LibGuides: Adulting 101: Cooking

Cooking on a Budget

Budget Bytes
Vegetarian, vegan, meal prep, kitchen basics, and searchable ingredient indexes. This is one of my favorite recipe blogs because it includes the price per serving and photos of each step, so you know if you are doing it correctly!
60 Cheap Family Meals Under $10
From Taste of Home.
Cooking for College Students
Mug cakes, what you can cook in a microwave (A LOT of things), dorm cooking, food staples that don't require a refrigerator, and more for how to cook healthyish in your tiny space.

Nutrition

Nutrition is different for everyone! Specific dietary restrictions, illnesses, lifestyle habits, and other factors can dramatically affect what works best for your body. Always follow your doctor's advice and recognize that nutrition is not a one size fits all.

My two mottos I follow about nutrition: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" and "Everything in moderation, including moderation".

Health.gov: Food & Nutrition
Be sure to check out the Dietary Guidelines as a starting point.
Nutrition.gov
Info on different needs at different points in life, how to read food labels, nutrition and disease, dietary supplements, and food assistance programs.
Medline Plus: Nutrition
From the US National Library of Medicine.

Basic Cooking Tips and Skills

Use spices and toppings to mix up meal staples
Allow your oven to preheat and your stovetop to heat up for a minutes before using it for cooking. In general, food tastes better when you add it to an already hot pan
Eggs, beans, lentils, nuts, and canned fish are cheap and easy sources of protein
If you have a freezer, many meals can be made ahead and frozen for later
Frozen fruits and veggies are almost identical to fresh produce in terms of nutrition
Oxygen is the enemy of fresh produce, so try to get as much air out of containers and avoid washing your produce until you are ready to eat it.