My life’s a bit of a wreck, and I should probably eat better

I’m in a really weird place in my life.

I’m poor. I’m newly-single. I only have a part-time temp job as I scramble to save money to move back to my home state in a few short months. I find it depressing to only cook for one, so it’s usually easier to opt for a bag of popcorn over a complete meal.

Backstory: in August, I moved from the town where I attended college in Arizona all the way to Queens, NY to be with my long distance boyfriend for good. Fast-forward eight months later, we broke up. It was thankfully mutual, but the timing was terrible. When I first moved here, I couldn’t find a job right away and so I made ends meet by taking on temp jobs and freelancing. Financially, I was already quite a mess. However, my wallet struggles right now as I also desperately try to find work back in Rhode Island or Massachusetts and save money for an apartment with my best friend and a new car.

Since moving here, I’m really ashamed of what my eating habits turned into. For starters, I was terrified to cook in our kitchen most of the year because we had a bad cockroach problem (thank you, ex’s prior roommates). I had no money for an exterminator and my ex simply didn’t care. Also since I rarely left the house (a lovely side effect of working from home), I lost the willpower to do much with my spare time, including cooking. You know what that means… crap food galore. More often than not, my chef skills didn’t go past easy-prep meals or a family sized bag of chips from the CVS 500 feet from my house.

As a result of eating bad food and not eating often enough, I lost a lot of weight. Not necessarily a good thing in my case; I was a healthy 120 lbs when I left Arizona, and now I teeter around 107. I look anorexic and my clothes don’t fit like they used to. Damn, do I miss my curves and my favorite pair of pants.

I’m not a “foodie.” I can cook when I really want to, but I don’t love cooking or find it “therapeutic.” In fact, if I could just order take out or buy pre-made meals every single day without bleeding my green dry, I would. So I’m determined to make cooking as cheap and easy as possible, especially since I’m only cooking for one. I need a new cheap hobby, and making food that can help me put some weight back on and make me feel better may just be it.

This blog is more for me than you. I want to explore a cost-effective and minimal effort hobby, eat something besides Cheetos three nights in a row, and hopefully use a sizzling kitchen to drown out my ex yelling at his video games in the other room. I’m hoping by writing a blog, I’m more likely to keep to my commitments. Join me for the adventure if you like.

My kitchen is prepped, and I’m pumped. My ex and I splurged on two roach treatments before the summer. And might I add, the exterminators did an amazing job. Green Earth Pest Control is seriously the bomb. My kitchen is clean, mostly. I’m stocking up on pantry staples as I go. I’m loaded with easy recipes I’m dying to try.

Let’s make some magic, fellow culinary newbs.