Inspiration is Everywhere

Learning how to cook is very much a communal process. While most of my basic cooking lessons were from my mother, I've spent a lot of time over the years reading cookbooks, asking for recipes, and learning techniques from shows and content creators. There's always something new to learn or a new way to try doing something. Below are some of the resources and kitchen wizards who have inspired and influenced me over the years.

YouTube

• Binging with Babish: I haven't been keeping up since he expanded and other folks started cooking for his channel, but his scripts are always fun and light hearted and his basics series is really helpful especially if you're just starting to learn.
• Claire Saffitz: Claire is a wealth of knowledge, especially when it comes to baking, and I have learned so much about the science of baking whether from her time at Bon Appetit or after releasing her first cookbook. I am immensely upset that I haven't been able to try any of her recipes, but someday.
• Peaceful Cuisine: Ryoya Takashima is a vegan creator based out of Japan. While I'm not vegan myself, learning about vegan substitutions has lended me more flexibility in my own cooking journeys than I would have had without. Plus, all of his videos are very soothing to listen to. Sometimes I just put them on for that.

Budget Eating

• Efficiency is Everything: Not so much about eating healthy as it is about getting calories for cheap. My favourite references are their Calorie per Dollar list and their cookbook, but they have other resources on efficiently eating healther, calories per cost at numerous restaurants, etc.
• MyFridgeFood or Super Cook: Both tools to find recipes based on what you have in your kitchen already.
• Good and Cheap & From Scratch by Leanne Brown: This link takes you to her main website where there are links to free PDFs of each book. Both suggest a lot of from scratch cooking, however they're easy enough to adapt to your kitchen limitations.
• Cooking on a Bootstrap: Britain based, vegan options, and while it is somewhat short, I love that there is a microwave recipe section!
• Budget Bytes: Recipes, meal prep recipes, and lots of general cooking/kitchen advice. Vegan and vegetarian options.
• /r/BudgetFoods Wiki: Links to some good cheap eating resources, the wiki also has some good recipes if you're on reddit.