Is your stomach growling?

Everyone needs food to live. It is one of the essential things of life and survival. This means that it is important to know a certain amount about cooking.

If there isn't anyone to cook for you, you are too far away from a place that serves food, or you have moved out of home into your own place, you are going to need to be able to feed yourself.

Cooking is a very broad subject. To show you just how large it is, think about this:

• What food have you got to eat? You need to know what you have got to work with before you decide what you are going to do with it. If you don't have eggs, you can't have an omelette!
• Do you need to get some more food? If you don't have enough or the right food, you will need to get some more.
• Where will you get your food from? You might go to the supermarket, but which one stocks what you want and is it the right place. It might be that you need to go to somewhere other than a supermarket such as a fishmongers, butchers or green grocers if you want something specialist. If you are surviving in the wild you will need to hunt and forage.
• How long will your food last? If you are on camp, or it is Christmas, you may not be able to go to anywhere to stock up again for a while.
• How many are you feeding? The more mouths there are the more food you will need.
• Are there any allergies? People react to certain foods in quite extreme ways so you need to make sure that you cater for them?
• Are there any religious or special dietry requirements? It may be that the people you are serving are vegetarian or their religion forbids them to eat pork or beef.
• What do you or your guests like? There is no point in eating something that you don't like if you don't have to!
• What budget have you got? You need to afford the food. You probably can't have quail, cavier and truffles for every meal!
• Is your meal healthy? You need to look at the food groups and the way it is cooked to see if it is healthy enough. You should really have some sort of fruit or vegetable in each meal and cut down on fat and grease. If you eat the wrong things too often you will end up overweight and suffering a number of illnesses.
• How are you going to cook it? An egg you can fry, boil, poach, scramble, etc. What way would you like and what way is best for your meal?
• Have you got the time? There is no point in starting a dish that needs a 2-hour marinade if you have to eat in 10 minutes. On the other hand, if you can plan in advance then you could start it earlier.
• Have you got the right equipment? Some dishes require specialist equipment such as a blender, sugar themometer, grater, mandolin, etc. If you don't have the equipment, you may have to make the dish differently or not at all.

There are lots of questions like this you can ask and many people ask themselves these questions every single day. As you can see, there is a lot more to cooking than simply heating up some food!