There is a certain type of people that I will never understand. People who don’t enjoy food enough to identify as a foodie, that wants to explore food and try new foods every once in awhile. How do you enjoy eating the same five or six different foods every day? Don’t get me wrong; I’m definitely a person of habit, but I like to change it up and try new things occasionally.

As a kid, I was a seriously picky eater. I did actually only eat about eight to twelve different foods, chicken in any form making up about 50% of my diet. I hated trying new foods, but my parents and grandparents always told me to try one bite, and if I didn’t like it, I never had to eat it again. That was just about the only way I was convinced to try new foods. Now, at 21, I’ll try most foods I’ve never eaten. I even love cooking now and I used to find it boring and mostly exhausting.

Here is why everyone should be a foodie: cooking yourself a decent meal isn’t actually difficult. I’m not saying that cooking gorgeous, gourmet food is easy, but cooking something that is delicious that doesn’t involve premade microwavable products isn’t hard. One resource that makes life a lot easier when you don’t know where to start is Pinterest. There are thousands of recipes right at your fingertips. Some recipes are a little more complicated for the more experienced cook, but so many of them are really easy to follow and don’t use tons and tons of ingredients. You can type your favorite food into the search bar with the word “recipe” after it and learn how to cook it yourself much better than the supermarket will make it for you.

Even if you’re a college student and don’t think you have enough time to cook for yourself, you do if you have a crockpot. Mini crockpots are inexpensive and much easier to store in your small apartment or dorm. Crockpots are great because you can dump everything in and let it cook for four to eight hours while you do homework. I love making homemade tikka masala and BBQ pork chops in my crockpot. Aside from the crockpot, oven-roasted chickpeas are a good snack that take awhile to cook in the oven so you have plenty of time to take care of life’s responsibilities.

My new favorite thing to do is stuffing meat with a filling. Stuffing meat helps me make it last longer too because I eat about half the portion I would normally eat, so I get two meals out of the one piece of meat. Pork or chicken stuffed with spinach and feta filling is amazing and I usually eat that with mushrooms and onion for vegetables and sometimes rice or pasta to go with it. A great money-saver for college students if you don’t go through fresh vegetables fast enough is to get frozen vegetables; they last a long time in the freezer so you won’t be wasting food or money if you’re not big on vegetables.

After that description of some glorious stuffed pork how could you not want to go cook yourself an amazing dinner? Loving food makes life suck a little less-- especially if you’re in college. So go try something new and leave behind the plain, unseasoned pasta! Be the foodie you never thought you could be and jump on the Pinterest bandwagon. You won’t regret it, I promise.