The wife and I had a discussion recently about cooking at home more and eating healthier as a way to better control weight, energy, etc.,. We tend to eat out a lot out of convenience and desire for variety. However, this means that we end up spending way to much on food, and usually eating more than we need to. I admire friends of mine that love to cook so much that they even do it when they’re on vacation, renting places that have kitchens.

I happened to ask a question about this on a Tumblr that I follow, and got a couple good pieces of advice. The first was a couple of cookbooks that were highly recommended: The Whole Foods Market Cookbook and Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s. I ordered both of those and they should be here before the end of the weekend. The other interesting part was the use of services like Blue Apron or Home Chef which send you packaged meals, with instructions, multiple times per week.

The benefit of this is not needing to gather ingredients from the grocery store, but also that they teach you various techniques that you might not have tried on your own.  This is especially beneficial to people who never grew up learning various cooking techniques. I myself only recently started playing with homemade bread (not using a bread machine).

We might give one of these a try, but I wanted to put it out there to my blog audience as well. What are your tips and tricks for getting more motivated to cook and cook healthy? Do you have any must-have cookbooks? Have you tried a meal service? Love to hear any input!