We grow a wide variety of produce on our farm and these ingredients are the building blocks to amazing meals made by you.  With food trends showing fewer meals made at home, we've found a few compelling reasons to reverse this trend and develop a habit of creating in the kitchen.

A healthier you

Whether the research comes from John Hopkins, Cornell or Cambridge, it seems that many of the research on this topic has a similar message.  Eating at home is a consistent way to control salt, fat, or food allergens.  In addition you have the ability to manage your own portion sizes.  The trick really is finding a few good recipes to add to your meal making repertoire.

More money

We've established that eating at home can make you healthier, but there is also a misconception that eating healthier costs more.   The findings in a recent study at the University of Washington School of Public Health show that by eating at home, anyone can eat better without necessarily increasing their food costs.   Logically it makes sense, look at the average sit dow restaurant and for the price of one meal, you can likely purchase enough ingredients to cover the cost of a healthy meal for two or four.  The challenge is to balance the modern life's time constraints with and give ourselves the opportunities to eat well. 

Connect with your family

Increase your social bonding with your friends and family through cooking together.  As they say, many hands make light work.  When it comes to children and grandchildren, you can be teaching them valuable skills and be making some great memories.  Likewise with your elders, you can always learn something new from them, whether it is a new recipe, technique or a funny story about someone in your family.  It is no coincidence that cultures that revere food often revere social connections.  Sharing home cooked food is a wonderful way to bring people together.

It Makes Us Happy

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has some unique results from a study done looking the happiness derived from home cooked meals versus indulgent meals.  As is often the case, what we say and what we do or feel are often very much opposed.  The study revealed that when an individual cooked healthy meals for themselves they regularly reported feeling happier.  Given that there is a perception that cooking is a chore by many, perhaps we need to take stock of how we feel after we prepare a great dish and note our feelings.  Perhaps you feel good about nourishing yourself, saving money, spending time with someone special, spending time doing something valuable, the flavours, or any other number of reasons that cooking can make us feel good.    Any reason is something for us to remember and build positive associations with our experiences in the kitchen.