Today we talk with Roger Anderson of the Kitchen Counter Podcast. The Kitchen Counter podcast is dedicated to helping aspiring home cooks grow their skills and confidence in the kitchen so they can start cooking up memories with their family and friends. Whether you want to learn to cook or just need some simple food inspiration, we will cover recipes, kitchen tools, and interviews with experts to help you on your home cooking journey! Roger has been a home cook for 20-ish years or so. I truly believe that learning to cook, and doing it as regularly as you can, is one of the single most important things you can do for your health, sanity, and wallet. There may be people who had parents who may have cooked when they grew up, they left home and get most of their food from a drive in window, or a cardboard box, or a microwave oven. For the person who knows they should cook more, but have zero in the kitchen to start home cooking, what are some of the tools they will need? What expectations should you set? What are the top hurdles people need to get over to be confident in the kitchen? Do you have a favorite thing to cook? What kind of planning does Roger do for the week? Common mistakes that people make when cooking, and how to have a smooth cooking experience. Cool Tools You Might Need To Get Started in the Kitchen A good knife can save you time and be safer (cutting things with a dull knife and lead to applying too much pressure and the knife slipping and causing injuries). Wüsthof knives are good and to stop over-cooking chicken breasts, a cooking thermometer can help. The Thermo Pro cooking thermometer has all sorts of built in temperatures for different meats (that you can over ride) or use it as a timer. Great for grills, or ovens as you stick the sensor in the meat and the long cable allows you to have the display outside. $20 When you first get started you may not need a food processor, but every time I use my ninja express chopper it saves me a ton of time (again, you don't need this, but after some time you may want to invest $20 in a ninja chopper, or at my grocery store they now offer onions and other items pre cut. I like the looks of this wireless units for around $20.00 I bought a cheap one at Walmart, and it didn't work as expected. I did chicken on a gas grill. As the probe was sticking out the chicken, it seemed to get the temperature of the grill mixed in with the temperature of the chicken. I'll be sharing a video of this in the LogicalLosers.com private Facebook group.