It’s long been my belief that there is money to be made in the kitchen. Maybe you start a profitable food blog like Delish D’Lites, or maybe you bake cakes for weddings as a side hustle. For most of us, the money-saving magic of the kitchen comes from eating most meals at home and packing lunches/snacks for the office. I like to think of this as the eating your way to wealth option. You have to eat, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get wealthy while doing so.

When I got my first Grown-Up job twenty-odd years ago, I knew that one of the hallmarks was buying coffee and a muffin every morning before work. There was also a mid-morning coffee, eating lunch at a nearby restaurant or kiosk, and an afternoon coffee. It was a lot of money. Granted, back then I was only paying $1 or $1.50 for each coffee… yet I was earning less than a third of what I earn now. Everything’s relative, right?

After a few years of eating so much food away from home and learning about FIRE, I decided to eat breakfast in my own kitchen every morning. It took a few years, but now I rarely ever go to the coffee shop before starting my day. Once breakfast was under my belt, I started cooking more dinners at home so I’d have leftovers for lunch the next day. That switch took a much longer time to make, much to my surprise. However, I’m doing a lot better.

Back in 2014, I found a darling neoprene lunch bag in a souvenir shop and couldn’t stop myself from buying it. As silly-looking as mine is, I happily fill it with my mid-morning snack and something tasty for lunch then carry it with me to and from the office every day.

I’ll go to my grave believing that cooking my own food and taking it with me to the office has helped me get into the Double Comma Club. Now, I’m not trying to convince you that eating from my own kitchen was the most important part of my Make-Blue-Lobster-Wealthy Plan. It wasn’t, not by a long shot! Staying out of debt and turning my former mortgage payments into investment contributions for the past 15+ years were the main drivers underpinning the success of my plan. If I had to guess, I’d say that maybe 15% of my success came from eating my own food. The money that was spent at grocery store went a lot farther than it would have if I’d spent it in restaurants and fast-food places.

Being the First Born Daughter of My Mother means that I make up a lot of my own recipes. I call them head-recipes. I don’t really write them down, which is too bad. No matter how delicious one of my head-recipes is, I know that I’ll never taste it the same way again because I never write down how much I use of any particular ingredient. It’s different every time. Lasagna, brussel sprouts, hamburgers, and meat sauce immediately come to mind. Every time I make these, they taste slightly different than the last time. One of my favourite head recipes to mix leftover rice with golden raisins and walnuts, then heat it up the microwave for 60-90 seconds. Delicious!

It pains me to admit this but it took me years to learn how to make pancakes. One day, I was walking down the grocery aisle and saw box after box of frozen waffles and pancakes. I realized that if a pancake could be mass-produced and frozen, there was no reason why I couldn’t make them for myself. (For the record, my parents did make pancakes but only very occasionally. We were more of Cream of Wheat family when I was growing up.

However, there are other recipes that I never would have created in my wildest dreams. In case you’re curious about what I’ve been eating over the years, here’s a list of a few of the recipes I’ve found online and have made more than once. They’re my go-to’s when I’m doing meal prep on the weekends, or when I’ve offered to bring a dessert or appetizer to a potluck or a party.

Here are some of my favourite recipes that came from online sources:

Eating your way to wealth is one of the best ways to get there. If you can’t cook, start small. Toast and peanut butter is not hard. You don’t need to “know how to cook” to operate a toaster. Get up a few minutes earlier and have breakfast before you leave for work. Myself, I like instant coffee but my mother and best friend swear by their French press machines. Bottom line, drink your first cup of coffee of the day at home. The same applies to tea.

Lunch is the next logical meal to master in your kitchen. Sandwiches aren’t hard to make, nor are they cumbersome to transport. Get yourself a lunch bag and start filling it with food for the day. When you make dinner, ensure there’s enough prepared for leftovers. I enjoy a good lasagna every now and then. One lasagna leads to 10-12 meals, depending on the size of each portion. I don’t eat it for days on end. I have some for dinner and some for the next day’s lunch, but the rest is frozen and put in the freezer for another time. Most pastas in meat or tomato sauces will freeze beautifully and make for delicious meals.

You can eat extremely well in your own home. Take the time to learn how to feed yourself. It will taste so much better than most of what you can buy through the drive-thru. You deserve to eat your way to wealth, so start today!

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