I also like to experiment, so sometimes I’ll hear about something and buy it, or I’ll see some ingredient I’ve never heard of with an interesting recipe on the package, and I’ll just buy it to see how it works.

Coconut oil is what lots of store-bought cookies used to be made from. It has lots of good properties. The cookies are…well, buttery in flavor and texture. It is very shelf-stable, which means they don’t get stale or rancid like liquid oils would without lots of preservatives. It’s gotten a bad health rep, which is undeserved, since the research which originally implicated it in health issues was faulty, in fact using a product that was chemically modified from naturally-occurring cocunut oils. Whole populations consume it daily and are completely healthy.

But for lots of things, there are tricks you can learn to save yourself learning the hard way. Coconut oil makes the best cookies, butterier than if you put real butter in. The coconut oil I get for baking I buy at Walmart, where it costs $2.67 for 31.5 ounces, an absolute bargain. To substitute into a recipe, use a little less coconut oil than butter, maybe 10% less, as butter contains water as well as fat.

As far as substuting flours is concerned, this is something I do because I can’t eat wheat and have to make substitutions. I probably would stick to unbleached white flour and whole wheat flour if I was still able to eat that, except for some recipes that call for a different flour for a special effect.

I have been looking for ways to cook heathier and well, to be frank, for someone who has little knowledge of the kitchen, some recipes send my head just a-spinning.

Where to start really?