TL;DR
- Shelly grew up in an Italian family where cooking was an art passed down without written recipes, but life eventually pushed her into survival mode, cooking for triplets.
- Her culinary disasters include sugarless pumpkin pie and chocolate chip soup, but those mistakes became valuable lessons.
- Once the kids left home, she rediscovered her love of cooking through streaming shows, TikTok chefs, and AI-powered meal planning.
- She realized learning to cook mirrors learning any complex skill like the PESO Model©—it starts with overwhelm, builds through trial and error, and evolves with practice.
- Microlearning helped her make real progress by mastering one skill at a time and embracing small wins.
- AI became a supportive, judgment-free kitchen companion that made it easier to plan, adapt, and grow.
- Her key takeaway is that progress comes from starting, making mistakes, and continuing anyway, whether you’re learning to cook or implementing a new professional framework.
- And yes, wine helps.
A Microlearning and AI Success Story
What’s for dinner?
Those few words have haunted households since the dawn of civilization. They’re the reason my eye twitches every Tuesday at 4:47 PM, and probably why our ancestors invented the microwave burrito. But let me tell you about my cooking journey: a tale of triumph, disaster, and the sugar-free pumpkin pie that shall never be spoken of again.
Help! Where Do I Even Start?
Growing up in an Italian family meant one thing: there was always something simmering on the stove. My grandma and her sisters treated cooking like sacred rituals, with recipes that lived exclusively in their heads and were passed down through generations like precious family heirlooms. These women could eyeball measurements with the precision of master chemists and somehow always knew exactly when pasta was “done” (which, for the record, is apparently not when it sticks to the wall; my college boyfriend’s approach).
Learning to cook with them was like attending culinary boot camp. They were strict recipe followers, even though their recipes existed only in the mystical realm of “a pinch of this,” “a dash of that,” and “cook until it looks right.”
I’d stand there, trying to figure out how to measure their “handful” of herbs while they guided me through techniques that seemed to require some sort of inherited Italian cooking gene that I was pretty sure I’d missed out on.
We made everything from scratch, from homemade pasta that required more arm strength than in my high school gym class to marinara sauces that simmered for days.
The planning, shopping (or growing our own tomatoes and herbs because apparently store-bought was basically culinary treason), prepping, and cooking were exhausting. But the smells? Pure Magic. Those smells meant home.
Meanwhile, my mom took the complete opposite approach. She viewed cooking like I view folding fitted sheets: technically possible, but why torture yourself? As a working mother, she was done with spending hours creating meals that disappeared faster than my teenage attitude on Monday mornings.
Enter the era of TV dinners, frozen pizzas, and my personal favorite: boil-a-bags. (IYKYK, and if you don’t know, congratulations on being born after 1980.)
By college, my culinary skills had devolved to the holy trinity of every poor college student’s diet: frozen burritos, packaged ramen, and late-night pizza delivery. I could microwave like a champ and had the phone number for every delivery place on campus memorized. Gordon Ramsay would have wept.
Welcome to Survival Mode
Fast-forward to parenthood, and not just any parenthood, but triplet parenthood. Three tiny humans with three completely different food preferences and the collective pickiness only found at a convention of food critics.
The toddler years were all about kid-friendly cuisine: chicken nuggets, mac-n-cheese, and “picnics” (which were really just finger foods arranged in a cute basket to make me feel like I was being creative). Bite-sized PBJs, grapes, apple slices, pretzels, cheese cubes, and Go-Gurts became my picnic go-to.
Then came the teenage years: three very social, very athletic teenagers and their friends who treated our house like a pit stop between sports practices and social events.
This was when I discovered the crockpot, that magical appliance that could transform frozen chicken and some questionable vegetables into something resembling a meal while I was at work. I’d prep everything the night before, throw it in the crockpot before rushing out the door, and pray to the culinary gods that it would be edible when we all reconvened between homework and practices.
Cooking during this phase wasn’t about passion or creativity. It was pure survival. I was basically running a short-order restaurant for three demanding customers who changed their preferences weekly and had the energy levels of caffeinated toddlers with the appetite of college football players.
Wait…I Totally Messed This Up
Of course, not everything went smoothly.
There was the infamous Thanksgiving when, in the morning rush, I forgot to add sugar to the pumpkin pies. Let me tell you, savory pumpkin pie is not a thing, no matter how much whipped cream you add. (Especially when my mother-in-law was the one who discovered my error.) My family still brings this up at holiday gatherings because apparently, my culinary failures are considered prime entertainment material.
Then there were the chocolate chip cookies where I doubled everything except the flour. The result was something that could charitably be described as “chocolate chip icing” but was really just a pan of regret and wasted butter.
And let’s not forget the Great Powdered Sugar Incident, when my daughters and their friends decided to make their own cookies, but mistakenly substituted powdered sugar for flour. The less said about that particular kitchen catastrophe, the better. Some traumas are too deep to process fully.
But you know what? Each disaster taught me something, and not that I should stick to cooking. I learned that baking is actually chemistry (who knew?), that reading recipes completely before starting is not optional, that ensuring you have the right ingredients is essential, and that having a sense of humor about kitchen failures is essential for maintaining any sort of culinary confidence.
Rediscovering My Kitchen Mojo
But then something magical happened: the kids grew up and left for college. Suddenly, I had time.
Time to think about what I wanted to eat. Time to experiment. Time to remember why I fell in love with cooking in my grandma’s kitchen all those years ago.
The cooking landscape had completely transformed during my survival years. Enter streaming cooking shows that made me feel like I had a shot at becoming the next Julia Child (spoiler alert: I am not). Alton Brown became my personal cooking guru, explaining not just how to cook, but why things worked the way they did. The Bear made me feel like cooking was cool and gritty and somehow connected to deep emotional truths about life and family.
TikTok Italian chefs became my new obsession. I scrolled their videos, pausing between each step, rewinding to catch technique details I’d missed, and asking AI to create shopping lists based on whatever mouth-watering creation I’d just witnessed. My cooking had entered the digital age, and I was here for it.
Cooking with my best friend became my favorite weekly ritual. We’d pick new recipes, debate wine pairings (because I’ve also developed opinions about wine), and challenge ourselves to try something completely outside our comfort zones.
My palate, which had been stuck in chicken nugget purgatory for years, suddenly expanded to include homemade ramen, exotic Italian dishes, and soups that didn’t come from cans.
Everything’s Different Now
These days, cooking looks completely different from what it did during my grandma’s era or even my survival-mode parenting years. AI is creating my weekly meal plans based on my preferences: “Asian fusion this week, please, with a side of something I’ve never tried before.”
I can ask my digital sous chef to whip up a shopping list from whatever TikTok recipe caught my eye, or even just tell it what’s existing in my fridge and get suggestions for turning those random ingredients into something edible.
Technology has revolutionized the whole experience, but in the best possible way. I’m no longer frantically flipping through cookbooks or trying to decipher my grandma’s cryptic recipe notes.
Instead, I have access to cooking videos that break down techniques step-by-step, online communities that share tips and tricks, and AI assistants that can adapt recipes based on dietary restrictions or ingredient availability.
My cooking confidence has grown exponentially, leading to what my family diplomatically calls “an enthusiastic approach to grocery shopping.”
My pantry now looks like I’m preparing for either a dinner party or the apocalypse—it’s really hard to tell which.
Reflections: From Kitchen Chaos to the PESO Model©
Looking back at my cooking journey, I realize it perfectly mirrors how we learn anything new, whether it’s mastering culinary skills, understanding wine (a whole other adventure involving questionable label-based purchasing decisions), or even grasping professional concepts like the PESO Model©.
The pattern is always the same: we start overwhelmed and intimidated, dive deeper as our curiosity grows, test our knowledge in real-world situations, troubleshoot when things go wrong, and eventually adapt to new ways of doing things.
Each moment of need builds on the previous one, creating a foundation of knowledge and confidence that grows stronger with every success and failure.
This is where microlearning comes in, that beautiful concept of breaking down complex skills into bite-sized, digestible pieces.
Instead of trying to become a master chef overnight (Ummm….impossible), I learned to embrace small victories. Mastering one technique at a time, understanding one flavor profile before moving to the next, and building my palate gradually rather than expecting to develop sophisticated taste buds immediately.
AI has become my tireless kitchen companion in this learning journey, never judging my questionable spice combinations (I don’t do spicy!!), always ready with suggestions when I’m staring at a fridge full of random ingredients, and constantly helping me optimize my approach based on what worked (and what didn’t).
It’s like having a patient cooking instructor who remembers all my preferences, dietary restrictions, and past disasters and crafts personalized learning experiences that actually work.
Whether you’re learning to cook, understanding wine, mastering the PESO Model, or literally any new skill, implement microlearning and just start. Scroll TikTok. Watch videos. Get help where you can. Use available PESO Model tools. Make mistakes, and don’t be so hard on yourself when the pumpkin pie tastes like, well, like disappointment.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a pot of something delicious simmering on the stove.
Buon appetito!
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