My car is paid off and I'm learning to cook

Three years ago this month I bought a brand new Mazda. I had a car to trade in and a bit of money saved up but I still had to get a sizable loan to cover the remaining costs. Back then I was working at a job that paid me well when I had to drive my own car and I made the odd extra payment when I had some saved up. Today I called to check up on how that 5 year loan was progressing and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I was only 1 and a half payments away from having that car paid off so I authorized a final lump sum to be done with it!

What a lovely feeling.

I really like my car and I think it was a realitively wise decision to buy it considering my situation at the time. But I hated making payments, even though they were reasonable, each month and I think in the future I will try if possible to keep my car debt very low or non existant. Especially since two years after I bought that car I quit my job and went on an adventure. Being bogged down with payments seriuosly hampers one's ability to do that.

Aside from paying off my car 2 years early, I have been learning to cook. It's never been something that I was good at or enjoyed. And my tastes in food aren't sophisticated enough that I had the motivation, but recently something has changed. It started out with muffins from scratch. One day I just felt like having muffins that weren't a ready made just-add-water and eggs mix. It progressed to making a few dinners requiring more than one step and 10 minutes. Then I tried to make my favourite things to eat (like chili) that I'd never actually attempted before. I began throwing in the odd dessert and even tried my hand at bread and buiscuits (both sad attempts but I'll get better). It's gotten to the point where I'm usually making something substantial about twice a week. It's been great. Some days I still don't feel like going through the effort (like today - although I still managed to throw together some enchiladas) - those are days I'm thankful if I have leftovers - but I kind of like feeling like I can prepare food for people that they might actually enjoy. So far my biggest success is Indian naan bread. Trust me, if I invite you over for it, don't turn me down. Unless you can't have gluten or hate Indian food.

So that's my latest journey. The world of cooking. It's kind of a scary place but armed with a couple of good cookbooks and a mom only a phone call away I hope to do a lot more exploring.

The next thing on my list is to make a Jamaician Jerk roast. Probably not till next week though. This week was a lemon/cranberry loaf and enchiladas. I'm busy so I think it will be a couple nights of spaghetti and Ceasar salad. Maybe I'll try making my own crutons! So yummy!