I was fifteen and unkempt in 1983, a boy unburdened by the challenges of childbearing and taxes and flounder-grasping. As for cooking, the jury was still out. And although Peg Bracken’s book, The I Hate to Cook Book, had been a cultural juggernaut for nearly a quarter century, I’d never heard of it. But I was hungry, so I kept reading.

Beyond the reading, the cooking classes, the careful adherence to recipes, the most important way to build knowledge in the kitchen is to put food in your mouth. To taste. Taste the stew as it cooks; taste the sauce as it reduces; the pasta as it boils, the fish as it poaches, the stock as it simmers. Pay close attention, to how your body and mind react. Sense it, feel it, name it, remember.

The goal isn’t perfection, it’s lunch, and good enough is good enough. Cooking, at root, is not an exercise in fantasy. It is a task, quotidian and necessary. If you wanna eat, you gotta cook. (Unless you’re rich, but that’s a topic for a different writer.)

Creating and maintaining your own personal stock takes doing, but it’s not much doing — simple enough to become a habit. And having a steady supply of flavorful, multifaceted stock on hand is a huge boost to anything you use it for.

Five flavorful dishes that demonstrate the beauty of your other options