Exploring Home Cooking
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the rhythm of everyday life and meant spending far more time at home than usual. That period created an unusual opportunity for me to spend more time cooking and to turn something practical into a small personal exploration.
Instead of cooking occasionally, I began preparing meals regularly and documenting many of them along the way. I tried different dishes, followed online recipes, adjusted ingredients to suit my own taste, and gradually became more comfortable preparing larger meals on my own.
What started mainly as a practical way to prepare food during a period when life was centered at home became a series of cooking experiences that I continued documenting over several months.
Learning Through Cooking
Most of my cooking started with recipes I found online, often through YouTube videos. I followed them as a guide while making changes based on my own taste and preferences.
Over time, I experimented with different ingredients and substitutions, from changing the type of beef or vegetables to adjusting entire dishes. For Khoresh Gheymeh, I also combined an online recipe with advice from my mother.
This process made cooking more than simply following instructions. Each meal gave me another opportunity to experiment, adjust, and learn from the result.
Cooking for the Week
My approach to cooking during this period was practical. Rather than cooking every day, I usually prepared a large batch at once and used it as my main meal for most of the following week.
A typical cooking session took around two to three hours. Spending that time once a week worked well for me and allowed me to have home-cooked meals ready for the days ahead without making cooking a daily task.
This weekly routine became a consistent part of my cooking during those months and shaped many of the dishes documented in my cooking reports.
Looking Back
Looking back, this period of cooking was closely tied to an unusual moment in everyday life. Spending so much time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic gave me the opportunity to cook more regularly, try different dishes, and become more comfortable preparing meals on my own. It was never meant to become a major long-term project. Instead, it became one of the ways I used that period to learn something practical, experiment with different foods, and document another part of my life at the time. The individual cooking posts now serve as a record of that period and of the meals I explored along the way.