I guess I first started cooking in Home Ec when I was 12, it was mandatory. Most useful class ever. They taught us how to budget, do taxes, the proper fork to use at dinner, cook, and sew. Or tried to anyways. I have been forced to sew in school an uncommon number of times in my estimation, and were it up to me, I will never again perform the task.

Then my habit of using up my food card buying cigarettes and BBQ at college led me to interesting ways to feed myself on the cheap. And a few years later with a tiny kitchen I was able to do a lot more. Wife burns soup, so there's 24 years of experience feeding myself, and I was a pizza cook too.

The baking is more recent. That's kind of a funny story. It just so happened everyone I knew but me was going to be out of town for 2 weeks at the same time. It did not occur to me that I was A) broke, and B) out of food. Wife had all the money cause she was out of town. And this was before you could just zip money around online... but we had a shitload of flour. So I ate a bunch of baked goods for a couple weeks lol.