Lacking the motivation to cook?
Missing a stronger connection to your friends?
One solution might be to share a meal with some of your closest friends and to create a collaborative cookbook together, filled with your favorite recipes and meals!
Cooking with friends is an amazing way to teach others about your favorite recipes, while being able to learn about different cuisines and styles of food from different cultures that you otherwise might not be familiar with. Collaborative cooking allows individuals to teach their peers about a variety of cooking techniques that they have either discovered online or those that have been passed down through generations to them by older family members and mentors. This distribution of knowledge between peers helps individuals become more comfortable in the kitchen setting by expanding their knowledge when it comes to prepping meals, whether their goal is to create high-quality dishes, or healthier dishes to assist in their health goals for the new year.
In addition to cooking with your closest friends, new studies from the University of Oxford have found that eating with others is linked to greater life satisfaction as well. Getting together with friends to cook and eat together is a great way to improve social connection, all while enjoying both delicious home-cooked meals and the company of their friends.
Here are three different ways to incorporate friends into your cooking habits:
Invite friends over for a potluck dinner, where each person brings a food dish to share. Be sure to make labels for the dishes to accommodate anyone with food allergies. Have each person talk about the reason for making their dish, and why they love it. Keep an open mind and try a little of everything!
If you want to improve your cooking skills, find a cooking class near you. Take just one class, or sign up for a course that spans a few weeks. Invite a friend, or go solo and get to know the other participants in the class. You’ll have a fun time learning new techniques and recipes while meeting fresh faces!
Ask your friends for a few of their favorite recipes. Collect fan-favorites, family recipes, or completely made-up ones from different people. Get permission to share the recipes and compile them into a recipe book. Feel free to use our Canva cookbook template found here. When it’s finished, print out the cookbook and gift it to the friends who helped contribute!
Food is a great way to learn more about others and form stronger bonds. Each individual has a unique perspective that can be shown and shared in their culinary pursuits. Making a cookbook and engaging in creative activities surrounding cooking can be extremely rewarding and overall a lot of fun. Creative activities that can be incorporated into your cooking routines range anywhere from testing yourself against your friends by challenging your cooking skills against theirs in a particular recipe, or by problem-solving and creating a healthy and delicious recipe while only using the items that are currently in your home pantry. These exercises help improve individuals cooking skills in the kitchen, while creating a fun and enjoyable environment for everyone involved.
Don't wait! Go and grab some of your closest friends and get started on preparing a plethora of your favorite dishes! Remember to document your progress and ideas through our collaborative cookbook template so you can start your own recipe booklet that you can pass down your family tree for generations to come!
