of a problem if you are cooking for one and the less frequently you cook.
I see two ways out of this. First way, develop an understanding of how to use ingredients flexibly across a variety of meals, knowing when and what ingredients to buy ahead of time, understand how food can be preserved. It's actually a pretty high bar, especially when you don't even realize these are skills you need, which I think is why I've bounced off learning to cook in the past. Second way, cook the same few things over and over. I'm guessing most people are actually doing this, but doesn't it get boring eating the same thing repeatedly?
So I'm curious how often posters here actually cook. What does your cooking situation look like: are you cooking for one or more, are you cooking everyday or less? Do you have a system that makes it work for you?
To start I'd work out a two-week slate of simple dishes so that you're not eating the same thing over and over but also you get enough repetition to dial in the elements you're interested in (cost/nutrition/technique/convenience). Then start adapting the menu to suit different seasons and what is available - you probably don't want a leaf salad if it's snowing outside.
Record what you cook and any notes. It doesn't need to be a full-on diary, a calendar-month A4 sheet will do so that you can refer to it when you're tired and hungry and don't want to think beyond "what did I do last time". Also keep a shopping list and add to it as soon as you use things up.
Don't get hung up on authenticity. I can make a passable hoi-sin sauce from scratch in about 3 minutes from shelf stable ingredients. That kind of thing saves on buying expensive single purpose sauces that might not come in suitable quantities.
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