1 . Advice for Cooking on a Tight Schedule

From my experience, there are three main reasons why people don’t cook more often: ability, money, and time.

    1    Money is a topic that I’ll talk about another day. So today I want to give you some advice about how to make the most of the time in the kitchen. Here are three tips for great cooking on a tight schedule:

Think ahead. I usually think cooking is a pain when I’m already hungry and there is nothing ready to eat. So think ahead of the coming week. When will you have time to cook? Do you have the right materials already?    2    

Make your time worth it. When you do find time to cook a meal, make the most of it and save yourself time later on. Are you making one loaf of bread?    3    It takes around the same amount of time to make more of something. So save yourself the effort for a future meal.

    4    This may surprise you, but one of the best ways to make cooking worth your time is experimentation. It gives you the chance to hit upon new ideas and recipes that can work well. The more you learn and the more you try, the more ability you have to take control of your food and your schedule.

Hopefully that gives you a good start.    5    And don’t let a busy schedule disappoint you and stop you from making some great changes in your life!

Li Ziqi,     1     lives in a village in Sichuan Province, is famous for her     2     (attract) videos of rural self-sufficiency (自给自足). Her video channel consists of beautiful process videos that show how she plants crops and harvests from her garden and the nearby forest before     3     (cook) delicious food in her outdoor kitchen.

For a worldwide audience in the pandemic, her beautiful D.I.Y videos have become     4     reliable source of escape and comfort. In her videos, she tends     5     (work) in silence and plays soothing music.

She is not known     6     taking shortcuts. Her way of cooking suggests that every delicious dish takes     7     (pain) to prepare. For example in a 12-minute video, she, at first, pushed garlic parts into the farm land outside her home; in the next few minutes, with the sprouts growing, they reached up towards the sky when she     8     (begin) to cook. Such a video is     9     (certain) a way to step out of the extremely high pressure society that we live in.

Her videos are beyond materialistic ways to explain the nation or culture. Therefore, she     10     (have) already become a major celebrity on the internet, inspiring people to return to their roots.

The two features of life in England that possibly give visitors the worst impressions are the English weather and English cooking.     1     former is a natural phenomenon and nobody can do anything about it. But cooking is something     2     can be learned. English food has often been described as     3     (taste). Recently, the situation has changed somewhat because so many people have been spending their holidays abroad and     4     (learn) to appreciate unfamiliar dishes. One of the traditional complaints about English food is the way that vegetables are cooked. The only way that many British housewives know to cook green vegetables is     5     (boil) them for too long in too much salt water and then to throw the water away so that all the vitamins are lost. To make matters     6     (bad), they do not strain the vegetables sufficiently so that     7     appear as a wet mass on the plate.

However, it would be unfair to say that all English food is bad. Indeed not only the raw ingredients are usually     8     very high quality, especially the meat and fish,     9     many traditional British dishes are as good as anything you can get anywhere. A visitor,     10     is invited to an English home might well enjoy steak and kidney pudding or pie, all sorts of smoked fish .

5 . Both of my parents worked full­time when I was a little girl，so my grandmother would stay at our house during the day. We would watch game shows in the living room. Our favorite was The Price Is Right. We would call out our answers along with the contestants.

When I got older and started going to school，we couldn’t watch our game shows regularly. That was okay with me，though，because the one thing I liked better than watching game shows with my grandmother was helping her bake cakes. Watching her in the kitchen was amazing：she never seemed to need the recipes（食谱）but everything she made tasted delicious.

At first I would just sit in the kitchen and watch，even though I didn’t understand what she was doing. As I got older，she let me help with the easy parts，such as measuring the sugar. The day she let me separate the eggs，I felt like I had found complete pleasure.

At last，my parents decided that I could take care of myself，and my grandmother stopped coming over every day. The love of baking，however，stayed with me. I started baking by myself，and even if the cookies ended up burnt sometimes，more often they turned out pretty well. I tried out new recipes，and whenever I got to a thorny part，I would call my grandmother for advice. Sometimes I would call her just to talk too. I felt like I could talk to her about anything.

My grandmother passed away ten years ago，but I still think of her every day. Last week，I found a recipe book she made for me. It included her recipes for brownies，cookies，and my favorite，lemon pie. As I looked through the pages，I thought I could hear her voice. She was the one who taught me not just about baking，but about life.